Catch reporting is a part of Monitoring control and surveillance

Monitoring control and surveillance

Monitoring, control and surveillance , in the context of fisheries, is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as a broadening of traditional enforcing national rules over fishing, to the support of the broader problem of fisheries management.Internationally, the...

 of Commercial fishing

Commercial fishing

Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice it as an industry must often pursue fish far into the ocean under adverse conditions...

. Depending on national and local fisheries management practices, catch reports may reveal illegal fishing practices, or simply indicate that a given area is being overfished.

Manual Catch Reporting

The general industry practice is to write out a catch report on paper, and present it to a fisheries management official when they return to port. If information does not seem plausible to the official, the report may be verified by physical inspection of the catch. Alternatively, a suspicious vessel may need to carry an independent observer on future voyages.

Semi-automated Catch Reporting

Some Vessel monitoring system

Vessel monitoring system

Vessel monitoring systems are used in commercial fishing to allow environmental and fisheries regulatory organizations to monitor, minimally, the position, time at a position, and course and speed of fishing vessels. They are a key part of monitoring control and surveillance programs at the...

s have features that collect, from keyboard input, the data that constitutes a catch report for the entire voyage. More advanced systems periodically transmit the current catch as electronic mail, so fisheries management centers can determine if a controlled area needs to be closed to further fishing.

While there is no standardization as yet for catch reports, a starting point came from an 1981 Conference of Experts :

• Catch on entry to each controlled area
• Weekly catch
• Transshipment
• Port of landing
• Catch on exiting a controlled area
• Days at sea
• Daily time at sea
• Seasonal catch limits
• Per-trip catch limits
• Limits on catch within certain areas
• Individual (vessel) transferable quotas
• Minimum or maximum fish (or shellfish) sizes

This was extended, in 1993, to include: to include the measurement of:

• catch
• species composition
• fishing effort
• Bycatch (i.e., species unintentionally caught, such as dolphins in tuna fishery)
• area of operations

A number of programs require tracking of days at sea (DAS) for a given vessel. They may require tracking the total cumulative catch of a given fishery.

Major Trends

Where the local fishery economy permits, perhaps with international funding, near-real-time catch reporting will become a basic feature of vessel management systems. Software at fisheries management centers will cross-correlate VMS position information, catch reports, and spot inspection reports.