The Council received a presentation from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the Draft 2021 Observer Program Annual Report and provided recommendations for the development of the 2023 Annual Deployment Plan (ADP). The Annual Report provides a scientific evaluation of the deployment of observers in 2021 to evaluate if deployment expectations were met that… Read More →
Observer Annual Deployment Plan and PCFMAC Report
The Council reviewed the Observer Program Draft 2022 Annual Deployment Plan (ADP) and received a report from the Partial Coverage Fishery Monitoring Advisory Committee (PCFMAC). The Council supported NMFS’ recommendations for deploying observers and electronic monitoring (EM) on vessels in the partial coverage groundfish and halibut fisheries in 2022. Specifically, the Council supported NMFS’ recommendations… Read More →
Partial Coverage Observer Program Cost Efficiencies
At the January 2020 meeting, the Council considered different options to improve cost efficiencies in the partial coverage program and adopted priorities for continued and new work on cost efficiencies in the partial coverage program. As background, in October 2019, the Council recommended an increase in the observer fee percentage from 1.25% to 1.65% for… Read More →
Cost Saving Strategies for the Observer Program
The Council received a report on continued work by the Fishery Monitoring Advisory Committee (FMAC) to develop new ideas to potentially lower costs in the partial coverage observer category, and requests that the group continue to develop new ideas. A subgroup of industry volunteers on the FMAC was first convened in 2017, to explore ideas… Read More →
Observer Annual Deployment Plan
The Council received a report on the Final Observer Program 2019 Annual Deployment Plan (ADP), which highlighted changes to the document since the Council’s review of the Draft ADP in October. The Final ADP uses the Council’s recommended deployment strata and a coverage allocation scheme of 15% plus optimized allocation based on discarded groundfish and… Read More →
