eCatchTechnology for Collaborative Fisheries Management

Matt Merrified – GIS Manager, The Nature Conservancy

A secure web based application that aggregates fisheries information for visualizing, reporting and mapping. Users can choose to share information with other members of cooperative arrangements.

Project requirements

Digitize paper records kept by permit lease holders (fishermen)

Monitor geographic constraints on permits

Monitor the capture of depleted species

Monitor progress towards catch limits for all permit holders

Track costs & revenue for each permit

Report to management agencies as needed

Data inputs – paper

eCatchwebsite

Tickets - landings

Logbooks

expenses

maps

reports

Outputs – electronic

The way it is What we want

In production since October 2007448 trips with 756 sets / tows by 8

vessels

eCatch core functions

Vessel AVessel BVessel CVessel DVessel EVessel FVessel G

Vessel AVessel BVessel CVessel DVessel EVessel FVessel G

Vessel B

What’s next

Ingest of electronicfish tickets from

NMFS

Capture logbooks using a mobile deviceSummer 2011

Short term: Data capture / integration

Spring Summer Fall

Weak stock hot spots in time and space

These are not re

al – proof o

f conce

pt

Who owns the data and controls the systems – industry, government, or a third party?

Fishermen / permit holders

How do we protect privacy?

accessing data should be no different than accessing your bank account online

How do we ensure quality, transparency, and integrity of the information regardless of who collects and holds the data?

How do we integrate disparate systems and maximize inter-operational capacity?

What is the best approach to stage development to ensure success?

How do we ensure that today’s systems will be consistent with tomorrow’s emerging technologies?

Establish a set of data standards

Can we (or should we) develop a single integrated “fishery information system”?

Absolutely not – spend effort developing a set of data

standards

In conclusion

• Information sharing is critical for collective fishing arrangements, particularly weak stock species

• Ideally we would not expend so many resources on data capture and entry

• Data standards are crucial for advancing development