Overview of Implementing Catch Shares from a General Reporting Standpoint

In May, 2010 a catch shares type program was implemented by NOAA/Fisheries for the groundfish fisheries of the Gulf of Maine, George’s Bank and Southern New England. This was accomplished under Amendment 16 to the Northeast Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan. This program apportioned the allowable catch in these fisheries to historic participants who either joined one of 16 industry sectors or elected to remain in a common pool of non-sector vessels.  In order to monitor the harvests of these fisheries new systems needed to be designed and implemented for the industry sectors to provide NOAA/Fisheries with up-to-date harvest information and for the Agency to provide them with information they needed to conduct their monitoring. New reporting systems for harvesting vessels were also required to allow the collection of additional information used to monitor the fisheries. This process was largely conducted through a series of workshops held over a period of several months with Agency staff and industry proponents and members to develop the details of these systems. We present an overview of this process, some of the issues we faced and the final products.