Integrating Data Services for Tracking Individual Fish Quotas

On January 11, 2011, the Northwest Regional Office of NOAA's Fisheries Service launched the West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Shares Management Program. This new catch-shares system allocates quota shares of Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) species to quota share owners. These quota shares can be transferred to vessel accounts, where these quota pounds can be transferred to other vessel accounts.

In order to manage quota share and quota pound account balances and transfers, the Northwest Regional Office (NWR) of NOAA Fisheries worked with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) and the Scientific Data Management (SDM) team to develop a web based data management system called IFQ. This online system allows quota share and vessel account owners to view current account balances, transfer quota pounds to vessel accounts, and view real-time catch data from landings. This system seamlessly integrates with a web service data feed from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) landings database, to debit quota pounds from vessel accounts due to landings in real time. This system also connects directly to the Office of Law Enforcement’s Declarations database and the NWRs Permits database. The system also allows staff from the Northwest Regional Sustainable Fisheries Division and the Office of Law Enforcement to access the data to evaluate the program and analyze the data.

To control access to this system and to ensure the security of the data, the SDM team developed this application with an Adobe Flash user interface; build on top of a secure Java middle tier that accesses an Oracle database.

This IFQ application is located at https://www.webapps.nwfsc.noaa.gov/ifq, where users enter a User ID and password to access their quota share and vessel accounts.

Details of the program can be found at http://www.nwr.noaa.gov and click West Coast Groundfish Trawl Catch Shares Management Program.