Is the OLFISH Electronic Monitoring System a Feasible Tool for Improving Fishery-Dependent Data for the Deep Water Red Crab Fishery?

This collaborative research study has been assessing the feasibility of customizing the OLFISH Dynamic Data Logger electronic monitoring system to record accurate catch and discards information during routine red crab commercial fishing trips in mid-Atlantic waters. The red crab resource underwent its second ever stock assessment in 2006, and was further reviewed in 2008; the paucity of data available for this species has been identified as a key hindrance to the effective management of the crab resource. With a core team of up to eight fishermen and two scientists, this study aims to considerably improve on the data available for stock assessments by developing an electronic data collection method which can be used for long-term monitoring of the catch and discards during commercial trips.