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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 8
April 2006
Chatham MA fleet set to test electronic FVTR
CHATHAM, MA - Tinkering with software developed for the Study Fleet cooperative research program, researchers and industry members think they have come up with a viable way to allow fishermen to electronically transmit fishing vessel trip reports (FVTRs) on their way back to port.
Now comes the testing phase.
The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association (CCCHFA) is partnering with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and lining up 10-15 Chatham- and Harwich-based hook and gillnet boats to try out the new system starting in mid- to late-April.
Chatham fisherman Mike Russo, owner of the gillnetter Gulf Venture and the tub trawler Susan Lee, began working with the Study Fleet program when it started in 2001 and has signed on to take part in the electronic FVTR project as well.
“My goal is to make my day a little easier,” he said. “I think this will help us get off the boat quicker.”
User friendly
Each boat participating in the project is being equipped with a laptop computer loaded with a modified version of the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Logbook software that came out of the Study Fleet program. The laptop is connected to each boat’s vessel monitoring system (VMS).
Scott Tibbetts is a Gloucester-based independent programmer who developed the UNH Logbook and has been contracted by CCCHFA to work on the electronic FVTR project. He explained how the system works.
A technician familiar with the software will run through the set-up portion of the program and help fishermen set the defaults, which cover basic information like vessel name, Coast Guard documentation number, and vessel permit number. Once the defaults are set, the fisherman won’t have to put the information in again – ever.
Russo said, “The top third of the trip report is all defaults. It’s a real time-saver.”
Other required information – like species caught, gear type fished, port of landing, and dealers sold to – can be pre-selected to form short lists. Once the set-up is complete, fishermen will be able to choose from these short, personalized lists to fill in the FVTR fields for each trip.
The program also automatically creates a unique trip identifier number for each trip and runs an error check to catch entries that may not fit the pattern of previous trips or wouldn’t be expected in a particular data field.
Tibbetts explained that he also created an on-screen keypad that will give fishermen the option of using the laptop’s mouse to make data field selections.
“You don’t have to type if you don’t want to,” he said.
Five screens
Altogether, each electronic FVTR consists of just five or six screens:
• A trip screen, which asks for basic trip information, including port of departure, time, and operator;
• An effort screen, which asks for area fished, gear used, and number of tows or hauls;
• A kept/discards screen, which asks for species and amounts kept or discarded;
• A landings screen, which asks for port of landing, amount of fish sold, and dealer or dealers who purchased the fish;
• A trip notes screen, which is an optional page for recording observations fishermen may want to pass on to NMFS or Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) scientists; and
• A transmit screen, which lets fishermen review the data they have recorded, points out any possible errors, and allows the user to give the command to transmit the report to NMFS through the VMS.
“Hopefully we’ve got a way to eliminate the paper at the regulatory office and make it easier for fishermen to fulfill their regulatory requirements,” Tibbetts said.
Equipment requirements
According to Tom Rudolph, CCCHFA’s director of cooperative research, the computer requirement of the system shouldn’t be a significant stumbling block, either for the fishermen participating in the electronic FVTR project or in the future if NMFS makes electronic reporting a requirement.
Several of the CCCHFA vessels participated in the Study Fleet program and so were already equipped with laptops and VMSs, he said.
VMS is becoming common aboard many different kinds of fishing vessels, he added, and, with the price of laptops coming down to as low as $600, many boats now routinely carry them.
“A simple laptop kept in the cuddy, preferably in its case, probably works best,” he said.
John Hoey, NEFSC manager of cooperative research programs, said that Study Fleet vessels used Dell Latitude notebook computers.
“We’ve been very impressed at how they’ve held up,” he said. “Some of them have been out there for three years.”
Study fleet connection
The electronic FVTR system came out of the NMFS Cooperative Research Partners Program Study Fleet program. The program, which involved small, medium, and large vessels, was designed to develop and implement state-of-the-art electronic data reporting devices for use by the Northeast groundfish fleet.
After funding ran out last year, Hoey’s staff interviewed the fishermen who had participated in the Study Fleet.
“They said, ‘We think there’s going to be electronic FVTR down the road and we want to make sure it works for us,’” Hoey said.
John Witzig, director of the NMFS Fishery Statistics Office, was already interested in moving toward electronic FVTRs and arranged for funding to develop and test the system.
According to Hoey, NMFS found that the UNH Logbook, which was developed to record data down to the tow-by-tow/haul-by-haul level, was an effective tool for collecting information and transmitting it to the science center electronically.
So it made sense to start the electronic FVTR project there, he said. And because Tibbetts developed the UNH Logbook, project organizers asked him to create a scaled-back but versatile version to suit the needs of an electronic FVTR.
Changes made
During the Study Fleet program scientists and fishermen said that the screens used by the UNH Logbook system were too small.
“We found that the guys with the smallest monitors had the highest error rate,” Hoey said.
Added Tibbetts, “The fishermen requested larger and bolder fonts. They couldn’t see the screens mainly because of the environment they work in.”
Fishermen who had worked with the logbook also asked Tibbetts to get rid of anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary for the FVTR.
And he did.
“If you showed fishermen the logbook and the electronic FVTR, nobody would believe they came from the same thing,” Tibbetts said. “We streamlined it to fulfill the regulatory requirements.”
However, the FVTR program retains the ability to allow fishermen to keep more detailed records if they want to.
“You can also send a copy to your own files so you have your own records,” Russo said.
CCCHFA goals
As part of its role in the electronic FVTR project, the CCCHFA took time to figure out how the data collected by fishermen through the computer program could be made accessible to as many branches of NMFS as possible – both to meet the data needs of managers and scientists and to reduce the need for fishermen to have to fill out multiple reports.
“A lot of people have had input into this project because of the many places in the agency where the data needs to go,” Rudolph said.
A few examples of those places are: the NEFSC Data Management System Office; the NMFS Northeast Region Office of Information Resource Management; and the Fisheries Information Section of the NMFS Northeast Region Fishery Statistics Office, where FVTR reports now go.
Furthermore, the association decided to give thought to other possible uses for the information.
“The data should be able to be shunted off to sector managers. It would be great to eliminate the paper,” Rudolph said. “Within the agency, it should go to the observer data base, the dealer data base, port samplers, days-at-sea enforcement, and other places.
“The technology is there,” he added. “It’s just a matter of building momentum.”
AOLA project
The Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association (AOLA) is also getting ready to work with a version of the electronic FVTR system. The association has agreed to provide participants and to monitor the project, according to AOLA Executive Director Bonnie Spinazzola.
“Our initial goal is to create a ‘lobster-only’ form – for boats only fishing for lobster – that can be used instead of the current FVTR, which is primarily a groundfish form,” she said.
Such a form will give scientists and fishery managers more relevant lobster data, Spinazzola added.
“Once that is in motion, we plan to escalate our study to look at ways in which we can report electronically,” she said.
AOLA is planning on building its “lobster-only” form based on the knowledge and technology gained by the hook association, which has been working on the project since last summer.
“We don’t want to spend time and dollars reinventing the wheel,” Spinazzola said. “We’re really excited about this since we believe that good data has to go into a model if we are to get good information out if it.”
Both projects are being pursued cooperatively with fishermen’s organizations because they have the infrastructure to get the word out and to get their members reporting electronically, according to Witzig.
“Once we solve the technical problems, our goal is to get it out to less organized groups,” he said. “We’re on the edge of being able to do electronic reporting for a large portion of the fleet.”
Lorelei Stevens
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