Grants totaling $3.7 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will help support data modernization and electronic data collection in Alaska and several other states.
The 12 grants awarded in late December totaled $3,701,000 and generated an additional $6,721,000 in matching contributions from grantees, providing a total conservation impact of almost $10.5 million, according to NFWF sources.
The grants were awarded through the Electronic Monitoring and Reporting Grant program, a partnership of NFWF and NOAA, with additional funding this year from Shell USA.
Jeff Trandahl, chief executive officer and executive director of NFWF, said the grants represent continued progress of efforts to help commercial and recreational fishing communities tackle conservation challenges. The grants will help advance sustainable fisheries management and drive technology innovation in fisheries nationwide, he said.
The projects aim to support sustainable state and federal fisheries management in Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
“These advancements in electronic monitoring and reporting will improve our science-based sustainable fisheries management efforts in the face of our changing climate,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries, and acting assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy NOAA administrator.
Amanda Dasch, vice president of Shell Offshore Power Americas, said Shell has a long history of operating in coastal waterways and working alongside local fisheries to help protect and preserve communities where they work and live. “We are proud to support NFWF grantees’ work to advance technology that will benefit the fishing ecosystem in the United States,” she said.
The EMR grant program was established in 2015 to advance NOAA’s sustainable fisheries goals to partner with fishermen and other stakeholders, state agencies and fishery information networks to integrate technology into fisheries data collect and observations.
Brent Paine, executive director of United Catcher Boats (UCB), which represents 72 Bering Sea trawl catcher vessels, noted that for the past three years UCB had participated in a research project examining the impact of using electronic monitoring (EM) in place of human observers. The cost of employing human observers runs $350 to $400 a day, he said. Overall costs with EM will be substantially lower.
With EM the video taken will be sent to the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission in Portland for analysis, providing a better system of enumeration of the overall catch. “We need to know where the bycatch rates will be high to avoid these areas, Paine said.
Grants approved for EM projects in Alaska include:
- $585,600 to United Catcher Boats, with $2,075,300 in matching funds totaling $2,660,900, to evaluate the cost efficiency and operation of EM systems on Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska pelagic pollock trawl catcher vessels to monitor compliance with retention regulations. The project seeks to expand on past efforts to improve data quality, timeliness and cost efficiency for salmon bycatch accounting and groundfish discards.
- $474,700 to Aleutians East Borough with $680,000 in matching funds, for a total of $1.15 million, to develop tools to enhance EM data review, test solutions for data transfer in remote fishing communities, automate salmon bycatch record keeping and explore use of EM in processing plants.
- $80,600 to the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, with $136,700 in matching funds for a total of $217,300 to evaluate EM for its ability to improve data quality, consistency, and reduce data collection costs in Alaska’s rockfish trawl fishery.
- $137,400 to Real-Time Data North America, with $290,500 in matching funds, for a total of $427,900, to collect real-time, fine-scale spatial and temporal fisheries data for catch accounting and stock assessment through a commercial fishery’s electronic logbook pilot in the Alaska halibut and sablefish fishery.
- $155,900 to the Alaska Trollers Association with $750,000 in matching funds, for a total of $905,900, to reestablish a fisheries data collection and analysis program conducted by Alaska troll fishermen through a voluntary electronic logbook effort. This project will collect physical and biological information on the southeastern Alaska marine ecosystem to provide managers and researchers with real-time access to data from participating harvesters.
