Catch reporting

The general industry practice is to write out a catch report on paper, and present it to a fisheries management official when they return to port. If information does not seem plausible to the official, the report may be verified by physical inspection of the catch. Alternatively, a suspicious vessel may need to carry an independent observer on future voyages.

Some Vessel monitoring systems have features that collect, from keyboard input, the data that constitutes a catch report for the entire voyage. More advanced systems periodically transmit the current catch as electronic mail, so fisheries management centers can determine if a controlled area needs to be closed to further fishing.

While there is no standardization as yet for catch reports, a starting point came from a 1981 Conference of Experts:[1]

• Catch on entry to each controlled area
• Weekly catch
• Transshipment
• Port of landing
• Catch on exiting a controlled area
• Days at sea
• Daily time at sea
• Seasonal catch limits
• Per-trip catch limits
• Limits on catch within certain areas
• Individual (vessel) transferable quotas
• Minimum or maximum fish (or shellfish) sizes

This was extended, in 1993, to include:[2] to include the measurement of:

• catch
• species composition
• fishing effort
• Bycatch (i.e., species unintentionally caught, such as dolphins in tuna fishery)
• area of operations

A number of programs require tracking of days at sea (DAS) for a given vessel. They may require tracking the total cumulative catch of a given fishery.

Where the local fishery economy permits, perhaps with international funding, near-real-time catch reporting will become a basic feature of vessel management systems. Software at fisheries management centers will cross-correlate VMS position information, catch reports, and spot inspection reports.

• List of harvested aquatic animals by weight