Electronic Monitoring

Project Summary >

BC Groundfish Longline Fisheries

Purpose: Catch and Effort Monitoring

January 01, 2005 British Columbia, Canada

Groundfish longline fisheries in British Columbia have been coming under increased pressure to improve the quality of catch reporting. The mandatory dockside monitoring programs for these fisheries account for all landed catch but little is known about that catch which is discarded at sea, or cut up and used as bait. Rockfish are an emerging conservation concern because these species are common in groundfish longline fisheries, are long-lived, and usually experience 100% mortality upon capture. Declining rockfish quotas may limit a fisher’s access to target species such as halibut or sablefish, a constraint that increases the likelihood that unreported rockfish might be discarded at sea in order to stay within by-catch limits. There are also concerns over seabird by-catch. The nature of the problem, or determining if a problem even exists, has not been established for British Columbia longline fisheries.

In keeping with Canada’s international commitments and sustainability goals, more at-sea information from groundfish longline fisheries is needed. Observer programs have until recently been regarded as the only reliable means for at-sea monitoring. The at-sea monitoring cost for the 8,500-day BC halibut fishery would be significant and there are a number of concerns with deploying observers on the groundfish longline fleet, when a significant component are less than 40 feet and have insufficient bunk capacity, workspace, or safety equipment for an additional person.

Trials using electronic monitoring in the halibut fishery have demonstrated this technology to be a promising tool for at-sea monitoring applications. In 2002, Archipelago implemented a large-scale electronic monitoring program for the halibut fishery, which included the use of at-sea observers to benchmark the electronic monitoring data. Catch information from video imagery was compared with at-sea observer data for about 400 sets (~220,000 hooks). Overall, video-based catch estimates were within 2% of observer-based catch estimates. A high degree of accuracy was evident for most species identification. This work has shown that electronic monitoring can effectively address a variety of monitoring issues including time and area restrictions, seabird mitigation devices, and catch identification and enumeration. With reliability and lower cost as drivers, electronic monitoring may be appropriate to replace or compliment at-sea observer programs, resulting in more strategic and cost effective monitoring. The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) published the report in 2003, and can be found on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada web site. To download a copy of the report, please click here.

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