January 28, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries has established a monitoring coverage target that would deploy at-sea monitors aboard 40% of all groundfish sector trips in the Northeast in the upcoming 2021 fishing year, the agency announced Tuesday.
The 2021 ASM coverage target represents a 25% increase from the 32% monitoring coverage target in the 2020 fishing year for the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery.
“Consistent with the requirement to monitor sector operations and to reliably estimate overall catch to the extent practical, the coverage target level will be 40%,” NOAA Fisheries stated in its bulletin announcing the coverage target.
At-sea monitoring coverage levels for Northeast sector groundfish vessels was one of the more tumultuous issues of the 2020 fishing season because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the monitoring program and the New England Fishery Management Council’s approval of Amendment 23 that set future at-sea monitoring coverage target rates for the fishery.