January 9, 2017 โ Several years into the controversial effort to bolster Alaskaโs fisheries observer program, a top federal fisheries official defended the work at a Seattle gathering of fishermen.
Eileen Sobeck, the NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, took the stage this past Nov. 18 to talk to fishermen gathered for the annual Fish Expo event to recap the program.
Observers are the eyes and ears on boats, collecting a range of data, she explained.
โWe have been monitoring fisheries for decades, and we do it in a lot of different ways,โ Sobeck said.
But the details of the program have been under fire over the past few years. Federal efforts to put a human on smaller boats was met with concerns about safety and efficiency, and fishermenโs requests to use cameras have had logistical difficulties.
Over the past few years, the effort to use cameras has increased nationwide, and the National Marine Fisheries Service has been tasked with sorting out how to make that work, both logistically and cost-wise.
Over 10 years, the National Marine Fisheries Service has helped fund more than 30 electronic monitoring, or EM, pilot programs. Expenses include the cost of cameras, the cost to install them, and the cost of going through the immense amount of data they can collect.
โWe have, collectively, an interest in being as cost-effective as we can possibly be,โ Sobeck said.
That effort has translated into regional electronic monitoring plans that were finished more than a year ago, and are now being implemented with plans for regular reviews, said George LaPointe, one of the point people on the project.
Although monitoring in some fisheries has developed successfully, like in the groundfish fisheries, LaPointe said, the agency is still working toward certain implementation, such as in Alaskaโs small boat fixed gear and pot fisheries, where the target date is 2018.