Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Cooperative Research
Study Fleet Program
Electronic Logbook
The primary goal of the Study Fleet Program is to collect high resolution data from fisherman under "normal" fishing conditions. The hardware setup, software deployed, and data collected are part of a study design that has been implemented to achieve this goal. The combination of equipment deployed collects data on fishing effort, catch composition, vessel position, water temperature, and depth on the individual haul level.
Study Fleet Hardware |
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Vessels are equipped with laptops and specialized software which collects fishing effort and catch information on a haul by haul basis. The laptops are integrated with the vessel's GPS, VMS, and depth sounder feeds. |
Vessels are also outfitted with temperaure and depth probes which are programmed to collect data at a set interval. The probes are attached to the "doors" of the trawl net, or to a string of fixed fishing gear. |
Study Fleet Software
The Study Fleet program uses the Fisheries Logbook Data Recording System (FLDRS) software. This software is designed to function as an electronic logbook recording system to collect data on individual fishing efforts, including kept and discarded catch, vessel positioning, and landings information. Once the data are collected, they are compressed into a single file and sent in an email which is transmitted via a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) to the Study Fleet project staff for auditing and analysis.
By using this software, fishermen's data can become part of the science that helps determine fisheries management decisions. This is a tremendous asset to fishermen and scientists alike, as it gives fishermen ownership in the management process while helping scientists collect additional data to facilitate the most informed decisions possible.
There are two modules within the FLDRS software:
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The Logbook module captures each individual fishing effort.
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The Administrator module provides a toolkit to simplify application maintenance and control application settings.
Click here to view a PDF file of the FLDRS Logbook User Manual.
Click here to view a PDF file of the FLDRS Administrator Manual.
Study Fleet Data
Fishing effort and catch data - The fishing effort and catch data collected by the FLDRS software is the principle focus of the Study Fleet Program. The main goal is to enable fisherman to collect more accurate and precise data on where and how much fish are caught, and how much effort was expended. It is intended that this higher resolution data will lead to improved reporting accuracy, additional data for use in the stock assessment process, and a way for fishermen to share their knowledge and at-sea observations with the associated catch and effort. In addition, this program provides a mechanism to develop cooperative relationships between commercial fishermen and fishery scientists.
Temperature/depth probes - The data collected by the temperature/depth probes are extremely valuable. These data are used to ground truth estimates of fishing effort, and more importantly, to provide information which can help scientists determine if there are patterns between the presence of fish species and certain environmental variables. Click here to see a sample plot of the temperature/depth data collected.
GPS polling data - The FLDRS software polls a vessel's GPS unit at fixed intervals and stores these data in a file that is downloaded by our field technicians. These data allow us to visualize cruise tracks and ground truth the estimates of fishing effort.
Data transmission - Once all of these data are collected, they are transmitted via a VMS (Vessel Monitoring System) to the Study Fleet Office where they are uploaded, audited, processed, and added to our Oracle database. Currently the FLDRS software supports Boatracs® and SkyMate® VMS systems.
Web Confirmation System - The Web Confirmation System is a secure web-based application designed with the objective of making the data that a vessel collects available to the captain and owner to view, edit, and confirm, after a series of automatic audits has been run. A more interactive component of the Web Confirmation System consists of a vessel electronic reporting map. The map enables the captain/owner to view the TD and GPS data collected. One very valuable feature of the mapping component of the web confirmation system is the ability to display the kept and discarded species for each trip in convenient pie charts.
Click here to see a schematic of how the software and hardware all work together.