The design and performance of an automated observer deployment system for the Northeastern United States groundfish fishery

Historically, a dock intercept process was used to deploy observers in the Northeastern United States groundfish fishery. In this process, the selection of which fishing trips received observer coverage was manually accomplished using pre-defined specifications established by the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast Fisheries Science Center. In May 2010, the management of the northeast groundfish fishery underwent major changes affecting the magnitude and complexity of observer deployment. These changes included: (a) a shift from input controls to a quota based catch-share system; (b) an approximate four-fold increase in the level of observer coverage; and (c) introduction of a new class of trained observers. The manual dock intercept process was insufficient to adequately address these new provisions and an automated observer deployment system, the Pre-Trip Notification System (PTNS), was implemented in the Northeastern United States groundfish fishery on 1 May 2010. The PTNS uses a self-adjusting probability-based, tiered selection process to randomly assign observer coverage across the groundfish fleet on a proportional basis for the purpose of monitoring discards. In this paper, we discuss the general design and performance of the PTNS over the first three years of use with a specific focus the self-adjusting properties of the system, and the impacts of vessel compliance.