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Since the inception of daily logbooks, NMFS personnel have executed, as a courtesy to the fishing industry, daily dockside pickup of paper logbook forms, in addition to accepting hand delivery of paper logbook forms to NMFS by represenatives, captains, and owners of vessels within the Hawaii-based longline fleet. This procedure was established because more than 99% of the Hawaii-based longline fleet is home-ported on Oahu and NMFS personnel were already visiting the doccks on a daily basis to maintain their longline vessel inventory. (Note that by regulation the fishing vessel operator is required to mail or deliver signed logsheets to the NMFS Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center; NMFS is not obligated to walk the docks and collect the logsheets.)
Although the current data collection system is working relatively well it is not taking advantage of emerging technology that could improve the efficiency of reporting and record keeping while reducing human error and improving data accuracy. Maintaining paper logbook forms and the interpretation of such forms is subject to high levels of potential error due to bad handwriting and inaccurate recording.