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- Evaluation and Approval of the Business Plan, and
- Implementation of the Electronic Signature Process.
NMFS manages fishing in waters of the United States and international waters under authority of various statutes and laws, primarily the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Public Law 94-265, as variously amended, most recently by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (P.L. 109-479)) (MSA) and the High Seas Fishery Management and Conservation Act.
Recent regulations have made changes to the Fishery Management Plan for the Western Pacific Region. In particular, the regulation authorizes the use of optional electronic logbooks. Affected operators of fishing vessels must record their catch daily in a logbook and report logbook entries to NMFS within 24 72 hours of the completion of each fishing daylanding. NOAA promulgated the final rule authorizing the use of electronic logbooks on April 17, 2007. This regulatory action was based, in part, on an analysis included in a Regulatory Amendment published by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Council in November of 2006 that articulated the benefits of electronic logbook reporting.
The electronic logbook, which may include the use of physical media such as CD-Rom, memory stick, or diskette, obviate the need for operators of fishing vessels to send in paper logbook pages at the completion of fishing dayson landing. Moving to an electronic system for the collection of these logbook data has many beneficial and practicable benefits in the form of increased NFMS NMFS efficiency, data accuracy, and burden reduction for operators over the current paper process. (Need more on system background).