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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 72 hours of landing. 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 Council's analysis was in turn based on a pilot electronic logbook program that had equipped up to thirty vessels with pilot software. One of those pilot vessels is still participating and reporting electronically.
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 on landing. Moving to an electronic system for the collection of these logbook data has many beneficial and practicable benefits in the form of increased NMFS efficiency, data accuracy, and burden reduction for operators over the current paper process. (Need more on system background).