eLandings Overview

The Interagency Electronic Reporting System (IERS) is an interagency project involving the three agencies that manage commercial fisheries in Alaska: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the International Pacific Halibut Commission. Commercial seafood processors are required to report data on seafood harvest to these agencies. Traditionally reporting has involved a combination of paper forms, such as fish tickets and weekly production reports, and electronic reporting such as shoreside processor electronic reporting and IFQ web-based reporting of halibut and sablefish.

The IERS provides the Alaska fishing industry with a consolidated, electronic means of reporting landings and production of commercial fish and shellfish to multiple management agencies. The agencies worked together to implement a system that enables the seafood industry to report landing, production, and IFQ to all 3 fishery management agencies through a single application. The data are stored in a shared elandings repository database and each agency pulls the data that is needed for management.

Benefits of the IERS include:

Eliminates redundant reporting
Immediate verification of permits and vessel IDs
Timely catch reports for management agency use.
Options for processors to import or export catch and production information.
Significant reduction in data entry by management agencies.

The system has five main components that interact with the elandings repository database.

eLandings - web-based access for seafood processors
seaLandings (including an elogbook)- locally installed program which enables data submission via email for catcher/processors and motherships with no web access report at sea. seaLandings also includes an elogbook (ELB) for catcher/processors and motherships.
tLandings - locally installed program for salmon, shellfish and groundfish tenders with no web access
Agency Interface - locally installed access for fisheries agency personnel
System Interface - provides an interface for processors to transmit landing information directly from their own record-keeping systems.

IERS also offers an elogbook for catcher vessels and the ability to integrate with the Commercial Operators Annual Report (COAR).

In addition, the elandings system has an eLandings Training Instance with Training Scenarios as well as an eLandings Test Instance and the test site has links to test plans, valid codes, and related documents.

Implementation

The long-term goal of IERS is to provide a single reporting system for commercial harvest and production of groundfish, halibut, salmon, and shellfish in Alaska. The eLandings reporting system was first released for the Bering Sea / Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program when the first fishery opened on August 15, 2005.

eLandings reporting of groundfish and halibut IFQ landings began in January 2006 on a voluntary basis. The system became mandatory for groundfish in 2009. eLandings for salmon was introduced in 2009 and is currently has been incrementally implemented throughout the state of Alaska.

Commercial Fishing Overview

Fisheries are regulated to ensure controlled harvest of species with a focus on future viability of the fishery. Regulatory measures for managing fisheries include limiting access to permitted entities, specifying harvest quotas, and allocating species by target fishery, gear, area, season, and management program. A recent innovation in fisheries management is individual fishing quotas which allow the quota holder flexibility in when and how to fish, but, restrict the quota owner to a specific amount of catch per year.

Seafood harvesters and seafood processors are both regulated. While most regulations are designed to meet biological objectives, some are designed to achieve socio-economic objectives. An example is Community Development Quotas which allocate a portion of certain fish harvests directly to coalitions of remote Alaska villages to increase local economic opportunities.

Commercial fishing typically involves a vessel and vessel owner, captain and crew, fishing gear, licenses or permits to harvest fish, target species, and incidental catch. A typical fishing trip begins when a vessel leaves port and ends when the vessel returns to port to sell the catch. The process of selling catch at the conclusion of a trip is called a landing.

Seafood processing at shoreside plants begins with offloading, weighing, grading and pricing, recording fishing trip data and licenses and permits, and reporting the landing to regulatory agencies. Seafood processing at sea is similar to shoreside processing with the exception that reporting is generally of the final product, and the offload of product occurs at intervals independent of fishing trips.

Historical Documents

The first formal documents published for this project are the Needs Analysis and the Technology Assessment, both published in July 2002. As a result of conclusions from the initial phase, a technology demonstrator project was conceived, and conclusions were published in December 2003.

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