PacFIN Brief for 2000

[Complete 2000 PSMFC Annual Report (1.6 MB pdf)]

During 2000, the development and system management efforts of the PacFIN Office were concentrated in the following areas: the W-O-C Trawl Logbook Data Subsytem; the NMFS at-sea pacific whiting (PWHT) observer tow-by-tow data; the coastal pelagic (CPEL) and highly migratory (HMS) fisheries; WDFW system re-development; ADFG datafeeds; PFMC Economic Analyses; and QSM enhancements.

During 2000, the PacFIN Office processed 160 datafeeds from seven data sources and responded to 190 requests-for-information. There were also 97,745 visits to PSMFC's PacFIN website for an average of 8,145 visits per month. This compares to 5,500 per month in 1999 and 2,855 per month in 1998.

W-O-C Trawl Logbook Data Subsytem activities included: data analysis and retrievals in support of NMFS/NWFSC bank and darkblotched rockfish studies; completion of a project to match CDFG tow records to fish-ticket records for 1981-1987; development of routines and subsequent data retrievals that were provided to a U.C. Berkeley researcher for a widow rockfish study; re-development of an NMFS/NWFSC retrieval routine for a dover-thornyheads-sablefish (DTS) study that improved performance considerably; and the incorporation of ODFW's and WDFW's 1999 contributions to the central database.

A program to summarize NMFS at-sea PWHT observer data was completed. The resulting summary table consists of catch summaries for each processor vessel, day, species, catch-area, and catcher vessel. Each summary point consists of total-catch and retained-catch. This project included developing daily, weekly, and monthly vessel-area proportions in order to estimate the species composition of unsampled (i.e. unobserved) tows. Westcoast economists and PFMC Groundfish Team analysts incorporated these summaries into various studies.

A routine to produce a standard non-confidential report containing the most recent catch statistics for the CPEL fishery was developed in conjunction with NMFS/SWR staff. This report, posted monthly on the PSMFC/PacFIN website, consists of quarterly summaries and has been designed to automatically exclude confidential statistics.

PacFIN activities related to HMS fisheries included: reviewing gear and species codes for the HMS FMP being developed; establishing species codes for bigeye and pelagic thresher shark; and developing various reports containing albacore landings and vessel information for the PFMC HMS Advisory Subpanel, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Humboldt Fisherman's Marketing Association, and for the U.S. - Canada Albacore meeting held in November. There was also general agreement reached with the NMFS/SWFSC on a future plan to incorporate into the PacFIN central database additional source data from the U.S. albacore fishery in the South Pacific.

Throughout the year PacFIN Office staff provided various levels of support to the WDFW PacFIN Coordinator in his efforts to re-develop, in its entirety, their PacFIN transaction generation software/system.

At various times during 2000 PacFIN Office staff assisted the AKFIN staff in their attempt to re-institute the regular monthly ADFG datafeed to the central processing system. Dealing with ADFG's strict confidentiality restrictions has consumed most of the effort on this project. There have been a few successes, one of which was the development of an automated process for the NMFS/ST1 office in Silver Spring that ensures the production of non-confidential summaries while at the same time producing summary statistics at the lowest level possible.

During the second half of 2000, there was considerable activity in support of various economic studies for the PFMC including: special retrieval/summations for partial annual periods (e.g. Jan. 1 - Sep. 16); development of special routines restricting summations to certain comparable time-periods; at-sea PWHT annual catch by catcher and processor vessels; annual catch and revenue for each species in each of the six minor rockfish groups; retrieval of all landings made by the fleet that landed lingcod, and black, canary, and yellowtail rockfish.

In January the Quota Species Monitoring (QSM) system was upgraded with the addition of six new rockfish categories corresponding to the North/South Near-shore, Shelf, and Slope rockfish subgroups. In December the catch estimate for darkblotched rockfish was added to the Best Estimate Report as a separate entity and at the same time removed from the catch estimate for the slope minor rockfish subgroup.