PacFIN Brief for 2004

[Complete 2004 PSMFC Annual Report (3.9 MB pdf)]

During 2004, development efforts in the PacFIN office focused upon: QSM enhancements including additional species, tribal data, at-sea fishery, and discard estimates; addition of six catch categories to the fish-ticket-line table; WOC permit data specification changes requested by ODFW; retrievals developed for the NWFSC-AFSC Community Profile project; VSMRFD and VFCMRFD table development; retrievals for the trawl IQ A-Team staff; WOC logbook data retrievals in support of the PFMC's EFH EIS; WOC logbook subsystem enhancements including FT-adjusted catch for WA, ″up″ position, and tow-level summaries; BDS subsystem refinements; CDFG species-comps and assignment of unknown gear; consolidation of CG tables and changes in datafeed delivery method and frequency; addition of data description reports on the website; projects specifically for NMFS including: non-confidential table for Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP) staff, expansion of table sum_fous2 to include lowest level gear and month, and OMIBBFEE processing developed and incorporated into production; and SC table re-summarization and inclusion of catch for all SPID codes in table SC.

The PacFIN Office processed 272 data feeds from seven data sources and responded to 123 requests-for-information. There were 204,249 visits to the PacFIN website for an average of 17,021 visits per month. This compares to 14,283 per month in 2003 and 9,719 per month in 2002.

Quota Species Monitoring (QSM) Subsystem

At the February 2004 PFMC GMT meeting, a two hour presentation on the QSM subsystem was given followed by a question and answer session.

During February the correction factor (CF) processing functions within this subsystem were reviewed. Certain correction factors (CFs) were changed from override CFs to natural CFs since a 12-month CF was now available for some of the species added during 2003.

The subsystem was enhanced to include the ability to enter weekly reported catches for the Washington Tribal fishery.

During April the program was modified to include a new option that allows for producing the correction factor report independent of the Best Estimate Report and for any time period.

Also during April, catch for spiny dogfish (DSRK), english sole (EGLS), and arrowtooth flounder (ARTH) were incorporated into the subsystem. This action required that the QSM remaining flatfish category be redefined in order to exclude EGLS and ARTH.

In May, weekly CF and reported catches reports were posted to the PSMFC/PacFIN website for the first time. This regular posting of these reports will facilitate the dissemination of this information to the PFMC GMT.

And finally, the project to fully incorporate tribal data separate from WDFW data is in development and is expected to be completed by the end of September. All of the above enhancements were incorporated in the subsystem at the request of the PFMC GMT.

In October the QSM system was enhanced to accept Washington tribal soft data for all species. The Best Estimate Report (BER) was re-organized to include tribal catches as a component within total catch. The metrics contained within the ′WASH′ column were re-constituted as ′non-tribal WASH′.

In December, statistics for catches (landed and discard) occurring in the at-sea fishery were added to the BER. This data is derived from the NORPAC database maintained by the NMFS/AFSC.

To distinguish between catches from the discard fishery versus the non-discard fishery, a new data column was added to the data entry portion of the QSM subsystem. All of the software that processes these weekly reported catches was enhanced to accommodate this expansion of this inseason system. This was accomplished during January.

Also in January work began on the enhancement necessary for computing the estimates of discarded fish for the shore-based landings. When this effort is complete the BER will include a column for at-sea discards and report will display the best estimate of total removals rather than the best estimate of landed-catch.

A re-design of this QSM subsystem was undertaken during this period as well. This was a design only effort pointing toward a future opportunity to re-develop the QSM subsystem. This design calls for using the Oracle PL/SQL and Perl languages instead of ′C′ and it makes more extensive use of Oracle tables than the current implementation does.

Note: All QSM subsystem change requests are initiated by the PFMC's Groundfish Managment Teacm(GMT). The QSM has been implemented and enhanced over the last 19 years specifically for the purpose of aiding the GMT in their charge to provide the PFMC with the best estimates of landed-catch on an ongoing basis.

FT/FTL Catch Categories Project

This project consists of a revised specification for the fish-ticket and fish-ticket-line transactions. The new specification includes: removal-type, legal-removal (T/F), product-use, product-form, overage (T/F), and assignment. The request for this data enhancement project was received from the PFMC GMT in February 2003. The specification for this project was agreed to in September 2003. The development project to enhance the PacFIN central processing system was completed in March. As of the end of July, only CDFG has provided data for these newly defined fish-ticket data elements. CDFG has provided data for these new columns for 2004 only.

W-O-C Permit Data Project

Although the specification for this subsystem was finalized in January of 2003, new data columns and other modifications to the specification were requested by ODFW in March as a result of their initial attempts to develop the necessary software. These new data columns and the other modifications were incorporated into the specification and the central processing system software was enhanced to reflect these changes.

The specification for the W-O-C Permit project was revisited as ODFW discovered that they were not able to provide their permit data using the specification previously agreed to. In September, a meeting with ODFW was conducted to resolve these issues. A new, slightly revised specification was then agreed to by all data sources. Software and database modifications where made to this central processing subsystem that reflects these changes.

CDFG has provided W-O-C permit data for 1991 thru 2004. ODFW and WDFW are still in the process of developing their software to generate this data.

Community Profile Project

A joint NWFSC-AFSC project to profile fishing communities on the west coast and Alaska commenced early this year. Project staff requested many datasets for calendar year 2000 and these were provided in March. After considerable telephone consultations and e-mail correspondence, additional datasets were requested and provided in June.

Projects for NMFS

During March the program manager conducted three distinct orientation sessions for NWR staff; and met with NWR and NMFS/ST1 staff providing an overview of the PacFIN system.

As a result of discussions with visiting NMFS/ST1 staff a report focusing on crewsize data within the W-O-C Trawl Logbook (LBK) subsystem was developed and forwarded to NMFS/ST1 and NWR staff. The vast majority of LBK trips are reported with crewsize. Crewsize varies between 2 and 4 depending on the gear being used.

In August, the PacFIN CG table was modified to include hull-number. This CG table contains a subset of the U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Vessels of the U.S. data as provided by NMFS/ST1 staff. In addition the twice yearly update frequency for this table was changed to monthly. Both of these system changes were implemented as a result of an NMFS/ST1 and NMFS/NWR directive.

In September, table SC_YR_AR_SP was developed and the refresh routine that maintains the data in this table was added to the monthly production system. This table contained a very high level summation including catch and value for annual species-area combinations. This project was entered into at the request of Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP) staff, who were functioning as an agent for NMFS/ST1 in developing a demonstration project for the national FIS consisting of non-confidential catch summations.

In October, improvements were made to the weekly process of capturing Limited-entry permit data from an NMFS/NWR maintained Oracle table. During this process the PacFIN NWR_LEP_SRC table was rolled-back to the 9-30-04 sync point until the necessary corrections could be made to the NMFS/NWR data that had been made available on 10-6-04. The data was then captured successfully.

In November, the sum_fous2 table was augmented to include summations for each lowest level gear and month. This request was made by NMFS/ST1 staff. The sum_fous2 table is used to periodically populate the NMFS webpage that contains commercial catch statistics.

In December, table OMIBBFEE was developed for staff with the NMFS Financial Services Division and the refresh of this has been added to our monthly production workload. This table consists of daily catch and revenue for each processor for the groundfish management group, dungeness crab, and pink shrimp. This confidential data is being provided to NMFS Financial Services for the purpose of monitoring fee collections for the 2003 westcoast vessel buyback program.

VSMRFD and VFCMRFD Tables

During the February PFMC GMT meeting a request was made to the PacFIN office for rockfish-distributed catch data by gear and with limited-entry (LE) catch separated from open_access (OA) catch. The analysis of this request resulted in the development of the VSMRFD table in April. This table is now a permanent feature of the PacFIN central database and is refreshed regularly (monthly or semi-monthly). The VSMRFD table contains monthly estimates of catch and revenue for each vessel, species, gear, each LE permit or permit-list, in addition to other stratifications. Each row is classified appropriately as LE or OA. To achieve this estimated distribution of catch to each vessel-month-spid-grid-fleet catch-by-area (ACM) and species-comp (SCM) proportions are applied to monthly vessel summations.

Discussions at the PFMC Trawl IQ A-Team meeting in November pointed to the obvious need for yet another rockfish distributed (*rfd) permanent Oracle table. The VFCMRFD table goes on step (i.e. dimension) beyond the VSMRFD table by including fish-ticket market-category summations of catch and revenue. The software to refresh this vessel summary table annually, was developed in December and was added to the production workload. The metrics in this table provide the relationship between/among vessel, fish-ticket category, sampled species, month, gear-type, port-of-landing, and fleet (LE/OA/tribal). Table VSMRFD has been eliminated from the set of permanent tables as it has been eclipsed by the VFCMRFD.

A number of requests for data originated during the Trawl IQ A-Team meeting. Retrievals requested by PFMC staff consultant included: lowest level FT data for all years; lowest level LBK data for 1987-2003; annual vessel summaries for all years; and complete retrievals from the VFCMRFD table, described above. The retrieval software was refined repeatedly as a result of the request-review process employed by the requestor.

W-O-C Trawl Logbook (LBK) Subsystem

During March, lowest-level LBK data was requested by Terralogic Inc. Terralogic is under contract to PSMFC to provide a GIS development and analysis service to the NMFS/NWR in support of the PFMC EFH EIS. LBK data retrievals were developed for 1987 thru 2003 and provided to Terralogic. In addition, telephone and e-mail consultation was provided for this project.

In June, the NMFS/NWR requested that non-confidential summations be developed and provided to Oceana staff as part of the PFMC EFH EIS project. After considerable e-mail consultation with Oceana and Terralogic staff, non-confidential summations for 1987-2003 were developed and forwarded to the requestor.

During May and June the lbk_tow Oracle table was expanded to include eight additional data columns, all of which are required to accommodate ODFW's inclusion of ″up″ position data starting with year 2003. The necessary loading software was enhanced and tested.

During July, six additional columns: ryear, lbs_hail, lbs_adj, lbs_adjexp, and pacfin_target were added to the lbk_tow Oracle table. The current method for computing catch values for each tow and determining the target strategy or species has required rather complex and high risk software. The addition of these six columns will simplify the retrieval programs that require this tow level data. A program to compute or determine the values for these six columns was developed and is run after each update to the LBK subsystem as part of the production system.

In January, the project to determine and apportion fish-ticket adjusted catch for each WDFW LBK tow record was completed. Although many LBK trip records are matched to fish-ticket records within the input data, many are not. The software for this project includes the step of matching fish-ticket records to LBK trips where possible. All of the software for this project has been included within a single module and has been added to the LBK production processing such that it is executed following the processing of each WDFW LBK refresh datafeed. With the implementation of this adjustment software LBK investigators and stock assessment authors now have a consistent set of data available to them since CDFG and ODFW provide this simple fish-ticket adjustment metric as part of their input data.

Biological Data Subsystem (BDS)

During March, PacFIN staff consulted with ODFW staff regarding the total_wgt and exp_wt fields. During May, June, and July PacFIN staff consulted with NWFSC staff regarding methods for selecting all samples with or without ages or maturity and ODFW ageing methods. In June, at the request of NWFSC staff, the basic BDS table status report was expanded to include counts of fish records with maturity codes entered (i.e. non-null).

Two new reports that develop record counts by species, agency, year, and other criteria were developed with input from NWFSC staff. Along with the existing reports, that catalogue datafeeds and records counts by agency and year, a new BDS webpage was established in September containing these four reports. PacFIN website visitors will find the link to this new BDS Reports page on the PacFIN Data page.

The most recent BDS data feeds for: CDFG is 2003 data provided on 12/28/04; for ODFW is 2004 provided on 1/20/05; and for WDFW is 2002 provided on 1/8/03.

CDFG Species-comp (SCM) - Corrected Gear-group Project

In April, the PacFIN office was informed that CDFG had re-computed species_comp (SCM) proportions for all years and intended to submit them to the PacFIN central database. These re-computed proportions were computed after CDFG re-assigned many fish-ticket records from unknown gear to some known gear. The initial analysis for this requested system change has been accomplished. In order to accept these re-computed proportions the ftl_summarize routine must be reworked in order to incorporate PacFIN's corrected gear-group data. Two other programs (pcs_mcmrfd_gf and refresh_vsmrfd) are likewise affected. This software/database re-development project is in progress and it is anticipated that these system changes will be accomplished by the end of September. The CDFG SCM proportions can then be incorporated into the best estimates of catch. The net result of this project, when implemented, is that a much greater portion of the CDFG rockfish catch will be distributed to scientifically defined species.

The project to modify the central processing system in order to process CDFG's most recent versions of the 1981-2001 species-comp transactions (i.e. proportions) was completed. This project involved merging the corrected gear-group data with the original gear into the adj_grid column in the FTL table. In addition the ftl_update module was modified so that column adj_grid will be correctly maintained as new data flows into the system and the ftl_summarize module was modified to use the adj_grid column instead of the original grid. The CDFG SCM replacement transactions for 1981-2001 were then processed with the resulting “shift” in the estimated catch for rockfish species, as expected. After review CDFG determined that some work still needs to be done on this and have embarked on an effort to assign fish-ticket gear codes directly to their fish-tickets rather than rely on the PacFIN gear group correction algorithms.

USCG Vessel Data

A program was developed to migrate all data currently located in the CG2 Oracle table to the CG table. All of the columns currently located in the CG2 table will be found in the CG table. This development will allow users to simplify their retrievals using the CG/CG2 tables. Users can simply eliminate all references to CG2 in their select statements. The CG2 table will be maintained until all users have eliminated CG2 from their retrieval programs.

For many years, the USCG vessel data has been provided to PacFIN via a datafile as a result of a pass-through operation by NMFS/ST1. ST1 has devised a new method for giving PacFIN access to USCG data, which is via an Oracle table maintained by ST1 on their shark Unix server. This change in this data delivery method has necessitated a re-development of the PacFIN USCG data load program. At the end of this period this project was essentially complete and in final testing.

General

In July, the program manager met with NWFSC staff regarding accessing stock assessment data and preparing for the upcoming workshop; and all PacFIN staff attended portions of the West Coast Groundfish (Stock Assessment) Data workshop.

The PacFIN central processing system maintains Oracle table COLDSC, which contains descriptions for each data column within each table. Reports containing these descriptions are now being posted monthly to the PSMFC/PacFIN website.

An improved process for re-summarizing the summary-catch (SC) table was completed. As part of this effort, the SC table was augmented to include summary points for all SPID (species and species categories) codes. Previously only summary points for groundfish, salmon, highly migratory species, and a few other SPID codes were maintained in this Oracle data table. The SC table is used primarily for report generation.