PacFIN Brief for 1993

[Complete 1993 PSMFC Annual Report (2.7 MB pdf)]

The Pacific Fisheries Information Network (PacFIN) staff completed the primary development effort for the "redefined" central processing system during 1993.

The records portion of the database was implemented for the Washington-Oregon-California (W-O-C) subset of the PacFIN database. Various fisheries research and management organizations employed this database for their data needs during 1993. The projects that did use the records part of the new database included:

• a W-O-C dungeness crab study;
• the NMFS Groundfish Limited Entry Office;
• the Coastal Pelagic Species FMP Development Team;
• a PFMC vessel capacity study;
• many analyses for the PFMC's Individual Quota (IQ) project;
• and an ODFW black rockfish study.

Monthly updates were incorporated into the database so that the "best available" data was used to satisfy these data requests. Development of the vessel summaries subsystem was essentially completed during 1993 also. Fisheries economists and biologist began using these vessel summary datafiles to develop answers to specific fishery questions. Checkout and testing of the on-line catch summaries continued on through the end of the year. These on-line summaries serve as the foundation of the PacFIN reporting system. The combining of fish-ticket data from three states (W-O-C) with proportions developed from port sampling and trawl logbooks to produce the best estimates of catch for each groundfish species by month, area, and gear is the essence of these on-line catch summaries and is the most novel aspect of this re-defined system.