PacFIN Brief for 1999

[Complete 1999 PSMFC Annual Report (2.5 MB pdf)]

During 1999, the development efforts of the PacFIN Office were concentrated in the following areas: QSM enhancements; retrieval software to support various studies for a potential West Coast on-board observer program; the centralized W-O-C Trawl Logbook Data Subsystem; the centralized W-O-C Biological Data Subsystem; cost-data tables for the EFIN project; support for re-development of the ADFG PacFIN datafeed; vessel-summaries with rockfish distributed; additional validations for state-vessel data; re-establishment of the at-sea pacific whiting datafeed; finalizing the corrected-gear algorithm; the extract_sc program; and the SGI/Irix/Oracle7.3 to Sun/Solaris/Oracle8.0 system migration.

During 1999 the PacFIN Office processed 181 datafeeds from seven data sources and responded to 194 requests-for-information. There were also 66,000 visits to PSMFC's PacFIN website for an average of 5,500 visits per month. This compares to 2,855 per month during 1998, 1,512 per month in 1997 and 803 in 1996.

The Quota Species Monitoring (QSM) inseason catch-tracking subsystem was augmented with the addition of catch for splitnose rockfish, chilipepper, and ″Sebastes South″. The QSM Limited-entry (LE) and Open-access (OA) Best Estimate Reports were added to the website The ′C′ program code was re-structured and in certain places re-written, making the program considerably more maintainable.

In support of West Coast on-board observer studies, retrieval software was developed to produce various statistics such as number of fishing trips, pounds per trip, and trips per vessel per month by gear-group and port group for sablefish and groundfish for the W-O-C for both LE and OA fleets.

The centralized W-O-C Trawl Logbook Data Subsystem went from development status to an on-line status during 1999. By the end of the year tow-by-tow data for 1987 thru 1998 for WDFW and ODFW and for 1981-1997 for CDFG was available to on-line users. Throughout the year refinements to this system continued, various retrievals were developed for PacFIN clients, and ticket-matching and expansion methods continued to be improved.

The centralized Biological Data Subsystem (BDS) continued in development status during 1999 as the issues of duplicate data and the handling of codes in the age column that do not represent actual ages continued to be analyzed. By the end of 1999 the BDS included data from AFSC for 94-97, from CDFG for 93-98, from ODFW for 93-98, and from WDFW for 90-98.

Oracle tables were designed and created for the EFIN fisheries cost-data project. The current design includes 23 tables intended to hold survey data for both catcher vessels and shoreside processors.

Support was provided to ADFG staff and then later the AKFIN staff in their efforts to re-institute the monthly ADFG PacFIN datafeed. This support included providing all relevant documentation, including the system specification, and reviewing code list assignments for species, areas, gears, and ports.

A new version of the software that produces vessel-summaries was developed. This new software routine distributes catch from rockfish market-categories to individual rockfish species and categorizes vessels as either LE or OA if appropriate. This new distribution of catch is in addition to the 13-dimension (vessel, period, species, ...) vessel-summaries that have been a PacFIN feature since 1993.

New methods for validating state-vessel registration data were added to the central processing system including: validations based on ratios of length, weight, and horsepower; restricting type 1 vessel-ids to 6 or 7 digits; and validations based on state plate number assignment practices.

After an hiatus of about one year, the datafeed for the at-sea pacific whiting fishery was resumed with the NMFS/NWR serving as the data source rather than the NMFS/AFSC. PacFIN staff participated in the extensive check-out and testing of this re-developed datafeed.

The algorithm for "correcting" gear codes was finalized during 1999. This is a method that assigns a more appropriate alternate gear group (i.e. HKL, TWL, POT, etc) to certain individual fish-ticket-lines based on prevalent gear usage and catch thresholds.

The extract_sc program was developed during 1999 and provides for a generalized capability for retrieving data from the summarized catch tables.

The PacFIN staff did considerable testing and debugging, in conjunction with the NMFS/AFSC/OFIS staff, during the transition from the SGI/Irix/Oracle7.3 to the Sun/Solaris/Oracle8.0 system platforms.