We worked through almost 2 full seasons of a blue crab pilot project with the Maryland DNR before they signed up for a 5-10 year contract in 2014. Under this new contract we launched a 6 month pilot for their striped bass fishery and that was melded into a full launch for their finfish fishery. The Finfish fishery is comprised of many species-specific fishery management plans which we were able to merge in a convenient way under the banner of finfish. Shortly after the finfish launch, the blue crab fishery was launched for real instead of continuing as a pilot. We are in the process of adding back roving monitors to collect data about landings – these monitors had been part of the blue crab pilot, but are now to be added to all fisheries we serve in Maryland. The rest of the contract is meant to add the rest of Maryland’s fisheries and aquaculture as well as dealer reporting.

Fishers hail using one of the many methods available to them as each day trip starts. They must also enter an end hail before they land which includes a harvest logbook. All hails can be revised until midnight the day of the trip when their trip data becomes official. Should an end hail not be submitted, the fisher involved cannot start another trip until providing the missing data. All fishers can access harvest summary and other reports that add value to their use of the system.

We have launched the three planned phases for Michigan (Wholesale, Commercial, and Charter).

The Wholesale phase allows wholesale purchasers to submit their transactions in real-time or as they please over the course of each month. By the 10th day of the following month, each wholesale purchaser follows a month end reporting process where they can catch up on data entry for the month, make any corrections to their submitted transactions, and certify their submission to the state.

The Commercial phase allows fishers to record their trips post trip. They can do so anytime they choose during the month. Similar to wholesale purchasers, the commercial fishers must report all of their trips by the 15th of the following month. They will also go through a month end reporting process, but it is more involved. Fishers still review their trips and make any required corrections, but they will also provide average sale price per pound for each species harvested, and provide actual species weights and catch destinations which they don’t know at the time of their trips.

Here we work for several industry groups called “sectors” which operate in the federal multi-species groundfish fishery in the region.

For three sectors managed under the same banner we provide our hails module and will be onboarding them to our quota management module soon. The other three sectors we serve are already using the quota management module.

The hails module has been in use since May of 2010 and the quota management tool since early 2017.

The quota management module alleviates a lot of leg work from the sectors. It automates a great deal of data issue detection which sectors have been having to find my themselves – often employing staff just to manage this ever changing flow of data. That data includes trip hails, VTRs (aka logbooks), dealer purchases for each trip, discard rates, observed discards, and compliance. All of that data is validated when imported into FACTS™ from government provided files and data with issues is excluded from the import process. The issues detected are added to an import specific for later review.