May 8, 2019 — The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is considering mandating the electronic filing of all commercial vessel trip reports, a move that could impact many New England fishermen.
The Mid-Atlantic council is working on an omnibus framework that would require commercial vessels fishing within its jurisdiction to file all vessel trip reports electronically while doing away with the traditional method of paper forms.
The transition to fully electronic trip reporting, according to the council, would result in significant savings of money, time and administrative effort, as well as increasing the accuracy of the data and eliminating duplication. It said it received 70,000 paper vessel trip reports from commercial fishermen in 2018 alone.