April 10, 2017 — The FishOn gang was kicking around the subject of at-sea monitoring at our decennial staff meeting the other day and we came to a conclusion that absolutely no one can reasonably refute:
That singing in the rails means electronic monitoring is coming at some point to the Northeast groundfish industry and there ain’t no stopping that train.
Beyond that, nothing is certain.
How much will it cost fishermen to buy and install the system? Will the feds subsidize those purchases and associated costs? Will the systems be used on every trip and will they be active for every minute? What are the legal and privacy implications? Will the footage actually be viewed by computers and not humans? On and on it goes.
In the end, this could be a fight that makes the quota contretemps seem like high tea.
NOAA Regional Director John K. Bullard, making his first start of the year, came out last week throwing a mixture of heat and fluffy stuff in an open message to the fishery concerning EM.
He spent much of the top of the piece with off-speed stuff just off the outside corner in explaining why it is actually unfair “and a bit premature” to want to compare the costs of EM and traditional at-sea monitoring.