NFWF Announces Nearly $3.8 Million in Grants to Support Electronic Technologies in U. S. Fisheries

Foundation awards 15 grants to modernise fisheries data collection, storage and management in nine fisheries


​WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 15, 2018) –The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) today announced 15 grants totalling $3.78 million to update fishery data collection and management using electronic technologies in fisheries in 10 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The grants will generate more than $5 million in matching contributions – which include in-kind and financial support from recipients and industry partners – for a total conservation impact of over $8.8 million.

The grants were awarded through the Electronic Monitoring and Reporting (EMR) Grant Program, a partnership between NFWF, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Kingfisher Foundation. This year’s projects will integrate electronic technology into fisheries data collection and integrate modernised data management systems.

“The grants announced today will increase the number of vessels using electronic technologies and will improve management, review and storage of data to support sustainable fisheries,” said Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF. “Supporting projects that work with fishermen across the country to adopt and expand the use of effective electronic technologies will provide long-term benefits for these fisheries.”

The 15 grants awarded today will address monitoring and data management needs in nine fisheries in Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The funded projects will advance development of electronic monitoring and reporting systems, initiate pilot projects in new fisheries, expand adoption in fisheries already using electronic technology, and modernise data management and review processes to support management of recreational and commercial fisheries.

"We are committed to implementing electronic technologies in collaboration with NFWF, fishermen, partner organisations, and the regional fishery management councils.” Said Chris Oliver, Assistant Administrator, NOAA Fisheries. “Results from these grants will improve on the water and shoreside use of these technologies in support of our sustainable fisheries management goals."

In the New England groundfish fishery and the Alaska pot cod fishery, grants will advance electronic monitoring and reporting tools to improve data accuracy for commercial fisheries. Pilot projects will test electronic technologies in new fisheries including the Alaska pollock fishery, the Gulf of Mexico highly migratory species fishery, Hawaii longline fisheries and small-scale fisheries in Puerto Rico. Several projects will address recreational fishery reporting needs in New England and the Gulf of Mexico. Additional projects in New England will improve data management technology.

Sustainable, prosperous fisheries need timely and reliable data,” said Kristine Johnson, executive director of the Kingfisher Foundation. “Electronic technologies are an essential component of systems that efficiently meet the information needs of fishery managers, scientists and fishermen. We are excited to partner with NFWF on supporting innovative projects to collect, use and manage data, empowering fishers and managers to enhance the sustainability of U.S. fisheries.”

The EMR Grant Program was established in 2015 to advance NOAA’s sustainable fisheries goals to partner with fishermen and other stakeholders, state agencies and Fishery Information Networks to integrate technology into fisheries data collection and observations. To date, the program has awarded more than $13.8 million to 43 projects in U.S. fisheries. Congress appropriated $3.5M to NOAA Fisheries for this Program in 2018 which was a $500,000 increase over previous years.

A complete list of the 2018 grants made through the Electronic Monitoring and Reporting Grant Program is available here.

About the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Chartered by Congress in 1984, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) protects and restores the nation’s fish, wildlife, plants and habitats. Working with federal, corporate and individual partners, NFWF has funded more than 4,500 organizations and generated a conservation impact of more than $4.8 billion. Learn more at www.nfwf.org.

About the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and our other social media channels​.

About the Kingfisher Foundation

Kingfisher is a small family foundation based in San Francisco. The foundation works to implement sound fishing management rules and methods that align long term economic prosperity for fishers with good stewardship and sustainable fishing. Themes include:

• ​Rebuilding fish populations, “right sizing” fishing capacity and creating durable fishing access rights in the US.  

• Harnessing technology innovations and modern information policies to drive sound data driven monitoring and management of commercial and recreational fisheries and enable innovative, resilient fishing businesses. 

• Strengthening distant water fleet management policies (national fleets that fish in the high seas (60% of the ocean) or in other countries exclusive economic zones (40% of the ocean)) in E. Asia (specifically, S. Korea, Japan and Taiwan).  

• Kingfisher works with and funds a range of advisors, conservation groups, academic institutions and other foundations to accomplish its goals. The complex and systemic challenges of fisheries mean that a range of expertise, relationships and resources are required for progress.

The foundation accepts proposals by invitation only.

Full story courtesy of the The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Atlantic cod - seeing is believing!

Atlantic cod, New England’s most iconic fish, has been reported at historic lows for years, but fishermen hope a new video monitoring technique will prove there are more of the fish than federal surveyors believe.

Ronnie Borjeson, who has been fishing for more than 40 years, says the federal surveys don’t match up with what fishermen are seeing. “I don’t care if you’re a gillnetter, a hook and line guy, a trawl guy,” he said, “there’s codfish everywhere up there. Everywhere. You can’t get away from them.”

Borjeson helped test a video rig designed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth that allows them to record fish underwater and count them on the video later. With this rig, scientists can sample a larger area in the same amount of time and hopefully improve federal estimates of how many cod are left.

For years, Atlantic cod has been reportedly overfished—but a new video monitoring technique may prove otherwise.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, cod are overfished, and in 2014, the spawning population reached its lowest numbers ever recorded. The once-booming cod fishery has been subject to increasingly strict regulations since the 1990s, forcing commercial fishermen to target less-profitable species while they wait for the cod population to recover.

Kevin Stokesbury, the researcher spearheading the project, hoped to create a more effective and transparent monitoring system by collaborating with local fishermen. “They know their gear and they know the distributions. So for me, I’ve certainly never discounted what they say,” he said. “You have to back that up scientifically, and I think that this is a means to do that.”

Federal scientists estimate the cod population by towing nets through randomly selected areas of the fishing grounds and hauling the fish on board to be counted. The results of these trawls are combined with information from fisheries observers and catch estimates to create a picture of the overall health of the fishery.

But cod are not evenly distributed across the ocean floor. The fish gather in tight groups to spawn, leaving large areas of habitat essentially devoid of cod and increasing the likelihood that a random sample will come up empty. The federally managed area in the Gulf of Maine alone is more than 30,000 square miles. With limited time and resources to accomplish their work, federal surveyors must rely on a small number of these surveys to accurately estimate the whole population.

And, according to Borjeson, “The general consensus [among fishermen] is they’re incapable of catching fish.”

Yet as Jon Hare, the Science and Research Director for NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center pointed out, fishermen “are targeting and looking for higher abundances of cod. That could also make their perspective on the abundance of cod different than what’s coming out of the [survey].”

Stokesbury thinks his video system can, at the very least, help scientists get a better idea of how many fish are in the spawning groups and help the fishery managers and fishermen see eye to eye.

The video rig has gone through several iterations to deliver clear images in the harsh, salty environment. The current version has two cameras and a set of LED lights facing backwards inside a fishing net. When fish are swept into the net, they pass the cameras and are funneled harmlessly out the open back end.

Hare agreed that the system holds promise, but cautioned that the work is not yet done. “You still need to extract [the information] from the video. You’re potentially looking at thousands of hours of video data,” he said.

Stokesbury and his team are working on this problem now. Currently the software takes two to three weeks to identify and count the fish for every week at sea. This is a vast improvement over the original method–graduate students counting by hand–but Stokesbury expects to reduce the processing time further as their software improves.

If that happens, Hare believes the system could be very useful. “As humans, we put a lot of faith in visual data,” he said, “Having the real-time visual information is a good approach to having people come to a common understanding.”

Borjeson hopes fisheries managers will incorporate video monitoring as soon as possible. “The system works,” he said. “People love it. They embrace it. It’s absolutely indisputably the way to do a stock assessment.”

Full story courtesy of NovaNet.

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