Amendments to West Coast Groundfish Electronic Monitoring Program

This rule revises regulations that apply to Pacific Coast Groundfish Trawl Rationalization Program participants and electronic monitoring (EM) service providers that participate in the EM program. The regulatory changes modify deadlines that have been identified as too restrictive in order to provide more flexibility to EM service providers to be able meet the deadlines without increased costs, while still ensuring timely debiting of discards from vessel individual fishing quota accounts and feedback to vessel operators. Specifically, this rule modifies submission deadlines in federal regulations specific to vessel feedback reports, summary reports, and logbook submissions by EM service providers. In addition, the rule clarifies regulations on how EM discard data should be estimated via the video review process.

This rulemaking is promulgated in accordance with a Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) action from their March 2023 meeting. Further details on this rule, and the Council’s recommendation, are provided below and on the West Coast Region's Electronic Monitoring page.