Vessel Logbook Database

This database contains the primary data reported on the vessel trip reports by vessel operators.

To collect trip-level catch and effort data for every fishing trip made by a vessel issued a federal permit with mandatory reporting requirements. Data are used for biological analyses and stock assessments, regulatory impact analyses, quota allocation and monitoring, economic profitability profiles, trade and import tariff decisions, allocation of grant funds among states, and analysis of ecological interactions among species.

The primary tables in the database are Document, Images and Catch. These are hierarchical. Data in the Document table describes trip level information, such as vessel permit number and date sailed. Data in the Images table describes subtrip level information, such as gear used and statistical area fished. The Catch table describes basic catch information, such as species caught, amount kept and amount discarded. Support tables are used to translate various codes into standard english equivalents.

Commercial fishing vessels generally report a "good faith" estimate of the weight of fish or product kept, referred to as hail weight. However, depending on the fishery various units of measure may be used instead and different standards may be used in the different fisheries depending on common industry practices. For example, scallops may be landed as meats or in the shell, as total weight, bushels, gallons, etc.

For hire recreational vessels (i.e., partyboats, charter boats) report catches in numbers of fish kept or discarded by species.

Two distinct data sets exist for FVTR data:

1994 - 1995 data resides at Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC).

1996 - present - data resides at Greater Atlantic Regional Office.

Most data is created and maintained daily by data entry and QAQC teams at the Greater Atlantic Regional Office.

Fisheries Data Services Division (FDSD)

55 Great Republic Drive

Vessel trip reports are considered to be business confidential and may not be released without signed approval of the permit holder on record for the time period requested.

Access to VTR data is governed by 50CFR600 - Confidentiality of Information. Access by state fishery management agency staff and Fisheries Management Council staff may be allowed through Memorandum of Understanding that are signed by the NE Regional Administrator and Directors of the State Agency or Councils that describe the need and uses of the data and list the individuals who will have access to the data. Contractors may be granted access provided they are working under contract to NOAA or a cooperating partner (state, Council, Commission) on a specific project under the oversight of a partner.

Contact POC to request access.

Access is restricted to personnel authorized in accordance with NOAA Administrative Order 216-100. A signed non-disclosure agreement must be on file for all authorized personnel. The APSD Data Request staff are the POC for non-disclosure forms.

Access to individual reports is restricted to NOAA employees and our partners who have signed non-disclosure agreements. Summary data may be made available based on the "rule of 3", i.e., there must be at least three entities included in a summary for the summary information to be made publically available. Data may be made available if there is no information included that could uniquely link the information to an individual entity (person, vessel operating unit, business, etc.). Individually identifiable information may not be released without written authorization from the provider or by court order.

There are no constraints on the use of the metadata associated with this program.

Relational database.

Vessel logbook data can be considered representative of all self reported vessel data in the NERO.

The Vessel Trip Reports are submitted by vessel operators and thus contain self reported data. The information in these reports is compared against the information in other data systems.

Vessel reported data is routinely audited for completeness. Vessel reports missing obvious data fields are sent back to vessel owners.

GARFO has established an "industry data investigation" (IDI) team whose responsibility is to investigate and correct data errors on GARFO's critical datasets including vessel trip reports, dealer reports, and various associated fishing activity reports. QC on these datasets is performed regularly since data is securely displayed on various web portals to its owners. JIRA is the tool used for tracking quality control.

Access to this data is tightly controlled. Most access is read-only. Write access is given only after data owners have authorized (accompanied by a signed NDA), and data is usually edited via an access controlled application. Data is QAQC'd on a regular basis by authorized personnel, and backed up both to disk and tape on a daily basis.

This dataset contains both paper submitted and electronically submitted reports from vessel owners or operators. Paper reports are submitted to GARFO via snail mail or directly, scanned in to image format by a QAQC team, then data entry is performed from the image.

Electronically submitted data comes in via one of several approved pieces of software, either pulled over a database link from the science center, or submitted thru a GARFO written API.