Northeast Commercial Fishing Vessel Cost Survey

Typically, commercial fishing businesses incur three major types of costs: fixed or annual costs; which are incurred annually irrespective of whether any fishing activity takes place; variable costs, which are associated with fishing effort (fishing trips); and labor costs for crew, including hired captains. The Northeast Fisheries Science Center collects the variable costs associated with fishing trips on a continuous basis as part of a fisheries observer program. There have been few attempts at establishing a protocol to collect fixed and labor cost data across fisheries. The Social Sciences Branch (SSB) previously collected fixed costs in 2007-2009, but response to the survey was low. The SSB conducted a survey of commercial fishing vessel owners in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states to collect their total fishing costs (fixed, variable and labor costs) for 2011 and 2012. A survey to collect total costs for 2011 was implemented in 2012 and information on 2012 total costs was gathered in a similar 2013 survey effort. For each year, the survey sample was stratified by primary gear type and vessel size. Information for Northeast commercial fishing vessels in the population of interest was pulled from the existing NMFS PERMIT, VTR, and CFDBS databases; this information included vessel owner contact information, vessel characteristics and vessel landings and revenues. Response rates were 30% (437 completed) and 21% (396 completed), respectively. Vessel owner participation in the survey effort was voluntary.

Information on the cost of fishing is integral to evaluate the economic impacts of fisheries regulations and management rules. However, limited availability of cost data often renders such analyses either incomplete or implausible. The purpose of these surveys was add to the understanding of the total costs commercial fishermen face in the Northeast, with an emphasis on fixed and labor costs, and to improve upon a similar NEFSC SSB 2007-2009 effort.

Responses to this information request are confidential under section 402(b) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act as was amended in 2006. Responses are also confidential under NOAA Adminstrative Order 216-100, which sets the procedures to protect confidentiality of fishery statistics. Notwithstanding any other provisions of the law, no person is required to respond to, nor shall any person be subjected to a penalty for failure to comply with, a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number.

NEFSC Data Access Procedure:

1. Formal request in writing usually to the data owner/contact or Center Director;

2. Requester is contacted by data owner to review and verify the request content and details for data delivery options.

3. If data is confidential then owner will determine if the data may be released to the requester;

4. If data can be released, the data is downloaded and packaged for delivery electronically; or the requester may be directed to where the data is available online.

NEFSC Data Access Constraint:

If data is stored on an internal NEFSC network, the requester may not have direct access to query the data unless they are also authorized for network access.

To check the quality of the data, each response was carefully reviewed for data reporting errors and then data was checked for outliers.

Commercial vessel owners with fishing vessels that operated exclusively as a charter boats were excluded from the sample.

data reviewed by SSB, questionable entries were verified by phone call

scheduled network backups, remote off-site backup

mail survey designed by SSB, implemented by private contractor.

can respond online or postal mail.

data entry by same contractor, clean up and analysis by SSB