Socio-economic Survey of Commercial Fishing Crew in the Northeast

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center's Social Sciences Branch (SSB) completed a survey of crew, including hired captains, participating in commercial fisheries in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions.

The purpose of the survey effort was to collect data that would contribute to the development of fisheries performance measures, with a emphasis on collecting data for social performance measures in the areas of governance, stewardship, and well-being. The survey began in October 2012 and concluded in 2013. Commercial fishing vessel crew were intercepted at several selected fishing ports from the region, and asked to participate in the survey. Participating crew members were interviewed orally using a standardized set of survey questions, with the interview entering the crew member's responses on a hand held tablet. By the close of the survey, 400 interviews were completed.

face to face interviews

Responses to the survey are completely voluntary and completely confidential. Responses were not collected for any enforcement related purposes.

No individual owner’s responses will be associated with his or her name or vessel information.NOAA Fisheries, including the SSB, will not know what fishermen are returning the survey or what a specific fisherman’s responses are.

Responses to this information request are confidential under section 402(b) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act as amended in 2006. Responses are also confidential under NOAA Administrative Order 216-100, which sets forth 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.

data entry and quality control were conducted by private contractor

Archival of source data preserving unaltered collected data, Scheduled backups, Remote storage backups, Password protection

face to face interviews were conducted by a contractor who was responsible for providing a clean data set