In November 2012, the Council passed a motion to begin the public scoping process for electronic monitoring. A workshop was held in February, 2013 to begin developing electronic monitoring policy for the trawl catch share program.
In 2012, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission received funds to test the feasibility of using electronic monitoring for catch and discard accounting. The project was meant to address some key questions, including whether video monitoring could be used to effectively track an individual’s catch and discards so they could be debited from a quota account, and how much such a program would cost the industry compared to human observers. For further details, see the PSMFC website.