Southeast Region Dealer and Interview Family of Forms

This request is for a revision and renewal of a current information collection. Fishery quotas are established for many species in the fishery management plans developed by the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Fishery Management Council, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and The Caribbean Fishery Management Council. The Southeast Fisheries Science Center has been delegated the responsibility to monitor these quotas. To do so in a timely manner, seafood dealers that handle these species are required to report the purchases (landings) of these species. It was discovered that the USVI trip interviews were being double counted with the Vessel trip interviews. We have made the changes to remove the USVI interviews for accuracy. Fishery statistics are collected by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for a variety of reasons under several Federal statutes. The overall purposes for the data collection activities under this family of forms have not changed significantly since the first approval of this family of forms in 1995. In general industry effort has been relatively consistent from year to year and is expected to remain so even though there are some minor localized disruptions. Locations where there were brief closures/ disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic are similar to impact noticed during natural disasters (i.e., Hurricanes and flooding) and procedures are in place to statistically account for strata with missing data. This family of forms includes the same three methodologies that were included in the previous submissions. These methods include: (1) landings statistics, (2) mandatory dealer reporting for monitoring Federal fishery annual catch limits (ACLs), and (3) bio-profile data from the Trip Interview Program (TIP). The SEFSC employs several methods to collect the variety of data included in the information collection. The following is a brief description of these procedures. For the landing statistics referred to as general canvass statistics, the SEFSC does not collect these data directly from the seafood dealers. The state fishery agencies in each of the states in the southeast region collect landings statistics under their individual state authority. The state agencies share these data with the SEFSC as part of formal cooperative agreements between the SEFSC and the states. These cooperative arrangements serve to both reduce the overall cost of data collection and avoid the possibility of duplicate effort. To collect the data required to monitor the federal fisheries ACLs for the coastal fisheries, the SEFSC has entered formal cooperative agreements with the states which has reduced the public burden. Starting in 2012, 7 of the 8 states changed state regulations to allow dealers to use an electronic trip ticket system. Minimum burden will be required of dealers in these 7 states to transmit federal data through the states to the SEFSC every week. In South Carolina, dealers are still permitted to use a paper trip ticket system for state reporting obligations. Burden will be required of SC dealers to use the electronic system and transmit federal ACL data every week. Mackerel gillnet dealers on the Florida gulf coast report summarized landing statistics to the SEFSC for ACL monitoring by using a simple, easy to use form developed by the SEFSC. The bio-profile data (also referred to as the trip interview data) is collected by federal and State personnel referred to as port agents who are distributed throughout the region and use local knowledge and relationships with industry to make arrangements to sample catch from the trip.

The latest form for Southeast Region Dealer and Interview Family of Forms expires 2027-09-30 and can be found here.

Coastal Fisheries Dealer Reporting

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Natural Resources - Conservation, Marine and Land Management