The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission

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About WCGOP:

The West Coast Groundfish Observer Program (WCGOP) improves our understanding of fishing activities and helps provide accurate accounts of total catch, bycatch, and discard associated with different West Coast fisheries and fish stocks. The program provides coast wide estimates of discards throughout the year. These estimates are important to stock assessments and the management of groundfish stocks.

As part of this program, fisheries observers are placed on commercial fishing vessels to monitor and record catch data, including species composition of retained and discarded catch. Observers collect critical data such as fish length, sex, and weight. They also conduct onboard interviews of vessel captains and crew, observe fisheries operations, and measure selected portions of catch and fishing gear. The program deploys about 40 observers coast wide on the permitted trawl and fixed-gear groundfish fleet, as well as on some vessels that are part of the open-access groundfish fleet.

Multiple vessel types participate in this fishery. They range in size from 8’ kayaks to 120’ trawlers and fish in nearshore to offshore waters. The vessels use various types of gear including bottom trawls, midwater trawls, pots, longlines and other hook and line gear to catch over 80 species of marketable fish. Trawlers account for the majority of groundfish catch on the West coast. The catch can be incredibly diverse in species and fish size. Overall catch size can vary widely as well. In many cases, a portion of the catch is retained and another portion of the catch is discarded at sea due to size, species, or management quota limits.

The WCGOP program aims to provide reliable estimates of discard to be used in conjuction with retained catch (landed) information available in the Pacific Fishieries Information Network (PacFIN) in order to estimate total mortality. Data reports can be found on the Northwest Fisheries Science Center website.

The West Coast Observer Program is a cooperative effort between NOAA Fisheries, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC), and the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. NOAA Fisheries and PSMFC work together under a cooperative agreement. PSMFC contracts with Alaskan Observers, Inc. to procure the services of unbiased observers who collect data at-sea aboard commercial fishing vessels.

Learn More:  

For more information, contact the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission at (503) 595-3100.

The West Coast Groundfish Observer Program can be reached through the Fishery Resource Analysis & Monitoring Division of the NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center at 1-866-780-8064. The Program’s email address is: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it