The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC), in cooperation with NOAA Fisheries, is conducting a cost earnings survey of the West Coast open access groundfish and salmon fleet through this request for proposals (RFP). The PSMFC has already completed a cost earnings survey of the West Coast limited entry fleet. The Limited Entry survey attempted to conduct in-person interviews with the owners of the approximately 300 limited entry commercial fishing vessels active on the West Coast, and obtained a response rate of about 70%. The open access groundfish and salmon survey, which is the subject if this Request For Proposals, will cover the much larger open access groundfish and salmon fleet, which consists of 1,352 vessels which do not have limited entry permits and made trips during the 2005-6 period targeting groundfish and/or salmon.

Because of the relatively large size of the survey population, this survey will use a combination of mail questionnaires, telephone interviews, and in-person interviews. The survey design calls for attempting in-person interviews with 413 vessel owners, telephone interviews with 258 vessel owners, and collecting data through a mail questionnaire from 681 vessel owners. The purpose of this RFP is to solicit proposals for conducting the 671 in-person and telephone interviews which will be attempted by this survey. PSMFC staff will conduct the mailing portion of this survey.

The chosen contractor will review survey materials and protocols developed by PSMFC and NOAA Fisheries, and conduct in-person interviews using these materials and protocols. Development of materials and protocols for this voluntary survey has sought to maximize the survey response rate by accounting for the unique characteristics of commercial fisheries survey research. Compared with other fisheries cost earnings survey questionnaires, the current survey questionnaire is relatively short (Appendix D). Based on discussions with members of the fishing community, the survey is using a combination of mail, telephone, and in-person contact methods. Data will be collected through in-person interviews, telephone interviews, and mail questionnaires.

The Contractor will assist in the development of the socioeconomic subsections of the
Mitchell Act Hatchery Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The socioeconomics contractor will:
• Develop the Affected Environment subsection.
• Develop the Environmental Consequences subsection.
• Develop a comprehensive list of laws, policies, and plans that affect the
socioeconomic resource in the project area (this is for the cumulative effects
section).
• Respond to DEIS public comments on socioeconomics.
The Mitchell Act EIS will analyze the impacts of NOAA Fisheries Service’s allocation and
distribution of Mitchell Act funds for hatchery operations.
The EIS will also analyze environmental effects associated with NOAA Fisheries
Service’s Endangered Species Act determinations on hatchery programs supported
through the Mitchell Act. The socioeconomics work will begin in Mid-December, 2006.

Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) intends to charter a vessel to participate in a fisheries research project in the Spring/summer of 2006. The project will be in collaboration with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). NMFS and ODFW will be responsible for designing the project and will provide all scientific equipment.

The timeline for the project will be approximately five (5) days at sea from May 22 through August 31 and will require one chartered vessel. The actual sea dates are subject to change based upon weather, logistical, or other contingencies. Mobilization and demobilization will be conducted in Newport, OR. The mobilization time is necessary for completing the following tasks: (1) loading gear, (2) planning use of deck space, (3) setting up electronics, and (4) orientating the scientific crew with the vessel. The demobilization time frame will include cleaning, unloading, and packing any scientific gear brought aboard the vessel for the project.

The Contractor agrees to furnish a vessel, crew, fuel, ice, and fishing gear necessary for sampling between 20 and 300 fathoms in the Pacific Ocean for sablefish, halibut, Pacific hake, and various shelf and slope rockfishes. The Captain and crew for the selected vessel will support the scientific party by utilizing their experience in fishing with bottom trawl gear. In addition to the vessel’s usual large footrope bottom trawl, a selective flatfish trawl will be supplied by ODFW to be loaded in Newport.

The Captain and crew of the vessel selected will assist in the deployment and retrieval of an underwater camera outfitted with a video system and oceanographic sensors. The equipment mounted on the trawl provides lighted video and ultrasonic video data to a monitor and associated computer equipment mounted in the vessel’s cabin.

The vessel’s crew, in cooperation with the scientific party, will systematically set and retrieve the fishing gear in locations specified by the Project Design. The project will occur between Cape Perpetua and the Columbia River at depths between 20 and 300 fm. The number of stations sampled will be determined by several factors: (1) weather, (2) cost, (3) vessel cruising speed, and (4) other logistical concerns. Most fishing operations will occur from sunrise to sunset, however some camera deployments may extend past sunset. The captain and crew must be available during all scientific operations. In order to ensure full use of daylight hours, the captain and crew should make any necessary evening

Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) intends to charter two vessels to participate in a fisheries research project in 2006. The project will be in collaboration with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

The timeline for the project will be approximately September 25 through October 9 and will require two chartered vessels. These dates are subject to change based upon weather, logistical, or other contingencies. Mobilization and demobilization for both charters will be conducted at Alamitos Bay Marina in Long Beach, CA. The mobilization timeframe is necessary for completing the following tasks: (1) loading gear, (2) planning use of deck space, (3) setting up electronics, and (4) orientating the scientific crew with the vessel. The demobilization timeframe will include cleaning, unloading, and packing any scientific gear brought aboard the vessel for the project.

The Contractor agrees to furnish a vessel, crew, fuel, and bait necessary for sampling between 20 and 120 fathoms in the Pacific Ocean for bocaccio and other shelf rockfish. The Captain and crew for all selected vessels will support the scientific party in the use of hook and line fishing gear deployed via rods and reels. In an effort to standardize gear, NMFS will supply the fishing gear that will be used during the survey. Section 3.4 describes this gear.

A portion of this project will involve the operation of an underwater video camera sled, and all camera-related activities will be conducted on the same vessel. The Captain and crew of the vessel selected to carry the camera sled will assist in the deployment and retrieval of an underwater camera sled outfitted with a video system and oceanographic sensors (See Attachment 5.8). The equipment mounted on the sled provides real-time video and oceanographic data to the monitor and associated computer equipment mounted in the vessel’s cabin.

Rationalization Program over a 6-year period to accommodate the specific dynamics and needs of the BSAI crab fisheries. The BSAI Crab Rationalization Program is comprised of a number of novel aspects, and the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (Council) is interested in ensuring that it will be able to adequately assess the impact of the Program on affected parties. Existing data collection programs do not provide the employment, cost and sales data necessary to understand the economic performance of crab fishermen and processors, let alone to determine how this performance has changed after rationalization, or what aspects of these changes are specifically attributable to crab rationalization. Therefore, the Council has recommended that a mandatory economic data collection program be developed. This data collection program will substantially reduce the analytical difficulties that were encountered when attempting to examine the effects of the halibut/sablefish IFQ program and the American Fisheries Act.

The Council has expressed a desire to monitor, among other things, how the economic returns of various stakeholders in BSAI crab fisheries are affected by rationalization. This requires the collection of historic data as well as annual data to not only better understand the economic performance of crab fishery participants, but to isolate the effects attributable to the Program. Economic data reports (EDRs) that ask questions about harvesters’ and processors’ crab operations were specifically developed for the crab fisheries to fill this knowledge gap.

The EDRs were distributed in March 2005 to all fishers and processors that had participated in the crab fisheries in 1998, 2001, or 2004. The EDRs were due by August 2005 and have since undergone entry into an electronic database. In order to ensure that the data submitted by respondents in the EDRs is accurate, we would like to develop and implement an EDR review and verification system. This system will involve reviewing the data contained within submitted EDRs, conducting verification audits for those EDRs containing odd or suspicious data values, and conducting random audits for a certain percentage of submitted EDRs. In this RFP we are seeking your ideas on how you would develop such a system and what it would cost to implement and conduct the process.

AKFIN is a regional program that consolidates and supports the collection, processing, analysis, and reporting of fisheries statistics for North Pacific and Alaskan fisheries. AKFIN integrates information into a single data management system using consistent methods and standardized formats. The Network then reports this information on their website, in various publications, and to researchers using different methodologies. The resulting data helps fishery managers, scientists, and associated agencies supervise fisheries resources more effectively and efficiently. More specifically, AKFIN reports catch data, harvest and value from commercial fisheries in Alaska using the best available data from the data source agencies. Once these data are incorporated into its system, AKFIN reports information from several critical perspectives to decide impacts of changes in fishery management. These include species, area, gear, vessel, processor, community, and fishery participants by season.

An AKFIN Data Warehouse Plan document was completed in the fall of 2001. Much of this document is relevant today and provides a vision for the AKFIN project. An independent study, which reviewed the AKFIN data warehouse implementation proposal, was completed in March of 2002. A follow-up to this report was completed in February 2005.
In the past year AKFIN completed an initial version of a data warehouse. The end product has useful, but limited functionality. All ETL is performed using in-house Oracle packages and procedures. Reports are in the form of data sets created by AKFIN programmers using SQL and Oracle procedures. No metadata system currently exists.
The total exported size of the database is 37 GB; fact and dimension tables account for 3 GB, with source and system data accounting for the remainder. Current warehouse contains one fact table with six years of data, and thirty five dimension and interface tables. Source data originates from multiple agencies with various versions of Oracle databases. Data quality varies between agencies and within years, with older data being less reliable.
A custom web application has been developed, which provides end-users the ability to perform ad hoc queries, view metadata, and retrieve documentation. AKFIN staff is currently in the process of implementing this product.
In the past few years AKFIN has lost key personnel during critical stages of development. This has proven to be especially difficult with a small staff. The purpose of this project is to mitigate future risk by replacing our in-house procedures with a commonly supported Oracle solution.

The purpose of this Request for Proposals is to assist the fishing industry in the collection of needed West Coast groundfish data, which serves to improve the information base for fisheries management while providing assistance to the industry. Additional scientific data, both in essential fish habitat and stock assessment, is needed for the effective management of the U.S. groundfish fisheries off the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts, pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (16 USC 1801-1883) and the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (the Commission or PSMFC) wants to encourage and fund effective partnerships among commercial fishermen, researchers, and other stakeholders to become active participants in cooperative research and to further the knowledge base of West Coast groundfish.

Fishermen and scientists have recognized that the sum of their understanding of the fishery ecosystem is greater than their individual knowledge. The Commission and the NOAA Fisheries/ NMFS are interested in re-establishing trust and working relationships between industry and scientists. All parties would like to acquire better information on the fishery ecosystem and fish stocks. There is a desire to develop greater consensus about the criteria of effective research and viable data.

Cooperative fishery research will offer a new source of revenue to fishermen and diversify their financial base, which is important when fishing options are so tightly constrained on the West Coast. Scientists and fishermen will have the opportunity to draw on each other to answer tough questions and creatively devise research projects.