Limited Entry Fixed Gear and Open Access Voluntary Cost Earnings Surveys

This project collects economic data from vessel owners participating in the West Coast limited entry fixed gear, and open access groundfish, salmon, crab, and shrimp fisheries. The data is needed for a variety of applications, such as the Northwest Fisheries Science Center's regional economic model (Input-Output Model for Pacific Coast Fisheries) as well as estimating the profitability of fishery participants for applications such as the Pacific Fisheries Management Council's Groundfish harvest specifications process. Major stages of the project include developing a survey questionnaire, developing a contact list of all fishery participants with available contact information (name, address, phone number), obtaining approval for the survey from the Office of Management and Budget through the Paperwork Reduction Act process, hiring a contractor to field the survey, training contractor personnel on how to field the survey, supervising survey fielding by the contractor, and working with the contractor to obtain an electronic data set containing survey results.