Northeast Electronic Reporting System (NERS)

The NOAA/NEFSC Study fleets are a subset of fishing vessels from which high quality, self-reported data on fishing effort, area fished, gear characteristics, catch, and biological observations are collected. Participating vessels collect data within their permitted fisheries using normal commercial fishing operations, and are selected to address specific research topics. Vessels collect data via electronic logbook (ELB) and submit the data to NMFS (refer to VERS system for details). The data collected by the vessel operators serve as the basis for ancillary data which are collected by Study Fleet staff and are usually associated with one or more targeted research objectives. The data collected from these vessels can be used to supplement the stock assessment process and are especially useful when catch data are limited.