Vessel Operating Units (Vessels)

This data set contains data for vessels that are greater than five net tons and have a current US Coast Guard documentation number. Beginning in1979, the NMFS initiated a system to conduct an annual survey to inventory all of the vessels that actively fished in commercial fisheries during the previous calendar year. The survey is conducted by port agents that are located at fishing port throughout the Southeast Region. They record the physical information about the vessels, e.g., length, age, horsepower, etc., as well as gathering information about the fishing characteristics of the vessels, e.g., type and amount of gear, number of crew, etc. Often the physical characteristics of the vessels are retrieved from the data maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard as part of their vessel documentation program. In recent years, much of the fishing characteristics are retrieved from either trip ticket and/or logbook data