Data Collecting Procedures
History of Transshipment Data Collection
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| Guam Transshipment Packing Facility (Click on picture for a larger picture) |
The island Territory of Guam currently serves as a homeport for a large purse seine fleet and in the later part of 1986, the longline transshipment industry also became a significant component of the island's economy. However, the rapid growth of these industries has concerned many of the domestic fishermen that the fishery has had a detrimental effect on Guam's small-boat fishery. The domestic fishery has been impacted in several ways;
- The selling of the rejected longline catches on the local market directly contends with the marketing of the domestic catches
- The illegal fishing by foreign longliners in the exclusive economic zone
- The potential for the large-scale fisheries to intercept migrating fish before they reach the areas fished by the small boats.
Since 1988, the Guam Bureau of Statistics and Plans (BSP) has administered the large-scale fishery data collection system to monitor and study the volume of tuna being offloaded and transshipped through Guam. The system was first developed by the South Pacific Commission (SPC) and is currently supported by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC). To further the need to analyze and determine the impact of the longline fishery the Western Pacific Fishery Information Network (WPacFIN) of the NMFS provided to the Guam BSP in 1989 a supplemental data processing program to register individual weights by species.
Data Collection During and After Landing
Upon entering the territorial waters of Guam the foreign longline ship's agent notifies the Port Authority of Guam Harbor Master's Office, Customs, and Immigration of the arrival time. Customs must approve the bill of lading and cargo manifests before the cargo can be offloaded and removed from the wharf. Typically, the vessels are offloaded next to the transshipment packing facilities. On board ship catches are usually gilled and gutted, and stored in packed ice. Landed fish are individually inspected and classified as "A", "B", "C", or "rejected" by an experienced grader. Quality of each fish is determined by cutting out part of the flesh next to the caudal peduncle and inspecting it for color and texture. Results are recorded on either the packing list or the reject form by the species names and weights. All graded fish are individually boxed and palletized for the air cargo to the Japanese fresh fish market.
Data Collection During Export by Air
At the airport the shippers' export declaration, the invoice (along with the packing list) and airway bill are provided to the Customs by the ship's agent for all of the transshipped fish. At the Port copies of the bills of lading, cargo documents, Transshipment Log Sheets and the Reject Fish Forms are submitted to the Customs. Copies of the Transshipment Log Sheets and the Reject Fish Forms are also sent to Guam BSP where the information is entered into a database. Copies of the database are periodically sent to the WPacFIN central office in Honolulu. The database includes individual weights from both rejected and graded fish transshipped to Japan, and along with ancillary information such as the boat name and dates. Furthermore, a compilation of the transshipment forms that include date, fishing days, area fished, trip length, country of origin and total weights by species for both acceptance and rejection grades are sent to the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. Besides yellowfin and bigeye tuna other species included on the transshipment forms are albacore, skipjack tuna, bluefin tuna, mahimahi, wahoo, blue marlin, black marlin, striped marlin, sailfish, swordfish and sharks.