Reported Landings Data Processing
1948 - 1999
From 1948 to 1999, the data in the Reported Landings Tables and Reported Landings Graphs presented in this web site came from the various Fisherman's Catch Report Forms and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Bottomfish Reports. For each month and year the pounds caught, pounds sold and value for each Reported Species from the General Fish Catch Reports (C-3), the Aku Catch Reports (C-4), the Longline Trip Reports (C-5), the Pond Operator's Monthly Fish Reports, the Albacore Trolling Trip Reports and the Crustaceans Trip Reports are totaled.
For the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Bottomfish Reports the Sales Reports are matched to the Trip Reports wherever possible for the same vessel and trip dates. If the pounds sold on the Sales Reports exceeds the pounds caught on the Trip Reports for some trip and species the pounds sold value is assumed to be more accurate and is used for the pounds caught as well. After this adjustment is made to the NWHI Bottomfish data it is added to the totals of the Fisherman's Catch Reports data as calculated above.
Commercial collectors of tropical marine fish are required to have an aquarium permit in addition to their commercial marine license and are required to report monthly on the C-6 Aquarium Fish Catch Report. The aquarium fish catch is not included in the Reported Landings Tables and Graphs nor are any of the fish entered as bait on the C-4 or C-5 forms included.
Completeness and Timeliness of Fisherman's Reporting System Data
When the various Fisherman's Catch Reporting Forms are received by DAR, the forms undergo a series of coding and editing procedures before being sent out for keypunching. Forms that fail the initial editing by DAR staff are returned to the fishermen for correction and resubmission. Notices are sent to fishermen who fall more than a few months behind in the submission of their reports. Once the data are keypunched, computer generated reports are used by DAR staff to verify and correct errors in the database.
Some of the advantages of a mandatory fisherman-reporting system are its relative efficiency, low cost, the potential for excellent percent coverage, and the amount of information that can be collected directly from the fishermen.
The major disadvantage is that it places the responsibility for accurate data recording and timely data submission on the fishermen. The assumption is made, therefore, that the data submitted by the fishermen are complete and accurate.
No real measurement is available for what percent of the total commercial catch is actually reported to DAR, but estimates have ranged from about 10% to over 99%, depending on the species and fishery. The overall percent coverage was probably over 80% in 1995.
Since this system is based on submission of data from fishermen, late reporting has always been a problem. Before about 1982, statistics from fishermen's reports received after the generation of the computerized monthly summary reports were hand tallied and added to the final version of the reports before they were published. However, because of processing restrictions or complications, the original databases were not updated.
Since 1982, additional editing and data correction procedures have been implemented, making database updates possible. The DAR has made significant progress recently in reducing late reporting by fishermen and the time lag before data are available.
Beginning with 1987, data were processed directly from the annual detailed databases received from DAR after enough time had passed to ensure that a high percentage of the required fishermen had submitted all reports.
2000 - Present
When the first full year of the Dealer's Reports were collected and analyzed in 2000, it confirmed that the Fisherman's Catch Reports data was 85&-90% complete, in addition to being several months behind real time. The Dealer's Reports pounds sold was 10%-15% higher than the pounds reported sold by the Fisherman's Catch Reports.
Because of this the pounds sold, value and price per pound data for each Reported Species, month and year were calculated from 2000 onward by summing Dealer's Report data for those Reported Species and time periods for the Reported Landings Tables and Graphs in this web site.
This left out the pounds caught data which is not reported in the Dealer's Reports. For fish caught by longlining the pounds caught are obtained from the Longline Logbooks for each species and month. The number kept from the Longline Logbooks for each species summed over a month and multiplied by a pounds/fish value to get the pounds caught. The pounds/fish value is determined from the Dealer's Reports data by separating out the longline catch for each month and species using vessel names and CML numbers identified as being longliners. The landing month or the month of the trip return date in the Longline Logbooks data is matched to the month of the Dealer's Reports data to do this.
For fish caught by methods other than longlining a pounds caught value is obtained by summing the pounds caught from Fisherman's Catch Reports data. For 2000 and 2001 the longline catch reported on C-5 forms was excluded from the Fisherman's Catch Reports data for these calculations. For 2002 and later longline data were no longer included in the Fisherman's Catch Reports.
Even with this new system there are problems. When the new Fisherman's Catch Report forms were introduced in 2002, fisherman had trouble adapting to them and the percent coverage dropped from 80% with the old forms to 70-55% with the new forms particularly for the small boat fishermen. The percent coverage by the Fisherman's Catch Reports has steadily increased since then and some of the missing data has been filled in. This under reporting in the Fisherman's Catch Reports caused the pounds caught to be less than the pounds sold from the Dealer's Reports for certain Reported Species and months particularly for the non-longline catch. In these cases the pounds caught value was set equal to the pounds sold value as you can be by looking at the monthly and annual tables.
Not all of the dealers are submitting Dealer's Reports. The most notable case of this are the dealers who are buying most of the saltwater shrimp. This leads to large values of pounds caught and small values of pounds sold and value.