Government-Industry Cooperative Fisheries Research in the North Pacific under the MSFCMA

Abstract

"The National Marine Fish­eries Service’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) has a long and successful history of conducting research in coop­eration with the fishing industry. Many of the AFSC’s annual resource assessment surveys are carried out aboard chartered commercial vessels and the skill and expe­rience of captains and crew are integral to the success of this work. Fishing companies have been contracted to provide vessels and expertise for many different types of research, including testing and evaluation of survey and commercial fishing gear and development of improved methods for estimating commercial catch quantity and composition. AFSC scientists have also participated in a number of industry-initiated research projects including develop­ment of selective fishing gears for bycatch reduction and evaluating and improving observer catch composition sampling. In this paper, we describe the legal and regu­latory provisions for these types of cooperative work and present examples to illustrate the process and identify the requirements for successful cooperative research."