You guy's are being way to soft on the commercial guy's. Accountability with only something like 20% of the film in their so called "full" monitoring camera's being looked at. You think DFO has the time to look at them just like they have the time to look at us. Give your head's a shake. The commercial sector pay's off DFO period. It's all about who has the biggest brown envelope. Don't give in to Fish4all or any of the undercover commies on here. Educate yourselves. It's all bull *****.
Sculpin take a bit of your own advice and educate yourself. You are some what mistaken about the monitoring requirements. AMR only looks at 10% of the video. but there is more to it than that.
1) before leaving the dock i have to get an AMR tech down to make sure my camera and sensors are working properly. He supplies me with a confirmation number.
2) I have to get another number from AMR/DFO that says I have no overages on my license
3) I phone AMR provide the two numbers above and receive a hail out number that i record in my log book
4) the hail out includes date and time of departure, species being targeted, area to be fished, date of return, port of return, and anticipated buyer
5) as we set we have to write down the lat,long of all the ends we put in the water,time/date, number of hooks set and bait used
6) when we haul every fish is recorded by the camera, as well i have to write all kept and released fish in my log book,date/time of haul.
7) when leaving the grounds we phone in and report port of delivery, buyer, date/tiem of arrival and catch on board
8) at the dock i am greeted by a AMR tech that removes the hard drive from the computer, there are a minimum of 2 people counting every fish that comes off the boat, every halibut is tagged, and the boat inspected by AMR at the end of the off load
9) the AMR dock staff then take my log book pages, add up every fish i recorded and check it against the number of fish they counted on the off load.
10) if I am out by 10% in any species(some rockfish are blended) in those counts I am tied to the dock until the issue is resolved
11) my video is sent to the office where they generate random set numbers, watch the video and record the fish kept and released on those sets. They also take the gps data lay it over a chart and can tell where i was fishing. if I was in any closed areas, number of sets, how far my gear drifted in the tide, the works. it is basically a track line from the moment i leave the dock.
12) they take their accounting from the video and match it against the same set in my log book and score us on a scale of 1-10 for accuracy. If I am out 10% again on any species by set I get a phone call to discuss and if AMR is not satisfied I pay for more of my sets to be audited against the log book.
For this program I pay $1000-$2000/yr (it changes every year) for a registration fee
the equipment from AMR (camera,sensors ect) $9000 to buy or $175/day to rent
roughly $1500/ trip for the unload monitoring, video watching and data collecting (this can increase if your logbook is not accurate.)
Total for us this year as we rent a camera $6000-$7000
