Mr. Colvin of DEC made reference to the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP), developed over the past several years to enhance mechanisms for the collection of fishery statistics on the East Coast. The Council’s composition has changed since ACCSP discussions began and he wanted to review the program’s goals and essential aspects, especially for newer Councilors.

When the Council and DEC jointly prepared and submitted recommendations to the State Legislature on commercial fishing license eligibility issues, they also recommended licensing all persons purchasing fish/shellfish for subsequent sale (this was eventually done) and to require all sales of fish other than consumer retail sales to be between licensed parties. Another recommendation called for monthly catch and effort reporting from all commercial foodfish, crab, and lobster license-holders. ACCSP began at about the time these recommendations were made.

ACCSP is a coastwide program along the East Coast with multiple agencies and partners. It is the coordinative mechanism for collection of all kinds of commercial and recreational fishery-dependent data and statistics. The program calls for complete reporting for each trip by all commercial fishing license-holders and a comparable system of regular dealer reports. DEC is beginning to implement the commercial elements of ACCSP within New York. The agency is also contemplating various enhancements to the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey (MRFSS) as the survey pertains to New York, as recommended by ACCSP. Mr. Colvin distributed a summary of the new commercial logbook-based catch and effort reporting system implemented in New York earlier this year. He noted a partnership between the Bureau of Marine Resources, Suffolk County Cooperative Extension Marine Program, and NMFS Northeast Regional Office that used federal grants to help New York implement these reporting requirements.

Mr. McBride stated that he thought MRFSS was inadequate to provide reliable statistics on recreational fisheries. Commercial fishery statistics are typically more solid and this causes problems in being able to meaningfully compare recreational and commercial catches. He urged improvements to the recreational fishery statistics collection program. Mr. Colvin responded that ACCSP had determined that a sampling approach (i.e., MRFSS) was the only cost-effective way to secure reasonably accurate statistics on recreational fishing activity and catch. To directly census all anglers in obviously impossible. However, ACCSP also found several ways to improve MRFSS to make its data more reliable and useful.

ACCSP maintains an industry advisory panel. New York’s representatives on this panel are drawn from the Marine Resources Advisory Council. New York’s current members on the panel are Councilor Melton (recreational), with Council McBride as the recreational alternate, and Mike McCarron (commercial) and Bob Baum is the commercial alternate. Messrs. McCarron and Baum are no longer fishing commercially and need to be replaced. Mr. Melton has asked to be replaced on this panel. Mr. Wise asked for volunteers from the Council to fill these vacancies. Councilor Freierman volunteered to replace Mr. McCarron on the panel; Councilor John Davi will be asked to serve as the commercial alternate. Councilor Ferrera volunteered to be the recreational replacement, with Councilor McBride remaining as the recreational alternate.