The Analytic Component To The Standardized Bycatch Reporting Methodology Omnibus Amendment

"Standardized Bycatch Reporting Methodology (SBRM) can be viewed as the combination of sampling design, data collection procedures, and analyses used to estimate bycatch in multiple fisheries. The SBRM provides a structured approach for evaluating the efficacy of the allocation of observer days to multiple fisheries to monitor a large number of species under the different Fishery Management Plans (FMPs), the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act. In this report, we examine 45 fleets and 60 species/species groups to encompass all federal FMP-managed species in the Northeast. A comprehensive summarization of 2004 data collected by the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP) is presented, as well as estimation of precision of bycatch for fish, turtles, marine mammals, and sea birds by using three methods and two discard ratios, an evaluation of these different methods, and the estimation of sea days required to achieve the desired level of precision. A combined ratio method using a discard-to-kept weight ratio was selected to evaluate the monitoring of bycatch over a diverse range of species and fleets in the Northeast region. We recognize that research on discard estimation is ongoing and future work may lead to improvements of this method. The number of sea days necessary to achieve a 30% coefficient of variation (CV) for all identified fisheries exceeds 33,000 days. Application of additional criteria for evaluating the efficacy of the monitoring program may lead to reductions in the total number of days necessary. In particular, criteria related to the magnitude of total discards relative to landings may reduce the number of days necessary to estimate infrequent discard events of fish"--Executive summary.