Cellular Electronic Logbook cELB Database

The ELB program provides data on Gulf shrimp fishing effort that is critical to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council) and NOAA Fisheries in performing annual assessments of the status of shrimp stocks. The ELB program is also a key component in the Councils red snapper rebuilding plan because accurate estimates of juvenile red snapper mortality attributable to the shrimp fishery are essential to the rebuilding plan. Vessels selected to participate must carry data recording devices, which are simple time-stamped global positioning system (GPS) units that record and store a vessels location at 10-minute time intervals. From these time-stamped locations, vessel speed between points (i.e., stopped, towing, moving between towing points) can be estimated and then evaluated with mathematical algorithms. Thus, effort by location can be calculated for a given fishing trip. Shrimp catch data for the trip are then used to estimate catch-per-unit-effort for the trip at various fishing locations. Shrimp effort estimates for various locations, time periods, or vessels are provided to NOAA Fisheries each trimester (i.e., 4-month time period). Vessels selected for the program must also provide the size and number of shrimp trawls deployed for each set and the type of bycatch reduction device and turtle excluder device used. NOAA Fisheries will not allow renewal of permits for selected vessels that are selected but do not participate in the ELB program. The cellular electronic logbook (cELB) is simply a newer, more efficient version of the ELB originally developed in 2007. The cELB uses cellular data networks to transmit data back to NMFS where it can be analyzed.

[
  "https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inportserve/waf/noaa/nmfs/sefsc/dmp/pdf/8542.pdf"
]