Fishing Vessel Monitoring Systems: Past, Present and Future

VMS: Past, Present and Future 41
mobile entity can practically travel to respond to a system alarm. Using
this response radius as a reference, the system should be able to, with
each position report received from a patrol vessel or aircraft, create a
circular geographical area (see manual input data files below) which we
will refer to as a response zone.
Catch reports: Data files containing information on what has been caught
on board a fishing vessel. Fields include�: date of catch�; fish species,
quantity (can be expressed either in weight, i.e. pounds, kilos or stone, or
in volume, i.e. number of boxes), and caliber. Please note that, though
position input to the VMS is automatic, catch data is keyed in manually.
The specific format for this data varies significantly from country to
country.
Boarding and sighting reports: Filed by patrol vessels and aircraft
respectively based on boarding observations or remote sightings of fishing
vessel activity. Will generally follow custom format with additional text
panel for observations.
Vessel permanent data files: The system will store separate files for
each of the vessels under management which will include information
such as�: vessel name, length, date and place of building, tonnage, type
(trawler, purse seiner, beam trawler, etc.), maximum fishing speed, normal
position reporting interval, normal catch reporting interval, vessel owner,
captain and permanent crew with address, etc., species normally fished,
species for which quotas are held. This list is not exhaustive and will vary
from agency to agency. When this file is retrieved, it should also permit
access to the vessel’s previous record (a list of all boardings and the
corresponding reports as well as a list of all violations and suspected
violations, i.e. events and alarms) and quota status.
6.7 Dealing with of standards
Once it is decided which of these data sets will be available, and under which
circumstances, there must be unanimous agreement upon the form in which they
will be sent, the security measures to be used to identify the requesting party,
and the means of sending the data.
This means that a family of norms and standards for data transfer will either have
to be defined, or adopted from an existing data sharing scheme. In all likelihood,
the result will probably be a combination of new approach and adoption of a
satisfactory operation already in service. Considerable help can be had from
some existing data sharing efforts in the same area.