Biography
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute pioneers collaborative solutions to global ocean challenges. Located in Portland, ME, GMRI is dedicated to the resilience of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem and the communities that depend on it. For the past 7 years GMRI has been dedicated to working on the design, testing and implementation of electronic monitoring (EM) for the New England Groundfish fleet. Currently, with our partners, we are testing a Maximized Retention EM Model, designed to improve accountability and decrease monitoring costs for vessels in the New England Multispecies Groundfish Fishery. In this model, vessels are exempt from minimum size requirements for allocated groundfish species and instead retain fish that they would otherwise be required to discard at-sea. EM is used as a compliance tool to ensure all groundfish are landed and, rather than recording discards at-sea, all allocated fish are accounted for on shore by a dockside monitor.
