Electronic Monitoring on fishing vessels is increasing globally and is seen as an efficient method of assisting reliable reporting in commercial fisheries. These systems have been traditionally focused on the need to independently meet regulatory and market demands for transparency and accountability, but an increasingly important consideration is the contribution such systems can make to effective management by increasing the amount and quality of scientific research data that can be supplied from commercial fishing vessels.
This paper describes initial development work and presents several examples demonstrating the use of EM to collect research data in the CCAMLR managed Ross Sea toothfish fishery by New Zealand. Following the success of this work and other trials undertaken by other New Zealand vessels, we suggest that EM is further used to help provide better scientific research and monitoring data.