1 Executive Summary

Last modified: 2025-09-30

The Catch Accounting and Monitoring System (CAMS) is a joint venture between the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) to implement a shared data system to support quota monitoring, stock assessments, and other programs reliant on fisheries-dependent data. The goal of CAMS is to provide a single, comprehensive source for all catch in the Greater Atlantic region (landings and discards) for quota monitoring, stock assessment, protected resource estimation, ecosystem modeling, and other needs of GARFO and the NEFSC in a fully documented relational database with appropriate user views and tables.

Prior to the development of the CAMS project, GARFO and the NEFSC developed and maintained two parallel systems for catch monitoring and accounting. Mission needs for quota monitoring led to GARFO operating one system, while the mission needs for stock assessments and other research activities led to the NEFSC operating the other system. The two systems each integrated data across a wide array of separate fishery information systems, and each approached integration and record matching slightly differently, resulting in different estimates of landings and discards that raised and continue to raise internal and external stakeholder concerns. Additionally, the two independent systems required significant maintenance and upgrading as regulations and data streams changed. This was an inefficient use of resources and was deemed no longer effective for providing the best information for science and management support.

To address both sets of mission needs, remove system silos, and redundant operational costs, the NEFSC and GARFO have jointly sponsored the development and implementation of the CAMS project. Initial project scoping and formation of working groups started in November 2019 with system development occurring over the course of three years. The CAMS Core Team included staff from GARFO’s Analysis and Program Support Division and the NEFSC’s Resource Evaluation and Assessment Division with additional project management and IT support. The logic and algorithms supporting CAMS build on previous knowledge bases, while incorporating updated matching and linking processes across the various fishery data sources. The current outputs of CAMS include 1) landings, value, and effort, 2) discards, 3) matched trip tables, and 4) support tables.