6 Apportionment
6.1 Description
Federal landing data come from multiples sources including federal dealers and Vessel Trip Reports (VTR). Landings data from dealers are considered the most accurate measurements of sold catch in the greater Atlantic region but they do not have location, gear, or effort information. Landings from VTR are generally less precise, on-vessel estimates but include information about fishing location, gear, mesh, and effort. The objective of the dealer apportionment process is to split each trip-level dealer record across the associated subtrips (AREA-GEAR-MESH).
CAMS trip apportionment integrates Vessel Trip Report (VTR) catch and dealer reported landings from the Commercial Fisheries Dealer Electronic Reports System (CFDERS). It uses the CAMS matching tables 3 to define the relationship between VTR trips and CFDERS transactions. For records that match at the trip and species group levels (CAMSID-ITIS_GROUP1; STATUS = ‘MATCH’), the dealer-reported landed pounds, live pounds, and dollar values are apportioned into individual VTR subtrips proportional to landings reported on the VTR (VTR kept converted to VTR live pounds). Dealer transactions and VTR trips without a corresponding match between one another are considered orphans. Additionally, within matched trips, individual species records can be orphaned if the species is not reported in both dealer and VTR sources. VTR species orphans are assigned to the subtrip they were reported. Dealer species orphans (STATUS = ’DLR_ORPHAN_SPECIES) are apportioned to VTR subtrips according to the NTRIPS method, which is proportional to the days fished (DF) effort reported on the VTR (including imputations of DF for VTR subtrips when missing).
The apportioned landings and values (LNDLB, LIVLB, and VALUE) that round down to zero for a record are rounded up to one. This happens for thousands of records resulting in an increase in total pounds and totals on those subtrips. To minimized this, the subtrip with the highest live pounds for any species that rounded up from zero are rounded down by an equal amount. This is done for all records unless the rounding down results in less than one pound or dollar. True zeros are left as zero, e.g., those coming from No Catch (status = ‘VTR_NO_CATCH’) and discard-only (status = ‘VTR_DISCARD’).
6.3 Example of dealer apportionment
Figure 6.1: An example of apportioning dealer discards across VTR subtrips and the results when species occur only in the dealer record (status = DLR_ORPHAN_SPECIES) and only in the VTR report (status = VTR_ORPHAN_SPECIES).
6.4 Mixed Hake Apportionment
After subtrip apportionment, any landings reported as mixed hake are apportioned into the individual species. This is currently done for mixed red/white hake (ITIS = 164729; genus = Urophycis) into Atlantic red hake (164730; Urophycis chuss) and Atlantic white hake (164732; Urophycis tenuis). This mix is not split into spotted hake or southern hake, despite being in the same genus, because the proportions on any mixed trip would result in estimates near zero and spotted hake tend to be identifiable when mixed with red and white hake. Additionally, the VTR data entry specifies the mix as red/white rather than red/white/spotted/southern.
Similarly, mixed silver/offshore hake (ITIS_TSN = 164790; genus = Merluccius) records are split into offshore hake (164793; Merluccius albidus) and silver hake (164791; Merluccius bilinearis), also commonly known as whiting.
Although done independently, both mixed hake apportionments use the same stratification process. The proportion landings of each of the individual species is calculated by year, hake stock region, and mesh category. Those proportions are applied to all matching subtrips with reported mixed take to split the mixed hake into the individual species. This doubles the rows from the original mixed species record but totals the same pounds just split by full, individual species. The intent is to have no mixed hake records in the final CAMS end user tables.
6.5 Additional trip attributes
CAMS adds additional trip-level attributes after the apportionment process. These value-added attributes are intended to support discard estimation and end users. These attributes are primary from declarations, pretrip hails, and similar sources to indicate exceptions from particular gear or area regulations that can lead to differences in fishing and discard behavior.
For example, the 71-30 exception is a late 2022 addition to these exemptions as part of groundfish Amendment 23. Groundfish vessels can declare a 71-30 exemption as part of their start hail. This excludes sector trips fished in their entirety west of \(71^o30'\) W Longitude from the at-sea monitoring (ASM) requirement. CAMS assumes trips fished west of \(71^o30'\) W are exempt even if the start-hail exception is missing (e.g. data mismatch, not yet received, etc.). In CAMS, this rule applies to all trips landing on or after 2022-12-15.
The additional trip attribute tables carried through are:
| COLUMN_NAME | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| ACCESSAREA | Scallop Access Area, only relevant for scallop trips |
| ACTIVITY_CODE_1 | VMS declaration |
| ACTIVITY_CODE_2 | VMS declaration, if more than one/trip |
| ACTIVITY_CODE_3 | VMS declaration, if more than one/trip |
| CLOSED_AREA_EXEMPTION | Groundfish specific stratification |
| EM | EM program, groundfish trips only |
| EXEMPT_7130 | Logical 0/1 whether a groundfish trip was granted the exception for fishing west of 71 degrees 30 minutes. |
| REDFISH_EXEMPTION | Exemption fishing under |
| SECTID | Groundfish Sector ID number |
| SNE_SMALLMESH_EXEMPTION | Exemption fishing under |
| TRIPCATEGORY | Scallop fleet designation, if applicable |
| XLRG_GILLNET_EXEMPTION | Exemption fishing under |
6.6 End user landings tables
End user tables are produced after all the landings data are processed, joined, and apportioned.The primary landings table is CAMS_LAND. Subtrip information associated with these records are found in CAMS_SUBTRIP. This table has one row per subtrip and can be joined to CAMS_LAND by CAMSID and SUBTRIP. Additionally, primary and other fishery target groups can be found in CAMS_FISHERY_GROUP which has one row per subtrip. Recreational data indicated on the VTR (recreational/party/charter) that are not sold to a dealer are separated into their own table CAMS_VTR_REC. Sometimes tuna and other species are sold from recreational trips, making those records then commercial. The format of this table is identical to CAMS_LAND and can be unioned as needed. Similarly, VTR trip-level mismatches (status = ‘VTR_ORPHAN_TRIPS’) are considered either preliminary until dealer reports are entered or bad data that might be duplication of dealer trip orphans (status = ‘DLR_ORPHAN_TRIPS’) and are therefore not included in the official record of landings in CAMS_LAND. These VTR trip orphans are separated into their own identical table, CAMS_VTR_ORPHANS and the associated subtrips in CAMS_VTR_ORPHANS_SUBTRIP. All landings tables run from 1996 - present. Information about the updating of years of landings data can be found in CAMS_LANDINGS_METADATA. More information about these tables can be found below:
Note: Database query unavailable during documentation build.
Last modified: 2026-11-11