Justification - California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program

Project Title: California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program

Program Office Sponsoring or Conducting this CSC Project: NMFS/SWFSC

Authority for this CSC Project: MSA and CCSA

Purpose of this CSC Project: This project is a fishery-independent hook-and-line survey to monitor groundfish populations within California's MPA network. It collects data NMFS uses to improve the stock assessments of federally managed species.

Type(s) of Information Collected and From Whom It Is Collected: Six university partners recruit volunteers to conduct standardized fishing with trained scientific staff aboard chartered vessels. University scientists lead the survey and record the data, which are provided to NMFS. The data includes fishing locations, amount of time fished, and number of individual fish encountered by species.

Use of the Information: NMFS uses the scientific data to inform stock assessments for federally managed species and the implications of the Marines Protected Areas for fish stocks.

Method(s) of Information Collection: The data are emailed to NMFS directly and eventually made public here: https://search.dataone.org/view/doi%3A10.25494%2FP6901R

Affected Public: Individuals and partner universities

Estimated Average Annual Number of Participants: 400

Estimated Average Annual Number of Responses per Participant: 1.70

Estimated Average Minutes per Response: 480.00

Estimated Average Annual Burden Hours: 5440.00

Estimated Total Annual Cost to Participants in this CSC Project: $0

Estimated Average Annual Costs to the Federal Government: $75,000

Estimated Average Annual Number of Federal Government Employees (FTEs): 0.47

Recruitment and Retention Methods for Voluntary Participants (SSA item 1): University partners are responsible for recruiting volunteers for this project. They maintain a list of past volunteers to contact prior to each sampling season and use a variety of methods to recruit volunteers, such as via word of mouth, social media campaigns and listservs.

Gifts or Payments (SSA Item 9): We do not plan to provide a gift or payment to the voluntary participants.

Annual and Multi-Year Schedules (SSA Item 16): Each of the six university partners operate on different schedules that are dependent on vessel availability and weather. General planning for each year begins in March and sampling ends in October. NMFS does not participate in the planning or volunteer recruiting processes. Data from the sampling period are available to NMFS by February of the following year.

Display OMB Control No. and Expiration Date (SSA Item 17): The university partners directly interface with the citizen scientists and collect information from them. NMFS interfaces with the universities that recruit the citizen scientists. The OMB Control No. and expiration date will be included in the CCFRP handbook and provided to each university partner.

Statistical Methods: This CSC project will not employ statistical methods.

Approval for Pretesting: This CSC project will not require additional pretesting with more than nine members of the public.

Supplemental Documents: There are two supplemental documents are provided for this CSC project. One is a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) document that includes instructions, correspondence with voluntary participants and all data collection forms. The other includes references to data sets collected by this project, some statistics on those data and a link to and the abstract for a report “Nearshore Fishes Abundance and Distribution Data, California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program (CCFRP).”

CERTIFICATION: I certify the following are true.

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The collection will not include highly influential scientific information, which is information NOAA or OMB determines: (i) could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any year, or (ii) is novel, controversial, or precedent setting or has significant interagency interest.

5. The collection complies with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).

6. The collection will provide qualitative and quantitative data that help inform scientific research and monitoring, validate models or tools, support STEM learning, and enhance the quantity and quality of data collected to support NOAA’s mission.

Name: Melissa Monk