Gulf of Mexico Electronic Logbook

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) manages the commercial shrimp fishery in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) under the Shrimp Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Regulations implementing the FMP require owners and operators of federally permitted shrimp vessels, if selected by NMFS, to carry an electronic logbook (ELB) on their vessel and participate in the NMFS-sponsored electronic logbook reporting program. ELBs provide a more precise means of estimating fishing effort than paper logbooks. Using ELBs to estimate fishing effort serves an important role to help estimate bycatch across the Gulf shrimp fleet.

The latest form for Gulf of Mexico Electronic Logbook expires 2023-11-30 and can be found here.