NOAA Seeks Electronic Monitoring Vendors for Atlantic Pelagic Longline Fishing Areas

NOAA Fisheries published a Federal Register notice on March 13, 2026, calling for electronic monitoring vendors to apply for certification to serve Atlantic highly migratory species pelagic longline vessels fishing in two newly established pelagic longline monitoring areas. Applications can be submitted at any time to HMS.Monitoring@noaa.gov, with no formal application form and no deadline.

The program has roots as the first fleet-wide electronic monitoring implementation in the United States. Its core purpose, as outlined in NMFS's 2021–2025 Electronic Technologies Implementation Plan, is precise: "to provide NOAA Fisheries a means with which to verify the accuracy of counts and identification of bluefin tuna reported by the vessel owner/operator." Every HMS-permitted vessel running pelagic longline gear must carry an installed and fully functional EM system, built around two to four video cameras, a control box and monitor, a GPS receiver, and hydraulic and drum rotation sensors. The system runs for the entire fishing trip, but cameras only record during the haul-back, positioned along the vessel's side to capture gear retrieval and catch removal.

Certified vendors take on direct responsibility once approved. They work with vessel owners to build a vessel monitoring plan and provide enhanced video review of sets on trips that occur wholly or partially within the designated monitoring areas. Full vendor and vessel requirements are detailed in a compliance guide referenced by NOAA Fisheries.

The stakes for when and where review is required vary sharply by season and area. Within the Monitoring Area, from February through April, 100 percent of electronic monitoring data for any trip that includes fishing there gets reviewed, with that cost falling on the vessel owner. Outside those spatial management areas, NMFS has designated four large EM Data Review Areas where video submission and review obligations shift.

A proposed rule now under consideration would reshape the broader EM framework. Currently, vessels must comply with EM requirements regardless of where or when they fish. The proposed change would confine requirements to specific areas and times. One modification under review would limit vendor workload to 10 percent of submitted sets in certain circumstances, a structure designed around the Southeast Fisheries Science Center's existing sampling program. The goal is to reduce complexity in set selection and give vendors more predictable workloads.

That unpredictability has created real market friction. Some vendors have received more video review requests than anticipated while others received fewer, a distribution problem NMFS explicitly flagged as one that "could result in higher prices to cover the possibility of higher video costs or could disincentivize vendors from entering the HMS EM pelagic longline market."

NMFS also signaled longer-term ambitions for the technology. While EM in pelagic longline fisheries has so far been applied narrowly to bluefin tuna disposition monitoring, the agency noted that broader use could deliver "additional regulatory flexibility, further reduction of bycatch, and even increased safety" for the fleet. Vendors looking to enter this market can reach the HMS Monitoring team directly at HMS.Monitoring@noaa.gov.