Summary

Description

There was a fairly short-lived market sampling program created by DMWR staff back in the mid to late 1990s which focused on obtaining species ID, length and weights primarily from the spearfishing reef fish fishery. There is no known database for this information. In October 2010, with new funding from Congress, FMB established a far more robust commercial fisheries biosampling program at DMWR that focuses on obtaining life length and weight frequencies for whole commercial catches and detailed life history samples for 4-6 selected species annually, plus fishing location and effort (hours fished) data from local primarily spear and bottomfish fishers. The biosampling program is on-going and will continue as resources permit. In addition to obtaining census samples for entire catches from a sample of the fishing trips landing on Tutuila, it also obtains otolith and gonad samples from a few species that are being submitted for life history work (e.g. size, age at maturity, etc.). These data include individual identifiers and are considered confidential.