Since the early 1980s, WPacFIN has helped its partner agencies meet local, regional and federal reporting requirements by developing custom data processing applications, while facilitating improvements to their fisheries monitoring programs. The software applications include data entry, error checking, scanning, summary reporting, and data transfer support between the agencies and the central data warehouse located in Honolulu, Hawaii (WPacFIN Central).

WPacFIN continues to develop a new generation of software to keep pace with the rapid technical advances and requirements in database security, accessibility, and compatibility. We help our partners plan and develop databases, and work towards database and summary output standardization to meet common requirements. WPacFIN database software supports data collections for shore-based and boat-based creel surveys, commercial seafood vendor (sales/dealer) data, fisher-reported data, and fisher-vessel-dealer data integration functions.

WPacFIN Central staff provide support by:

• Summarizing and providing online access to non-confidential fisheries data summaries.
• Servicing ad hoc data queries for principal clients.
• Summarizing and providing access to confidential data for authorized users, with consent from the data providers.

WPacFIN Central staff also help partner agencies improve their data collections and represent total landings and fishing effort in each area. The results of these partnerships are manifested in a variety of ways, including:

• Adding monitoring programs for new fisheries;
• Helping agencies develop online reporting systems;
• Integrating data from other sources (e.g., linking vessel registration data to fish landings);
• Developing fast-track monitoring for new quotas;
• Responding to new data management challenges;
• Maintaining and standardizing gear, species and other codefile references across the region to improve cross-compatibility;
• Building local capacity and improving IT infrastructure to promote technological independence.