Fisheries stock monitoring for rock lobster has traditionally involved the use of trained technicians in two-person teams on board fishing vessels. These technicians manually record information about rock lobster length, sex, maturity, and injury, as well as weather and sea conditions, water depth, and method of capture. This information is reported to the annual rock lobster stock assessment process which informs fisheries management decisions around the TACC. The real cost per observer technician to the industry is estimated at being $600-$1,200 per observer day (Gibbs and Middleton, 2008).

The NZ Rock Lobster Industry Council has developed ERNIE (Electronic Recording of Nature, Investigation of Environment), a purpose built, waterproof, handheld computer, using software technology which enables direct downloads of monitoring results to the existing industry research database. The computer records the information outlined above using digital callipers as well as recording the GPS location of catch, and is illustrated in the figure below.

The ERNIE system enables more data to be collected in the time available on board fishing vessels, and allows the direct download of electronic data into the research data base to provide a more cost effective and timely analysis for inclusion in stock assessments (Sykes, 2002). Since being developed in 2000, observer catch sampling undertaken in one of the rock lobster fishery management areas provides a case study of the cost savings that have been realised. Costs from undertaking 28 sampling days with one technician using ERNIE were 28 per cent lower than undertaking 28 sampling days with two technicians manually recording data (one measures, one records on paper) - the total GST exclusive cost fell from $57,800 to $41,406.

Figure 23: ERNIE in action

This case study has been taken from the Spatial Information in the New Zealand Economy - Realising Productivity Gains report, August 2009.