Some 4,000 fishermen possess commercial licenses, while the actual number of fishermen deriving part of their income from fishing may be three times that number. Any fishermen selling any part of his catch is supposed to obtain a commercial license and file the required reports, but few do. Thus, the catch figures reported to the state are generally thought to be far smaller than actual hauls. How much of a difference there is is anyone's guess. Even when reports are filed, they are prone to be inaccurate.
Reports are to be filed monthly.
When reports come in late, as occurs frequently, they often will reflect little more than the fisherman's best guess of when and where his haul was caught. The catch report forms provide blanks in which the fishermen are to write the names of the species caught. This leads to further inaccuracies in the reports, since common fish names can refer to more than one species of fish. Resistance From the time the bottomfish fishery management plan took effect to the present, the state's weak data collection system has been regularly criticized by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. In 1991, this recommendation was seconded by the council's Scientific and Statistical Committee.