Department of Commerce, NOAA, 200 World Trade Center, Room 209, Norfolk, VA 23510-1624

B -- STATISTICAL EVALUATION OF THE TWO TICKET SYSTEM SOL EASC 00-994 DUE 071400 POC Michelle Morales, Contract Specialist, (757) 441-6526, Melvyn DesJarlais, Contracting Officer (757) 441-6647 WEB: Click here to access our homepage., http://www.easc.noaa.gov. E-MAIL: Click here to contact Contract Specialist via e-mail., Michelle.Morales@noaa.gov. The Eastern Administrative Support Center (EASC) intends to acquire for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Northeast Regional Office (NERO) contractor services to analyze mandatory reporting data from mandatory reports by federally permitted seafood dealers and federally permitted fishing vessels. Mandatory reporting by seafood dealers was established in the northeast in 1992 and was expanded to fishing vessel owners in the multispecies fishery in 1994. Since then virtually all federal fishery management plans now contain reporting requirements by federally permitted seafood dealers and fishing vessels. The overall goal of this work is to determine the effectiveness of the current mandatory reporting system in providing information useful for fisheries management and to provide an evaluation of potential biases and errors of the primary information collected. The goal of this study is to evaluate the quality and quantity of information collected by the National Marine Fisheries Service as required in the fishery management plans in the northeastern United States and to determine which data elements may be more appropriately collected using a sample based design without significant loss of information. Specific objectives of this study are:(1) to evaluate the precision of the reported landed and discarded catches on the fishing vessel trip reports (FVTR) and the reported landings on the dealer reports and correspondence between the reported landings contained on both reports; (2) to determine the size and direction of potential biases of all quantitative information contained on the FVTRs and dealer reports; (3) to develop a sample based design for characterizing fishing activity at a range of precision levels; (4) to evaluate available discard information and develop a sample based design for estimating discards for major sectors of the fishing fleet using on-board observers; (5) to evaluate the level of compliance with reporting requirements, and associated biases which may be introduced due tonon-compliance; (6) to develop methods for use of reported information which takes into account biases taking with appropriate methods for bias corrections methods for any detected compliance and correction for in-season use of information contained in the reports; and (7) to estimate the cost of collecting information via a sample as opposed to complete reporting via a census of all permitted vessels and dealers. The Contractor will write an independent report on his/her findings and recommendations. The period of performance for this contract will be 270 days from the date the contract is awarded. The anticipated issue date for the solicitation is 15 days after the date of this synopsis. Requests for the solicitation must be in writing or by fax. Telephone requests will not be accepted. Fax number (757) 441-3786. No contract award will be made on the basis of quotations received in response to this notice since this synopsis cannot be considered a Request for Quotation. This is a Simplified Acquisition with a value of less than $100,000. Posted 06/28/00 (W-SN469428). (0180)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0013 20000630\B-0005.SOL)