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CNMI Commercial Fisheries BioSampling (CFBS)

Published by Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce | Metadata Last Checked: December 19, 2025 | Last Modified: 2025-12-03T01:00:28.000+00:00
The main market sampling program in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is the new biosampling program implemented in late 2010 on the island of Saipan. It is a joint Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) and industry project with a local environmental consulting firm doing most of the field work, data processing, and obtaining of life history samples. DFW is working up some of the life history samples for that aspect of the project. It is strictly a voluntary data collection system requiring ingenuity to obtain the participation of a large percentage of the main fish vendors on the islands of Saipan, Rota and Tinian. All catches are from the CNMI with some of them coming from up to 100 miles from Saipan. It is a census sampling program of 100% of the commercial harvest of a subsample of the trips landing during any sampling period. Due to logistics and resource limitations, the majority of sampling was initially (Dec 2010-late 2012) focused on the spearfish reef fish fishery on Saipan. This has since expanded to include information on the bottomfish fishery as well data from Tinian and Rota. Life history samples are also being collected on several species on reef fish and one deep bottomfish. These data are considered confidential.

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