Specifications include, but are not limited to: The State of Maine is seeking proposals for providing up to 1,500 tracking units for federal lobster fishing vessels that meet Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission type approval specifications and a corresponding data plan to collect and transfer data to the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is providing funds to Maine to facilitate the implementation of a mandatory federal American lobster and Jonah crab fishery vessel tracking rule that is effective in December 2023. The Department seeks to use these funds to purchase trackers and 5 years of data costs for license holders under its discretion. This will enable fishermen to benefit from bulk pricing, rather than individual unit and data plan orders, as the fleet moves to comply with this pending regulation. This RFP is also designed to allow the Department and fishermen flexibility in adapting to a commercial fishing environment that is rapidly adopting new technologies and providing a novel framework for at-sea data transfer and communication. The RFP will better position the Department and fishermen for this evolution that is already underway. The provider’s system must be able to submit collected tracking data the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP) Standard Atlantic Fisheries Information System (SAFIS) Application Programming Interface. A test of this connection was part of the type approval process. Provider must be able to produce up to 1,500 tracking devices by August 1st, 2023. Devices must be either shipped to the Department for dispersal or directly to fishermen.
