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The Northeast Fisheries Science Center has awarded a single award Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quality commercial services type contract with a 5-year ordering period (1-base year and 4-option year option periods) for Fishery Observer Support Services to A.I.S., Inc. in support of the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP).
A.I.S., Inc. was founded in 1988, is based out of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and specializes in designing and managing complex field sampling and monitoring programs. The period of performance for the contract is September 15, 2025 through September 14, 2029.
Since the 1980s, NOAA Fisheries has contracted fishery observers in the Northeast to collect vital data that informs fisheries science and management. A.I.S., Inc. will deploy observers aboard commercial fishing vessels from Maine to North Carolina to collect information on:
- Retained and discarded catch
- Fishing gear
- Biological samples
- Operational details
These data help assess fish stock conditions and support sustainable fishing practices.
The Biological Port Sampling Program is a new component of this NEFOP contract. This program was previously managed by the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office for many years until this new merge with NEFOP. The Biological Port Sampling Program gathers biological samples of landed catch to characterize size and age composition. The NEFOP observers will now collect data both at sea and shoreside at docks, fish houses, and dealer facilities to improve sampling efficiency and bolster fishery dependent data collections.
NOAA Fisheries is responsible for training and certifying observers and port samplers, managing all collected data, and developing annual sampling schedules. A.I.S., Inc. will recruit and deploy certified personnel to fulfill the required number of observed sea days and biological samples across fisheries.
The contract will be managed by the Fisheries Monitoring and Research Division at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
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