Highly Migratory Species Fishing Permits

The Highly Migratory Species Management (HMS) Division issues a variety of fishing permits that allow commercial and recreational fishing using many different gear types and fishing practices. The HMS Division issues permits to dealers for swordfish, tunas, and shark. The HMS Division also authorizes scientific study and aquarium collection through an exempted fishing permit program. The HMS Division also requires any fishing tournaments that target highly migratory species to register and report the catch if selected.

Permit and registration data are used to draft annual SAFE (Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation) Reports, stock assessments, and bluefin tuna and swordfish annual specifications. Highly migratory species (HMS) tournament data are used to help meet ICCAT landings reporting requirements by facilitating selection of tournaments for reporting of fishing effort and landings by the South East Fishery Science Center. These data are also used to quantify the tournaments held for HMS to improve fishery management measure development and by the public to determine applicable regulations for vessels participating in tournaments. The data are used to help meet Amendment 2 to the Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan (FMP) requirements of the shark research fishery program by selecting participants for collection of shark species data used for stock assessments and to meet the research needs of NMFS. Vessel permit data provide the universe of vessels participating in open access Atlantic HMS fisheries.