OBJECTIVES
The goal of the FIRST project was to evaluate the ability of seafood processing plant workers to collect representative length samples from commercial landings of groundfish species. The evaluation process was comprised of three main objectives: (1) To assess the accuracy and precision of the lengths measured by seafood plant workers; (2) To examine whether there was a difference between the fish lengths collected during business hours (Monday-Friday, 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.) versus those collected during non-business hours; and (3) To test whether fish length distributions collected by seafood plant workers were similar to fish length distributions collected by ODFW port biologists.