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The states of Washington, Oregon, and California currently require vessels in the Pacific coast groundfish trawl fishery to fill out and submit a logbook, which was developed through the Pacific Fishery Management Council in collaboration with NMFS. In addition to providing basic vessel information as part of these state requirements, vessels are required to record data for each trip they take. These data include tow time, tow location, depth of catch, net type, target strategy, and estimated pounds of fish retained per tow. The logbooks are due monthly to each respective state. The data is used by multiple entities including NMFS, the Council, the Groundfish Management Team, the Northwest Fishery Science Center, and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission in analyses of catch locations, bycatch hotspots, spot verification of fish tickets, analyses on gear usage by area, and a variety of other applications. The state of California will soon be removing its requirement for Pacific coast groundfish trawl logbooks. Without a new Federal requirement for keeping and submitting this logbook, NMFS and its partners will lose logbook data from the 18 trawl vessels that home port in California. This proposed rule would establish a Federal requirement for the completion of the logbook. The majority of the logbook process would remain the same under this rule, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) would continue to enter logbook data as it has always done; the one minor change to the process would be that fishermen will send in completed logbooks directly to the PSMFC rather than to California Fish and Wildlife.