National Marine Fisheries Service Seeks DIS Particpants

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is seeking volunteers to participate in the document imaging system trial, said CBP in a CSMS message. The pilot allows importers and brokers that use ACE to submit official CBP documents and specified Participating Government Agency (PGA) forms via the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

(See ITT's Online Archives 12040548 for Details of the First Phase of CBP DIS Test for Importers and Brokers.)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) NMFS is one of the PGA participants to the trial. Two NOAA-NMFS forms/documents are included in this first phase of the DIS test. They are the NOAA Form 370 Fisheries Certificate of Origin and the Toothfish Pre-Approval form. Persons importing frozen, canned or processed tuna are normally required to submit a completed paper copy of the NOAA 370 form which must accompany the shipment and persons importing frozen toothfish must submit a copy of the “Toothfish Pre-Approval” form. Through the DIS trial, these documents can now be submitted as scanned images in lieu of paper documents. Filers will then need only to retain the original document.

Contact Dale Jones of the NMFS at dale.jones@noaa.gov or 301-427-8143 for further details.