The RMPC has been operated by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) since 1977. The RMPC provides regional coordination of tagging programs among 47 Federal, Provincial, State, Tribal, and private entities that release more than 50 million salmonids with the CWT yearly. The RMPC also manages the regional database, called Regional Mark Information System (RMIS), that houses CWT data submitted by fisheries agencies on the West Coast. The RMPC is responsible for RMIS' design, development, implementation, and on-going evaluation of the central database for the storage and retrieval of Pacific Coast wide CWTs and related fisheries information. As part of its responsibilities RMPC validates multi-agency submissions of CWT release, monitoring and evaluation, recovery and related data used for Pacific salmon and steelhead research studies and harvest management (Figure 1). RMPC task also includes managing the data exchange specification, validating data submissions, generating reports, distributing documentation, and providing access to these data through an online query system from:
http://www.rmpc.org . As of 1985, the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST) designated the RMPC as the single site to exchange all United States CWT information with Canada in the Pacific Salmon Commission's (PSC)
http://www.psc.org/ format. The RMPC Program Manager serves as co-chair to the PSC Data Sharing Committee which informs the data exchange specification for RMIS. Canada also submits its CWT data to the RMPC where it is validated and then uploaded into RMIS.
Primary project partners who provide and use RMIS are the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG), Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), Columbia Inter-tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) and their member tribes, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Each of these entities are represented on the RMPC Mark and Tagging Committee and several are also represented on the PSC Data Sharing Committee. Funding for the RMPC is provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).