the protection of Marine habitats. Parallel to this the EU has also introduced the use of electronic logbooks, which replaces the traditional use of paper records. The UK fishing authorities are made up of the Welsh Government, Department of Agriculture & Rural Development Northern Ireland, Isle of Man Department for Environment Fisheries & Agriculture, Marine Scotland, Marine Management Organisation and the Channel Island Authorities. EU and National reporting schemes are defined thus: National VMS reporting schemes: These are fishing vessel position reporting requirements that form part of management schemes set up by one or more UKFAs to control certain fisheries and marine conservation areas. Commonly referred to as 'National VMS reporting', it uses both satellite and GPRS/GSM communication services depending on the Legislative requirements. Two schemes are currently operational: for Northern Ireland Mussel Dredging and Isle of Man Scallop Fisheries. EU VMS reporting scheme: these are fishing vessel position reporting requirements, through satellite communication services only, that enables the authorities to track the position of fishing vessels, as set out in EU Regulations. It is commonly referred to as 'EU VMS reporting'. In addition, electronic logbook requirements are defined thus: catch and effort recording in 'real time' but as a minimum every 24hrs whilst a fishing vessel is at sea. Catch and effort data can be transmitted over whichever communication channel is available (i.e., if the Satellite Communication Service is unavailable, connection will be attempted via GPRS/GSM and vice versa). Electronic logbooks are commonly referred to as 'E-logbooks' and the end to end process and accompanying software is referred to as 'Elogbook Software System or ELSS'. In order to address this challenge the UK fishing authorities teamed up with Applied Satellite Technology Ltd (AST Ltd) in 2012 to come up with a combined solution. The resulting solution was the VMS Plus device, which has the capability to deliver all of these requirements through one device and is now being rolled out to the UK fishing fleet. In summary, the VMS Plus device meets the following functional requirements in full: • Position reporting in accordance with the EU VMS regulatory requirements; • Position reporting in accordance with relevant National Regulations governing marine protected and other special conservation areas at sea; • Polling to request current and/or past positions from the device. The VMS Plus device has its own internal GPS used for position reporting and therefore is a useful cross referencing