This tutorial will demonstrate entering a trip in the SAFIS eTRIPS website. For the purpose of this tutorial our example will be for a rod and reel fisherman departing from Ipswich fishing for striped bass in waters off Cape Ann, but this will be generally applicable to other means of harvesting and related variables so please substitute data relevant to your methods of harvesting as we go along. As always please contact us with any questions about trip entry by calling the DMF Stats department at 978-491-6279.
This is the main eTRIPS online screen as it appears in the chrome browser on a computer. And while it is possible to access this on a tablet or phone, it is a bulky website that is not optimized for devices, so if you are using a tablet or a phone, we suggest using the eTRIPS Mobile 2 app. Also Please note eTRIPS is incompatible with Safari, the default Apple/Mac browser, so if you're on a Mac, use Chrome, Firefox or another browser.
If the expanded navigation menu is not initially available to you go ahead and select the hamburger menu icon, that’s the small box made up of four horizontal lines in the top left-hand corner of your screen. The hamburger menu icon will collapse and expand the navigation menu when you select it. The second option in the navigation menu under Home is Enter Report. Let's select Enter Report.
Entering a report is a process that involves three pages: the trip header page, the effort page, and the catch page. This first page is the trip header page. We previously configured our Favorites so some fields will pre-populate when the page loads. In our case: Trip Type will be Commercial, Port Ipswich, and Vessel MS9999; these were set up in favorites, so they have pre-populated for us here. The fields we will need to enter are trip start date, trip start time, trip end date, and trip end time.
Let's enter our trip start date by selecting the calendar icon button to the right of the Trip Start Date field. Selecting that button will load a calendar and you can use the previous and next arrows to the left and right of the calendar’s month and year heading to get to the month you're looking for. I'm going to say this trip happened on June 24th, so I will navigate using the previous arrow to June and then select June 24th. This will populate that field with 06/24/2026 in the proper format the calendar requires. Trip Start Time I will say I departed at 6:00 AM so I’ll select the Trip Start Time field and since we need to enter in military time format 6:00 AM is going to be entered as zero six zero zero. Now, this trip was not an overnight trip it began and ended on the same day, so I'm going to select the calendar button at the right of the trip end date field and use the previous arrow to navigate back to June and select June 24th again. I’ll select the Trip End Time field to enter my trip end time I will say I returned at 1:00 PM that is one three zero zero 1300 in military time. At this point everything is entered properly so let’s select the Next button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
This second entry page is the Trip Effort Page. We previously configured this in Favorites so everything is going to be populated for me on this page and should be for you if you have properly set up your Favorites. If there are any empty fields you need to enter, you can do so now on, but here now, the distance is filled in as state waters inshore, the local area is properly populated as MA 2 MA state waters Cape Ann, Gear Code is hook and line, fishing time I set to 6 in favorites, so that is populated as such, hours slash days is set to hours which is correct. Gear quantity is marked as 1 for one hook on my line, and depth is “20” for 20 fathoms. Unless there are edits you need to make, you are ready to continue to your catch page by selecting the save and add catches button in the upper right-hand corner of your screen
This takes us to the catch page this is the final page of entry for this trip. Since on this hook and line trip out of Ipswich to the waters of Cape Ann for striped bass resulted in a single catch of striped bass sold to our favorite dealer ACCSP test, this page is just about fully populated with: species bass, striped; Unit of Measure pounds is correct; market unclassified is correct; Grade is round; Disposition is general utilization food, as this bass will be used for food; Catch Source is standard; sales disposition is set to sold to dealer; and sold to dealer indicates “ACCSP Test”, the dealer to whom we sold, so I'm just going to select the only field that needs entry the reported quantity field and say I caught and sold 57 pounds of striped bass. I’m going to enter 57 in that field and that is going to complete my trip. I’m going to choose the save and complete button in the upper right-hand corner and a window loads asking you to certify that the information is true complete and correct to the best of my knowledge and made in good faith, which it is so I will choose save and complete.
And as a final checkpoint in trip entry we are presented with a report summary that encapsulates the data we just entered. Should you need to make any changes to this you can select any section or simply select the edit report button at the top and that will return you to the editing process. Otherwise at this point you can select the finish button in the upper right-hand corner of the window, and you have successfully entered a trip in SAFIS. Well done!