NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

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MARINE FISHERIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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Monday

June 4, 2007

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The committee convened at 9:00 a.m. in the Atrium Ballroom of the
Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20001,
Dr. William Hogarth, Chairperson, presiding.

[COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT]{.underline}:

> William Hogarth Chairperson
>
> Jim Balsinger
>
> Tom Billy
>
> Laurel Bryant
>
> Randy Cates
>
> John Connelly
>
> Bill Dewey
>
> Randy Fisher
>
> Robert Fletcher
>
> John Forster
>
> Catherine Foy
>
> Jim Gilmore
>
> Mark Holliday
>
> Steve Joner
>
> Rob Kramer
>
> Peter Leipzig
>
> Mary Beth Nickell-Tooley
>
> John O\'Shea
>
> Tom Raftican
>
> Sam Rauch
>
> Ralph Rayburn
>
> Kenneth Roberts
>
> Eric Schwaab
>
> Larry Simpson
>
> I-N-D-E-X
>
> [ITEM]{.underline} [PAGE]{.underline}
>
> Housekeeping 4
>
> Laurel G. Bryant
>
> Executive Officer, MAFAC
>
> National Marine Fisheries Service
>
> Opening Remarks/Overview 5
>
> Dr. William T. Hogarth
>
> Vice Chair
>
> Assistant Administrator for Fisheries
>
> Jim L. Gilmore 26
>
> Director of Public Affairs
>
> At-Sea Processors Association
>
> Tom J. Billy, President 27
>
> International Food Safety Consultants, LLC
>
> Rec Fish Working Group Subcommittee 30
>
> Robert Fletcher, President
>
> Sportfishing Association of California
>
> Introductions 36
>
> Q/A Discussion regarding Aquaculture 39
>
> Administrative Matters
>
> Travel reimbursement 51
>
> FACA Info 67
>
> Andy McCreedy)
>
> Office of General Counsel, Dept. of Commerce
>
> FishWatch Presentation
>
> Alan Risenhoover 92
>
> U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA
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> Office of Sustainable Fisheries
>
> National Marine Fisheries Service
>
> Michael Kelly 93
>
> U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA
>
> Office of Sustainable Fisheries
>
> National Marine Fisheries Service
>
> I-N-D-E-X
>
> (continued)
>
> [ITEM]{.underline} [PAGE]{.underline}
>
> FishWatch Presentation Questions/Comments 120
>
> Magnuson-Stevenson Act Presentation 157
>
> Alan Risenhoover
>
> U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA
>
> Office of Sustainable Fisheries
>
> National Marine Fisheries Service
>
> Magnuson-Stevens Act (Continued)
>
> Presentation/Discussion on Annual Catch
>
> and Accountability Measures provisions 166
>
> Alan Risenhoover
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> U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA
>
> Office of Sustainable Fisheries
>
> National Marine Fisheries Service
>
> NEPA Presentation/Discussion 196
>
> Limited Access Privilege Programs (LAPPs) 213
>
> And Implementing Regulations for Disaster
>
> Provisions -- Discussion
>
> FishWatch -- Assignment of Subcommittee, 225
>
> open discussion of 3^rd^ party certification
>
> concerns and Seafood Promotion Councils

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

(9:13 a.m.)

MS. BRYANT: I\'m going to do just a few housekeeping notes, one, thanks
for everybody. I\'m glad you all found the room change. It was a bit of
a surprise this morning. I walked into the other room and they had
everything set up. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the ceiling that
was dripping water on our table, so the staff kicked into action and we
shifted to the ballroom. We are not going to be here tomorrow.

So number one, because we weren\'t expecting such a large room, our
recorder \-- it\'s very important \-- this is a public meeting \-- we
need to be on record \-- so I need everybody to be aware to speak up,
speak clearly and don\'t talk over each other. Speak one at a time so
that he can hear you and we can get the words down because everything
you say is important. Identify yourself when you speak. Very good.

There was something else about \-- oh, also, because we\'re not going to
be here tomorrow, we\'re going to be back in the Springwood Room, I\'ll
need you to take your notebooks and your name tags. I\'m going to ask
you to do that because it\'s less than for us to have to break down and
get secured. So if you can remember to do that, take everything with you
and then plan on being in the Springwood Room tomorrow.

In the notebooks, you should have gotten a table of contents. It was
kind of the last thing. I went through a memory problem last week and
didn\'t get a table of contents. You should have that. There also is a
handout of presentation on Magnuson-Stevens, kind of overview, and the
last additional supplemental was the summary report from last meeting
from July of 2006. So if you didn\'t get those, they\'re up there. Let
Tywanna know and we\'ll make certain that you get that in your notebook.

The last thing I wanted just to mention is that before the end of today,
if you are planning on attending Fish Fry, please let Tywanna or me know
so I can your name down. I want to make certain that we call those folks
and make certain that there\'s a ticket there for you. We got you guys
in early. Everybody\'s had a little bit of a different experience
calling in. I don\'t really know this group that well, and I just wanted
to make certain that nobody works to get there and then all of a sudden
doesn\'t have a ticket, so want to make certain those of you who are
covered are covered. I\'d like to also make certain that if you are
planning on attending the stewardship leadership awards on Thursday,
make certain that you let Mary Hope know before she leaves, because if
you have not bothered to respond or you\'ve got a guest coming, she\'s
going to need to know for head count purposes to make certain that you
get a dinner seat. And that\'s it for me for now.

DR. HOGARTH: Okay. Again, just make sure on the Fish Fry ticket \--
sometimes it gets at the end difficult and there is a place where they
hold tickets there. They asked me this morning was my \-- did I have
extra tickets. I\'m not sure I have a ticket yet. I\'m trying to figure
that out, too, with my own office. But we know this morning we should
have time to figure it out, so make sure that Laura knows where you are.

Before we start, we need to do one thing because we have two new members
with us this morning for their first meeting. I\'d like to give them
their certificate of appointment. The first one is John Connelly. John,
welcome, congratulations.

MR. CONNELLY: Glad to be here.

DR. HOGARTH: And the second is Randy Cates. Randy, as you all know, is
replacing Jim Cook who said he\'d like to get off but he wanted to make
sure someone from Hawaii got on, so we were able to make that switch
that I think will be very good.

Delighted to make that first meeting of 2007. We had a little difficult
time getting things done last year with the budget process, so we never
knew what we had in the way of money. I\'m not sure today we know what
we have in the way of money, but it\'s \-- we are operating. It\'s sort
of a unique experience with the federal government. For 2007, we got a
budget. We just got a lump sum budget with no earmarks. In fact, it was
such a lump sum budget that it went to NOAA. We had to think of a way to
fight for our portion of the budget. We had nothing except the NOAA
budget. We are a little bit less than we were. Normally, we do better
but when it got time to divvy it out of NOAA, we got a little less than
we normally get but we got enough to operate in 2007, we think. So
we\'re just trying now to get the money out.

We\'ve got a lot of new ways of doing things. We\'re having to basically
go out and get project proposals for money from people who had normally
gotten money. Pacific salmon money, the \$66 million there, they\'re
having to put in bids for the money from the various states and we have
to sort that out. So it\'s been a somewhat difficult year but this is
the way OMB thought it should be done. If you have no earmarks, the
money should be going to various agencies and organizations, that they
had to apply for it through a competition process. So that\'s what
we\'re trying to do. So we do our best to get it done quickly.

The supplemental bill that was just passed presents a couple more
challenges but they\'ll be worked out pretty easily I think. There\'s
money for the Klamath fisherman from the fishing disaster. And then
there\'s additional money for the Gulf and I think \-- Larry, what did
they give us, 15 days to get the money? From the time the President
signed the budget, we had 15 days \--

But we were \-- by having some advance notice, we were able to work with
Larry and the state directors in the Gulf, and I don\'t think that\'ll
be a problem, never has been a problem. And I don\'t think it\'ll be a
problem getting the money for the salmon fund out. I have to go over and
meet with some of the Hill people Wednesday, I think it is, to discuss
that money.

So things are moving a little bit but it hasn\'t been a good as we\'d
like it to be. But so we need to talk this week and try to get back on
sort of track for MAFAC what we need to do the rest of this year. And
maybe we want to meet our budget year end, the end of September feasible
this budget year or not, but we need to talk about it.

This year is sort of a big week in Washington. The President\'s declared
the month of June as Ocean Week. This week is Ocean Week and starting
with a whole bunch of stuff going on, there\'s a Reg Fish and Boating
week. It\'s this week. There\'ll be fishing down here downtown for the
kids going on. Tomorrow night the national sanctuary is having a board
banquet, the annual board\'s banquet. Theirs is a black tie affair that
costs \$250.00 a person to go, but they make money I guess. Tomorrow
night is also the American Sport Fisherman Association reception on the
Hill. Wednesday night\'s the Fish Fry.

Yes. Most of you should have gotten invitation to the ASA reception. The
Fish Fry\'s on Wednesday down in Commerce. With the weather being 90
degrees, you\'ll really enjoy the sweat box that we have down there with
no breeze, but it is lots of fun, lots of good seafood and a lot of
people coming through. And then Thursday night is the Stewardship
Awards, our second attempt at this. If it goes half as well as the first
one went, I think we\'ll be very, very happy. And talking to Senator
Stevens last week, he said he\'d be here. He thought it was the most
laid back and fun event he\'d been to, glad to be here again this year
so we\'ll see if he\'s here. So it\'s a busy week here and then during
the week, I have to work on council appointments. They\'re due out soon.
So it gives us all a lot to do this week.

This is also a week when it looks like a lot of bills will be introduced
on the Senate side finally. The coral reef bill, or coral bill will be
introduced probably sometime between now and Thursday night.

The Aquaculture bill on the Senate side will be introduced by Thursday
night. Not sure exactly how they\'re introducing the Aquaculture bill.
I\'ve spent time with Amy Frankel and Todd Fide as we were going to
Seward. And then I was trying to convince them not to try to make a lot
of changes to introduce it but introduce the bill and let\'s try to work
with the House and then make the changes. So I\'m hoping at least we can
get that bill introduced. And Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye have
both said they would introduce it. Senator Murkowski from Alaska is
trying to decide whether she\'ll sign on or not. She thinks it handles
some of the things she wants.

Had an interesting day in Alaska, though, Friday. Everywhere I went,
everything they wanted to show me in Alaska Friday was Aquaculture, but
they don\'t want Aquaculture. They\'re doing red king crabs. They\'re
doing blue king crabs. They\'re doing work with salmon. They\'re doing,
you know, I mean it\'s everywhere wet. That\'s all it was. But it\'s not
Aquaculture to them \-- some places \-- but we\'ll have to work through
it. I think the thing they want to keep talking about is fin fish. But,
you know, the opt out provision, you know, we\'ll try to work through
it.

We just \-- we have to get this bill \-- we\'ll talk about it later \--
get this bill done and we got to get in so it is a business bill and so
that the industry and the business leaders will be behind it, so we have
to work with that.

Also this week, we hope we can get finalized the \-- get a step closer
to getting the Western Mississippi council \-- not council, the
Commission adopted by the U.S. and anyone who haven\'t signed on to the
Commission yet. I think the Whiting \-- known as the Whiting bill is now
signed by the President, so that should be through. So there\'s a lot
going on this week, but we\'ll be going on for the next few months here.
And so we need to make sure that we get MAFAC back involved, because I
think we did have a lull there due to budgets and not being able to
really get together and talk. And there are a lot of things we need
input on.

My understanding today that Chris Dorsett would not be here. I think
it\'s a Gulf Council meeting or one of the council meetings. Heather
McCarty will not be here. She\'s at the North Pacific Fishery Management
Council. Tony DiLernia will be coming in in person tomorrow. I think
Chris and Heather will try to join in for the discussion tomorrow. Eric
Schwaab is supposed to be here later today. I don\'t know where Jim
Donofrio is.

MS. BRYANT: I\'ve not heard. He was supposed to be here \--

DR. HOGARTH: He wanted to be a member of this badly, but I don\'t think
he\'s attended yet. So when you talk about the Vision document tomorrow,
Tony and Chris and Heather will be here.

And John Connelly is a new member and we\'re glad to have John. It\'s
his first meeting and I think John brings a lot from the National
Fisheries Institute here and some of the issues that we\'ve tried to
address so it\'s good to have that viewpoint here and to help guide us
as we go fowrard. And then Randy Cates from Cates International Offshore
Aquaculture is here with us. We\'re glad to have you. He is part of the
briefing we had earlier, Aquaculture.

You know, this \-- we\'ve \-- there\'s \-- I think sometimes we have so
many issues that we try to get all the issues looked at. We need to
decide this again how effective \-- most effective way for MAFAC to
operate because there are a lot of issues. We got MAFAC implementation
which is \-- I mean the Magnuson-Stevens re-authorization which is
taking place which is going to be a lot more difficult than a lot of
people thought. It\'s going to have a lot more impact on the fishing
industry and the communities and the infrastructure than a lot of people
realized. To end overfishing by 2010, 2011 and then to have rebuilt
stocks within 10 years is somewhat of a train wreck, and then to have to
set annual catch limits and then to have to have accountability with
those catch limits plus have to get the Marine Rec survey in place by
January to get a registration for all the recreational fishermen in
place by January 2009, it\'s a huge workload. And \-- but one that I
think \-- I\'m not sure that the public totally understands, and so part
of what we\'ll do today is \-- this week is to get Alan and Sam over
here to make sure that you all know where we\'re going and see issues in
there that I think will be helpful for MAFAC to get more involved in.
We\'d like to make sure that we discuss that with you.

And then I think this week we have divided up into subcommittees to talk
about the issues that we have that we\'ve been talking about in
subcommittee. We still need to work on Aquaculture. This is \-- remains,
from the Secretary\'s viewpoint, one of the few bills that he\'s got a
lot of interest besides immigration law. I don\'t think it\'ll replace
immigration but it\'s pretty close, and I think he\'s had several
meetings with the industry. We\'ve talked to him several times and he\'s
quite interested in Aquaculture. And, you know, I think MAFAC has been
excellent, I think, to this point in giving guidance and helping through
this process and we need to continue that.

And the Rec survey, I think, you know, we need input from here, and so I
think that is going to have a full, full life between now and January of
2009. As of this week, we\'ve hired Gordon Colvin who was the head of
the New York Fisheries Group to come in to work with us. He\'s retired
from New York. He\'s coming in and helping with that program. I felt
like it needed someone with a stature within the states that they would
look up to or work with, and so Gordon\'s agreed to come in. And it
looked like Pres Pate \-- I\'ve got to call him again middle of this
week \-- may help us on one part of it, but Pres is ready to go back to
work full-time but he agreed to help particularly on the license aspect.

It took a long time to put a license in place. It looks like now that
they got one, it\'s probably one of the best, if not the best,
recreational license in the country with few exceptions and exemptions
which we have to look at, so I think we\'re moving in the right
direction and John Boreman will be here this week to talk to
subcommittee about that.

And then we have another issue that we want to spend some time with you
this week, and Alan is coming over, and I\'m not sure who he\'s coming
with, to talk about FishWatch. We have been very much involved in trying
to figure out a way to present the correct information on fisheries,
sort of a roll out plan and marketing to help the industry. I\'ll give
you the correct information. We wanted people to make informed decisions
obviously, and we\'ve been looking at how to do this. We\'re coming up
now with a web page site which I think is excellent. But we\'re also
looking at \-- I hope Alan remembered to bring it \-- if not, we\'ll get
it \-- but it\'s Michael\'s \-- I don\'t know if he brought it with him
or not \-- but we\'ve been looking at a way to present this so it will
be \-- a way it will get people\'s attention but also to get the
information out quickly.

And we developed this sort of a wheel where 30 or 40, I think it was,
major stocks that people would buy, and you would go to like summer
flounder and you turn the wheel to summer flounder, and it would have
enough information that it\'s going to refer you, if you wanted a whole
lot of information, to the website FishWatch. So we need to run it by
you and see how you think that idea may work. And what we thought was
that we would try it out with one of the bigger grocery chains to see if
they would hang it near their seafood, and so people could come up to do
it, and they could see what was on the shelf and they go look at it.

We are very concerned about the red, yellow and green that keeps running
around, because it doesn\'t depict properly, we think, the way fish are
being managed and the way fish are. And so we were trying to get around
red, yellow and green and so, hopefully, this will work. But I think we
would really like \-- we need your involvement in this, and so, however
we need to work with MAFAC on this, we want to make sure that it gets
done. Also, we\'re going to have to \-- we don\'t have to, but we
thought it would be a good idea is to \-- we have got the MAFAC travel
and FACA review rules that you\'d need to make sure that everyone
understands. They\'re under Tab 4 and then we\'ll go over those and the
DOC General Counsel, Anna McGrady, will be here to give you a short
presentation and answer any questions.

You know, I think the main thing is to remember when you settled on
MAFAC, you\'re here not as an individual but to represent the national
and put your national hat on. So I think, Jim, your group, Gilmore\'s
group is one that\'s been working with the subcommittee on the Magnuson,
and I think the annual catch limit stuff will be \-- put that there.

Vision 20/20, we need to talk quite about it. I think, there\'s been \--
it got caught up last year in the budget process, and I think really
couldn\'t get the people together. But now we got, I think, a draft
report that brings us to a point that we need to decide where we\'re
going next. I know Mark Holliday\'s been working quite a bit with Mary
Hope last few weeks to get it to this portion where we are and, I think,
to lead us as to where we will go in the future. But Tony will be
available tomorrow, and we can look at this further.

The real concern I have now is that we put a planning or how we\'re
going to proceed section in this to make sure that we get outside input.
I think that\'s one of the concerns I have now. Basically it\'s an
inside, basically, report, but I think it\'s something that would help.
It will help us now, but I think it will also help the new
administration that\'s coming in shortly in 18 months to have a document
that they can look at as to fisheries and the future fisheries. But it
has to have a broader outside look, and so I think this could do it.

And the other thing on Aquaculture which you need to look at this week,
while you\'re here, is there will be an Aquaculture summit on June the
27th and 28th \-- 26th and 27th here in town. It will be at the Ronald
Reagan \--

MS. BUNSICK: To be determined. It\'s going through \-- it has to go
through competitive award of the location, but it will be in DC.

DR. HOGARTH: Okay. It will be in DC. If it\'s June the 3rd, 4th or 5th
and we don\'t have a place, we may be in trouble with the competitive
process. I didn\'t know you had to go through a competitive process.

MS. BUNSICK: They had to announce it and it should be okay.

DR. HOGARTH: We\'ll deal with that. Anyway, the Secretary will come over
and open the meeting, and then we\'ll have several panels. One of the
panels is \-- these may have changed since I\'ve gone through them \--
is \--

MS. BUNSICK: They\'re still finalizing the agenda.

DR. HOGARTH: On the panels, one of the topics, it was like why is it \--
why the U.S. should embrace Aquaculture, then another panel on the
business case of Aquaculture and bringing in, you know, experts and
people from all over, looking at supporting resilient cultural
communities, stock replenishment and hatchery-based enhancement, federal
actions to enable marine Aquaculture development, legislation and
regulations for marine Aquaculture, economic incentives, you know,
research and development, scientific priorities.

What they do is try to have panels that let \-- have a moderator but
have panels to discuss all of these issues and to see out of that if
there are things, as this bill is proceeding and will be modified \--
it\'s no doubt there will be amendments to it \-- how do we want to move
these amendments. I know the industry really has some concerns, still,
about does the bill have enough that business incentives are such that,
you know, you can \-- people who have the money will be willing to come
to the table with money and move this. And so we need to look further at
that, but how much of that can we do in the bill itself, how much we can
do in regulations.

I also met last week, while I was playing with whales, I got to talk to
the oil and gas industry. And I\'m trying to get the oil and gas
industry to have a workshop on platforms and see what we can do with
platforms in this process and get mineral management involved. But the
oil and gas industry seem willing to come to the table, and the workshop
and we\'ll probably handle that separately from the Aquaculture summit,
because I don\'t think we can get them to a table this quick. But they
seem to be willing to come and talk about some ways of using the oil
rigs for Aquaculture, so I think it will be helpful.

And the other thing that I think we got to talk about in Aquaculture as
we read more and more, and that\'s with the latest in all the feed
scares and additives, how do we control this. The Hill was talking to me
Friday about part of the Aquaculture bill maybe being that fisheries
need to be more involved in some of these testing. So we need to talk to
industry on where they should be, but should we then have the same
requirements for, you know, industry can only do certain things, but
those same things pertain to those products that you\'re importing. And
I think we can do that to be consistent with WTO, as long as it\'s \--
effects on both.

But I think those are the things \-- we need to strengthen the
Aquaculture bill to really cover those things that will make it
competitive but make it a big business venture. But I feel strongly that
we need to get this bill moving and looked at.

For those of you that know, we just finished IWC which was my first year
as Chairman of IWC. I mean we have 6-or 700 people in Alaska, in
Anchorage. We were able to get our bowhead quota, well, it\'s the
bowhead and great whale quota for the next five years, by consensus. But
a lot of the rest of the meeting sort of fell apart. Japan threatened to
leave IWC. They might. It wouldn\'t surprise me. It was a tough meeting.
But we got a chance to talk to a lot of the staffers because they were
there for about a week or so, and I think hopefully can get some of this
stuff worked out that we can continue to work forward now.

I am talking to the Admiral and some of you all have heard about sort of
my future, not that I\'m really going anywhere right now. But I am
finally seeing the wear and tear on this old body. It\'s beginning to
start to take place a little bit, I think, it could be effective in both
international and try to get Aquaculture and not to lose tension on a
domestic aspect. It\'s becoming a little tougher. And so we\'re working
it out so that Jim Balsiger will be here to sort of be me for Domestic
Affairs so as not to take anything away from any of the staff people
that are there.

But Sam \-- Sam joined us this morning. Sam has got his hands full with
Alan on getting the Magnuson implemented. With all the PR issues that we
have and all that, someone seems to always think that\'s where the
decisions are made. So if you\'ve made at that level, who\'s going to be
above them to talk to. And so if you can\'t get to B, they want someone
in.

So we\'ve asked for Jim to come in and I\'ll basically focus on
international and Aquaculture will be what I focus on for the next, as
the Admiral said, until the yellow bus comes in a year and a half. So
but it will, I hope, not be a lot of difference. There\'ll be just
someone else that these domestic fishermen in particular can talk to
when they feel like I am ignoring them. And I\'m not ignoring them, but
sometimes I\'m not as accessible as I\'ve been because of \-- my next
big job there besides Aquaculture is ICCAT meets in November and I\'m
Chair of ICCAT.

And to be honest with you, one of the most magnificent fish, I think, in
the ocean is about gone, bluefin tuna. The indications are that it\'s
top may have already collapsed. And the eastern bluefin tuna in the
Mediterranean, it\'s been a terrible year. The last two years, we\'ve
caught less than 10 percent of our quota and the season\'s already
started here this year, and we\'re not seeing much.

We spent a lot of money in the Gulf this year to look at the spawning of
bluefin in the Gulf, because that\'s one of the two spawning sites, is
the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean so we\'re having to take a look
see. And we got, domestically, a lot of \-- internationally, a lot of
problems with sharks. They\'ll be a very, very small shark season this
year in the U.S. so those stocks are just in bad shape, so.

Anyway, we\'re glad to be back with you at MAFAC and we need to get
input from you on where you think you can be the most service to us and
to the people that you work with. I can tell you that Aquaculture direct
stuff, FishWatch trying to get the right messages out, and Magnuson
implementation are the issues that we really got on our plate right now
that need lots of help.

So with that, I\'m going to turn it over to the subcommittee chairs to
see if they have anything they\'d like to offer at this time. And I\'ll
start with Jim Gilmore.

MR. GILMORE: Not too much to say except looking forward to Alan\'s
presentation here this afternoon, see what kind of interests,
controversy, provocation, whatever it brings up. And then I guess we\'re
scheduled to meet in a subcommittee at 9:00 o\'clock on Wednesday
morning, so.

DR. HOGARTH: I said to Tom, I knew I said that Tom and a couple \-- Eric
Schwaab came to talk to the Admiral about Aquaculture and pushing a
couple of things. And one of the things they pushed was the Aquaculture
summit, and so they listened to you, I think, in several ways, but Tom,
I\'ll turn it over to you.

MR. BILLY: Yes. Thank you, Bill. Well, the idea of the summit as well as
a number of other ideas were developed by the MAFAC Committee over a
year ago. And to pull together in the letter that we sent to you and
through you to the Admiral late last summer, and I\'m pleased to report
to the full committee that a lot of progress has been made. You\'ve
outlined quite a bit of it, but we\'ll hear more from the program people
at our working group session tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 o\'clock. The
discussion will include the status of the 10-year plan for marine
Aquaculture, the budget that NOAA received for Aquaculture, other
administrative changes that have taken place, the legislation.

And you\'ll note that some of the \-- there are some comments that
we\'ve received on the legislation, so we may want to consider that and
see if we have any recommendations or suggestions to NOAA.

The summit, Bill\'s outlined it. We\'ll hear a little more about that
and what the goals and objective are for the summit.

And then finally, with the time we have for our workgroup on Aquaculture
and the subcommittee on commerce, I\'d like you to be thinking about new
subjects that we would want to focus on, priority areas be it this
initiative on FishWatch, the legislation on the seafood marketing
councils or other issues that we can take up and start to work on as a
subcommittee of MAFAC. Thanks.

DR. HOGARTH: Thanks. If you look at Tab 10, I think it\'s also
Aquaculture Act, and then Tab 11 is a lot of the correspondence that\'s
gone forth from the NGO interest group letter to Congresswoman Bordallo,
see they ought to be part of what you look at here. Anyway, it\'s really
good that John Connelly has joined and is here, because the Secretaries
have several breakfast meetings and went up to Boston, and John has
heard these comments probably from the business leaders more than anyone
else. So I think it\'s really good that you\'re hear to bring these to
the table and help us address this in this committee, because we really
\-- this committee is going to be extremely important as we move
forward.

And I think the other thing I\'d like to have the group do \-- maybe
we\'re not doing enough getting information out on seafood and
particularly Aquaculture. And to be honest, one of the concerns that I
have is we got to be careful what we say about Aquaculture and the
importance of Aquaculture and all, because we depend on Aquaculture
already so much for our seafood in the U.S. So we got to be careful, I
think, that we don\'t destroy an industry. At the same time, I think we
can be positive on what we can do in the U.S. I think it\'s a tightrope
we need to walk, but I think it\'s one we need to try to walk.

And I\'m hearing that the week of July the 8th, we\'ll be at the
hearing. We don\'t know which date, but they told me last week that be
prepared for the week of July 8th for testimony. And I think that that
would be something good that we talk about here is the testimony, points
that will be made. But also, if we can have any influence over who they
invite to present testimony, so I think the subcommittee, I hope, would
spend some time on that.

And one other thing that Tommy did bring, I think, you know, we have set
up marketing councils. We do have FishWatch. And whether that\'s part of
Aquaculture or just separate, if we want to do a separate subcommittee
to look at that, I think I\'d like for you all to talk about it, because
I think it is something that we can do. And John is here and I don\'t
think we let people introduce themselves, probably ought to.

The Tuna Foundation is now part of NFI which brings another big group
that\'s had some interesting issues to face them. The seafood marketing
group is now part of NFI and brings a bigger picture to have to deal
with. So I think there\'s a lot of opportunities that we need to work
through.

And then in summary wise, we\'ll go to Bob Fletcher and the Rec Fish
working group, whatever you want to talk about.

MR. FLETCHER: Well, first of all, Bill, Captain Norris Tap sends his
regards and says in case you weren\'t aware, the California Sea Lion is
getting smarter and getting worse. That\'s an \"in-joke\" for everybody.
Norris\' staff has had to deal with California Sea Lion interactions for
a long time, and it\'s his pet peeve about the problems that he faces.
And so he just had \-- asked me to pass that along.

The \-- you explained the problem pretty well. We\'re faced with a
pretty tight deadline for Magnuson implementation. We\'ve got to hit the
ground running. I think we have to a large extent, thanks in part to
John Boreman and the work of the Science and Technology Division of NOAA
Fisheries. We began our work in March. The first meeting of the
Executive Steering Committee of the \-- they call it the Marine
Recreational Improvement Program \-- the goal is to get implemented a
new survey, \"Son of MRFSS\" or whatever you want to call it.

Don\'t use MRFSS. But I think here in MAFAC, we owe a huge debt to Rob
Kramer because he\'s willing to take on a job with Rob Andrews on the
operations team. And there\'s a lot of concern out there about just
where this whole process is going. I hope that Jim Donofrio will be here
for that subcommittee meeting, because, of course, his area is one of
the ones that is most concerned about this direction. John Boreman is at
the Gulf council meeting this week to discuss with the folks down there,
including Bob Zales and Bobby Walker, the direction that we\'re going.

We have an operations team that I think is composed of some of the
finest technical minds as well as fisheries and management minds around
that are working diligently now to find all the very best recreational
data collection systems in the nation and try to take the best of all
those systems and create a better system to meet that deadline of
January of \`09. I think the only way that we can be successful is if we
get people like Jim Donofrio and the people he represents and Bob Zales
and the people he represents on board and continue to be supportive of
programs that are working, like the one in California, like the one in
Texas and provide help for areas that really haven\'t had much of a data
system like the Hawaiian Islands and the Western Pacific and those
areas. And I think we can do that and I think that the schedule, while
it\'s very tight, is doable.

And Rob Kramer, I talked to him this morning, and he says the key here,
as I mentioned, is to bring on those various groups out there and get
them engaged in this process. I hate the attitude of some of them where
they say I don\'t care what you say, you\'re wrong. I hope that they\'ll
recognize that this is a federal mandate that we\'re going to try to
accomplish. And we\'ll have a long discussion with the subcommittee on
Wednesday.

So I\'m cautiously optimistic, Bill, that this is going in the right
direction. I am hopeful that those of us who feel good about where we
are, such as California and the West Coast, can continue to receive the
kinds of support, both from NOAA fisheries and financially, that we need
to continue to do the job. And I think that you mentioned Pres Pate and
North Carolina. I think California is close to an automated license data
system that will be able to get all the information that you\'re going
to need to meet that deadline. And so I think there\'s a lot of positive
things out there. We just have to keep pushing and I think we will. So
that\'s kind of the nutshell.

DR. HOGARTH: Thanks, Bob. I think it took a while to get, I think,
everybody\'s attention, particularly internally, that we were really
changing; you know, it wasn\'t business as usual. It\'s taken a long
time, I think, to get that switch over. But it\'s taking place and I
think it\'s just \-- it\'s a monumental task. And I think we have to do
it either with the states or with the three commissions. The state
commissions, I think, are key to doing this and so \--

MR. ROWAN: Just one other comment. At the NOAA fisheries state
director\'s meeting, I think we saw just the magnitude of differences
from state to state from the comments from the various state directors.
I was fascinated to hear the things that some of them said from one
state to the next, from one area to the next. It\'s a \-- part of it, I
think, is they\'re looking for the federal government to help them get
it together and part of that\'s funding. And I know that you\'ve
recognized that, Bill, and I hope that the Congress and the
Administration will recognize that there\'s no substitute for the
appropriate funding to help gather that information.

DR. HOGARTH: Another thing I wanted to bring to your all\'s attention
this morning, we expect \-- it may have happened since it\'s been about
a week, but the incident with the pufferfish from China, we expect quite
a bit of \-- there was some toxic pufferfish that came in and got
labeled \-- came into us labeled as monkfish. We\'re saying we can\'t
get control of proper labeling on the imports, and it\'s \-- but we\'re
working very closely with the FDA finally now on these issues. They\'ve
agreed to sit down and agreed to utilize our lab and have seafood
inspection. And it\'s paid for by the industry. We inspect about 33
percent of all the seafood brought into this country through the
voluntary program that\'s paid for by the industry itself, not by
federal government but WalMart and Whole Foods and a group of them have
the seafood inspected, so we do almost a third of all that\'s consumed,
particularly by certain chains. And so this is something I said that
Congress wants to talk to us about now as to how to do this and do it
maybe in conjunction with Aquaculture.

So that\'s, as far as the introductory things I wanted to bring up, I do
think it would probably be good, and I should have done it first, if we
start at the end of the table there with Randy and go around the room
and make sure everyone knows who\'s here because we have some new
members.

MR. FISHER: Randy Fisher. I\'m the Executive Director, Pacific States
Marine Fisheries.

MR. CATES: Randy Cates. I run the first open ocean fish farm in Hawaii
and in the nation. Prior to that, I was commercial fishing for many
years and marine mammal training, worked with the government for many of
those years.

MS. FOY: I\'m Catherine Foy. I\'m the Aleutians East Borough marine
mammal biologist and member of a commercial fishing family.

MR. FLETCHER: Bob Fletcher, the President of the Sport Fishing
Association of California.

MR. FORSTER: I\'m John Forster. I\'m an independent consultant of
Aquaculture and I work with a number of companies, and I\'ve also been
working with Michael Rubino and his group as they develop some of their
Aquaculture thinking for the bill recently.

MR. JONER: I\'m Steve Joner. I\'m his neighbor so to speak, same town.
I\'m with the Micah Tribe in Washington State. The Micah Tribe does
everything from whales to whiting.

MR. KRAMER: I\'m Rob Kramer. I\'m with the International Game Fish
Association.

MR. GILMORE: Jim Gilmore with the At-Sea Processors Association and the
Alaskan Pollock Fishing Company.

MR. CONNELLY: John Connelly with the National Fisheries Institute.

MR. RAUCH: Sam Rauch, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory
Programs.

MS. BRYANT: Laura Bryant, Executive Director for the Marine Fisheries
Advisory Committee.

DR. HOGARTH: Bill Hogarth.

MS. BUNSICK: Susan Bunsick with the NOAA Aquaculture Program.

MR. BILLY: Tom Billy, President of International Food Safety
Consultants.

MS. LOWMAN: Dorothy Lowman, Natural Resource Consultant working on West
Coast and Alaska fishery issues.

MR. DEWEY: Good morning. I\'m Bill Dewey with Taylor Shellfish Company
based in Washington State and growers of clams, oysters, mussels,
geoducks.

MS. TOOLEY: My name is Mary Beth Tooley, and I\'m actually the former
Executive Director of the East Coast Pelagic Association which it says
on my name tag, and I\'m now working with a small pelagics group in New
England. I also work for the O\'Hara Corporation out of Rockland, Maine
and Seattle, Washington.

MR. O\'SHEA: Good morning. I\'m Vince O\'Shea, Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries.

MR. RAFTICAN: Good morning. Tom Raftican President of United Anglers of
Southern California.

MR. SIMPSON: Larry Simpson, Gulf State Marine Fisheries, Executive
Director.

MR. LEIPZIG: Pete Leipzig, Fishermen\'s Marketing Association.

MR. RAYBURN: If you wouldn\'t mind, there are a couple of things, if I
could? I\'ve heard about the summit, the Aquaculture summit, and if
it\'s all going to be discussed in the group, I may or may not be there,
but the invitation list, and I\'ve seen the dates but I haven\'t seen
any more. I heard MAFAC was going to be invited, but I haven\'t seen
anything. And honestly, it\'s getting kind of late, you know, to get any
kind of fares up here and stuff like that. So will we get an invitation
and do we know is there a hotel we can get the reservations at if we\'re
prepared to come? Could you give us a little bit more information on
that.

MS. BUNSICK: We are working on the hotel right now. It will definitely
be in DC on those dates, 26th and 27th. So if you want to do your
airline reservations, you can do that.

DR. ROBINSON: Can we start early on \--

MS. BUNSICK: If you want to make a backup hotel reservation that you
could cancel if you get a better rate from us, that\'s probably smart to
do. The agenda\'s not quite finalized and that\'s why it hasn\'t gone
out. As I mentioned when Bill mentioned the location, we\'ve had
contractual issues. We\'ve had to jump through hoops, and I think we\'re
rally close to finalizing the location. So once the agenda\'s out, note,
MAFAC and others will be invited. There\'ll be a website for registering
and MAFAC will get the details on the logistics probably by email. And
Michael may have a little more details on the agenda, because it\'s been
\-- being tweaked as speakers get invited and some decline \--

MR. RAYBURN: You would assume it\'s structurally Monday morning, so we
should come in on Sunday? Is that the plan?

MS. BUNSICK: Actually, the 26th is a Tuesday.

MR. RAYBURN: Oh, the 26th is a Tuesday?

DR. HOGARTH: Tuesday, Wednesday.

MR. RAYBURN: I thought it was a Monday. Okay.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes. Tuesday, Wednesday. One of the problems we have has
been trying to tie down the Secretary\'s schedule because we wanted to
make sure he came in support of it and wanted to make sure he was there.
And then getting \-- you know, it\'s a pretty impressive list of people,
and we hope that MAFAC does come, so.

MR. RAYBURN: It\'s not necessarily open. I mean I guess it\'s open but
it\'s not \--

DR. HOGARTH: It will be open to certain to \-- they hold a certain
number. You know, all that means it had to be open, but it might be
invitation, then as room provides, yes.

MR. RAYBURN: Okay. Thank you.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes.

MR. CATES: I think it was back in 2000, \`99 or 2000, we had a summit
here. There were about 200 guests on Aquaculture. Is this different than
that? What\'s the goal of this? I mean we had a three-day meeting that
we all met and talked about what we were going to try and do.

DR. HOGARTH: Well, the difference is we tried to take some novel idea
for that, so it may end up being the same thing. But what we tried to do
is take the, you know, I think it\'s eight topics, the big topics we\'ve
heard, and bring experts in to have a, you know, sort of a round robin
discussion on those topics to see if then out of that we could make some
recommendations that either go into the bill or go into the regulations
as they\'re developing but had to \-- you know, are we together, are we
not together, where aren\'t we together. We are going to be together but
to look at the science if it\'s an issue about science. So can we, you
know, put some of these to rest or is it actual things we need to talk
\-- and the research and development, a business aspect; you know, what
does it take to make this a business venture that the business capital
people will be part of. You know? So we tried to make sure that people
that are the experts in those fields are there to either participate on
the panel or to moderate the panel, so.

MR. RAYBURN: One more thing. I had sent a note the other day about a
discussion of ECO labeling, and if there was time in the agenda or
whether it best be in the committee, I\'d like to have, if there was any
time, in full committee, because some of the people that may have
thoughts on that and involvement in it might be in the full committee
rather than the small one. But \-- and maybe we can discuss it as a part
of FishWatch. I\'m not sure but ECO labeling situation seems to be
something that MAFAC might be interested in pursuing further, at least
knowing what\'s pro and con on it.

DR. HOGARTH: Well, I hope we do discuss that. I think, you know, what is
the role of NOAA fisheries in that. You know, we don\'t want to get in
competition with others, those big \-- take some business \-- you know,
in business wise. But through FishWatch and through this wheel and the
other things we\'re doing, can we \-- is it something, several people
have come to us and ask to use the NOAA label so to speak. You know, is
that something that would help the industry or not help the industry?
You know, how would you go about doing it? So I think it\'s part of the
seafood marketing, the whole thing, I think. It may be that we need to,
you know, decide for another small subcommittee to focus on that really.
But I would like to see us spend some time on that issue.

MR. CONNELLY: Bill, the Department of FishWatch discussion occurred late
from a market standpoint sort of related to the FishWatch question?

DR. HOGARTH: I don\'t want to dilute Aquaculture, because from now until
\-- I want the people who are working on Aquaculture, honestly, to be
Aquaculture until we get this bill through. And I\'m one of those that
say until we get it \-- I still think we can get it through. I think we
got a tough road ahead of us, but I think if we put the right minds
together and get the business case together, we can get this through. So
if you need another subcommittee to be looking at that stuff while we
keep the Aquaculture people, you know, focused \-- that\'s why I want
you all to talk about it. Yes, we have great people here. We still
don\'t utilize all of you all as well as I think we should, and that\'s
more my fault because I get too, you know, busy and go off and dump but
we will fix that. With Jim coming and Sam and all, we can fix this and
we will fix it. But we\'re going to make it work.

Other questions? Good time for questions. Yes, Bill.

MR. DEWEY: Just following up on Randy\'s comment and just background
information for you, and correct me if I\'m wrong, Randy, but I think
that was a meeting that was back around \`98, \`99 when Commerce came
out with their Aquaculture policy. They had an invitational meeting
where they brought people from around the country to discuss what the
obstacles were to them implementing that policy. It was a good \-- I
mean it was good discussion. Actually, from that, the Pacific
Aquaculture Caucus was formed. We started a non-profit in the Pacific
Northwest to try to help facilitate implementing that policy on the West
Coast.

DR. HOGARTH: Thanks. We need to see if we can find those comments.
We\'ll take a look.

MS. BRYANT: Way back in 19 \--

MR. DEWEY: I was thinking about that as I was saying it. You know,
there\'s probably some minutes captured from that.

MS. BRYANT: There are. It was MAFAC. It was in 1999, I think, and Jay
Johnson came and did a presentation on the legislation at the time. And
I think we were very specific, almost legislatively. I\'m not certain.
And things kind of have changed.

MR. DEWEY: Well, the meeting I participated \--

MS. BRYANT: But Linda Chavez might even have some of those old records.

MR. DEWEY: Yes. The meeting I participated at was specific around
Commerce\'s Aquaculture policy. It\'s when they released that policy and
they invited people. So I don\'t know that the focus was so much
legislation as much as it was their policy \--

MS. BRYANT: No. MAFAC\'s initial involvement was on the legislation.

MR. DEWEY: Okay.

MS. BARDIN: So you\'re talking about the summit.

MS. BUNSICK: I think there was a report of a workshop.

MS. BRYANT: Sounds like it.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes.

MR. CATES: A lot has changed since then.

MR. DEWEY: Yes, that\'s right. Yes. It\'s been a decade and there\'s a
lot changed.

DR. HOGARTH: At this week\'s meeting of the Gulf Council, we expect them
to finalize their Aquaculture plan for that \-- and that\'ll be the
first council who\'s done it. But the Gulf Council is proceeding. Other
comments, questions? Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: The Aquaculture discussion will be at the subcommittee
level, is that right? That\'s where it\'s going to be?

DR. HOGARTH: And then it\'ll come back to the full.

MR. RAYBURN: And then it\'ll come back \--

MS. BRYANT: Back to full committee.

MR. RAYBURN: We\'ll have time to \--

DR. HOGARTH: Oh, yes.

MR. RAYBURN: \-- flesh out some \--

DR. HOGARTH: Yes.

MR. RAYBURN: Thank you.

MR. CATES: I have one question. Earlier, you made mention the states
were putting comments in on the recreational fisheries? Are those
comments available? Am I right that you were saying that a lot of the
states were giving input?

DR. HOGARTH: Yes.

MR. FLETCHER: Well, this is going to be part of this whole process that
the Executive Steering Committee created an operations team. The
operations team is going to be contacting the states and asking them who
the key players are in each of those states that could be contacted and
can be part of the system as we develop a better approach to
recreational data collection

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. The caucus was referring to it, at the state
directors meeting, there was extensive discussion about implementing
this federal registry of anglers. And we got a lot of input and feedback
from state directors on that process. I\'m not sure if that\'s \-- those
comments \-- if those comments are available.

MR. CATES: It\'s a hot issue for us in Hawaii right now. Big changes in
both commercial and recreational \-- yes.

DR. HOGARTH: You do have the recreational fisherman in Hawaii?

MR. CATES: We have a lot of them but they call it subsistence fishing
which I don\'t call it subsistence. Hawaii is a very different place
when it comes to fishing. It \-- I\'m sure everywhere feels it\'s a lot
of culture in their fishing, but even more so in Hawaii. And we\'re
having some real hard times right now to say the least. It\'s \--
reality is coming to many of our residents of the state of our
fisheries, low reserves, less fish. It\'s just a tough time.

DR. HOGARTH: Anything else? If not, let\'s go to the administration
issues.

MS. BRYANT: Okay. I asked Tywanna to put together, kind of to help me
\-- when I didn\'t have her with me for a while and trying to deal with
everybody\'s phone calls and doing both administrative things and
content \-- so Tywanna put this together for me on travel.

And the thought is that we\'d like to have it presented to you today
just on some of those specific basic requirements when you travel with
the government knowing a lot of you travel, whether it\'s for MAFAC or
whether you\'re on invitational travel in other venues with regard to
fisheries or NOAA activities, and get your comments. We don\'t have to
do all the input today but certainly by the end of this meeting, because
our thought was we\'ll then package and put this up on your web page and
make it available to others. These things are always changing, and
everybody always has different needs, and it\'s always kind of a
struggle at the end. But if we can try to package it and get it done
smooth and get you guys the information that you need to know, maybe we
can do some of this work up front and work a little smarter and not as
hard.

So, anyway, with that, I\'ll turn it over to Tywanna.

MS. OTTS: Hi. For the nature of this presentation, I\'m going to cover
what you need to do for basically any agency that you travel for,
that\'s like NRS, OAR or NOAA Fisheries Office. This is the basics for
them. When it comes to MAFAC, I will make that difference for you.

Traveling policies go beyond, let\'s say \-- okay, the regulations. So
you guys will understand, when you call us and ask us a question \-- can
you do this, can you go from Point A to Point B and return, and we say
you can\'t, we\'re not saying based on our opinion what we think you
should do. We\'re doing it based upon the regulations that govern
travel. And there are three regulations that the travel office goes by,
the federal, DOC and NOAA. So when you all submit your travel vouchers
to the IG and we do the travel vouchers, they go against those three
regulations to see if you should get reimbursed for your travel in that
particular area.

Basic travel \-- your phone call or email, letter, whatever, that office
that calls you contacting you, they will instruct you to contact SATO to
make all your travel arrangements and that\'s with the regulations.
That\'s under our regulations. They know it\'s currently our travel
agent for the government \-- and I know a lot of you guys have problems
with SATO because their rates are too high, but we have no control over
that. That\'s who the government has selected to handle your travel
needs.

In our case for MAFAC, hotel is predetermined from the group, so we,
Laurel or myself, contact the hotel and set aside a block of rooms for
you guys. You call the hotel and confirm your space. So SATO will not
handle your hotel for the purpose of MAFAC. Okay?

Car rental is only approved by a committee because generally you don\'t
need it because the meeting is usually at the facility that you\'re
staying at.

MS. BRYANT: Tywanna, can they do it separately or individually if they
wanted to?

MS. OTTS: Do what?

MS. BRYANT: Get car rental still, have SATO set it up, but if they
wanted to do that privately, they still could?

MS. OTTS: Yes. Along with the personal \--

MS. BRYANT: Yes, but I mean if you wanted to do one stop and had them do
it, they would set up. That\'s all I\'m saying.

MS. OTTS: They can. And then SATO will forward your itinerary, your
airline, to us and to the inviting office, and they will prepare it. You
should get an email from SATO saying that your itinerary is ready. We
then, the inviting office will prepare a travel authorization and
forward it to SATO. Then in turn, you will receive an email saying your
E-ticket is now ready to be picked up.

If \-- in the case you\'re trying to get personal mileage, airline
mileage and phone smiles, however the airlines call it these days, or
you\'re trying to make arrangement for a significant other and you need
us to prepare your authorization right away so you can jump on a ticket,
we need to know. Contact the inviting office and say, hey, done my
arrangement with SATO, can you please contact them if they haven\'t
already sent you my itinerary so you can prepare my authorization so I
can get my ticket, so I can process my ticket for my significant others.
If you don\'t let us know, we\'ll process it in time, because actually
we have, what, a week before you actually travel.

Now you\'re ready to travel, you\'ve gotten all that done.

MR. FLETCHER: Tywanna?

MS. OTTS: Yes.

MR. FLETCHER: Why is it only that week before you travel when the
authorization can be issued? Why can\'t it be done earlier?

MS. OTTS: No. We \-- I try to do it as soon as I see your itinerary.
Some offices will hold it. They have up until a week unless SATO tells
us we don\'t give us the authorization three days, a week, this price
will not be guaranteed. Otherwise, some offices will wait in case your
meeting is cancelled.

MR. FLETCHER: Okay.

MS. OTTS: Okay. Continuation of Basic Two. You return from travel. What
we need from you at that point is you need to gather all your receipts,
especially those expenses over \$75.00, and write down a little summary
of extra expenses that you had. Your POP monitor is a private vehicle
that your wife took for you, significant other, dropped it off at the
airport and returned home, you get that mileage. They pick you up, you
get that mileage. Your taxicabs, your shuttles, your bridge tolls \--
what else \-- your phone calls home, we do allow you at least one phone
call home a day. You let us know. Your business calls have got to show
up on your hotel receipt. You write all that down in a little summary,
this is what I did, and you submit it to the inviting office.

We, in turn, will prepare your travel voucher for your signature. I, for
MAFAC purposes, when you send in the receipts, I make a copy of it, do
your vouchers, send you your voucher along with a copy of your receipts.
It\'s your responsibility to overlook your voucher to make sure you get
every dime you spent while you were in the government\'s time back. I
will do my best not to overlook a receipt, but if I do, I\'m here. Just
let me know. I\'ll redo it. You sign it and send it back.

I will then \-- once you\'ve signed the voucher, that\'s saying to me,
okay, I\'m getting all my money back, all that I feel I deserve. I will
get the necessary here and will forward it to Finance. Finance will
review it, make sure I followed the regulations as well as you,
everything paid you will receive your direct deposit in your account. If
your form has been permitted and your information is current, you won\'t
get it rejected, you will see your big check in your bank account and
you can pay your credit card bill.

Any questions so far?

For the local travelers \-- local travelers are basically those people
who are in the area that the meetings will happen, again, anybody in
Maryland, Virginia or DC are considered local travelers. Okay? You\'re
basically, once you accept the invitation to come to a meeting, you just
go. And then at the end of it, then you will fill out a local travel
sheet, which I, in turn, will officialize it, get the necessary
signatures, and you will get reimbursed. You get reimbursed basically
for everything just as if you traveled outside of your home area,
parking, subway, phone calls, etcetera. The only thing you won\'t get
reimbursed for is hotel. And in some cases, we will approve for a hotel
if the commute time is ridiculous, like two to three hours. Okay? You
can get approved for a hotel in those cases. Otherwise you will get the
same thing everybody else does that\'s out of town.

Your responsibility \-- know the regulations which basically means know
Laurel and myself.

(Laughter.)

MS. BRYANT: And I should say know Tywanna.

MS. OTTS: But I have to say for our purposes you make your arrangements
through SATO. If you follow that rule, we generally won\'t have any
problems and whatever hotel we ask you to use. Now anything else, you do
it on your own, you take a chance of not being reimbursed.

Obtaining travel authorization. Make sure that you\'ve been authorized
by the government to travel. I try to fax MAFAC members a copy of the
authorization prior to your travel. If you don\'t receive it and you
want it, just let me know. Your travel authorization is basically your
insurance paper. Should something happen with you in the airline, they
say you\'re with the government, the government got to pay you for that.
Okay? And then at the end, submit your receipts and we do the voucher.
You sign it, return it, then you can get your reimbursement.

And then understand the government will not reimburse you for expenses
over the limits set by the regulations. There are exceptions to every
rule.

Okay. A couple of things you might not know. The government is charged a
fee for using SATO, so we prefer that you actually know that you will
travel before you make your reservations through SATO, because whether
you cancel or not, we have to pay that fee. Okay?

Currently, the travel vehicle miles is 48.5 cents per mile. Rental car
and travel advances are allowed. But again, that\'s based upon the
office that\'s inviting you. Travel advances, MAFAC will do it. I found
out. You check. They will do it. However, you have to keep in mind that
when we do it, you get the money up front, and if the meeting is
cancelled or you don\'t attend the meeting, you owe the government. So
you can get it, but it will go back once it\'s in your pocket. So we try
not to do it unless you really have to. We know how people \-- you know,
you all are using your own personal credit cards. I attended the meeting
myself. You have other obligations.

Another thing. In order to get full reimbursement, like I said, you need
any receipts over the amount of \$75.00. You definitely need that.
There\'s no way around it. Finance will not pay you for any expenses
over \$75.00. We can get away with parking that\'s under \$8.00 or
whatever loss is due, but you must have, in writing, your receipt has
been misplaced, oh, no, can\'t find. Because what I do is put in notes
when I send to Finance \-- traveller said they misplaced the receipt.
That way you won\'t come back aggravated and looking for something.
We\'re both guilty on that. Okay.

With the CAMS form, that is your vending profile that was \-- I don\'t
know if you remember \-- you have to fill it out your bank information,
your address, contact information, that must stay current because you
get direct deposit. So if that\'s not current, you close the account,
let us know of things you cancel before or else your money\'s going to
stay in limbo. You\'re going to get paid, but it may not go where you
want it to go. So even if it\'s a temporary thing, let us know and I\'ll
find out how we do a temporary transfer to another account for you. But
make sure that\'s up to date. Okay? Because I don\'t want you all to
lose your money.

And this is quite a section here. We call you, contact you, email,
invite you. You call SATO, make your plans, you travel, we pay. The end.

(Laughter.)

MS. OTTS: Okay. I\'m just going to put this up in case you guys got
questions, but this is just some points you need to remember. Any
questions on travel?

MS. BRYANT: And remember, if you\'ve got comments or suggestions to add
to this, I\'d like to leave this up on this space, because all these
boards have new members. You\'ll notice some will be changing. And I
just kind of want to see if we can get something that\'s down in one
place where everybody can go to and this is all essentially available.
And it\'s not that we can can\'t change it over time, but do think about
if there\'s other additional information or things that we need to get
up there. We\'ll get this on the website. We\'ll be able to \-- the CAMS
forms are there now. Your financial disclosure forms are there. All of
those things that we routinely need for you as members of the committee.

MS. OTTS: Any questions \-- possibly?

MR. RAYBURN: The reimbursement forms in our packets here, do you have
copies of those for out of town folks?

MS. OTTS: For out of town folks, all you can do is send me a little
note.

MR. RAYBURN: We don\'t have to use the firm?

MS. OTTS: No. Just the receipt -

MR. RAYBURN: Okay.

MS. OTTS: Do you all think it\'s helpful if we leave you little \--
whatever to mail back in? I think we can do that. Actually \-- I mean
it\'s two ways you can do this. You can just send me a note with all
your expenses, and when I send you your vouchers, you can send me all
your receipts at that point. But I happen to have something in mind.
Okay? I will push you guys by just doing a dummy voucher if you take too
long to respond and usually that kicks it in \-- well, I know I want to
get my money back. That\'s not right.

So that\'s what we do as far as hotel and stuff. For everybody else, you
know, that they pay, I will kind of do your job for you. But if you want
precisely what you paid, I need receipts and something detailing what
you spent. Anything else?

MR. RAYBURN: Tywanna?

MS. OTTS: Yes.

MR. RAYBURN: Can we email electronic?

MS. OTTS: Sure.

MR. RAYBURN: You do? Email you and scan our receipts and send that
receipts to you electronically? Is that okay.

MS. OTTS: Yes, but just note Finance come back at you. I\'m sending them
to you because I don\'t have the original.

MR. RAYBURN: So you need the original?

MS. BRYANT: Oh, so you need the original?

MS. OTTS: No. I don\'t need the original. Some of it\'s between me or
the travel have to have the original.

MR. RAYBURN: Got you.

MS. OTTS: If I don\'t have it, I\'m coming to you, sir. You don\'t want
to have to track you down and send me the original. But it doesn\'t
matter as long as they have some kind of documentation. Okay? Next?

MS. TOOLEY: Like if we just email you a summary and say this is what we
have, and then you only have to send the travel authorization, send the
receipts back? You know what I mean? It seems like that might be quicker
than the way you did it before. Before we had forms and I, you know,
copied all the receipts and then sent the originals with the form. And
then you had to send something back to me. And then I had to send
something back to you.

MS. BRYANT: Isn\'t it great to have to run it back?

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. So this way, I think, we could just email something to
Tywanna, she could do the forms, and then it\'s just a \--

MS. BRYANT: And then we can get your authorization signed \--

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MS. BRYANT: \-- and mailed back \-- then mail that back with the
original receipts.

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MS. BRYANT: Might be that\'s going to be that much more officiant.

MS. TOOLEY: Sounds like it. Yes.

MR. CATES: Does it matter to you if it\'s signed for you, like in the
hotel room, or do you want us to pay for each meal?

MS. OTTS: Your meals? I\'m sorry. Thank you for bringing that up. Your
meal is \-- you don\'t \-- I don\'t need receipts for meals because your
M&RE is the meals and incidental expenses. That what you get regardless
of what you spend. That\'s, I think, it\'s \$64.00 here in the DC area.
Anything over 64, you\'re on your own. So 64 is what they say it takes
to feed you for one day in this area.

MS. LOWMAN: So and then your travel day is half of that?

MS. OTTS: Yes, like three-fourths of a day.

MS. LOWMAN: Three-fourths of a day.

MS. OTTS: Anything else? Thank you for your attention.

MR. RAUCH: All right. Next on the agenda, we had asked Andy Preedie from
the Office of General Counsel to come and talk to us about the Fisheries
Advisory Committee Act, particularly \-- focusing in particular on how
this group communicates with the outside world. We had an issue last \--
over \-- since the last meeting about people sending letters in
commenting on MAFAC\'s advice and how we should respond to those
letters, whether MAFAC should respond separately or through the
Department.

MS. BRYANT: And do you want to come on up?

MR. O\'SHEA: Should I just stay \--

MS. BRYANT: No. Why don\'t you come up where \-- because \--

MR. RAUCH: Come up \-- at least sit at the table.

MS. BRYANT: Yes. At least sit at the table because we have a recorder
transcriber that needs to be able to hear you.

MR. O\'SHEA: Vince O\'Shea. I\'m sorry, Sam. Voice kind of lowered and
trailed off at the end when you were explaining what the incident was
why we\'re \--

MR. RAUCH: Oh, so \--

MR. O\'SHEA: I didn\'t catch that.

MR. FLETCHER: I mean, in general, we wanted to have General Counsel give
us an update and refresher on what this group should and shouldn\'t be
doing, but the particular event that led to this is we had a letter that
came in from an outside group commenting on some recommendations that
MAFAC had made. And Laurel sent a response saying that she would forward
that letter on to MAFAC, but we didn\'t send \-- neither MAFAC nor the
Department sent any official response back to that letter.

MS. BRYANT: The letter was responded to the group because they sent it
also to the Department and the Administrator. But the issue came about
\-- a lot of signatories on this letter to MAFAC specifically talking
about the recommendations. And I responded as Executive Director saying
we received it, it\'s part of the records, it\'s up on line, thank you,
and the letter has now been forwarded on to the Undersecretary and the
Secretary and the Administrator.

And there was some kind of concern because some people know certain
signatories on it that shouldn\'t MAFAC be responding to this. And I was
reminded very heavily by General Counsel that it is absolutely illegal
for a advisory committee on anybody other than those that are elected by
the public or appointed by Congress and the President of the United
States are not to speak on behalf of an administration on policy, that a
FACA committee, their role and their communication is to the agency that
they are to advise and not to the outside public.

And with that, all of a sudden it dawned on me I\'d gone through a whole
changeover of membership. And I thought, you know, probably it\'s about
time \-- talked with Bill and we thought, you know, it might be time to
just get somebody in here and say here\'s what FACA was all about and
this is why and this is kind of what it does. So we just thought we\'d
bring Andy in for just a little bit and be able to kind of refresh us
and then also answer questions. But that was \--

MR. McCREEDY: Yes. I\'m going to talk very briefly about the origins and
purpose of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. First of all, I\'m in the
General Law Division in the Office General Counsel at the Department,
and we handle general administrative matters including FACA.

MAFAC, of course, is a pioneering advisory committee having been in
operation before the passage of FACA, Federal Advisory Committee Act, in
1972. So it\'s important to protect your legacy. I understand you\'re
contemplating making significant changes to the committee. I also
understand there are one or two of you, at least, who may have been
around since the beginning.

The FACA \-- the origin of the FACA was basically there was a
proliferation of advisory committees that had grown up over a period of
years. And actually, the process of regulating the committees actually
began with OMB who issued a circular, A-63, that contained many of the
features in the current Federal Advisory Committee Act. The momentum for
passing legislation increased after the issuance of the OMB circular.
And then as I say, in 1972, it was finally issued.

The main reason it was enacted was to address the concern that advisory
committees had essentially become an additional branch of government
essentially constituting an invisible voice in the shaping of government
policy. So the Congress very much wanted to get that process out into
the open. It represents an attempt to make the process for selecting
members transparent and open to the public and also represents an
attempt to institute mechanisms to ensure that the membership of
advisory committees is fairly balanced, representing a broad range of
interests as opposed to being dominated by a particular narrow interest.

That\'s basically all I have to say about the origins of the Federal
Advisory Committee Act.

As to the issue that Laurel raised, it\'s important to bear in mind
that, as she said, that your function is to advise the federal
government, and along with that, there are Sunshine provisions that
require the operations of the committee and its meeting minutes and
records and so forth to be open to the public which she also alluded to.
But there\'s no obligation to answer particular \-- and as a matter of
fact, as she said, you definitely should not be answering specific
inquiries from parties outside the federal government.

She did the right thing by posting their comments, but as I say, we do
have an obligation to make the records available to the outside groups,
but there \-- we should not be compiling answers to their questions.
Does anybody have any \--

MR. RAUCH: Could I ask you a question about that \--

MR. McCREEDY: Sure.

MR. RAUCH: \-- about the procedure for this? Would it have been
acceptable for the Secretary to refer the letter to MAFAC and ask for
MAFAC\'s advice internally, and if MAFAC chose to respond to the
secretary, then to post that advice publicly \--

MR. McCREEDY: Yes.

MR. RAUCH: \-- say this is the advice I got.

MR. McCREEDY: Yes. That would have been fine.

MR. RAUCH: That would be \--

MS. BRYANT: That would be okay.

MR. McCREEDY: Yes.

MR. RAYBURN: It seems \-- the Chairman of MAFAC is the administrator of
NOAA, correct? So \-- and the Vice Chairman or Co-Chairman is the
Director of National Marine Fisheries Services \-- Assistant
Administrator, so they are part of MAFAC, so it seems to me that unlike,
as I understand, other FACA committees are all volunteer citizens, if
you will, MAFAC is somewhat unique in that the government actually leads
the committee. So if you receive a letter, MAFAC receives a letter, then
it seems to me as Chairman of MAFAC, the Administrator of NOAA then
could decide how he would respond or she would respond and could very
well assign that committee some opportunity to provide a response that
the Administrator or the Assistant Administrator could issue on behalf
of MAFAC.

MS. BRYANT: And that actually \--

MR. RAYBURN: Is that not correct?

MS. BRYANT: Yes. And that actually was done because that same letter was
sent to the Undersecretary and was sent to Bill, but it was also sent
after we had already finished our thing, so \-- but I don\'t know what
the answer was.

MR. RAYBURN: And I was involved in that a little bit, and I guess what
disappointed me was \-- and it\'s not to reflect on anybody, it\'s just
probably just as much MAFAC\'s issue as any \-- you know, we received a
letter from folks who were actively involved and have been historically
involved in the fishing community for their entire careers. And they
were concerned about an action that MAFAC took which seemed like on
Aquaculture. And the letter, you know, laid \-- I guess, had been
received, and it was about a month before the people signatory to that
letter were even informed that it had been received. And then they were
only told thanks for your letter, it\'s entered on the record. It seems
to me that you show a much more professional and sensitive nature if you
were \-- if you did get a response to that letter, you know, back to the
signatories. And again, unlike other FACA committees, it could be given
by Dr. Hogarth, you know, in response to what MAFAC said. Maybe it
won\'t happen again, but we\'ve already received the same type of letter
on Aquaculture from the same \-- pretty much the same group of people.

I was just kind of disappointed that we had the opportunity to connect
on an issue that is a primary issue, as Dr. Hogarth told us earlier,
Aquaculture, and we basically blew the people off. Now we\'re asking
them to come back and give us input on the summit. We\'ve already blown
them off and so I just felt we lost a significant opportunity. And I\'m
not directly involved in it, but it just sensitized me to maybe we
really weren\'t as \-- what we were supposed to be.

MR. BILLY: I\'m a little concerned about your we. I don\'t think that I
blew anyone off. Who\'s the we you\'re talking about?

MR. RAYBURN: Well, the we I\'m talking about is MAFAC in general, and I
put myself in that. I say \-- and again, I don\'t want this to turn into
any kind of chemistry issue, but it\'s just a matter of we did have the
opportunity, I think, to establish a communications with the signatories
of that letter on an issue that we\'ve been dealing with. And we just
pretty much said thanks for your letter, we\'ll put it on our website.
And so that was \-- it\'s not reflected \-- and I know, Tom, you\'ve
been doing an excellent job, but it\'s just kind of one of those points
and we maybe could have made some mileage on that if it had been handled
a little bit better.

And we make \-- we already have the same situation occurring now. How
are we going to respond to the issue \-- the letters that we received on
the Aquaculture legislation that\'s now in our packet that we received
over the last week or so? Are we going to do the same thing \-- thanks
for your letter? You know? Do we have an opportunity, I guess, is what
I\'m asking.

MR. McCREEDY: What do you have in mind?

MS. BRYANT: As MAFAC versus Bill, he did respond to those people and the
Under \-- it was the same letter, but then they also sent it to MAFAC.
The issue is \--

MR. RAYBURN: Okay. And they responded, I guess, on behalf of their
particular position within government and not necessarily after venting
this through MAFAC.

MR. McCREEDY: I mean \-- and a response by MAFAC isn\'t appropriate.

MR. RAYBURN: But what \-- can the Administrator of NOAA respond as the
Chairman of MAFAC, or does he only respond as the Administrator of NOAA?

MR. McCREEDY: He responds as the Administrator of NOAA.

MR. RAYBURN: He can\'t respond as the Chairman of MAFAC?

MR. McCREEDY: No. that\'s not appropriate.

MR. RAYBURN: Not appropriate or not legal?

MS. BRYANT: I\'ve been told by McKenna it was not legal. In fact, the
last time that something happened, she said, oh, I\'m glad you brought
this up, because I just go back from going over to the Marine Protected
Areas Councils who were communicating on behalf of the Administration
with regard to marine protected areas.

MR. McCREEDY: I mean it\'s not \--

MS. BRYANT: And that became a big issue. And it was like, no, you can\'t
go out there and talk like you\'re talking \--

MR. McCREEDY: It\'s not legal to respond. I mean if you simply
acknowledge it or something, that\'s one thing, but to respond in a
substantive way is not legal.

MS. LOWMAN: I\'m glad that we\'re embarking and doing this document
which I\'ve been understanding is a MAFAC document, this Vision 20/20,
and then there\'s \-- you know, we\'re supposed to go outreach to people
about, you know, when it goes out public, gets some responses from the
public but, I guess, goes back to the wall and to the chair of the
committee, but that it\'s always been we\'ve been describing it as sort
of a MAFAC document. But what are the constraints on any individual
MAFAC member talking about this document of MAFAC when we get to that
point?

MR. McCREEDY: You mean when you\'re outside the meeting?

MS. LOWMAN: Yes. I mean this is going to be put up on the MAFAC website
eventually, you know, when it\'s completed. And, you know, it\'s going
to be this sort of document looking at whether we want the fisheries to
look at \--

MR. McCREEDY: Oh, you can market that all you want, you know, just so
you don\'t communicate \-- you don\'t give your individual advice to the
\-- you know, that\'s a key thing with the Federal Advisory Committee
Act. I mean you\'re not going to be communicating with government
officials \--

MS. LOWMAN: No.

MR. McCREEDY: \-- apart from the committee. You\'re \-- I mean these
meetings, obviously, are open to the public, and if the were closed
meetings, that would be a different matter. But since they\'re open,
you\'re free to discuss them \--

MS. BRYANT: Yes. This is kind of \-- also to respond \-- Andy, correct
me if I\'m wrong \-- I\'ve been told that the function as a FACA is you
guys are able to build consensus. That\'s one of the key elements and
having a broad spectrum, so you can develop consensus together and then
give that to the agency. When you\'re outside, if you\'re putting your
MAFAC hat on, again, the issue is pulling in information to the
Committee for the Committee to deliberate and develop consensus
information and then back out to the agency. It\'s not like you,
Dorothy, I\'m now going to represent MAFAC and speak for MAFAC or Eric.

MR. McCREEDY: That\'s not \--

MS. BRYANT: Everything is back to the, you know, the center of consensus
building on Committee. And then when it goes back out, it\'s back out
through the agency and to the public. That\'s my understanding of kind
of the cycle of information and how it\'s supposed to work.

MR. McCREEDY: Yes. That\'s why I was emphasizing that the advice \-- any
advice should be committed \-- or communicated through the Committee,
not through \-- or individually but just so you adhere to that \--

MR. RAYBURN: So with the Vision 20/20, this strategic vision that we\'re
creating in MAFAC, and I guess we\'ll get to the \-- we\'ll kind of
refine that at this meeting \-- then that\'s submitted to the \--
that\'s submitted \-- I mean our only course of that is to submit it to
the Administration and allow them to take whatever action they take? We
shouldn\'t \-- there was some discussion at one point that MAFAC would
have hearings, MAFAC would solicit comments on that but that\'s not our
role as I understand. All we do is just submit it to the Administration
and they can it or put it out for public comment, right? Is that the
same?

MR. McCREEDY: I think not. I think you could have hearings and all of
that \--

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. McCREEDY: \-- to finalize the document \--

MR. RAYBURN: As a FACA Committee?

MR. McCREEDY: Right.

MR. RAYBURN: I mean \--

MR. McCREEDY: You would \-- essentially then what you would be giving to
us is a draft, and You\'d have the hearings as part of your FACA
Committee, you know, in terms of collecting your consensus advice, and
then you\'d give us a final document which would reflect whatever
deliberations you had as a result of that public process.

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. McCREEDY: I think that\'s \--

MS. BRYANT: And then submit it to the agency and that\'s only limited at
this point just by resources. I mean \--

MR. BILLY: Is that the way \-- I mean \--

MR. McCREEDY: Yes. You\'re allowed to \--

MR. BILLY: \-- it would seem counter to the other, that we\'re actually
taking a position \--

MS. BRYANT: No. Again, you\'re out there collecting information. You\'re
collecting information.

MR. McCREEDY: Right. You\'re allowed to give advice, to take a position
and whatever you do \-- yes, to the agency \-- and whatever you need to
do to develop your position and collect whatever information you need is
fine.

MR. RAUCH: And you can also \--

MR. McCREEDY: I mean subject to the reg \--

MR. RAYBURN: To follow-up on that, you could also, I think, give us a
final document, take hearings and give us a second final document and
say that your position is evolving over time. There\'s nothing that
would prevent that as long as your advice is to us, and then we can
disseminate your advice to the public and say this is what MAFAC told us
publicly.

MR. BILLY: NOAA has authority under the Administrative Procedures Act to
hold hearings, not NOAA, MAFAC?

MR. RAUCH: The Administrative Procedures Act doesn\'t apply to MAFAC.

MR. BILLY: Then what \-- where\'s the authority to hold hearings by
MAFAC?

MS. BRYANT: Not hearings but public input meetings to get \--

MR. BILLY: Well, that\'s what we were just talking about \--

MS. BRYANT: \-- input from \--

MR. BILLY: I\'m not aware of that authority.

MS. BRYANT: Public meetings maybe would be more appropriate.

MR. RAUCH: There are advisory committees that hold public meetings.

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. RAUCH: I don\'t think there\'s authority. I don\'t think there\'s a
lack of authority as far \-- I mean I\'m \-- you can tell me but I
don\'t think there\'s anything that would preclude MAFAC from doing such
a thing.

MR. McCREEDY: Not that I know of. That would seem to be fine.

MR. BILLY: Then I have a request, at least for myself. I\'d like a legal
brief that explains to me how I am legally protected if I am put in a
position as a member of this Committee going out and soliciting input
through a hearing process on a document like the 20/20 document and
what, if any \--

MR. McCREEDY: Well, no, there\'s not \--

MR. BILLY: \-- liability I assume in doing that.

MR. McCREEDY: Well, I would say that normally, the process for gathering
public input is just what we\'re doing here. I mean that\'s why it\'s
open to the public, and this is a forum for discussing your views
amongst yourselves but also hearing the views of members of the public
who may be present. So that\'s what I would urge you to do. I mean
hearings, they\'re \-- that can mean different things to different
people. But the point is, as Laurel mentioned, is you have the right to
collect the views of the public and the main mechanism for that is just
what we\'re doing here, holding a public meeting. The public has been
notified of this, and those who are interested can show up and make
their views known.

MR. SIMPSON: Larry Simpson. I don\'t view this process of MAFAC as any
different than a council process. Matter of fact, the council process is
covered under the FACA. And I stand to be corrected, but I don\'t think
in the original Magnuson-Stevens Act that public hearings were
mentioned. I mean it\'s just something you do and something they have
done. Now as a MAFAC member coming to give advice to the Secretary,
you\'re covered under the federal government\'s cloak. People can sue
you but that guy right there\'s going to go to court for you.

So I mean I don\'t see this as any different than a council-type action.
Nobody \-- a council member can\'t go out and say I\'m representing the
Gulf Council, and I\'m going to speak to them on an issue that they
haven\'t come to consensus on. Now they can go out and say this is the
position of the Gulf Council, but they can\'t say I\'m here to represent
the Gulf Council and here\'s some new initiative and this is what we
think. You can\'t do that.

MR. RAYBURN: Is that true that council is under FACA? I thought they \--
but their chairman responds to inquiries from the public on actions
taken by the council. Is that counter to FACA?

MR. RAUCH: The Council has both FACA coverage and other authorities.
They are not a FACA committee. They are exempt from FACA under explicit
statutory \--

MR. RAYBURN: Well, that\'s what I thought. That\'s why I said they\'re
not a FACA committee.

MR. RAUCH: Now not a FACA, they\'re exempt \-- explicitly exempt because
they do come to consensus and they would otherwise be a FACA committee
but for the statutory exemption.

MR. RAYBURN: So they\'re exempted from FACA?

MR. RAUCH: Right.

MR. RAYBURN: Okay. That\'s what I thought. Okay. So it is different.
That\'s \-- because I\'m saying if it\'s a FACA committee, then it would
seem like they\'re the same \--

MR. SIMPSON: Larry Simpson again. Correct me, and my memory as I get
older fades, but there\'s only three, four or five FACA committees, one
of which is MAFAC, another which is, I think, Sea Grant.

MR. RAYBURN: Yes. We have a national review \-- within NOAA you\'re
talking about?

MR. SIMPSON: Within NOAA.

MR. RAYBURN: Yes. And that\'s where \--

MR. SIMPSON: And a few others. There are not many FACA committees that
I\'m aware of. They\'re very few and far between and you don\'t ever
want to lose that, because regardless of where we are now or what we\'ve
been in the past, in the future, you may want to utilize that FACA
committee circumstance.

MR. DEWEY: Bill Dewey. A question. So the public is here to participate
in this meeting. If they were to comment here verbally at the meeting,
it\'s really no different than a letter that\'s submitted. It sounds
like we\'re limited in our ability to respond to those comments that are
offered here. We can listen to it. We can debate it and try to form
consensus here but we can\'t \--

MR. RAUCH: Exactly.

MR. DEWEY: \-- or maybe we could ask a question or clarifying question
\--

MR. RAUCH: Exactly.

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. DEWEY: \-- of the presenter \-- or comment, but we are \-- we need
to be careful about responding back.

MR. RAUCH: That\'s very well put.

MS. BRYANT: And, Ralph, to your \-- with that letter, there was a lot
going on at that time, because that letter, that same letter had been
sent to Bill, to the Undersecretary, to the Secretary, and those
decisions and how to respond had not yet been done. I just asked, do we
have that yet, did we ever get the copy of the response. And if you
remember, the individual that sent it had been told either don\'t send
that right \-- you know, make certain you send that to Dr. Hogarth
because we can\'t respond on behalf of the agency.

But what Sam was saying, and we might want to remember this again, if
the member \-- there may not be consensus by the membership to want to
do this, and I would caution against it, because I think you\'re really
going down a different slope, but if the Secretary or Bill or the
Undersecretary had then contacted MAFAC and said would MAFAC please
respond to this letter on behalf \-- and said and advise us, MAFAC would
do that and then send it to Bill who would then send it on. That would
be the appropriate chain. Okay? So we could \-- I mean that\'s something
to consider, but that was all a bit of a quick learning curve and I\'m
glad you mentioned that, Sam. Good for \-- to know.

MR. RAYBURN: It seems like it would be appropriate perhaps to have a
response and have MAFAC\'s input into \--

MR. CATES: What\'s the appropriate response if an issue comes to MAFAC
but also comes to us as an individual company? I\'m assuming we\'re
allowed to respond individually.

MR. McCREEDY: It\'s \-- if an issue comes to you individually, sure.

MS. BRYANT: But to respond as a consensus building on behalf of MAFAC,
no.

MR. McCREEDY: But you have to make clear that it doesn\'t have anything
to do \-- I mean if the person has impression \--

MR. CATES: My personal \--

MR. McCREEDY: \-- you\'re speaking with respect to a position on MAFAC,
you have to make clear that that\'s not the case, that you\'re speaking
purely in a personal capacity or in your corporate capacity.

MR. RAUCH: Any other questions, comments? We\'re going to take a break.

MS. BRYANT: Ten minutes, is that enough \--

MR. RAUCH: Ten minute break.

MS. BRYANT: \-- so we can start FishWatch next? Okay. Great. Andy, thank
you.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 10:56 a.m.
and resumed at 11:16 a.m.)

DR. HOGARTH: So we talked a little bit this morning about FishWatch and
where we\'re trying to go as an agency and the desire to have a lot more
input from you, this group. So I\'m going to now turn the program over
to Alan who will introduce FishWatch and then Michael Kelly\'s here. He
didn\'t bring my little wheel, though, but he\'ll have it here for you
later. I\'m proud of my childhood toy again that\'s coming back to be
worthwhile, I think, if we can make it work right. Anyway, Alan.

MR. RISENHOOVER: All right. Thank you, Bill. And I think most of you are
familiar with the FishWatch idea, at least to some degree. It\'s
something that has its roots in MAFAC from a number of years ago that we
talked about - how do we get those facts out there to the public in an
understandable and concise fashion. There\'s a number of organizations
and groups that have positions on whether or not you should eat one type
of seafood or not eat another type.

That\'s not the purpose of this. What we\'ve tried to do with this
website is link it directly to our status of the stocks and provide
additional information to inform the consumer, and then the consumer can
make their choice on whether to eat that seafood or not or participate
in other activities. So I just make sure \-- we did go around, but I
want to introduce Chris Moore \-- Dr. Chris Moore, the head of our
Partnerships and Communications division, he\'s here, and with Michael
Kelly, who I think has probably presented before MAFAC before, and then
also Katie Hughes.

MS. SEMON: Yes.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- there\'s no R in there \-- I keep trying to be
conservative \-- who have really progressed this over the last few
months, and Michael especially over the last year. And what we\'ve tried
to do, again, is to present those facts, tie it to our status of the
stocks report, basically overfishing, overfished, and give you an idea
of kind of the biomass on where these are. So again, the purpose is just
to get the facts out there on each individual species to provide the
consumer a portal to start any kind of research they want.

And so I think I\'m just going to turn it over to Michael and let him
run through. Our goal here, where we are in the process of this website
now, and Michael will get into this, is we want input from folks. Does
the site look usable? Does it provide the basic information folks want
on each stock? And we, hopefully, will roll it out later this year.
Michael?

MR. KELLY: Great. Thanks, Alan. Let me go ahead and just get started. I
know a number of you are somewhat familiar with FishWatch and with the
\-- this offering that\'s been developed to do consumer education,
seafood consumer education at NOAA. This has been an idea, as Alan said,
that\'s been around since MAFAC, I think, first initiated the
conversation about doing some better seafood consumer education in the
National Marine Fisheries Service a number of years ago.

The assignment, though, to do this has come from a number of other
places as well. A couple of years ago, Dr. Hogarth was at NFI Board of
Directors meeting and one of the things that we got from that meeting
was the idea that NOAA needs to do a better job of making its
information available to seafood consumers in a consumer-relevant way.
The Ocean Commission certainly stressed this idea of building more ocean
literacy and environmental literacy among the public through FishWatch.
And certainly that \-- also, the National Academy of Public
Administration gave us the charge to do a better job making that kind of
great depth of information that the National Marine Fisheries Service
has available to consumers in a relevant way.

As you can see, what we want to do is demonstrate what the National
Marine Fisheries Service does on behalf of seafood consumers in terms of
our simple mission as well as the work that we do with a number of
partners. We\'ve been very clear about who the audience is for this, and
the audience is, number one, concerned consumers. We want to make sure
that are giving concerned consumers the information that they want. And
we understand that that\'s kind of a broad spectrum of folks, from the
retail buyers to the folks like me who want to order fish at a seafood
restaurant and feel generally good about doing that as well as making
sure that we\'re hinting to organizations, that we\'re making sure that
we\'re talking to organizations who have influence over decisions that
consumers make whether that\'s chefs in the United States or zoos,
aquariums or fisheries managed for kills.

The overall theme that\'s kind of structured throughout the site is that
the National Marine Fisheries Service is the U.S. authoritative source
for information related to sustainable seafood and fisheries. We feel
that in a lot of ways, that kind of resource has been kind of fractured
among a lot of different user groups, some of them industry groups, some
of them environmental NGOs, some of them informal education groups like
aquariums, and we want to kind of \-- we\'re trying to win some of that
ground back, in a way, to make sure that consumer understand that if
they want to get the most accurate, precise and detailed information
about sustainable seafood and fisheries, they need to come here.

The idea is that we\'re not makng any decisions for consumers. We\'re
just giving them the information that they need so that they themselves
can make informed decisions. We\'re not going about this the way a
number of seafood score products or other programs have where they say
the red, yellow, green or yes, no, maybe. We just want to get the facts
out and let consumers make whatever decisions they want based on the
best information.

The other thing that\'s important about this site is it\'s a
coordination site. It\'s a portal site really for information related to
a number of species. I know I\'ve gotten calls from folks like you,
Vince, people in the councils, who\'ve said, hey, give me some
information on this species. And I can spend a day kind of doing Google
searches and looking around at the various NOAA and NMFS websites to try
to find information on that species and then come up with a whole list
of places where folks can go look. All those sites are good and it\'s
good information, but, boy, you can spend a day just trying to have one
question answered.

What FishWatch does \-- it coordinates all that information and puts it
in one place so that people can kind of drill down to the greatest level
of detail that they want. They could go and look at the Commission\'s
fishery hatching plan; they could look at council plans; they could look
at EIS\'s; they could look at the most recent research that\'s being
done on a species all within one spot.

This site, too, answers a lot of important questions and addresses some
real requirements from the NMFS point of view, from the NOAA point of
view and from our Offices of Partnerships and Communications point of
view. We have now in Fisheries Service a new national outreach plan, and
a couple of the goals of this plan are to, number one, coordinate those
kind of resources, to develop coordinated campaigns that are national
campaigns so that in the headquarters office, we can make sure that
we\'re addressing on appropriate scale that people have in the regions
but making sure that the resources, the content, the format and all that
is all kind of standardized.

As Alan said, this is being undertaken by the Partnerships and
Communications Office, and it\'s important to understand that this new
office, this is a real good kind of initial offering from this division,
because we\'re working with so many different people within the
organization and also outside the organization to partner to develop
this information and communicate it in some new ways.

About a year ago, we developed a beta site for FishWatch and last winter
into January, we received a lot of internal review on that from our
leadership. And as a result, we kind of scrubbed a lot of what we were
doing, restarted and came up with a new site which I\'ll show you today.
That internal review has been with our program offices, with our
regional centers, with our sites and there\'s all those folks that have
seen FishWatch and are familiar with it.

We\'re also undertaking a number of meetings now with the commissions
and with the Fisheries National Councils to make sure that they
understand what FishWatch is so that, wherever appropriate, we\'re
getting good technical review from folks in those parts of the agency.
I\'m here today, of course, to talk to you guys and, in the next couple
of weeks, to other official advisory bodies, science panels, science
advisory boards, things like that.

And we\'ve done a number of external reviews. Folks in the seafood
industry have been very helpful in kind of pointing us into some new
ways to do our communication. We\'re looking at things kind of from some
random perspectives, from folks who kind of look at things from an
administrative or scientific point of view. It wasn\'t really natural
for us to develop something that was kind of seafood consumer friendly,
but we\'ve had a lot of help with developing that.

We\'re projecting that the site will go live on August 5th as part of
the celebrations at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans.
We\'ve chosen that event because there\'s a lot of national as well as
regional media already there. We\'ll have a large presence, as we always
do, at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off, and it\'s a good place for
us to really be talking about sustainability and what NOAA\'s role is in
sustainable seafood.

This diagram, if you just kind of follow numerically, tells us what the
process for the development of FishWatch has been. Number one, we have a
steering committing. Katie, our project manager, and I are part of the
steering committee. I know Laurel Bryant has been part of the
development of this product for a long time. We\'ve got people from
science and also from sustainable fisheries also part of the steering
committee. They provide us with kind of the raw concept, with ideas,
with recommendations on what FishWatch needs to be. That goes to the
FishWatch team which is really me, myself, right now. We develop
something and then give it to a content team which is really just a
loose confederation of experts, whether they\'re people in the regional
offices or science centers or people in a variety of program offices
right now to look at things and give us, you know, improved content, to
check the work that we\'ve done to make sure that we\'re looking at the
right resources. They then give that back to us. We reconfigure it, give
it to our leadership, and then after the highest levels of NMFS or NOAA
leadership were happy with it, it goes on the web.

Some of the comments that we\'ve gotten, again, just very quickly go
through this, and these comments have come from external review as well
as internal review \-- number one, the need to make this very, very
scientifically accurate. Since the goals is to make the National Marine
Fisheries Service that authoritative source, we\'ve got to make sure
that we\'re right on the facts and right on our figures.

Secondly, to look at this from a consumer\'s point of view to make sure
that we\'re not just making the scientists, the bureaucrats or the
commissions or the councils happy, but we\'ve got to think of my Aunt
Betsy, you know, who told me recently that she can\'t eat salmon anymore
because of mercury. People who have heard something about seafood and
health or sustainability, they\'re not sure but all they know is they
probably better not eat it. And so that\'s the kind of person that
we\'re hoping to target with this site.

The need to take this kind of overly administrative and sometimes
bureaucratic process called fisheries management and humanize it, break
it down so that consumers can see who the people are involved in the
creation of sustainable seafood, whether that\'s a seafood company CEO,
Assistant Administrator of the Fisheries Service, a recreational angler
or a fisherman. And so we introduce consumers to those people that they
might meet, kind of encounter along the way from ocean to plate in an
area FishWatch called profiles in fishing.

MR. FLETCHER: Just curious. Well, you can talk about fisheries
management on domestic fisheries, most of our seafood seems like it\'s
now coming from overseas. How do you break that out of \--

MR. KELLY: We\'ve got \-- number one, the site is concerned with U.S.,
the management of U.S. fisheries. That\'s our kind of \-- at this point,
that\'s our central focus. We want to make sure, though, that in as much
detail as is appropriate, folks know that, you know, 80 percent of this
product is imported from other countries. What, hopefully, that does, it
gives consumers the incentive to go and ask and say, where does this
shrimp come from, where does this product come from, is this part of a
U.S. managed fishery. and just by giving them that information, we\'re
hopefully leading them into asking those kind of questions. And we\'ll
talk a little bit about how we\'ve tried to address that.

MR. FORSTER: AS a follow-up question to that, I think you may have just
given the answer, in a way, but you talk about sustainability but you
just referred to Aunt Betsy who wanted to know about a safety question,
so are you going to be addressing safety questions as well as
sustainability in your answer to this?

MR. KELLY: You guys are giving away all my content here.

MR. FORSTER: Okay. Sorry.

MR. KELLY: I\'m going to hold that \--

MR. FORSTER: That\'s fine.

MR. KELLY: \-- until we go into them. But that\'s another very, very
good point. I mean one of the things that we heard from consumers, from
folks who\'ve looked at the site early on was, hey, there\'s really two
questions that are utmost in consumers\' minds, one of them has to do
with sustainability and whether or not this is environmentally and
ecologically a good thing for me, as a seafood consumer, to do. But just
as important, sometimes more important, is what about this health thing;
what about my aunt who won\'t eat salmon because of mercury; what about
people who know something but are still very confused over what the FDA
is saying, what, if anything, NOAA is saying or what other experts are
saying about whether or not the seafood that they want to order at the
grocery store or the restaurant is safe. So we address some of those
issues as well.

MR. FORSTER: Okay.

MR. KELLY: I\'m going to go over this when we actually get to the
species page, so I\'ll show you what all this means. But what we had to
do is come up with a template, with a common set of information for each
species that we think really represents the depth and breadth of what a
consumer would be interested in and here it is. You know, basically
having some accounting of what the various names of seafood recall, so
that there\'s some, you know, people know that this fish that they
bought which is called this is also called this and so that the names
are there, some critical facts that right up front on the page, people
see bang, bang, bang, bang, this fish is overfished, this fish is not
overfished, this fish comes from a very healthy population of fish, x
amount of this fish is imported each year, so some very, very
straightforward, very simple facts.

That\'s then followed by a box that we call sustainability status which
has a greater level of detail in there with some words that are
problematic for us \-- biomass, BMSY, SSBMSY, overfished, overfishing.
So we have links to the official definition for these words, including
the definition, of course, of sustainability in our National Fisheries
glossary that was developed by science and technology.

Having some graphical representation of data \-- biomass, landings data.
Then the next two important two dates in fisheries management, so when
you look at the graph, it becomes meaningful when you see a sudden
uptown or a sudden downturn in biomass or landings information. Yes?

MS. TOOLEY: It\'s just interesting to me on the sustainability status
that you don\'t have rebuilding on that list. I mean if you think in
terms of Gulf of Maine Cod, it seems to me that the consumer in the
grocery store, you know, comfortable buying Gulf of Main Cod even though
that fish may be classified as overfished if it is in the rebuilding
program, because it\'s in a strict \-- you know, it\'s vanished by the
council and the agency. So we would want to, even though you present the
information just for the consumer, if they see Gulf of Maine Cod in the
grocery store, that it\'s okay for them to purchase that fish.

So is there a way \-- do you think there\'s a way that the FishWatch is
addressing that?

MR. KELLY: Yes, I think there is. And we\'ll look at the Atlantic Cod
page and then I\'ll show you one of the ways that we try to address
that.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And that\'s important. We\'ve been trying to
look at that in our status of the stocks report. It\'s one thing to say
it\'s overfished. It\'s another to say well, what\'s going on, is it
still at historic lows, is it rebuilding, is it not rebuilding. And so
that\'s something we\'ve tried to incorporate here. And you\'ll see that
we have graphs so people can graphically see what\'s happened over the
last few years. And so that is an issue we\'re very sensitive to.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes. One of the things \-- that may concern us, but \-- is
overload to the consumer. You know, we\'ve got to find some simple,
direct that let\'s them make decisions but does not overload. You\'ve
put so much stuff on there and they leave confused or I really still
don\'t know, I\'m really concerned, maybe I just should not eat this
fish or something. We don\'t \-- really got to prevent that from
happening. It\'s got to be crisp to the point that they can understand
and not overload when we dictate.

MR. KELLY: Yes. So that the consumer, number one, you know, has the
right information and understands they have the right information.

MS. TOOLEY: Right. I certainly wouldn\'t provide too much information,
people aren\'t going to use the site. You know, we don\'t want that. I
would just hope that the overall focus of the site would be that if this
is a U.S. codfish that\'s under a management program, whether \-- no
matter what the status of the stock, I mean I\'m assuming that it would
be in a rebuilding program if it\'s old fish, that the consumer would
come out at the other end feeling comfortable buying that product.

MR. KELLY: That\'s our goal as well.

MS. TOOLEY: Thank you.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Or that the consumer has the information to make a
decision on whether they feel comfortable. And if somebody looks at the
site and says \-- makes the decision I\'m not going to eat anything
until it\'s fully rebuilt, again, this would provide them the
information on \-- to execute their decision. It should show, as you
said, that it\'s under federal management, that it is rebuilding and
this is the current status of it, and then they make their decision.

MR. KELLY: Well, let\'s look and we\'ll look at one of the sites, and
I\'ll show you what we\'ve done, and maybe you can give us some ideas
about how to improve that or how to make that more direct.

The other thing that\'s very important \-- and there\'s actually two
things that we\'re asking for your help with today. Number one is when
we look at the site, giving us some impressions, some input, some ideas
today and also on an ongoing basis about the way the site is developing.

And number two, we\'ve developed a pretty comprehensive outreach plan
for FishWatch and these are our big targets. Some of the outreach, some
of the communication of FishWatch, we think, will be meeting and calling
on some of you for assistance with, certainly the relationships that you
folks have with people in the fishing community, in the seafood industry
and the processing communities and the recreational communities. These
are all places that we want to make sure we have a good representation
of and that the information that we have on FishWatch is appropriate,
kind of, to their requirements.

So for some of the outreach for this, we would likely, I think, ask for
your help. For example, we\'d like to make sure that we are going to all
the appropriate kind of big retailers of seafood, whether that\'s half a
day in grocery stores or in restaurant chains. We want to make sure that
we have a good representation from all sectors of the seafood and
commercial fishing world. So if you have some ideas about any of these
or if there is one of these that you think hey, I could certainly give
these guys some good guidance or some assistance, we\'d certainly
appreciate it.

So the two things are number one, the outreach plan, and number two,
input and impressions on the site itself.

This is going to be a large and an ongoing commitment on the part of the
National Marine Fisheries Service, and we understood that, kind of, in
the development of the initial site. One of the things that we had to be
very, very clear about is that the creation of a site like this, for it
to be viable, for it to really meet the goals intended of making the
National Marine Fisheries Service that authoritative source is that
it\'s going to have to be very, very carefully cared for and fed with
new information as information becomes available.

Right now we have about 20 species completed. By the time we roll this
out, we\'ll probably have 30 species and what we think are these are
some of the 30 most common grocery store species, species that are most
commonly encountered on a restaurant menu. So we want to make sure that
those are out there, but then we\'ll be adding new species every year.
We\'ll be doing a lot of fund rollout. We see a lot of new products
developing from FishWatch, education lesson plans, professional
development for teachers, podcasts, or RSS text messaging so that people
can get information directly to their telephone about species if they
wanted it; ongoing evaluation besides just the stats and site reports
that we get from our software packages to find out whether or not we\'re
really hitting our targets and that the site is being used in the
appropriate manner.

So we\'ll go ahead and cross our fingers and get this. Aha. Okay. Here
we are. Ths is the \-- this is what you\'ll see on the site when you
first hit it. Number one, we wanted to make sure that the connection
between the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, and the Department
of Commerce was all made in a good, uniform way. We want this to kind of
immediately give consumers that kind of impression of scientific
management integrity. We want them to know that this is where they go to
get the facts. If they want U.S. seafood facts, there\'s one place, and
we hope that this will become really the last word, the definitive word
for sustainable seafood.

We say if you can read it, that FishWatch can help make informed
decisions about the seafood you eat by providing you with the most
accurate and timely information available on the sustainability of U.S.
seafood fisheries. FishWatch is brought to you by NOAA\'s National
Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. authority on marine fisheries
science, conservation and management. And then we\'ve got a little
placeholder there for our 200th logo which will go in before you give
your presentations downtown, so to make our corporate NOAA very happy.

The other things that are important right up front is that we have the
link to seafood and health, that we have facts about various species.
You can see that there\'s a box right there above the fold where most
browsers will hit it really quickly on seafood and health. Folks can go
to that and be linked. Across the top, you\'ll see a number of kind of
banner headers, and we\'ve got some things up there that we think are
very important. Number one, a very quick, a very concise explanation of
fisheries management, what this is all about, how it works broken down
in a very simple one-page format but with links so that if people want
to, they can get to greater levels of detail by visiting our regional
fishery science centers which we think really are the foundation for so
much of what we do in the management world. They can go to our MSA page.
They can go to the commissions. They can go to the councils. So they can
kind of drill down as deep as you wanted in this page on fisheries
management.

We\'ve got a link here to our status of stocks. One of the improvements
that we\'ve been kind of given in some early rounds of review is to make
this a FishWatch page. Instead of pointing outside of kind of the First
Watch into the Office of Sustainable Fisheries, take all this
information and redo it so that it\'s part of FishWatch. What that\'ll
do is keep people kind of within the FishWatch domain so that they
don\'t have to hit their back browser button to get back to a particular
species, which we think we can do.

Another thing is this summary on gear, so we\'ve got some very, very
simple explanations on how some of the most commonly used fisheries gear
works addressing, I think, some very important concerns to consumers
about habitat, about by-catch, things like that. And then this is
profiles in fishing. This also links right from the home page, again,
introducing consumers to the people behind all things fisheries, science
and fisheries management. So we have an observer there. We\'ve got a
recreational angler there. We\'ve got Dr. Hogarth there. We have Senator
Stevens. We\'ve got a seafood company CEO coming on board, kind of a
large industrial commercial fisherman coming on board, a very small
scale tribal fisherman coming on board, Dawn Martin from Ski Web, Randy
\-- I talked to Randy this morning about having aquaculture represented
here.

So we want to make sure that we can get consumers some really good
appropriate back story. What this is is an opportunity for us, whether
within the National Marine Fisheries Service, within industry, within
NGOs to say that we\'re all really interested in the same thing, we\'re
all about sustainable seafood, we\'re all about making sure that the
supply of seafood is safe, it\'s healthy, is well-protected for
consumers today and in the future.

Now the backbone of all this, so really the kind of heart and soul, are
the species pages. And one of the issues that we\'re having right now is
how do you \-- you know, how do you put these on there. Is it
alphabetical? Is it alphabetical by scientific name? You know? There\'s
a lot of different ways that you could make a list of seafood. What we
try to do is say well, the kind of common name is cod, but even though
it\'s Atlantic cod or Pacific cod, we\'ll keep it kind of high up there
in the c\'s and hope that people get to it. Walleyed pollock, I was told
that nobody calls it walleyed pollock except me, and it\'s Alaska
pollock. Or, you know, we had some comments from some folks out in
Hawaii that said you can\'t call it yellowfin, you have to call it ahi.
People don\'t know what you\'re talking about when you say Yellowfin. So
there are some issues about some of the conventions and some of the
names, but here\'s the list that we\'ve got so far. If you\'ve got some
ideas for us on how to improve the clarity of this, we\'re all ears.

And let\'s just go to this one. We\'ll go to Atlantic cod first since we
had some issue there. And again, right here early in the page, we want
to make sure that consumers understand that, number one, we\'re talking
about the same thing, so there\'s a picture of seafood there. Thank you,
John, and some of the folks at NFI who said, hey, look, you\'ve got to
have a picture of food on a plate so that people are understanding that
you\'re not talking about, you know, something else, you\'re talking
about the same thing, that seafood that they\'re interested in. So
we\'ve got a picture of seafood on the plate, and we got those four
bullets, and we\'re saying the Atlantic cod populations are low, that
strict rebuilding measures have been implemented, that recent studies
link the affects of climate change to decreases in cod population in the
North Atlantic.

And then we\'ve linked that bullet to the recent science publication in
Science Magazine about climate change and why cod stock aren\'t in the
Atlantic, the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Maine aren\'t coming back up as
quickly as we might have hoped.

We also say that only about 2 percent of the U.S. cod sold in 2005 were
Atlantic cod and the rest were Pacific cod, a very health cod
population. And we say that about 17 percent of the cod bought in the
U.S. in 2005 was imported. So right up front, we\'ve got some very, very
simple, hopefully some very clear indices that the consumer might be
interested in. That\'s what we\'re going for anyway.

And so I \-- I showed this to my wife and now, unfortunately, I
corrupted her, so she\'s starting to think more like a bureaucrat than a
consumer. But I run this by other people to say is \-- as a consumer,
does this make sense, am I talking Aunt Betsy\'s language here, is this
the right scope and detail of information. And from this page, if
somebody wanted information, if somebody was to say, well, look, yes,
I\'d like to know more about this rebuilding plan for cod, well, you can
go to the multi-species FMP right here and actually get the Fisheries
Management Plan if they\'d like.

They can go to get information here on likeness during habitat for all
of these species \-- who catches it, is it commercial, is it
recreational, is it both, how do these things figure in in terms of
predator, prey and habitat and all that other \-- all those other
ecosystem questions. And fortunately, we have more and more information
about the role of these various species in the larger system in which
they live.

We\'ve got this other box here for additional information, and we\'d
actually just started last week having some discussions with folks in
the FDA about their studies. They have a very, very informative site,
but the gist of the information about, at a consumer level of what\'s
really required to know, is difficult to find, so we\'re looking at some
ways to kind of ferret out the FDA information, maybe even have a link
to FDA information or have their information resonant here so that
consumers can get good information about the FDA\'s seafood
recommendations, if this is one of the five species that the U.S. FDA
says pregnant women, young children shouldn\'t eat, things like that. So
we\'ll have that information probably here in additional info.

MR. DEWEY: So related to your earlier point that a lot of these fish
have different names, and I don\'t know if you really want to
acknowledge that or facilitate that, but I mean is it appropriate to
maybe have other common names when you get to the page?

MR. KELLY: Yes. And one of the things that we\'re thinking about doing
to help address that is right here, at Atlantic cod, when you roll over
this, we\'d like another box to pop up \-- the issue is it\'s hard to
find the Section 504 compliant tools that we\'re required to use so that
folks with disabilities and everybody else can get equal access to it
\-- but have that information pop up in a separate box. Or have it
somewhere farther down the page. The FDA list of market names, common
names against the science names is going to be a very useful tool for us
here, but we\'re just looking at the best way to link it up so that
people don\'t have to go hunting on this page \--

DR. HOGARTH: But, Michael, over here on the right-hand side where you
got the, you know, you got the dish, you had other things as you went
down further?

MR. KELLY: Yes.

DR. HOGARTH: Those \-- sort of like to denote \-- you maybe could in did
you know that it\'s known by other - it spans out a little bit.

MR. KELLY: That\'s true. Yes.

DR. HOGARTH: Known by \-- Atlantic cod is also known as such and such
and such and such?

MR. KELLY: Yes.

MR. CATES: Are you trying to influence behavior, too, for the consumer?

MR. KELLY: Yes. Yes, I think so. We want to make sure that, you know,
whatever choices consumers are making, they\'re taking the action,
they\'re making those choices from an informed place. We think that this
information will help them take some actions.

MR. CATES: One suggestion I would have is pictures of cooking. You have
pictures of fries right here, probably not what we would want consumers
to be eating as much, although I do.

MR. KELLY: Okay.

MR. CATES: you know, if you\'re taking an opportunity to influence
behavior \--

MR. KELLY: That picture cost me 150 bucks.

(Laughter/Crosstalk.)

MR. KRAMER: You know how hard it is to find good seafood pictures.

MR. CATES: Right.

(Laughter/Crosstalk.)

DR. HOGARTH: With me, you\'ve got several questions. You got Rob, then
Mary Hope and Mary Beth.

MR. KRAMER: Well, I\'ve got a couple of questions. This is Rob Kramer,
IGFA. First of all, what is going to be the actual address of the
website?

MR. KELLY: The actual address will be fishwatch.noaa.gov. We also have
got to pull the fishwatch.gov so that if people just type in
fishwatch.gov, they\'ll be redirected to this site which will be
fishwatch.noaa.gov.

MR. CATES: And we\'re thinking about going live in August, though, so
it\'s not working yet.

MR. KRAMER: Another comment. You\'re probably familiar with the website,
fishbase.org?

MR. KELLY: Yes.

MR. CATES: They have \-- that\'s a very comprehensive site for all
different species. They have common names, and there may be some ideas
in there on how to organize a site like this. How will the retailers and
grocery stores be involved? I saw some targeted outreach to them. What
specifically are you asking them to do?

MR. KELLY: One of the things that we\'re asking for their help with
specifically is marketing the site. We want their help in getting
consumers to our pages so that consumers are getting the right
information. We\'ve got a whole suite of products that we\'re developing
and discussing from stickers to table tents to recyclable shopping bags,
all different kind of \-- fish wrap with the URL on it, all kinds of
different things that would just kind of point consumers to the site.
We\'re going to be appealing to \--

DR. HOGARTH: And the wheel.

MR. KELLY: \-- and the wheel \-- thank you. So getting consumers the
information about the site, that\'s what we\'re going to be asking
partners from the outside to help us with. We\'d like to go to the
WalMart Sustainability Network to garden Restaurants to Legal Seafoods
and ask them to help us get the word about the site by providing some
information or some products that we\'ll produce but they\'ll help us
distribute.

MR. KRAMER: My final comment is last week our organization was contacted
by a group out in California and appears to be a consortium-building to
redo the yellow, red, green cards, and it sounds like there\'s going to
be a lot of money behind it. It\'s going to be a much broader base than
originally it was done. And it looks to me that they\'re going to be
utilizing effective marketing and PR efforts. And if I\'m Aunt Betsy,
looking at a red fish, a yellow fish, a green fish is real simple for
me. And although I should be looking at something more comprehensive, I
think consumers are going to do what\'s easiest, and it\'s just
something to consider going forward. And I can probably provide you with
some names of some of the organizations that are involved in that effort
out there that might be beneficial to work with immediately and right up
front. But I think one of the reasons that campaign was successful is
you had a business card that had these species on them, and they had a
colored fish, and obviously that wasn\'t as up-to-date as something like
a website is, but consumers just want to go in and eat and go on about
business. So Bill mentioned that you\'ve got to be super simple, and if
there\'s a way to simplify a component of the outreach from this, I\'d
recommend it.

DR. HOGARTH: Just to that point about the red, yellow and green, the
problem we\'ve seen with those is that anything that\'s overfished goes
automatic to red, and so, you know, it\'s really given me the \-- the
incomplete information. Yes.

MR. KRAMER: I agree if it\'s just \-- it has a \--

DR. HOGARTH: But it\'s simple.

MR. KRAMER: \-- it has a following. It\'s \--

DR. HOGARTH: It\'s simple.

MR. KRAMER: \-- already \-- it\'s known out there, so that\'s just going
to have to be contended with as you move forward to re-establish the
government as the logical and single authority.

DR. HOGARTH: John?

MR. CONNELLY: Just directly to that point \-- John Connelly with NFI \--
very good research actually shows those cards are well entrenched in 20
percent of the population, but those are 20 percent of the seafood
industry who\'s never going to have any out, and that kind of the Upper
East Site of New York uses that card. Aunt Betsy\'s not using that card.
So \--even so, the groups have put it out or are trying to figure out
different ways. That\'s why they\'re taking the retailer approach more
in those cards. But I\'m interested in anything redone with those cards,
so.

Making a follow-on, the points about the names, I\'m not sure if you
could buy dot.net, dot.org, dot.com, everything. I would buy anything
and all related, anything to close to \"fishwatch\" so that it\'s not
just dot.gov but it\'s fish_watch, fishwatch one word, fish watch two
words and all the permutations, because if you don\'t, someone else will
buy those and may well create mischief with a shadow website.

And on the Atlantic versus Pacific cod, can you scroll up to the top?

MR. KELLY: Sure. This site, by the way, right now until it goes live is
all password protected. You know? Nobody except for those of us with the
user name and password can get into it.

MR. CONNELLY: I\'m looking at those numbers. Eighty-three percent is \--
excuse me \-- 83 percent is domestic, 2 percent of that is Atlantic cod
which means that 98 percent of 83 percent is Pacific cod. So wouldn\'t
it be better to have Pacific cod up there rather than Atlantic cod?

MR. KELLY: That\'ll be \-- that\`s actually \-- Katie, we finished that
page, Pacific cod page. It\'s one of the next species to be up. When
this goes live, Pacific cod and Atlantic cod will both be up.

MR. CONNELLY: I guess the broader question for me is how do you
determine what species, you know, on there get on there? What\'s the
process?

MR. KELLY: It\'s the Steering Committee. It\'s groups like this. It\'s
the councils and commissions. In almost all the meetings that we\'ve had
with the councils so far, they\'ve all said, hey, could we please get
this species up there, this is one of our highest priority species.
We\'ve talked to a number of different folks about making sure that the
right \-- that the appropriate species were up there.

And these 20 species that we\'ve selected are not just common grocery
store species, but they\'re species of some kind of interest, whether
that\'s regional interest. We want to make sure that there\'s good
Alaska representation and Hawaii. We had some political, you know, ideas
about this as well, so we wanted to make sure that the right species
were up there as well as, you know, being ones that you are going to
encounter frequently when you go to the store.

If you\'ve got some ideas about those next species, we\'d like to know.

DR. HOGARTH: Mary Hope?

MS. HOPE KATSOUROS: If you really want to hook the consumer, you, you
know, one of those would be follows the cooking and recipes. Consumers
interested \-- well, how do I cook this when we get, you know \--

MR. KELLY: That\'s a great idea.

MS. HOPE KATSOUROS: And if you had a recipe, it would be easy to just
put it on there.

MR. KELLY: What we\'d like to do at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off
is maybe next year, because we\'ve been told that this year it\'s a
little bit too late to add this requirement, but we would be requiring
the chefs to use the species that are listed on FishWatch in the
development of their entries. And then we\'ll link to the recipes that
those chefs as well as some information about the chefs on this page.
That\'s a possibility down the road, a very good idea.

MR. SIMPSON: Yes. I\'m back \-- previous talk of a suggestions about how
to get the word out. Until recently, you could take every pill I ever
took in my life and put it in two hands. Now I have to take, you know,
old man stuff, you know, blood pressure and everything. And then when
you get the little sac, that\'s the thing, they put an information sheet
on the medication. Well, Pike\'s Food, WalMart, you know, big, large
seafood markets, whenever they sell a fish, you could have one of these
rubber tear-off type sheets, you know, thousands of pages about
FishWatch and stick it in the bag. Every time it goes out, that would be
an informational idea about the website \--

MR. KELLY: That\'s a great idea.

MR. SIMPSON: \-- seafood restaurants.

MR. KELLY: Right. Back to Rob\'s point, you know, we\'re up against a
very well-funded reorganization of modern day offering right now and in
their attempts and other groups who have said, hey, we\'ve got to
somehow overcome the red, yellow, green classification, what else are we
doing. I don\'t think they\'ve hit on the wheel yet, but they want to do
some other things, and when it comes to getting the word out, they\'ve
got a lot of money behind them to do that. That\'s why wherever we can,
we\'re looking to folks like you, large and small, helping us make sure
that, you know, consumers get the word about this and are directed to
the site.

MR. FORSTER: Could you talk a little bit about what discussions you\'ve
had about aquaculture species in this that you clearly \-- I couldn\'t
see too many on there, and you get some Atlantic salmon, for example, is
a homegrown species. It\'s a relatively minor amount, but somewhere you
must have had a whole lot of discussions about what to do with that. It
would be interesting to hear?

MR. KELLY: Absolutely. Very, very early on, we\'ve \-- what \-- in fact,
in these top buttons across the page, would it be appropriate maybe
there to have a link to our aquaculture page or somewhere else on the
front page so that people have kind of the overall connection to what
we\'re doing here at FishWatch to what we\'re trying to do with
aquaculture. And that\'s a really good idea. We haven\'t figured out
exactly how to make that link. But then here also within the various
species where there are important aquaculture components, both domestic
and imported, we wanted to somehow make that information available on
the species page.

To tell you the truth, and I know that \-- excuse me, Susan\'s not here
to defend herself \-- but they\'re working very hard right now on this
conference that\'s coming up the end of this month. And fortunately, we
have somebody from the aquaculture program, part of our Steering
Committee, and outside of having her kind of expertise and her
sensibilities as part of this so far, we haven\'t really cracked the nut
about what the best representation of aquaculture is going to be in a
very broad sense. But we\'re having those discussions and we\'re
thinking about it. One of the immediate things that we know we can do is
with the \"profiles in fishing\" page, make sure that aquaculture is
featured there. And where there are very important aquaculture, you
know, fish, that we\'ve got some information on the species pages about
that.

MR. FORSTER: Just a comment on that. First of all, if the priority is to
inform the public on best seafood choices, aquaculture is such \-- now
such a dominant part of those choices that, I mean it\'s deficient if
it\'s not covered. And the second point is if the competition, in a
sense, is the red, green, yellow card, then some of the aquaculture
interpretation on those cards, I think, is disputed by a number of
people. And if the sense is to bring to the government authority to this
discussion, then I would urge very strongly that you take that challenge
on. I appreciate it\'s very difficult, but I think it\'s an important
part of the overall information you\'re trying to get out.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. You know, we have some concerns in that, you know, I
think there are a lot of people who will look at the page, probably read
the top part and never really make it down, so I think the stuff that
you have at the top probably is the most important. And, you know, when
you look at interactions with habitat, you know, it talks about bottom
otter trials. Certainly, we know that bottom otter trials do impact
habitat at certain degrees. But it doesn\'t tie it, you know, tightly to
the concept that there are mitigation measures in place to protect, you
know, critical habitat and that, you know, that is being managed.

I mean I think somebody would just read that and say, yo-ho, it\'s
impacting habitat and that\'s not a good thing. But we know in the
regions, that councils, to take actions, have habitat closed areas and
do things, you know, to try to maintain biodiversity in areas. I think
if you could somehow make that sort of a tighter connection up \-- you
know, near the top, it would help. I\'m sure if somebody scrolled down
through, they\'d find that kind of link, but I think people don\'t read
the whole page unfortunately.

MR. KELLY: Right.

MS. TOOLEY: And the other thing, just to speak to, you know, humanizing,
you know, some of these pages, certainly some of the comments that I\'ve
made about Atlantic cod, I mean the one thing that I would be concerned
about is that if the consumer were to go to this page, come away with an
impression it\'s overfished and, therefore, you know, I\'m not buying
cod, that this would somehow impact the price of cod at the dock. And if
you have ground fisherman in New England who are, you know, constricted
by 28 days at sea, to have that species\' price bottom out because of
that, I mean that was a huge want to try to avoid. And, you know, other
groups already have, you know, the red light out there on Atlantic cod.
So I mean you can\'t \-- that\'s a difficulty to overcome. But if there
would be a way to sort of humanize the, you know, sacrifices that
fishermen are making in the region because of the situation, tie into
the page somehow.

MR. KELLY: Yes. If you have some ideas about a \-- some fishermen who
you think would be appropriate for the profiles page, I\'d be happy to
talk to them and, you know, try to get their words as part of this,
because the idea, part of that profiles page, the goal is to sensitize
consumers to the fact that we\'re all concerned about the same things
here, we\'re all working towards those same kind of sustainable goals,
and, you know, that\'s just as true for Bill Hogarth as it is for a
Northeast, you know, cod fisherman.

So making that \-- making sure that that message is clear throughout the
site, it\'s an important goal for the site. So if you have some direct
folks that I could talk to, I\'d be happy to do that.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. And the only other thing is on gear effects, I mean
you\'ll go into a restaurant and it\'s not uncommon to read on the menu
these are day boat scallops, this is hook-caught cod, and, you know,
somehow, you know, inferring that this is a better product because it
was caught on a hook but not with a bottom dredge and things like that.
So I think \-- I mean I haven\'t had a chance to go through the site,
but I mean the gear information is really important.

MR. KELLY: Absolutely.

MS. BRYANT: I think this argument is in the queue, I have Tom Billy,
Pete Leipzig. Then I\'ve got Randy, John Connelly, Catherine Foy, Vince,
Dorothy and Steve, so it\'s an exciting discussion so \-- And we\'ve got
\-- Tom Billy, you\'re on.

MR. BILLY: Thank you. I have a number of concerns, but first let me say
I appreciate the thought of what you\'re trying to do, but here are my
concerns. In any given year, my numbers may be a little dated, but there
are about 3-to-500 species of fish that are sold commercially in the
U.S. Of those, 75 percent, maybe a little higher now, are imported. And
of those, 50 percent are from aquaculture. So if you\'re \-- if the idea
is seafood on the plate or seafood from the consumer\'s perspective, if
you take imports off the table, you\'re taking 75 percent away and
you\'re not addressing how those fish are managed in other countries,
related issues to what you\'re covering here for the U.S. You\'re
putting only U.S.-managed stocks off our coast under the spotlight.

You can choose to do that but it ought to be a very clear decision why
you\'re doing it. If it\'s because you\'re trying to counteract the stop
light kind of thing, fine, so be it, but be clear in what you\'re trying
to accomplish. It makes no sense to me, from a consumer perspective, not
to include aquaculture species and create additional categories to
describe sustainability and so forth. And that would particularly be
important if, in fact, legislation is passed and it comes under
management as we look to the future of the form of management for sure.

And then sport fishing or subsistence fishing and that whole category,
if you\'re going to consciously not include that, it\'s part of what\'s
on the plate. I\'m not so sure you should exclude it either, but if you
do include it, then you may want to relate it to not only the management
part of this but the other considerations that go into sport fishing and
including species identification and all the rest.

So what you\'ve presented is, to my analysis, sort of mixed up. It\'s
sort of a little bit focused in one area, a little bit on the other. I
think you need to be really clear about what you\'re trying to
accomplish over the longer term. You could start with the universal
product code and species identified by that and have it keyed back to
that. That certainly would be useful to both supermarkets or retail and
restaurants. And then build, based on some of these existing systems
like that, but FDA fish list, FDA-NOAA fish list is an official
document, so you need to, at least, relate to that in terms of common or
usual names.

There are ways to address some of the food safety considerations. We can
get to that later, but I just wanted \-- I\'m a little concerned about
the understanding and having a clear objective in mind for what you\'re
trying to accomplish.

MS. BRYANT: Next, Pete Leipzig.

MR. LEIPZIG: Just a couple of comments. In terms of the organization of
species, last week I took a look at the site expecting it would have
been more helpful for me if \-- I have looked at some of West
Coast\'s/Alaska\'s \-- I looked at their fish, Chinook salmon and that
can range from Central Southern California all the way out to the
Aleutians, tremendous area that have different stock assessments for
depending on which one you pick, salmon and just to put them all in one
basket, I think it could be misleading. So you may have already gone
down this path in terms of organization but to me, that made some sense.

Another picking up on some of the comments that Mary Beth has
color-coded store cards that are out there. I think the \-- I mean I
don\'t like their seafood, but I think the message here is that if fish
is available in the marketplace, presumably, it\'s been caught or netted
legally using fisheries management. And I think discussion, if there is
management, even if a stock issues have a low level of abundance, there
is management, and if there\'s fish available to the consumer, it is
under regulations, properly reported and done legally. And I think
that\'s the message that the consumer needs to be aware of.

If it\'s not \-- if it\'s a low level of abundance, we can call it
overfished, and it could be at that level for a variety of different
reasons. The fishermen may not propose as to why it\'s at a level of low
abundance. But that\'s the main point associate with it, but it doesn\'t
apply to the shipping that fish is in the marketplace, I believe there
is something wrong being done. It\'s perfectly legitimate to buy that
fish. The management is. I think that\'s a particular message.

MS. BRYANT: We\'ve got Randy, then John Connelly and then Catherine.

MR. CATES: I have a few comments and a suggestion. Try to keep it
simple. I agree that aquaculture should be on the list, but I don\'t
think you need to do for each species. You could just talk about what is
fishing, is fish, you know, coming from a sustainable resource, what are
the color-added in salmon. The more educated a consumer gets, the better
it is or us.

This issue and the cards and such, it comes in my company quite a bit.
What I\'m finding is some of the large restaurant chains are really
trying to get educated. And so I think this is going to fall in line. In
fact, I was in a meeting last week talking about this, and its
credibility is what\'s going to win you here. Those cards you talk
about, they\'ve lost their credibility, especially in Hawaii they\'ve
lost credibility big-time to where you can\'t even find them anywhere.
So science base is going to win credibility.

And having said all that, one of the things \-- way we get the message
out is to target the cooking shows, go to the networks, some of the top
chefs, Roy\'s Restaurant for example, Emeril Lagasse. They\'re asking us
for the information, and they\'re asking us what is real and what is
reality. Some of the large chains, the Whole Foods, Darden that you
mentioned, they\'re all coming to my company and trying to get educated.
They\'re as confused, if not more, than the consumer is on what they\'re
going to offer.

So aquaculture is the big ticket item. It is what\'s driving most of the
controversy from what I can see. I think it needs to be spelled out a
little bit.

MS. BRYANT: John?

MR. CONNELLY: I just echo \-- I don\'t think aquaculture should be in a
ghetto of \-- up on the top. It needs to be in the species that are
eaten. And is there a plan to actually test this with the consumer I
mean beyond Aunt Betsy? Because we all think what we know it says or
what the message is conveying and not conveying, but is there a plan \--
is part of the plan to go out and do focus groups with Margaret, Aunt
Betsy, Tom, your daughter, whatever?

MR. KELLY: Right now we haven\'t gotten there. We \-- you know, we
discussed that and talked about possibilities, but as you know, there
\-- that can be a pretty expensive undertaking, and so we haven\'t \--
we haven\'t allocated the resources for that. I\'m not even sure what
kind of administrative hurdles have to be overcome for us to do that,
but I understand that there are some. So outside of the help of, you
know, folks like you and other people, we\'ve been somewhat limited.

We\'re breaking this out, though, to, you know, some pretty wide
audiences. And I\'m talking to folks, a number of folks about this. I
will be going to a couple of cooking schools. Katie and I, I think, are
going to be up at the Culinary Institute of America later this month and
California Culinary Institute in San Francisco and a number of other
places to talk to faculty and to talk to students about sustainability
through FishWatch.

I\'ve tried. You know, I\'ve got some connections from back when I used
to be a chef, and, you know, I\'ve tried to tap into some of the kind of
the bigger name celebrity chefs and see about having somebody like that
as part of our \"profiles in fishing\" page or getting the word out
about that through some of those kind of very large amplifiers.

And the Food Network\'s participation in the Seafood Cook-Off is one
alley for us. But until we have some of those very well-known, kind of
the Rachel Ray\'s and some of the very popular television chefs, talking
about this, that\'s going to be a bit of a hurdle.

Anyway, that \-- but those are considerations that we\'re thinking of.
So any help that you folks can give us in terms of, you know, your
Rolodexes or connections or connections, or if we could go to a meeting
with you about this, we\'d love to do it.

MR. CONNELLY: Related to that, Michael, I think it would be helpful for
the group to understand what feedback you\'re getting from people. And I
think everyone has an opinion about the site, but if it\'s going out to
the broader community and the broader public, and if people could feed
that back into you, and then you feed that back to the Committee, not
exactly a focus group but at least the group has a sense of how people
are reacting.

MR. KELLY: Okay. We\'ll be happy to do that. And we\'ll provide you
folks with, you know, ongoing research about how this is developing and
what kind of evaluations we\'re having.

MR. RISENHOOVER: And we definitely want to, not only before we roll this
out, but afterwards, evaluate what it is and what perceptions people are
getting to make sure that is it isn\'t being used or is it just another
government website nobody uses. And if it is, we\'ve got to retool a
little.

MS. BRYANT: And that\'s why I want to put this together also for MAFAC,
becuase some of the administrative hurdles, as ridiculous as it sounds,
when you try to go back out to the public and you actually ask for
information, honest to God, you have to go through Paperwork Reduction
Act stuff, you\'re asking survey questions, and it gets to be a
nightmare. And that\'s why going to your council chairs and the
commissions and MAFAC, these are kind of our built-in advisory folks. We
can still keep it going but we can get some of that refinement up before
we go live in the broader sense. I have - Catherine.

MR. KELLY: I just wanted to say one other thing is we\'re so lucky, in
our office, to have Katie as the project manager for this. Katie\'s a
canal sea grant fellow, but she comes out of a background of business
management and kind of environmental management. And, you know, I hope
I\'m not embarrassing you \-- she doesn\'t know anything about fish \--
and so this site has been her introduction to a lot of this. And, you
know, she\'s been a great way to kind of make sure that this was an
appropriate scope and detail of information back to folks who, you know,
don\'t have their PhD\'s in fishery, biology or stock, you know,
dynamics.

MR. RISENHOOVER: So know that she\'s done it, we just watch and see what
she eats.

(Laughter.)

MS. FOY: Thanks. I like the site a lot, but I think that you\'re missing
a target audience that\'s got a lot of maybe not purchasing power but
definite pressure. So if you would address the school kids and get them
behind this, they put a lot of pressure on their parents and a lot of
\-- they can educate the parents about where the site is, what to look
for.

And Apple Computer did a brilliant job when they started out. They went
to the schools and made sure that Apple Computer was the computer of
choice in all schools for teachers, and that\'s what the kids were
taught on and it became part of popular culture because the kids were
educated in it. As they came into the purchasing population, then
that\'s the choices they made because they were familiar with it,
familiar as kids with this site, and it got a huge demographic. I don\'t
know how you can get it across. There\'s Oceans Week and NOAA has
outreach coordinators that could get you into the local schools.

MR. KELLY: Some of our outreach products \-- the development of specific
products, and we\'ve talked about this at the Steering Committee level,
but we haven\'t fleshed it out very much. And we\'ve got some great
people in our NOAA education counsel and around the agency that, you
know, are teachers or come from education that could \-- that have seen
this site and say, wow, this could be \-- this would be great lesson
plans, we could do a lesson plan on every one of these species, you
could do it \-- you know \-- so the link has been made but what the
actual product would be hasn\'t yet \-- the other think that they\'ve
said is that we would need to do some kind of professional development
for teachers to make sure that the concepts of sustainability, of
fisheries management, of science-based management and how that works
would all be part of what the teachers were teaching and that they could
make this kind of an inquiry-based tool that, you know, the students
would have to go do research on or something \--

MS. BRYANT: One other thing, too, is also \-- and if anybody has any
thoughts on it, some of the things that Michael and all of us were
looking into is through the development of the Smithsonian\'s Ocean
Hall. There is going to be a web component to that whole effort, and
we\'re at looking to try to make certain that, as part of that web
portal and everything, that FishWatch, at some point, as it develops
there\'d be a link up on that as well. Okay. And, Bob, next?

MR. FLETCHER: Michael, I just want to echo what Pete said. I couldn\'t
get on the site. For some reason, I was blocked when I tried to get on.
But I want to point out something about the importance of
regionalization. Red snapper is one fish in the Gulf. In Southern
California, it\'s a whole different set of species. Red snapper in
Southern California is rock fish but non-rock fish if you\'re over here.
Rock fish is a whole different species over here, so somehow you\'ve got
to regionalize it and make sure that the people that are going on the
site understand those differences.

MR. KELLY: One of the things that we kind of tossed around is the
possibility of doing intermittent pages where there would \-- the list
of species would be even more generalized. It would say things like
snapper, cod, tuna and then that would take you to another page that
would have a list Atlantic bluefin tuna, Pacific yellowfin, Atlantic
tuna has, you know, big eyes. All the different tuna species would be
kind of broken out on that tuna page. The same with cod. You could do
the same thing with snapper and have fish that really aren\'t snapper,
you know, represented from that page. A lot of ideas but kind of a
complex problem to try to figure out.

MR. FLETCHER: Sounds like it might not be a bad idea because, again,
tuna\'s going to be huge to tease, and if you don\'t somehow break that
out.

MR. KELLY: Vince is next.

MR. O\'SHEA: Two quick things, Mike. One is get ready \-- I\'m inclined
to have a link on the Commission\'s web page over to this. I think
that\'s something that people who go to our web page would be
interested. Happy to do that.

And then the second is just a suggestion to think about. The people
connection is great, and I think the next step as you guys involved
would be consideration of place connection. There\'s some terrific small
regional fishing ports that produce these fish that people, I can see,
readily locking into as part of the identity thing that you\'re trying
to create here down the road. I mean something to think about.

MR. KELLY: Yes. I mean the truth is each one of these species has an
incredible story about \-- I don\'t know if anybody read Mark
Kurlansky\'s book about cod. But you know, it has a socio-economic
there\'s political, there\'s historical, there\'s a lot of really
interesting aspects to every one of these species and some great stories
to be told.

MR. SIMPSON: Also recommend the Big Oyster. Same guy wrote that.

MR. KELLY: Oh, yes.

MS. LOWMAN: I think just, again, the sort of message about trying to \--
you know, one of the reasons the red light/green light appeals to people
is it\'s simple. And, you know, I think that people flip to one of these
pages, they almost \-- maybe you could have some certain questions that
had specific answers for each one. You know? Is it overfished, yes/no,
but the rebuilding is in place, yes. If it\'s a \-- if it\'s say a trial
fishery, are there are EFH, you know, regulations to their extra
buy-catch, you know, things in place? Kind of give a more holistic view
of all the things that are sort of place to protect the habitat as well
as the species, rebuilding, so that it\'s sort of right up there up
front, too, to sort of. And then there may be some link to that for more
information. But I\'m afraid if we read a whole, you know, paragraph
about the gear and all of this, you may miss that there\'s some extra
protection for the habitat in there. You know?

MR. JONER: Well, there\'s not much left after everybody took all the
good stuff off \--

MR. JONER: Just trying to come you with something here. I wasn\'t able
to read it, but your fisheries management page, one of the things I
encounter a lot is misinformation that\'s deliberately put out about the
overfishing and how the councils don\'t react. And I think Dorothy had a
good idea and I\'ll try and build on what she said. I spent a lot of
time explaining that with Pacific rock fish. The scientists weren\'t
crying we\'re overfishing, we\'re overfishing and the council ignoring
them. The scientists were saying everything looks good, everything looks
good although we\'ve overfished, if suddenly we found out that we had
overfished. And there\'s a time line that shows that, and I actually
carry that with me and I can counter and bring it out.

Maybe a simple way of doing that is to have a question and answer page
\-- what is overfished, why did it occur. And then in the case of the
Pacific coast, show detail of the rock fish conservation area, the EFH
places. We have narrow pathways on the Pacific coast that can be fished
now, and a large percentage of the shelf and the entire fishing grounds
are restricted or closed. And then maybe a little bit about the gear. I
saw what you said about under the cod, about trawl gear damaging, and
people have a perception of trawling, you\'re bulldozing the bottom. And
you hear this even from people involved that know better.

Another example on the Pacific coast \-- small rower gears are required
in most fishing, in most fisheries now for most species because of the
impact it\'s had. It keeps away from the rock fish. And also the
excluders and net designs, new technology that\'s there. And you can do
all this in a nice, fresh announcer page.

MR. KELLY: I think you want to \--

MR. JONER: Yes, what is overfishing, why did it occur examples. Lake cod
for example \-- lake code rapidly refills, so you could have some
successes in there as well but I just think you need to focus on this
misinformation that it wasn\'t neglect or anything on the part of the
councils. It was just catching up with the biology and the science
catching up with the biology and the status and what\'s been done, and a
lot has been done in a short period of time.

MR. KELLY: Granted. There are some other really good templates of this
kind of user information that\'s been made available. The State of
Florida did some really good stuff that kind of explains science to
anglers, and it broke down some pretty complex scientific principles
into really user-friendly messages. We\'re trying to do the same thing
for this with \-- that we\'ve done with management also with science so
that we can introduce some of those concepts and flesh out what
overfishing means and, you know, what these various terms, you know,
mean and how our science derives fisheries management plans but
addresses how overfishing and how that threshold really is kind of an
unknown variable sometimes until it\'s crossed, about the variety of
work we do and ongoing projects to develop our databases and to check
our models and to work \-- that\'ll probably be developed when the site
goes live, some little premier on fisheries science as well as
management.

MR. JONER: And maybe a featured species \--

MR. KELLY: Yes.

MR. JONER: \-- from each region.

MR. KELLY: But I like the idea of frequently asked questions, doing
something like that could be a very good way to address, you know, some
of these issues.

MR. RAUCH: All right.

MR. RAYBURN: Thank you. I mean we\'ve talked about this for years.
Congratulations on the point that you that you brought this. I think we
all working together \-- I think it\'s tremendous. And we talked about
earlier, again, it may be that school that we can use to move into some
appreciation for the work that the government does do in creating
sustainable fisheries in the nation and perhaps is being discounted.

But I think there are several issues maybe. I think one is you\'ve got
to apparently address the issue of the effectiveness of government to
give this type of message. Is it going to be effective or does it
require a third party to come in and evaluate the government in anything
they say about giving themselves a report card on the results of all the
money and all the actions and all the work that people are saying? So
you have to deal with that and maybe this is, you know, a good start.

But a couple of things. It seems to me when I went through some of the
pages, and I focused primarily on the ones in the Gulf region, you know,
there didn\'t seem to be the level of consistency from page to page that
I would prefer. I mean when you \-- and I\'m going to get into \-- I\'m
not going to take a long time \-- but I think if we\'re actually giving
U.S. seafood facts, then there ought to be something about seafood in
it. Really, what we\'ve got is U.S. fisheries facts. We talk about, you
know, how they\'re being managed and what the implications to habitat,
those are fisheries facts. They\'re not seafood facts, in my opinion.

It seems to me if it\'s going to be a seafood facts, you know, as I
think Dorothy said or Mary Beth said early on, you know, when you hit
them with a name \-- you could go to one of the pages \-- go to brown
shrimp because I want to talk about brown shrimp a little bit more \--
but you ought to say if it\'s a cod, you know, whatever it is \-- white
fish, mild in flavor, utilized for various activities as your first
bullet under this.

And then if you want to \-- it doesn\'t fit with brown shrimp, but it
seems to me if it\'s going to be a seafood thing, you ought to have
something about seafood up first. You know? It\'s mild, it\'s strong,
it\'s high in omega fat, fishy flavor, whatever the compliments are to
why somebody might want that particularly seafood item.

And then I would think in your bullets you would really want to have it
consistent through, you know, the quality of it as a seafood product. If
you want to talk about the management, that would be a nice bullet. If
you want to talk about the supply in the marketplace, whether it\'s 2
percent in the case of Atlantic cod or whether it\'s 90 percent. In the
case of shrimp, it\'s 10 percent domestic product in the marketplace,
something that reflects on its supply, the domestic supply in the
marketplace.

So, anyway, I would suggest that, you know, kind of get that frame of
reference in the first block where people are, if they get to the page,
that may be the stuff they want to look at. And then in some cases on
the fisheries, you\'ll talk about history going back to when they first
caught the fish, the first fish caught and documented in 1800\'s and
others you\'ll start with the first management element of that fisheries
stock. So I would suggest maybe some consistency there. I personally
like history and, you know, to say the fishery developed, you know,
wherever it did just is a nice complement to the story. And then if you
want to get into the details of the management, you know, in 1981, the
first management plan was passed, dah-dah-dah, that\'s okay. But I would
say you may want to look at, like the case of shrimp. Shrimp has \-- of
course, I\'ve lived it for a long time \-- but it\'s got an interesting
history, and it\'s really more of a cultural thing now than an economic
now for a lot of it. So I think if a person really is going to get into
it, they would get into it, you know, from the historical standpoint, at
least, as a warmup.

Also, in some pages, there\'s an advocacy issue that it\'s not
consistent from page \-- or fisheries to fishing. And that\'s why \--
you know, the brown shrimp stock primarily, if you look at it on the
page under additional information, it talks about the hurricanes of 2005
and, you know, the impacts and to keep the fisheries from going back to
this highly, seriously over capitalized shrimp fishery, the way it\'s
described, I mean, you know, you\'re going to lose a good portion of the
folks that may be your friends on this by still calling the shrimp
fishery a seriously over capitalized fishery. I mean after the storms
and everything, I mean I can see people \-- if nothing else, it\'s going
to increase your email. People are going to get really ticked about
that. Now if you \--

MR. KELLY: I\'ve got all of those going right to you actually.

MR. RAYBURN: Yes. I can\'t respond because I\'m a MAFAC, but \--

(Laughter.)

MR. RAYBURN: All right. But I think you need to be careful in those
kinds of advocacy issues, because, really, it seems to me the people
that are going to support this or potentially could support it most
would be the domestic seafood producers and marketers and folks like
that. And if you turn them off as an advocacy position, you may run out
of friends real quick. So I would \-- that\'s one of \--

MR. KELLY: Strong \--

MR. RAUCH: And plus, I don\'t think that\'s accurate any more and
certainly if it\'s not, to say that shrimp fisheries are over
capitalized any longer is, you know, that\'s residual, I think a
residual excuse for management action perhaps.

Let\'s see. I also thought \-- it may be, too \-- go back to the brown
shrimp deal where you \-- and it just \-- in the sustainability status,
you know, again, I think it was mentioned most folks, unless they\'re
involved, don\'t know what overfishing from overfished and what does no
mean. I would suggest in the sustainability status you go ahead and say
is it sustainable, yes or no, or is it sustainable with conditions. You
know? If you got to go through all that to figure out whether you\'re
going to buy it, you\'re going to be very confused, I mean and probably
would say, well, I\'m not going to buy brown shrimp, for example, I\'m
going to buy this other shrimp over here. You know? So I would think
what you\'re really trying \-- the message you\'re trying to convey
there \-- is it sustainable, or is it not sustainable, or is it
sustainable with conditions. And maybe that\'s too much red, yellow and
green, but still, I see this as an instrument to move to an, at least, a
validation of the management program for the U.S. fisheries.

And if we can\'t say it\'s sustainable, then \-- I mean if it\'s not
sustainable, we need to say that, don\'t buy it. You know? But I think
you may want to make that \-- you may want to consider just coming right
out and saying its sustainable, yes, with management, under management
conditions, it\'s sustainable; or no, it\'s not; or, you know, it\'s if
climate change, there may vulnerability here, so it\'s marginally
sustainable.

But if you go on down that page, I want to show you something. And I
think I mentioned this the last time we visited on this issue. Those
pictures right there, that first picture, if that\'s a brown shrimp,
it\'s got claws. That\'s a freshwater shrimp. I can\'t really see the
second segment, but it looks to me like that\'s a freshwater shrimp,
because it\'s got, as best I can tell, those are claws, so a macro \--
yes, macrobranchium, I would assume, if not a crawfish. And that, I
think, is a picture of a northwest shrimp harvest. I can\'t imagine a
brown shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico even having a fishery that
clean, that small, or that quantity. So I\'m not sure that this has
been, you know, validated yet, but I can \-- I seem to recall those same
pictures the last time we saw them. They haven\'t been changed yet, so I
don\'t know if that\'s just a beta set or not but \--

MR. KELLY: Yes. This is all part of the beta set.

MR. RAYBURN: Well, make sure that you put some kind of circle with a
cross over it or something. Again, if those go on the website, I think
you\'ve got problems from the get to. So please make not of that.

MR. KELLY: Okay.

MR. RAYBURN: But again, I want to \-- thanks for the time, and we don\'t
have time to get into the labeling deal as much as I\'d like to, but I
think \-- I sure \-- this is very positive and very important, and I
think if we \-- even if we go through and evolve this. To evolve it on
the same kind of parameters that are considered in developing the
certification for ecosystems labeling, the government saying
sustainability, yes; it talks about the habitat; all those kind of
things, whatever the implications are, so this could be a tool down the
road for, you know, validation by the U.S. government that the fishery
is sustainable and should be taken to the marketplace and then go back,
you know, get retailers to buy in on that. Does that make sense?

MR. KELLY: Yes, it does. Yes.

MR. RAYBURN: Thanks for your time.

MR. RAUCH: Sorry. We have about eight minutes passed where we\'re
supposed to take a break. I\'ve got three more people on the list \--
I\'ve got Foster, Dewey, Harafski. We could continue on. We could take a
break. We could continue after the break. What do people want to do?

MR. KELLY: I\'d say take a break.

(Laughter.)

MR. RAUCH: I think we\'ll break then and raise issues privately
afterwards, or if we need to reconvene for a few minutes when we come
back and talk about it for a little bit more, we can probably do that.

DR. HOGARTH: Let me know because I won\'t be here this afternoon,
because I\'ve been through this quite a bit going through. I\'d like to
go back to this. I think we need to look at a subcommittee or something
to deal with this issue. It\'s not going away. It\'s something that we
need to get involved in, but we need this group to get involved. We\'ve
got people around this table that need to help, so we will \-- we\'re
not going to forget this FishWatch.

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. KELLY: We need help.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes. We have all this on FishWatch, all this stuff,
whatever it is. What do we need to do as NOAA to get the consumers
comfortable with seafood and to correct them \-- therefore make
decision. With everything going on right now, I don\'t know what I\'d
be, if I really was a consumer, what I would be thinking. I wouldn\'t be
thinking very well and I\'m sure of that. You know? And I think it\'s
our job to try to do this. I know \-- I do. I think it\'s part of our
job, our mandate from Magnuson is to do this, and so we need help and
we\'re trying to do it. We\'re trying to do it right, but we need help,
so if you all walk away from here before the end of this week \-- this
week\'s over without helping us to find a way forward or, you know, a
roadmap forward, I\'d be disappointed.

MS. BRYANT: We\'ll hold it \-- we\'ll forward them all emails.

DR. HOGARTH: So.

MR. FISHER: But it is getting rolled out August the 5th?

DR. HOGARTH: Well, it\'s what we planned. The seafood show in New
Orleans, we sponsored that seafood show. And this year we\'re trying to
take it to second step. We\'re going to have the facts on it within the
next day of the, you know, so \--

MR. FISHER: Yes, but you\'ve got to deal with questions like conflicts
at work. I mean \--

DR. HOGARTH: But if we don\'t make it \--

MR. FISHER: \-- this whole theory \--

DR. HOGARTH: Randy, to do something, if it\'s not right, we\'re not
going to do it. Okay. We do it right or, you know, the initial stage of
where we\'re going type thing to let people know, that would be good.
But if \-- no, I don\'t want to do more damage than good \--

MS. BRYANT: And I want to defend Michael. A lot of this, we\'re working
really hard and we\'re looking for pictures and, Ralph, a lot of these
things are just placeholders. We\'ve got swordfish and some earlier on,
it was just MAFAC was meeting and we wanted to take advantage of it. But
you\'re absolutely right. That quality control is critical, so jump in.

DR. HOGARTH: Too much is a big problem.

MX\. McKENNA: Right. We can\'t do a hundred species initially by August.
We\'ve got out get, you know, the dozen or so that we kind of selected
right and get the template down on how we do those, and then we\'ll
start adding them as the years go on including crayfish.

(Whereupon, off record comments.)

MR. RAUCH: We\'re scheduled to come back at 1:45.

MS. BRYANT: You want to do one? I mean \--

DR. HOGARTH: Two.

MR. RAUCH: Two o\'clock.

(Whereupon, off the record at 12:46 p.m. and back on the record at 2:06
p.m.)

MR. RAUCH: We have some announcements?

MS. BRYANT: Right. One of the things we need to make certain about,
because this isn\'t our room and they have a 6:00 o\'clock function
here, we need to be out of here and stop the meeting at 5 sharp and
gather our stuff up. So just to give everybody that heads up, we\'ll
need to move out smartly.

I also wanted to mention the handouts. We have copies of the enrolled
MSA, Magnuson-Stevens Act, over there in the box, blue books. They\'re
rare and not yet fully printed for a second print, so if you don\'t need
it, please leave it, because we got lots of people wanting it. But by
all means, take what you need.

We also have the new National Marine Fisheries Service outreach plan
that Chris Moore\'s office and team have been working on for a long
time. That\'s available. And then also the business report for 2006 is
available, so I wanted to mention those handouts. Please take them so I
don\'t have to carry them back. And with that, back to you, Mr.
Chairman. And these are the three people in the queue.

MR. RAUCH: Yes. So we\'re going to return to the discussion of FishWatch
that we began before lunch, and we will have questions from the
presentation, and then for the \-- Dr. Hogarth\'s request that we
consider forming \-- or that MAFAC consider forming a subcommittee on
this. I believe that would be a proper topic for the full committee
sessions either if you have time tomorrow, or more likely, on Wednesday
afternoon to see how MAFAC wants to deal with that request. But we will
return to three questions, and if there\'s more, starting with John.

MR. FORSTER: Yes. I was reflecting on the idea that it\'s really the
main goal of this program is to provide your folks with the source of
seafood, you might almost say take that authority back from those
who\'ve appointed themselves as judges of the fish. Then you actually,
at some point, have to do is to take on the cards and just simply say in
this particular case, we disagree with the red card analysis in our
system, this particular group, or this group and just actually note \--
say this is our opinion and this is why. Because otherwise, it sort of
kind of ducks the primary purpose of the thing, if indeed that is the
primary purpose.

MR. KELLY: And yes, it is. And you\'re right. You know, a lot of the
information that we hope to have in each one of the species page has
been kind of informed by what has been created with the vacuum. Since we
weren\'t saying anything, all of these other voices kind of rushed in
and have said things, some of which we think probably are responsible,
other ones we know aren\'t. How then do we use this tool to address
those specifically? And I\'m not sure what the best way to do that other
than maybe as part of the species page to kind of say there is
information out there that says this is a, you know, for one reason
another, an inappropriate species. We could do that.

There\'s an interesting new website, though. There\'s a \-- Ralph Kramer
talked about FishBase. There\'s one called IncoFish, I-n-c-o-fish.org,
which is funded by partly UN money, also World Bank money. And one of
the things that IncoFish does is they link to FishBase and they also
have a list of all of the various seafood scorecard sites that are out
there. So you can go to their walleye pollock site, and you can see
Monterey Bay, Audubon, Natural Resources, South Carolina Aquarium, all
these different seafood scorecards that are available and see what the
ranking is for each one. And you\'ll find that they\'re all different
depending on what the ranking criteria are \-- by \-- from that
organization. So they\'re kind of all over the map and it\'s \-- it
would be difficult for us to kind of address that, the great variety of
opinion about those other than to say this is the authoritative source,
this is the right source, this is the source where a lot of these groups
come to to get their information. So anyway \--

MR. RAUCH: All right. Bill?

MR. DEWEY: As you were talking earlier, I was thinking about costs
associated with trying to reprint. You know, outside the website, if
you\'ve got handout materials or this wheel that Bill was talking about,
that information going\'s to become out of date relatively quickly if
we\'re \-- if NOAA\'s doing their job and these fish are rebounding and
so on. And thinking in this day of electronics, you know, maybe there\'s
an opportunity for public-private partnerships with some of these
retailers and restaurants or even the seafood distributors to go to like
a touch screen type setup in their stores or so on so that \-- whether
it\'s live or \-- they get periodic updates for their database or
something where people could, while they\'re standing there at the
seafood counter, get answers to these questions. Just a thought, outside
the box thinking there.

MR. KELLY: Yes. It\'s \-- that\'s a very good idea. And that\'s one of
the issues that, you know, make so many of the cards a problem because
they do go out of date pretty quickly, and that would be the same issue
that we\'d have to confront with whatever product like that that we
develop. One of the things that I did want to bring up earlier as part
of the species pages, we had talked about some of that stuff and some of
the other products that we see developing out of those. One of them is a
kind of a one-page summary, PDF, printable copy of the species page with
some condensed amount of the information from the species page on a
one-page PDF that people could download very easily and then bring with
them if they wanted to. Anybody else could then have kind of a one-page
summary of information on that species \-- very easy for us to update.

We see the possibilities in the not too distant future of actually being
able to link this to our databases, you know, that have landings
information, that have biomass information on them so that it\'s
realtime. I mean as the information comes to National Marine Fisheries
Service, it then becomes available to the public.

MR. RAFTICAN: Couple things. One I think Rob touched on a little bit
before is that you must talk to farmed seafood. Really, we are
well-managed. When you look at the world stage, we\'re clearly leaders.
And you need to have U.S. seafood up there, because I mean we\'re the
good guys in this. And if we don\'t tell that story, nobody will. The
target\'s consumer. Consumer will make choices.

If you want to bring the rest of the world \-- I mean we could work at a
disadvantage to most of the rest of the world because of the way they
manage fisheries. Well, if you make it economically viable for our
fishermen and our aquaculture, all of a sudden, you\'ve changed the
balance. If you want to bring the rest of the world along, you can yell
and scream all you want. Until you hit the pocketbooks, it really won\'t
make any difference. And what you do is you have a vehicle here that
actually can work very much in that direction.

I like the idea \-- the site does generate a lot of confidence because
it gives very specific information. I think one of the things \-- if
we\'re \-- it has to be relatively readable. I mean if you give levels
of biomass, you\'re going to lose people. But if you say, hey, these
fisheries are, and then maybe a simple guide at the bottom right, hey,
this is how it comes out so you got a tally there.

And I think the gear impacts are also important. From your NOAA
operating strategy, well-informed sets the standard, acts as a steward
of coastal and marine ecosystems. Ecosystems is the key word there. And
gear impacts really have \-- they bring in a very full picture of us,
also very important.

Swordfish, although we\'d like to think about it as being extremely
clean, their impacts of our fisheries that also are important. And
again, I think it\'s one of the things you mentioned, it\'s important.
Let\'s tell everybody\'s store there so, you know, bring ours out there
also.

And then finally, we\'re one of the people \-- we participate \-- you
know, Rob was talking about it before about, you know, the red, green
and yellow cards. You know, we worked with a couple of people on those
before, and I would try and bring some of the stuff that\'s going on
here back to those people so that the next time they go out there, they
can do a little bit better job of balancing some of the things that are
important to them.

MR. RAUCH: Any other comments or questions?

MR. CATES: Is there a way to have a section for current events where you
can give information?

MR. KELLY: Well, there\'s this. On the front page, we have this feature,
\"seafood and news\", where ongoing issues, like the monkfish issue last
week was a good one, or, you know, other things like that that there\'s
something important, there\'s something current. You know? We could even
use these as an opportunity to talk about some of the things that we\'ve
been doing in ending overfishing or certain milestones that are being
met for managers, the publication of important scientific documents,
things like that. So this\'ll be available on the front page, and
this\'ll link to some of the other resources within NOAA, like \"Fish
News\" that we do. So that\'s how we\'re going to be handling that.

In some cases, we thought it would be appropriate to do something on a
species page. For example, with monkfish, when there was the incident
last week and there was, you know, important stuff in the news, here\'s
the place where right on the very front of the page, we can put
something, you know, and just something in red or something that
highlights some sort of a newsworthy activity and, you know, take it
down in a week or so. But, you know, this would be a place where folks
could \-- know that they could go to get the right information.

The last thing that I wanted to leave you guys is my coordinates so you
could reach Katie and I. Here\'s our email addresses, phone numbers for
the Partnerships and Communications Office, and we\'re here, we\'re
happy to continue talking to you folks this week. If other ideas, things
like that come up when you get home, please stay in touch with us and
we\'ll be updating MAFAC on a regular basis with how the site is
progressing and what\'s going on in terms of any evaluations.

MR. RAUCH: All right. If there are no further questions or comments \--

MS. TOOLEY: We have just one last comment. Just to follow-up a little
bit on what Vince said earlier on the importance of perhaps developing
an area of, you know, highlighting communities, there was an article in
the New York Times a month of so ago \-- I don\'t recall the timing
quite well \-- but \-- and it sort of was a community profile of
Stonington, Maine, but it was not a balanced report in any way. And it
described the collapse of biodiversity in the region, and particularly
Gulf Maine cod, and the fact that we had an industrialized fishing fleet
that came up through the 70\'s, early 80\'s that, you know, had, you
know, bad effects on habitat, overfished the resource, and were fishing
with nets that were, you know, as big as football fields. And most of
that information was incorrect characterization of what the fleet is in
New England, which is primarily both offshore and shore family-owned
businesses.

And so I think that if, you know, the general public, they\'re reading
the New York Times and they think that this is accurate information, so
to have a place that you could refer people to. I mean at lunch, we
talked amongst ourselves in a very small group that people ask us
questions all the time. So if we could develop, you know, a place where
you could say I can tell you this but if you want to find out some
information, here\'s the place to go, I think it will \-- would just
have a huge value.

MR. KELLY: And if you or Bill or other folks have some ideas about an
appropriate way to tap that community story, and maybe there \-- it
would just be maybe a feature of the FishWatch site or a feature of the
profiles in fishing. The profiles in fishing page, though, is set up
kind of according to the same type of template that we did for the
species page where folks, you know, sort of free questions. And, you
know, I don\'t know how we would get a community to do that, but I like
that idea. I think it\'s an important story to tell. I\'m just not sure
of the right way, but if you\'ve got some ideas about how to include
that, we\'d certainly like to do that, so.

MR. RAUCH: Anything else? Thank you, Michael. Thank you for coming back
from lunch to \-- actually coming back from lunch. That was good. We
need to turn now to the \-- and let me just reiterate what I said at the
beginning. Dr. Hogarth has asked the MAFAC to become involved in this
issue and that should be a topic for one of the full committee sessions
later on, either tomorrow or Wednesday.

With that, let me turn to our next speaker. Alan Risenhoover is going to
talk to us about the new Magnuson-Stevenson Act and what we\'re doing to
implement it and some of the provisions in it.

MR. LEIPZIG: On Wednesday, subcommittees that exist are going to meet.
Is that task of certification and outreach and FishWatch going to be
assigned to one of those subcommittees or when is that coming back?

MR. LEIPZIG: Tomorrow we got presentations through the day. Bill had
talked about maybe having a subcommittee deal with this, maybe
appointing a new additional subcommittee and just I don\'t want to find
yourselves Wednesday and having it fall through the cracks.

MR. RAUCH: Well, yes, let\'s talk about that tomorrow after \-- during
the full committee the full committee discussion.

MR. LEIPZIG: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: And we can \-- but yet in the morning, we have a discussion
on the 20/20 project. At the end of that, let\'s have \-- because
that\'s when the full committee\'s going to be sort of in session, and
let\'s have the committee discuss who to assign it to and where to
assign it \--

MR. LEIPZIG: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: So that if there\'s a need either tomorrow afternoon for one
of the committees or Wednesday morning for one of the subcommittees to
meet to begin addressing that, we should do that.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Now Bill said to kill some time here while seeing what
people had for lunch. Any monkfish? Anyway anything you want to open
with here? But I did talk to Jim about this. What I thought I\'d do is
basically three things, and then we can have a discussion. I\'ve got a
few trick questions at the end for MAFAC folks.

But what I thought I\'d do to give a quick overview of the Act, of what
was in it real quick. This presentation is up on our website, and the
website address will be at the end. And we\'re really trying to use that
website and put everything we can up there. There\'s an implementation
task tracking table up there, so if you look at those provisions of the
act that had deadlines, we have those up there, what the status is and
what the latest information people can get on that particular item is.

And again, I\'ll have that website address at the end, but we really
want people to go to that website to try and follow along as a first
step of what\'s up \-- or in keeping themselves up to date with what\'s
going on with the Act. So again, this presentation is up there. Stop me
if there\'s something you want some clarification on but just to give an
overview.

After the overview, I thought I\'d turn to what we see as one of the
major issues in the re-authorization, and that\'s the annual catch limit
provisions. And so I\'ll give you a quick overview of what we see as
that provision meaning, what some of the results were from the public
hearing, public scoping hearing, we add on that. And then we can talk a
little bit about where we\'ll be going with that.

I\'ll then also quickly go over the environmental review processes that
we\'re trying to revise, the NEPA processes, and we can talk about some
of the public comment we\'ve gotten to date on that and hear from you.
And then I\'ll give you an update on just a couple other projects that
we\'re working on right now out of the multitude of what we\'re working
to implement the Act, and that would be the limited access privilege
programs, maybe a little bit on the catching, the by-catch reduction
engineering program or other things folks may be wondering what we did.

Okay. So the goals of the 2006 amendments were varied, but the main ones
that came out of it were to end overfishing, and there was a lot of
discussion on should we end overfishing, what should the tool or the
mechanism be, and I\'ll go through that a little bit more. One of the
Administration priorities is promote market-based management approaches,
and that developed into the limits of access privilege program
provisions.

Another major goal we had was to improve the science of the act,
especially how and what is the sciences role in decision making. The big
one, of course, that many of you are involved in is the recreational
data, the NMFS and the recreational registry. And then finally, the
Administration didn\'t propose any amendments regarding international,
but about a third of the bill wound up being international provisions.
So I\'ll address those briefly as well.

As I said, the big one to us is the annual catch number limits, the new
requirement for fishery management plans. And I\'ll kind of repeat
myself in the next one, so I\'ll be brief here. But basically, the
fishery needs to have an annual catch limit in place by 2010 for those
subject \-- for stocks subject to overfishing, in 2011 for all others.
And these\'s an exception for annual life cycle stock such as shrimp.
And there\'s also a provision \-- it a \-- it depends on how that
fishery is doing internationally as well what you do with Mexico.

And again, this is the presentation that\'s up on our website and we\'re
trying to keep it up. I think everybody \-- not everybody maybe \-- a
lot of folks know Rachel O\'Malley who\'s here, our Environmental \--

MS. O\'MALLEY: Liaison.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- Liaison. I didn\'t know if it was Environmental
Liaison or Non-governmental Organization Liaison. But anyway, she\'s
working to kind of keep this updated, so we try, on the website, show
how people can stay involved in the process. They\'re developing these
guidelines, and you\'ll see those throughout presentation.

For overfished stocks or stocks approaching overfished, the management
measures must be fair and implemented to end overfishing immediately
within two years of the notification. So that\'s on the rebuilding side,
and that\'ll be effective in 2009.

On the market-based purchase side, and I\'ll take a few minutes since
we\'ll talk a little bit about that later. But I don\'t have a specific
presentation on that, more just some trigger questions for you. Again,
we look at this as an additional tool for fisheries management. It
involves a transferrable permit that specifies the amount of a catch to
a specific privilege holder, what they may harvest.

Again, the goals are to rebuild overfished stocks, reduce overcapacity,
promote safety, provide economic benefits. And this is the one we hope
comes out with advanced notice of the post rule making in a few weeks,
days, hours, I\'m sure right now, hopefully soon. So we\'ll talk a
little bit more about that. It requires that the allocation of these
harvest provisions be fair, be equitable. There\'s a number of pages
that we have to talk about these limited access privilege programs and
how they should be implemented.

Again, there was an additional provision in there that there needs to be
a referendum conducted in the Gulf of Mexico or New England. We\'re also
on a separate track. There\'s a lot of guidance for those two procedures
as well.

On improving the science, we wanted to make sure that the \-- or the
Congress wanted to make sure that the science and statistical committees
were involved in the process and wanted to make sure we have some peer
review process. There\'s regional ecosystem pilots required in the Act,
and it also requires attempts to do these five-year research plans. So
there\'s a lot of things going on in the research side of this act as
well. And the councils are currently starting on some of these in
advance a guidance we may give them. So research programs. We\'re also
authorized by-catch reduction, deep sea corals and cooperative research.

So again, on improving the science, the main one is on recreational
fisheries, new angler survey, new angler registry and also how do we
improve the MRFSS program. And what came out of the Act is a lot aligned
with the National Academy of Sciences report we got the previous year.
And then on the commercial fishing side, we\'re able to collect the
fisheries information we need now per some of the economic side, some of
the economic analysis.

International fishing, the big one was to address IUU, illegal,
unreported, unregulated fishing and also by-catch. So we need to submit
a biannual report to Congress on international compliance with these
provisions. We\'ll then certify whether those nations are taking
appropriate actions to address the issue. And then if they\'re not,
they\'ll be subject to potential sanctions over the High Seas Driftnet
Enforcement Act.

Enhancing international cooperation, there are recommendations to the
State Department and Congress to end overfishing, that is to establish
to these regional fishery management organizations or to work through
current regional management organizations to end the overfishing. We
need to maintain historical U.S. catch shares internationally. There\'s
the establishment of a new position or the requirement for somebody in
the administration to be a secretarial representative for international
fisheries, and we provide assistance to other agents, other nations
through technology transfer. And two specific ones there were the
Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention implementation and the
U.S.-Canada Whiting Agreement.

One of the other things that\'s taking a lot of our time or that we\'re
looking closely at is the Act required us to revise our procedures for
implementing NEPA for fisheries management actions. So the goal was to
integrate NEPA better with fisheries management while still maintaining
the requirements and the \-- of NEPA. So we\'ve been working with
regional council through the council coordinating committee. We\'ve also
been working with the council on environmental quality to revise these
procedures and regulations within the next year. And I have a separate
presentation I\'ll run through real quick on that on where we are
exactly.

Some other important provisions that the Act included were it
strengthens the conflict of interest rules for the councils. It also
requires this SSCs to file financial disclosure statements. I mentioned
a little bit about the deep sea corals, joint enforcement agreements
with the states. We\'d had a program for a number of years on joint
enforcement agreements. This formalizes that in the statute. It
authorizes our community-based restoration program, another program we
had had for a number years. This formalizes it in the statute as well.

There\'s two large provisions on coastal disaster assistance and
hurricane assistance programs stemming from the issues in the Gulf of a
couple years ago that we\'ll be implementing as well.

So our priorities in implementing this was looking at what was in the
Act and what we had requested them to look at, and so we\'ll talk about
a number of these today or I think \-- do you have a session on
recreational fishing, too?

MS. BRYANT: We do and that\'s scheduled for Wednesday morning.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. So as I mentioned, we\'ll talk about the annual
catch limits and NEPA here this afternoon. The international provisions
\-- we don\'t have a focus on at this meeting. Perhaps that\'s something
for a future meeting or we can discuss it to a degree here. But then
we\'ll also took a little bit of by-catch engineering and a little bit
of the LAPP program, as I mentioned.

In summary \-- so anyway, that was a quick overview of it. If anybody
has any questions, we can address those now or I\'ll move on. But again,
here\'s my important point. I feel like, you know, the last two
presentations here we\'ve just been pointing you at websites. We\'re
going to point you at another website here. But again, this is what
we\'re trying to put up there so everybody knows what\'s going on on
individual provisions of the Act and what the latest information or
status of things are. That\'s kind of the first stop, one stop shopping.
So any questions or shall I move on to ACL? Vince?

MR. O\'SHEA: Alan, a quick question. You had a slide there saying a
secretarial position in international fisheries, and there is a deputy
assistant secretary within NOAA right now that does international. And
then we were told this morning that Dr. Hogarth was going to focus some
time on international fisheries. Is that somehow connected?

MR. RISENHOOVER: I don\'t know. I\'d let Sam discuss if that\'s
connected. But this provision doesn\'t come into effect until 2009. And
that\'s the designee for this position, a senate-confirmed position
within the \--

MR. O\'SHEA: So it creates a new deputy assistant secretary position?

MR. RISENHOOVER: It says that somebody will be appointed with those
authorities or designated to have those authorities.

MR. O\'SHEA: Right. That\'s different.

MR. RAUCH: It\'s different from what Bill\'s doing. Bill\'s going to
focus on \--

MR. O\'SHEA: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: \-- ICCAT out at sea and \--

MR. O\'SHEA: So you guys envisioning another DAS in NOAA, deputy
assistant secretary level in NOAA, or you\'re just saying one of those
deputy assistant secretaries will be given an international fisheries
portfolio?

MR. RAUCH: We could do either. That\'s \-- haven\'t figured that out
yet. We don\'t have to deal with it until 2009.

MR. O\'SHEA: Okay. Thanks.

MR. RISENHOOVER: It says somebody should be designated as that, and that
person needs to be Senate confirmed \--

MR. O\'SHEA: Okay.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- whether it\'s a current position or a new one.

MR. O\'SHEA: Got it. Thank you.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. Other thoughts, questions? Annual catch limits,
as I said, is one thing we\'re spending a lot of time on. It\'s
something we dumped out quickly after the Act passed to get going on,
because we knew it was going to be such a large issue.

So again, the Act requires that annual catch limits and accountability
measures be implemented in 2010 for fisheries determined by the
Secretary to be subject to overfishing. So depending on what last report
you saw, that\'s in the order of 45, 48, 46 stocks that are subject to
overfishing right now. So we need to get annual catch limits in place
for them by 2010 and then in fishing year 2011 for all other fisheries.
So that\'s the requirement. Okay? Pete?

MR. LEIPZIG: For those plans - the annual limit on how much can be
caught, what is going to be required?

MR. RISENHOOVER: And that\'s what we\'re in the process of developing
now. Looking at the requirements of the new Act, we\'re trying to
develop guidance for the councils to determine whether \-- do they have
a catch limit now that meets the requirements of the act or not.

MR. LEIPZIG: So what they are doing may be adequate or it may require
some plain amendment just for semantics?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Do they need to do something new and different. The
other half of this is the accountability measure. So one is you set the
annual catch limit, but then what is the accountability measure to
ensure that overfishing is being presented. So \-- and again, some
councils may have that, some may not, some may have one, not the other,
or they need to adjust in some way or other. Okay?

And we see the accountability measures and the annual catch limits kind
of working together in coordination, so again, since they must end
overfishing on the fisheries for stocks subject to overfishing, they
also need to prevent overfishing. So on one hand, you have your annual
catch level. The other hand, you have your accountability measure which
is the what do you do if you\'re not hitting your annual catch level as
a target. And so we\'ll talk a little bit more about that. And I\'ll get
into some of the comments we received on the scoping document I think
many of you have already seen.

So our preliminary interpretation of this going in was that for each
managed stock, you need to establish what the overfishing level is. We
need to know what that is so that an annual numerical amount of catch or
something \-- some proxy to that. It\'s not this annual or this
overfishing level isn\'t identified in the Act. It\'s something we\'re
suggesting. It\'s something that the councils need to consider since
they\'ve got to prevent overfishing. You have to know at what level that
overfishing is. Mary Beth?

MS. TOOLEY: I\'m just curious why you would want to create a new term? I
mean all the different terms and acronyms, they really do confuse the
public. And in my mind, an old fishing level is MSY. So why would you
just not say MSY? I mean why create a new term?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Because that may not be the overfishing level for all
stocks around the country, and overfishing may be below that MSY level,
so it\'s very stock dependent. The second one, though, is the annual
catch level, but it is specified in the Act. And so what we\'re saying
is we need a relationship between those two levels, so if for some
reason MSY is your overfishing level, then your annual catch level is
what you want to shoot for each year so that you don\'t exceed that
overfishing level.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. And I think that \-- thank you. I mean that helped some
but I do still think that in general, the introduction of new terms when
people are used to certain terms is very confusing. I mean you have \--
you set an MSY level, OY is, you know, MSY reduced by, you know, certain
things, socioeconomic and uncertainty or whatever, and that would be
your annual catch limit, you know, OY would, and the \-- how all these
things intertwine, I think, is where a lot of the confusion is coming
from.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And that\'s what we\'re trying to explain in
these guidelines is how those relate. So the overfishing level would be
the limit, what you don\'t want to exceed. Now if that\'s defined as OY
in a specific fishery, okay. But then your annual catch level typically
would seem to need to be something lower than that as your target. Now
maybe they could be the same, and maybe that distance between them needs
to be great. And that\'s what this is showing. So you establish what
your overfishing level is. That\'s the trigger in the Act that says you
need to have something that ensures you do not \-- that it prevents
overfishing in the fishery. Then you have a catch level, and there would
be a distance between those two.

And as I\'ll talk a little bit later \-- and this is one of the kind of
trigger questions I mentioned that we\'ll want to get some feedback from
the Committee on here \-- is how those two are going to relate. So the
distance between those two would be if you have an overage, so if for
some reason you go over your annual catch limit, you\'re still not
exceeding your overfishing limit. So the closer those two are together,
the better your science and management need to be on controlling that
fishery and then monitoring what\'s happening.

So again, the initial criteria \-- again, this is nothing set in stone
yet. This is just our presentation that we have taken around the country
to stimulate conversation on it. So you have your overfishing level and
your annual catch level. They need to be set for each managed fishery or
stock. They can be set for multiple years. You just have to have an
annual one each year, a numerical annual value, weight or number of
fish, and they need to include all sources of mortality so that you\'re
looking at everything that\'s happening to the stock. So landings,
discards, and all the sectors of the consumer stock.

MR. FISHER: So, Alan, why wouldn\'t somebody set their overfishing level
at some ungodly high level?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, the overfishing level \--

MR. FISHER: Where you\'d never, ever go home?

MR. RISENHOOVER: That\'s going to be a basic science-determined thing.
Now remember the annual catch levels, the SSC\'s recommends what that
level should be to the councils, and the councils can\'t \--

MR. FISHER: Right.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- exceed it. So the overfishing level and the annual
catch levels are going to be based on the science. So the overfishing
level is what we do now. We look at the stocks and based on our stock
assessments determine whether overfishing is occurring. And that relates
to a level of catch per year. So one of the \--

MS. TOOLEY: One quick question. Your threshold mortality limit, that
does not equal MSY? I mean I\'m not saying, correct me if I\'m wrong.
It\'s a rate of fishing?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right.

MS. TOOLEY: It\'s not a hard number so MSY is a hard number \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, you have \-- the biomass \--

MS. TOOLEY: \-- then you\'re not saying \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- is what you want the population to be basically.
Then your fishing mortality is the rate that you\'re removing from that.
Your f-value.

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MR. RISENHOOVER: So your annual catch limit is translating that f-value
into a number of fish, number or weight, some way of measuring how many
fish are removed that particular year.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. Unfortunately both the fishing level doesn\'t mean
just attributable to fishing. And that was something the administration
tried to change in the act was to try and get that as a depleted level
so that if it\'s environmental or it\'s something else or fishing, that
it doesn\'t sound like the only thing that\'s causing this maybe
overfishing.

Okay. So another issue that we see as critical in determining the
guidelines we\'re going to put out on these is what do you do with
different sectors. What do you do with the different parts of the
fishery, recreational, commercial, state fishery Maybe there\'s two
types of commercial fishery, a hook fishery and a gill net fishery. So
how do you separate those ACLs out by sector? Do you have one ACL for
the whole fishery or stock, or do you separate that out into individual
ACLs for the sectors with the idea that you would have an ACL for the
stock and the sub-ACLs would then subdivide into that other ACL?

We\'ll talk a little bit \-- one of the questions we may want to make
that \-- to wrestle with, is how do these sectors interact. Is each
sector responsible for its ACL if they go over? They\'ve got to have
some accountability measures to take them back? Or does the
accountability measure happen at the next level up? If one sector goes
way over, other two sectors may have to pay or reduce their targets or
have season closures or some accountability measure. How do those three
things \-- how do those three sectors in this slide interact? And how do
those accountability measures apply to each of those sectors?

So a little bit on accountability measures. We would see two basic
types, the preventive or the corrective. And the preventive, again,
it\'s going to depend on the fishery, what kind of information you have
and how is the fishery conducted, what\'s the reporting schedule for it.
You might have preventive in-season ones where you notice where you
notice you\'re getting close to the ACL and you\'re able to back that
fishery off in season. Or you have specific season to harvest quotas,
maybe you go over in the first one and that you go a little bit under or
you slow the rate of fishing down.

The second one would be corrective, that is after all the information is
entered, the fishing year is over, you went over or under and you may
have a payback provision. Now again, a payback provision of fish isn\'t
the only way to do this. You may have more seasonal closures or area
closures depending on the individual stock. But we do need these
accountability measures established for each stock and probably each
sector as I mentioned the slide before.

So kind of the overarching issue we have is there\'s so many fisheries.
There\'s 530 stocks we report on in our annual status of the stocks
report. So you\'ve got a lot of stocks that are different biologically.
You\'ve got a lot of stocks that are different the way the fisheries
prosecute it, the timely reporting, so the management approaches are
going to vary. We\'ve got 46 fishery management plans. I think I said
the data varies. So what we\'ve got to do is design some guidance that
kind of works for everything but ensures we have catch limits that work
and accountability measures that they go for.

So a couple of key factors on the management side \-- there may be some
that are more appropriate in some fisheries than others, different
levels of control on the harvest. You have specific \-- you know, the
strain would be an individual fishing quota for \-- you have so many
fish to catch and you report that or so many pounds of fish and report
that. Others would be along the open access side of things. That\'s
going to vary on how you have an accountability to ensure your ACL.

Monitoring scientific knowledge and then uncertainty \-- you may have
good reporting but the uncertainty is really big. How does that affect
the distance between your ACL and your overfishing habit? But all these
combined are what we\'re trying to look at now.

This is one we put together specifically for the state director\'s
meeting was how do catch limits affect state limits, or how do state
limits or state harvests affect the federal ACL. So if you have a
federal ACL and that\'s all taken by the states pushes you into federal
waters. And again, the science is the key consideration. What data do
you have? When do you have it? How good is that data? How often do you
get that data? Precision of the data? What\'s the method you collect the
data? Is it paper logbooks? How fast can you turn those paper logbooks
around? Is it electronically reported? How fast does that take you? So
all this is going to matter on how you set your accountability measures
as well as your ACLs.

Let\'s see. More here. What do we do for unknown stocks where you don\'t
have the basic data to even determine whether they\'re \-- overfishing
is occurring or not. How do you deal with those situations? How do you
bring in all the information? Some of these problems that we have now,
they become a little bit more acute when we\'re trying to set an annual
catch limit and then monitor it \-- monitor to it each year.

One big consideration we\'ve been thinking about is kind of the
timeliness. If your data comes in in-season so you perhaps have
electronic data reporting where at the end of each day, the vessel
reports how much it caught, you can kind of have day-to-day monitoring.
Well, what if you don\'t have that? What if you don\'t have the data
that comes in 18 months late? How do you set the annual catch limit for
the next year? How do you keep ahead of that and catch the problem of
overfishing before it gets out of control. And then the worst of all,
what if you don\'t have any catch data at all? How do you monitor this?
How do you set an accountability measure to ensure that overfishing
isn\'t occurring?

So this diagram I don\'t think we need to spend a lot of time on, but it
just shows that you\'ve got to set your management strategy. What are
the goals of that? Look at your data collection. Look at how your data
is analyzed. See if you can monitor in-season or if you have to have a
longer monitoring accountability cycle and feed that back into the
management.

Okay. So, as I mentioned, we came out in April with a scoping notice of
some of these concepts I\'ve gone over here today. Those were included
in a scoping document. We took comments. The comment period is closed. I
guess that went out in February, closed in April is what I was trying to
say. And Laurel has put that in your book. So the scoping notice didn\'t
have a lot of information in it, but we did give a presentation a little
more detailed than this and probably better delivered at eight regional
council meetings, plus we\'ve had one national scoping meeting here in
DC.

So we took those comments. There were over 2,000 comments, kind of the
number one comment if we were reporting, what is that show, the survey
said? Improve your data. The biggest concern we got was everybody
thought what you really need is better data to implement these. So
we\'re going to be looking on the science side of improving our data.
And you\'ll see budget requests, hopefully following that event. But
what we\'ve got to do is we\'ve got to implement these annual catch
limits by 2010 anyway. So we need to improve our data.

There were comments on develop guidelines specifically on optimum yield;
how do you deal with state fisheries \-- a lot of this I\'ve already
mentioned \-- provide the SSC. The SSC\'s role, as I mentioned, is a
little stronger now that they recommend to the council and the council
can\'t exceed that level plus short time cycles referring to season
adjustments. If you have a fishery that gives reporting weekly, monthly,
or does it report annually or how long does it take us to get to that
was another concern. So you can see a lot of those are related to the
science of things.

Folks thought that annual catch limits should also support rebuilding
stocks, that is don\'t just end overfishing if it\'s an overfished
stock, you need to move that toward rebuilding the stock as well.
Protect the sectors from each other \-- I mentioned that. How do these
sectors interact? How do their accountability measures interact? How do
we set ACLs for them?

People mentioned paybacks. There\'s a lot of talk about the buffer
between your overfished level, overfishing level and your annual catch
level. How do you decide how wide that buffer should be? How close could
you go up to that overfishing level? And then the mixed stock exception
some thought was incompatible with these new regulations or these new
Magnuson Act requirements.

So that\'s a quick on what we got as comments. Thought I\'d spend just a
minute on where we\'re going next, and then we can talk a little bit
about how MAFAC can help us get there. I mentioned we had the scoping
meetings February through April. Our goal is to get a draft
environmental impact statement out in the July timeframe and have a
45-day public comment on the proposed rule at the same time. That\'s a
very tight deadline.

As I mentioned, we got 2,000-2,500 comments. We\'re pulling all those
together, going through them. They did identify a number of issues we
hadn\'t initially thought of back in February or March. And so while
we\'re working on that, July is still our goal but we\'ll see what
happens this week as we move forward with the draft.

Ultimately, our goal is to get the final guidelines out by the end of
the year. And we feel like the sooner we get those guidelines out, the
better, because then the councils can take those guidelines and start
setting their ACLs. So there may be some things the council can do
immediately, like if they don\'t have a process for setting an annual
catch limit, they might want to get that process in place or then later
decide what the annual catch level is when you get some additional
information on it.

But again, our goal is to get that out, hopefully, by the end of the
year. And the councils are going to do their jobs by 2010 or 2011. That
does it.

Do you want to talk a little bit about annual catch levels before we
move on to NEPA or the others, or shall I just run through everything
and then we\'ll circle back?

MR. CONNELLY: Folks seem like they\'re engaging as you go along, so do
you want to just run through everything?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: Do you want to see if there are any questions on this?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. Anybody has questions? Or if I muddled it so much
folks are confused? Yes?

MR. CATES: On council websites, should it list the species and their
value? Correct?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. Most council websites I do believe do have a list
of species \--

MR. CATES: And everything else is basically a state\'s responsibility?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, for the fisheries that occur in the state waters,
yes. So some states may manage stocks that don\'t occur in federal
waters or on the East Coast, if they predominantly occur in state
waters, there\'s the Atlantic Coastal Act that they manage those under.

MR. CATES: Does the National Marine Fisheries step in if fish is being
overfished in the state water or is it purely a state issue?

MR. RISENHOOVER: That\'s a good question and that\'s one of the things
we\'re going to circle back for is if we, in our work, discover that the
amount of annual catch limit for a certain stock is x and x is being
caught in state waters, what do we do? Do we close federal waters? Do we
preempt the states managing their waters? Do we work with the state to
try and find some agreement in between? So this was something that
Hawaii very recently did.

MR. CATES: Yes.

MR. RISENHOOVER: It\'s probably \--

MR. CATES: We\'re dealing with that right now.

MR. RISENHOOVER: And so that\'s going to be \-- as you set these annual
catch limits, we got to look at that in the management that\'s currently
occurring. So the state may be managing within three miles. There may be
an international agreement or something also that may determine how you
manage this whole \-- but we\'ve got to move both sides of this and try
and take into account these new regs. Bob?

MR. FLETCHER: Couple of years ago, a survey council was sued by an
environmental group on dark blotch rockfish, and the result of the
lawsuit was that the council became much more conservative in the way it
was managing those stocks. And you may not be familiar with the lawsuit
or the results of that, but it appears to me that much of the concern
that led to this change in Magnuson was addressed, by the Pacific
Council anyway, when they became more conservative in their total
allowable catch and closed areas, etcetera. Are you all familiar with
that approach that took place there?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. I think you\'re probably even more familiar with
that than I am. Now does that meet the standard we\'re ultimately going
to have in these guidelines? I don\'t think we know yet.

MR. FLETCHER: Well, I just \-- maybe one question I have is in the case
of the Pacific council, it appears that much of the painful adjustment
that would lead to setting this overfishing level and etcetera, annual
catch limits, we\'ve already gotten drug through the dirt on because of
that lawsuit.

MR. RAUCH: I think that was the question earlier about whether some
councils already comply, and I \-- we presumed that there are councils
out there and fishery management structures that do already comply with
this structure, and then there will be some that don\'t. And it\'s just
our task is to identify which ones those are. We\'re not presuming that
every council everywhere is going to have to change everything that they
do.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. Other questions? Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: How does one evaluate? If someone, some community that has
like the responsibility for determining the quality of the data so that
you can then determine how to move. Does the the SSC or the Sea Guard or
the National - started looking at the overfishing list and the
overfished list and ask the scientists, you know, are you rating those
by whether we have adequate data to possibly set an ACL and if certain
developments were going through a one through five scale, which is, you
know, one \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: We probably have \-- we\'re pretty certain we would
have enough information to set an ACL, whereas five is, you know \-- and
so they\'re trying to arrange \-- array that. But if you think of the
ACL and the accountability measurements being kind of working in unison
so that if you had really good data, maybe your ACL gets close to that
overfishing level, especially if you have good monitoring and reporting
of the catches when it goes about that ACL.

And remember, perhaps not going above the ACL is always a bad thing. It
may not have a biological impact. Where you\'re going to start worrying
is when you start going above that overfishing level. So that ACL is how
you stay under the overfishing level.

Now if you don\'t have really good data and you don\'t have realtime
monitoring, maybe that ACL needs to drop down a little. Or if you make
the choice that, okay, I don\'t have that good a data, but I think
we\'re doing okay and you move that ACL back up, well, what does that do
to your accountability measure? Your accountability measure would have
to be much harsher then, because, you know, if you move that ACL up and
you go over by this much, then that accountability measure needs to
bring that down either that much or even below.

And so there\'s going to be, I think, kind of a learning process over
time as how much buffer you have depending on how much you go over,
because you don\'t want to have your accountability measure kick in
every time. So if you\'re managing right up to that line and you go
over, it kicks in. Maybe that\'s a bad thing that \-- the mark is bad
for the fishermen. So maybe you move that ACL down and you vary around
it based on your management experience.

But the idea of scientific uncertainty is something that we\'ve talked a
lot about. We held a workshop in Seattle a couple of weeks ago that I
think perhaps some of you even went to to talk about those sort of
things, about how do we set some uncertainty around these stocks? How
does that vary with your ACL? How does that vary with how we set them in
the first place, or can we set them?

MR. RAYBURN: I hope they will kind of like subdivide the assessment
where you might be a five level of data, say a three. You know, you
might have good fishery reporting data, accurate, you know, take but
maybe your spawning data is not good or something \-- we have that, too,
so there\'ll be some opportunity to focus cooperative research or
something in those areas is lacking.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. To identify those areas where we need more, how
we fund that or how we get that information would be, you know, either
we do it, we do it cooperative \--

MR. RAYBURN: Sure.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- or somebody else does it. But, yes, try and take
all that into account. And that\'s something that will feed into what
the SSCs will be doing when they provide advice to the councils. Mary
Beth?

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. I guess I just continue to struggle with \--
particularly with the buffer zone. You know, I think I\'m just familiar
with a process in which you do take into account all the uncertainties,
but it still is that difference between MSY and OY. And that\'s where
the buffer is often created in the fisheries that I\'m just to working
with.

So if you \-- all the uncertainties you might have with a retrospective
pattern in the stock assessment would be considered there, any social
and economic concerns would be considered there, and, you know, good
catch reporting and statistics, all that stuff, it\'s all considered in
that particular place.

So it sounds like you\'re going to do that and then you\'re going to,
like, do it again. And you\'re going to \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well \--

MS. TOOLEY: \-- so it\'s going to drive the numbers down further. And so
I just don\'t understand why you need to have the buffer. I really
don\'t.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. But you\'re overfishing level typically isn\'t at
OY, right? Wouldn\'t it be below that somewhere?

MS. TOOLEY: No.

MR. RISENHOOVER: No. So your overfishing level is OY? So if we \--

MS. TOOLEY: Well, it depends on how one interprets overfishing level. If
your overfishing level is what would be detrimental to the, you know,
the total biomass of the stock, then OY is well below that.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. Okay. So if OY, for the New England council is
what you\'re setting as your overfishing level, then what we\'re saying
is the annual catch level needs to be probably below that a little so
you have a buffer so that if you\'re shooting at the annual catch level
and you go over, it doesn\'t trigger overfishing. Because if you\'re
always shooting at the limit, you\'re going to miss high occasionally.

MS. TOOLEY: I guess I just struggle with the OFL then, because I mean,
you have MSY. Now we\'re going to have some new OFL, I guess, that\'s
less than MSY. And then we\'re going to have OY that\'s less than OFL,
and OY is what we fish at. The interaction \-- I think maybe if you had
an opportunity to like take the concept and apply it to a couple of very
different fisheries that it would be easier for people to interpret the
outcome.

MR. RISENHOOVER: And that is something I\'ve talked to my staff about is
we really get hung up on what we call things.

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MR. RISENHOOVER: And so maybe we should focus on the definition so the
OFL is the level where there\'s no overfishing. So if you fish above
that OF, or OY level in your case, if you fish above that certain line,
then overfishing is occurring. If your catch is below that certain line,
whatever we call it, you\'re not overfishing. Overfishing is a
well-established term we\'ve had for \--

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- ten years now. So you want to prevent overfishing.
That\'s the goal.

MS. TOOLEY: And I can understand that as a goal. It\'s just when we have
these numerous, you know, definitions of and acronyms of different
things, how they all, you know, mix together and what comes out the over
side is very important.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And we\'ve talked about that. You know, when we
get to kind of the environmental review stuff, we\'ve talked about
framework actions. A framework action in New England is much different
than a framework action in Alaska, so let\'s talk about what we mean,
not what we call it. And so maybe we need to be more sensitive to that
as we go through here.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. And maybe if you took it and applied it to, you know,
particular \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. But we need to set \--

MS. TOOLEY: \-- species.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- an ACL that ensures that overfishing does not
occur. And if we exceed that ACL and overfishing is occurring, we need
an accountability measure to address that.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. I mean, but I just \-- in terms of \-- I mean you also
need to achieve OY. I mean that\'s the primary goal of the Act is to
achieve OY. So I don\'t think you want to be setting buffers in such a
fashion that you can\'t achieve OY for the fisher.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And over the long term. OY is not instantaneous,
it\'s over the long term. So we can \--

MS. TOOLEY: No. Generally, like for herring, OY is not instantaneous
over the long term, MSY is, and OY varies through the specification
process that can be on an annual basis.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. So if we think about herring, you may have the
basis of this concept already, and we may be running into the \"what do
we call it\" \--

MS. TOOLEY: Well, that\'s what I wonder, so I mean \-- and I\'m getting
caught up in the terms, I think. And so if you could take the concept,
apply it to a couple of different managed species in a way they\'re
currently managed, what does that specifically mean for those species?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. And internally, we\'re starting to look at that.
We\'ve asked each of the councils to give us information on how they see
annual catch limits being implemented currenlty in their fishery.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes, because I think we \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: We haven\'t received that from New England yet.

MS. TOOLEY: We\'re just concerned in some of the conversations that
I\'ve had regionally in New England that if you \-- that what proposed
might really take away some of the flexibility you need for different
managed species because of, you know, whether it\'s, you know, sedentary
scallops or, you know, something that\'s highly \-- well, highly
migratory is not under the councils but I think you know what I mean.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. And so part of what we\'re also looking at is, you
know, I talked about the diversity of fisheries. How do we maintain the
flexibility in our guidelines to ensure that the councils can act in a
way that makes sense? It\'s not going to be a one size fits all, but we
need a concept that fits all. Other questions?

MR. SCHWAAB: I was trying to find the slid. There was some discussion
\-- you mentioned fisheries that were managed solely by effort
constraints, and I\'m not sure I understand how you transitioned from
that to the annual catch level.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And that\'s a question where if you have effort
controls, days at sea, for example, how do you translate that into an
annual catch limit and monitor toward it? And does that occur in-season
or does it occur after the end of the year? And depending on if it\'s
high or low, what do you do about it?

MR. SCHWAAB: And that presumes that you\'re able to set some catch limit
in advance. Is there an exception for the annual life cycle?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. There is an annual life cycle exemption \--

MR. SCHWAAB: Okay.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- exception.

MS. TOOLEY: Well, I think days at sea is a good example of effort
controls. It\'s used in a couple of fisheries in New England, but I
think you also have effort controls that are pretty much used in all
recreational fisheries.

MR. SCHWAAB: Well, there\'s lots of effort controls. The question is if
that\'s the only thing you have.

MS. TOOLEY: Right.

MR. SCHWAAB: Then everything that you\'re doing with respect to catch is
sort of after the fact, sometimes much after the fact.

MR. RISENHOOVER: How do you translate that into an annual catch limit
and put some sort of accountability measure on it in a certain timeframe
to ensure that overfishing isn\'t occurring? That\'s the challenge,
probably not a new one but more specific because of the new Act. So, you
know, maybe you\'d have a seasonal closure, you know, the fisheries
close three months a year, the rest of the time, it\'s open no bag
limits if it\'s recreational or no catch limits if it\'s commercial. How
do you set a catch limit? How do you monitor it? And then how do you
adjust it to ensure overfishing isn\'t occurring?

MR. SCHWAAB: And my second question while I have the floor \-- I mean
all of this still seems pretty much single species. I mean there is no
provision for multi-species implications at this point.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, that\'s part of what we\'re looking at in the Act
on what it says and what that translates to. And we did comments that
this multi-species exemption doesn\'t apply anymore because of the Act
and we\'ll need to look at that.

MR. SCHWAAB: Okay.

MR. RAYBURN: Does sustainability have any meaning of merit in inventory
just, not as a definition \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: It\'s not defined in the Act. I don\'t think we put a
regulatory definition of it. What we have is the overfishing and
overfished definitions.

MR. RAYBURN: So you could assume that if it\'s not overfished it\'s
sustainable or rebuilding?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And I made a note to Katie earlier when we were
talking about sustainability, and you made the comment, you know,
sustainability with measures, conditions. You know? How does that play
into the FishWatch thing, but that might come into this as well. But
there\'s no sustainability definition or goal that we\'re driving at.
It\'s ending overfishing, making sure they aren\'t overfished and then
going up toward the rebuilding status.

MR. CATES: I think you\'ve answered the question already, but are the
MSYs determined? Is there a standard nationwide or are they \-- they\'re
different each region?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Different. There is no standard definition.

MR. CATES: How do you determine that?

MR. RISENHOOVER: I didn\'t hear you. I\'m sorry?

MR. CATES: How do you determine the level?

MR. RISENHOOVER: And that\'s the councils would look at that.

MR. CATES: How do you determine MSYs and what it is for that fishery?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Basically, the answer - I\'ll run through the - I
really can\'t hear you. This little thing is so noisy that I - I\'ve
just been giving the same answer to every guest.

(Off the record comments.)

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. So section 107 \-- so we\'re going to turn now to
the environmental review procedures of the Act. There was some concern
on how NEPA relates to the Magnuson-Act. And Section 107 of the Act
addresses that, and it tells us that we need to revise and update our
NEPA procedures to better inform with the Magnuson Act process and that
we\'re supposed to consult with the council on environmental quality and
the regional fishery management councils to do that and to come out with
the proposed rule in six months. And that\'s the part which makes me
sweat, Ralph.

(Laughter.)

MR. RISENHOOVER: And that this would be the sole environmental impact
assessment procedure for MSA activities. So this is MSA fisheries
management only. The old procedures will still apply to our habitat
program, for example.

So our implementation process to this is we had to initially concede to
the Council Coordination Committee \-- that\'s what the CCC stands for
\-- which is a new group established by the Act. The CCC committee put
out a strawman that had a process that would have a single type of
environmental review document, an environmental impact assessment, and
that would go through basically a three-meeting process for approval. WE
also went out with some trigger questions in the [Federal
Register]{.underline}. Not in the [Federal Register]{.underline}. I
don\'t remember. Not [Federal Register]{.underline}, the website. So we
sent out ten trigger questions and asked for public comment on this to
get input on what we saw as some of the trigger questions, and then,
also, we wanted comments on the council document. We didn\'t endorse the
council document. I\'ve gotten that question several times. We simply
put the council document on the website. Those folks could comment on
it, since it was the one proposal that was out there. So we took public
comments on that. That comment period ended in April. Each of the
councils held a listening session on NEPA and the new procedures. And
they provided comment on our trigger questions as well as their
strawman.

Where we\'re going with this \-- looks like I jumped ahead here \--
here\'s our schedule. We just got done with the CCC meetings a couple of
weeks ago. Our target, again, is July. If we make it through July,
we\'ll all be doing well here because of all the six-month deadlines. So
by July 11th, we\'d like to have a draft rule out on these new
procedures. We\'re then required by the Act to take 90 days of public
comments and then publish our final new procedures by January of 2008.
That\'s what we\'re shooting for.

We\'ve got over 1600 comments on the trigger questions and the
council\'s strawman, 1600 of those primarily in the form of a form
letter opposed to council\'s strawman. We did 8 individualized letters
from these groups and we\'re in the process of putting those up on our
website, so any \-- they are on our website so anybody can look at those
comments and you can see who commented individually there.

And again, just to give you a kind of a flavor of some comments we got,
some folks questioned whether there was a need for change. While the Act
said revise your procedures, many thought that the current procedures
were good when we came to NEPA. Others were concerned about the role
between the councils and NOAA fisheries, that is, when the development
of this environmental impact statement or environmental impact
assessment is done, is that a role the council should have since
they\'re not a federal agency, and what should the role of NMFS be in
reviewing that or should NMFS do all of it?

Reasonable alternatives were a big issue. What\'s the range of
alternatives you need to consider when doing your environmental
assessment? Thirty day comment period \-- how do we make the comment
periods of NEPA fit better with the comment periods established under
the Magnuson Act? How do you handle emergency actions? I\'m going to
touch on a few of these a little bit more. And then what do you do with
other laws? You know, how does ESA now play into this?

So on the need for change, there was a legislative intent to do
something in that the Congress told us to work with CEQ and the councils
to update our procedures. So whether there is some change needed or not,
the Congress felt there was a need for change, so what\'s important is
the degree to which change is made. So whether the current are adequate
or if we need to do others.

The roles, as I mentioned, whether the councils or NOAA fisheries should
have the lead in preparing these documents \-- you know, I did change
this Marine Fish Conservation Network. I may have sent Laurel the wrong
file. See, that is my one big thing. I was hoping Lee would be here.
See, feedback works.

That\'s the Marine Fish Conservation Network that I thought I fixed.
Thought it would be best if NOAA fisheries prepared the draft
environmental impact statement, deliver that to council, the council
would vote, and then you\'d have a 45-day public comment period. So that
was one specific thought we got on that.

Appropriateness of the analysis, public access to the comments, conflict
of interest on preparing the documents were all concerns. And then there
were a number of suggested improvements, and we can see those that \--
you know, folks felt like, you know, maybe that the council process
wasn\'t the best way to get comments in. There needed to be another one.
We could use more kind of outreach to folks. We shouldn\'t constrain the
public input as much. And we need to have a clear FR notice done by the
councils to start the scoping process, just more comments.

Under reasonable alternatives, that is what is the range of
alternatives, it should be annualized. It varied on what reasonable is,
of course. What\'s reasonable to me I\'m sure is reasonable to all of
you, but what\'s reasonable to you may not be reasonable to me. So that
was the sort of thing there. There\'s a lot of concern about the no
action alternative being no fishing. So if they\'re required to do a no
action alternative, does that refer to the status quo state of the
fishery, or does that mean no fishing should be analyzed under each
action?

And some suggestions \-- what do we do if the council ultimately selects
a management measure that falls outside of what was analyzed in the
underlying NEPA document, so concern there. How do you scale your
analysis? As I mentioned, the councils proposed that there be a single
document, this environmental impact assessment that looked a lot and
sounded a lot like an EIS for everything. So the concern there was how
do you scale that single document to smaller actions or to larger
actions. As you know, now there\'s the environmental assessment and an
environmental impact statement. How would we have a similar scale. For
things like frameworks or plan amendments, what\'s the level of
analysis. So some folks even, you know, preferred that we not have
standardized criteria for that and that it be done on a case-by-case
basis.

There were comments that we should keep the EIS-EA distinction. Folks
know what it is. Others believe that we should do away with it. So as
you can see, we got that whole range of comments here.

On the 30-day comment period, again, the range. Some thought we should
maintain the current 45-day requirement in the NEPA guidelines versus do
away with it or give us flexibility, 15 to 30 to 45 days. The concern
here is we need to provide for meaningful public input, what\'s the best
way to do that so the public is assured that they\'re going to have
input at certain parts of the process and in a timeframe that\'s
reasonable.

Scientific research \-- that there shouldn\'t be a NEPA analysis for
scientific permits, that there should be a statutory exemption for them.
A little late for that now. Or exempt some of the permits entirely.

Emergency actions \-- most of them felt that the way we handle emergency
actions currently is sufficient. And then there\'s a number of other
suggestions on how to treat emergency rules or interim rules.

Coordination with other applicable law \-- we had issued, a year and a
half ago, some draft operational guidelines that tried to frontload the
NEPA process into the council process so that your beginning documents
under the council process were also the beginning documents under NEPA
and try to align as we went through. And that\'s the front-loading
analysis. So some folks thought front-loading was good, some thought
front-loading was bad. And then again, how does this affect other laws
is something we need to look at.

So that\'s a real quick overview. I don\'t know how much you all are
interested in NEPA, but the next big chance for folks is, hopefully,
going to be in July, when we\'ll have a public rule \-- public comment
period on a proposed rule proposed to take a look at.

And with that, I would endeavor to answer questions on this. Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: I was under the impression that the conflict between MSA
and NEPA was a timing issue and NEPA required a longer period of public
comment, stuff like that. But basically, the analyses of options and
stuff like that is fairly common within a regional council\'s process of
evaluating measures to undertake. Is that the case? Are you really
looking at a time deal \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: We\'re looking both at the analysis alternatives and
the timelines. So on the analysis alternatives, we had been sued \-- and
Sam, you can correct me on this \-- mainly on our environmental
assessment and whether there was no significant impact on those and we
didn\'t need to do an EIS. And then there is also the timing, and this
is what you hear from the councils is that the NEPA process has
lengthened the time it takes them to get a fisheries management
regulation done and also the documentation, that we\'re getting very
big, thick NEPA documents. And so how do we streamline that? Look at the
alternatives that really matter, and again, keep the public comment in
it with the, you know, the council process as well. How do we integrate
those? Yes?

MR. SIMPSON: Larry Simpson. Council\'s comment is all that\'s built into
the Magnuson Act already \-- timelines, public given to a review \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. The councils develop their recommendations, they
vote, the councils hold public hearings. And there\'s also these NEPA
public hearings that we do. And then there\'s that part about whose
document is it. Is the NEPA document the council\'s product or is it a
federal agency product or some combination of both? Other questions?
Mary Beth?

MS. TOOLEY: I was just wondering. One of the things that you do hear
about is the length of the documents, as you said. And you\'ll have
some, you know, amendments that are like 1600 pages long and, you know,
it\'s supposed to cover both the NEPA and Magnuson requirements within
the same document. But at the same time, you also hear people complain
about the length of the document and then what\'s not in the document,
you know, that the social and economic, you know, impact analysis is not
sufficient or, you know, it wasn\'t done correctly. I mean you get a
variety of both of those things.

And I was wondering has anybody come forward with, you know, some
suggestions on how to make those documents the 400 pages that they\'re
supposedly supposed to be?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well \-- and we\'ve talked a lot internally about that.
How do we decrease the amount of pages to make sure what\'s in there is
needed but still allow the public or interested groups to have
everything fully analyzed. So it\'s going to be a balance. You know,
folks will talk about, you know, EIS\'s don\'t need to be that thick.
Well, if you\'re just analyzing a single issue across five or six
alternatives, maybe so. But most of the council documents, you have
multiple issues and multiple alternatives under each of those.

MS. TOOLEY: Cumulative impacts?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And that\'s what really makes these grow. So
internally, based on the public comment, some of the ideas the councils
have and CEQ has and we have, we\'re looking for ways to reduce the
number of pages but still provide the same information to the public and
decision makers. So that\'s really going to be a tough balance of how
you do that.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. Because the NEPA guidelines are a 60-day comment period
versus a 45-day comment period in Magnuson. And the one thing that comes
to mind is if you shorten up, you know, for an amendment, a major action
to 45 days versus 60 days, and we still gave you the same sized
document, I mean if you calculated how many pages you needed to read per
day during that period of time, and plus most of us really have it well
before that, but if you didn\'t, for whatever reason, you better be
devoting your life to that document for 30 or 45 days just so you know
what\'s in it.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. Now we won\'t be changing the Magnuson Act
guidelines. We\'ll be looking at how do we align the NEPA timelines with
the Magnuson ones.

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. And the NEPA ones are the longer ones, right?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Other questions?

MR. O\'SHEA: Alan, on this life thing, one of the things that was
pointed out to me was, you know, there\'s \-- different groups have
different interests in government actions, so the fact that a document
might be a thousand pages doesn\'t necessarily mean that for an
individual\'s particular interest that all thousand pages cover their
interest. Their interest may only be 50 pages. But the issue snowballs
because you bring in all these different interests, so we end up with a
very long document. But if you only \-- for example, if you were only
interested in marine mammals, for example, that might be a much smaller
part of the document. That\'s a challenge that I see you guys have.
Sounds great to make it down to 200 pages, but there are all these
different competing interests that need to have their interest \--

MR. O\'SHEA: Analyzed.

MR. RISENHOOVER: \-- their turf analyzed. And then it ends up being a
big document. Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: In the role of CEQ, can they determine whether or not
recommendation is good.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, we\'re working closely with them so hopefully
they will agree with what we come up with is a good one.

MR. RAYBURN: To say it was Mr. Gilmore\'s or the strategic planning
committee or whatever or MAFAC took a position \-- to undertake a
position that would either support the efforts to move NEPA more into
the, you know, the management framework or something like that and have
that as an outcome of this meeting? MR. RISENHOOVER: Well, the Magnuson
Act, the revision kind of says do that, try to better align those. For
MAFAC, depending on the interest here, you might want to see what would
come out with in July. It\'s fairly nebulous to think about this
beforehand, and I didn\'t bring a full briefing that would show how
different things align. But if the committee does have interests or
wants to explore those, yes, we can use all the help we can get.

MR. RAUCH: The council chairs have put out a public proposal. And while
our A&PR comment period is over, if in the next three days the MAFAC
wanted to comment on the issues in that proposal about whether we should
go that direction or a different direction, that\'s still timely for us
to consider before the proposed rule. Otherwise, they will be in the
next 90 \-- will be in the final \-- proposed final rule stage.

We haven\'t put out anything other than our list of questions which Alan
\-- so the two things that MAFAC could react to are the list of
questions we put out or the council chair\'s proposal that they put out.
And if you wanted it \-- the subcommittee wanted to deal with that.

MR. RAYBURN: We have the council chair proposal?

MR. RISENHOOVER: We can give that to you. It\'s on our website. So, we
can either give you the link and gave you a hard copy as is our \--

MR. RAYBURN: And then you put our ten \-- you did put our ten questions
in the book, didn\'t you?

MS. TOOLEY: Yes. They\'re \-- whatever you gave me.

MR. RAYBURN: The ten questions are in the book?

MR. RISENHOOVER: The ten questions we put out of there. And \--

MR. RAYBURN: The what?

MR. RISENHOOVER: The ten questions we put out are in the book, your
briefing book. So, yes, like Sam said, if you do have comments on the
other \--

Tab 7. And a link to the council proposal is at the bottom of that. So,
yes, if you have feedback that \-- on that, great. This is something
we\'re pushing hard to roll out in July so it\'s a sooner the better
sort of thing. Other thoughts, comments?

MR. SCHWAAB: So did I \-- I meant to actually ask about where CEQ is on
this similar \-- a similar question to Ralph\'s question, but did I
understand you to say that the adjustments are likely to be to the NEPA
process and not to the MSA process?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes.

MR. RAUCH: Alan, if I could? The reason is that \-- I was talking about
the timelines.

MR. SCHWAAB: Yes.

MR. RAUCH: The Magnuson Act timelines are statutory. The NEPA timelines
and CEQ regulations are regulatory, so there is some flexibility to
change that, but we cannot change the maximum statutory time in the
Magnuson Act because Congress has said that. Other things that we\'re
talking about are neither CEQ regulations or the Magnuson Act statute
which we have some flexibility with CEQ to work with. But for those
strict procedural times dealing with the conflict between the maximum
time that NEPA gives you \-- I mean the maximum time the Magnuson Act
gives you to act and the minimum time NEPA gives you to act, that\'s a
statute versus a regulation, so you can\'t alter the statute.

MR. SCHWAAB: So would CEQ issue that regulatory proposal \--

MR. RAUCH: Well it depends on what we do and where \--

MR. SCHWAAB: \-- if there were adjustments to the \--

MR. RAUCH: If there were \--

MR. SCHWAAB: \-- NEPA timeframe specific to Magnuson?

MR. RAUCH: The CEQ regulations themselves allow, in consultation with
CEQ, agencies to adopt alternative procedures mainly dealing with time
that address their particular statutory regime. So within the CEQ time
regulations already, there\'s a provision to adopt just what we\'re
perhaps discussing, which is an alternative timing procedure to fit the
Magnuson Act timeline.

MR. SCHWAAB: Okay. And so CEQ has been generally pretty receptive to
fixing these problems?

MR. RAUCH: The CEQ and NOAA were part of the \-- if you go back and look
at the administration proposal \--

MR. SCHWAAB: I\'m sorry?

MR. RAUCH: If you go back and look at the administration proposal on the
Magnuson Act, it contained language that is very similar to the one that
Congress adopted. We cleared that through the administration with CEQ.
So the administration, as a whole, which would include CEQ, has been
behind a fix to this problem. And we\'re \-- CEQ and NOAA fisheries are
trying to work being responsive to the councils and the public to try to
address this problem. So we haven\'t come up with a proposal yet.
That\'ll come out in July. But that\'s where we are. So CEQ \-- I don\'t
know what you mean by being behind it. They do recognize the issues.

MR. SCHWAAB: Well, the problem that I heard \-- the murmur might suggest
that they\'re less invested in the outcome that everybody seeks than
maybe you guys are.

MR. RAUCH: They were part of the \-- they were \-- they actually
authored the language that\'s in the bill, so.

MR. SCHWAAB: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: I don\'t know \-- I don\'t want to discuss members \--

MR. SCHWAAB: No.

MR. RAUCH: \-- but they\'ve been very supportive of trying to resolve
these issues \--

MR. SCHWAAB: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: \-- and to make the two statutes work together.

MR. RISENHOOVER: We\'ve been working closely with them. Okay.

MR. SCHWAAB: Try to read between the lines here. It\'s worrying me a bit
\--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Any other things on NEPA? That concludes the
presentation that I had. The one other issue I think I mentioned \--
part of our Act right now we\'re going to have this limited access
privilege program. I mentioned over 20-some pages with you statutory
text on those included in the bill. We were looking through those. We
did get comments from outside groups, Congress, that they signed through
some formal guidelines on those as well.

So we put together an advanced notice of proposed rule-making much like
we did with the NEPA and the ACLs, and I\'m hopeful that that will be
coming out very soon. That\'ll have a series of questions or topics that
we\'d like input from folks on what they see as should be included in
these upcoming guidelines.

So on the LAPS, I just have included some of the types of questions that
we\'ll be asking for public input on when this comes out. So what should
or could be the requirements or limits on holding privileges under the
MAFAC\'s access privilege programs? What criteria would determine
whether businesses are substantially dependent upon a fishery? Some of
the terms used in the Act. How do we determine whether a sustainability
plan is acceptable? The Act talks about these groups putting together
such a plan. What activities or categories should be included in cost
recovery? The act requires for a limited access privilege programs to
have a cost recovery provision in them as well. This is something that
we\'ve been dealing with over the years with individual fishing programs
is we\'re limited at recovering 3 percent of the landings, up to 3
percent. But what costs should be included in that 3 percent? So we want
to take some public comment on that.

So these are a few things that MAFAC may be wanting to think about in
advance and during our advance notice proposed rule-making.

So that\'s the type of things and if you look \-- if you read those
provisions in the Act about LAPS, questions pop up in your mind as you
go through them. And so these are some subsets of what we\'ll be taking
comment on. The idea then is after we take comment, have a few public
hearings on this, we\'ll move toward a proposed rule and a final rule of
guidelines later on. Ms. Lowman?

MS. LOWMAN: I mean it seems a little vague what a regional fisheries
association is also. I\'m assuming that\'s probably one of your
questions?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right. And if it\'s not one of the specific questions
in there, write it in and say you guys need to \-- it talks about
regional fisheries associations \-- what are they? What are the scope?
What\'s the criteria? Do they have to be formally \--

MS. LOWMAN: All right \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: The other part of this is we had been working for a
year or two with the councils on what we\'ve been calling some technical
guidance on LAP programs, more specifically IFQ programs that we\'re not
updating to include LAPS as well. And what that guidance is addressing
\-- it\'s non-binding \-- is okay, you\'ve decided to do a LAP program
or an IFQ, here are some of the pros and cons or considerations on
things like cost recovery. Should you collect it annually? I think the
Act actually specifies that now. That\'s not a good example anymore. But
what are the range of options on different things for eligibility
criteria or the range on consolidation holding privileges? What are the
pros and cons of different parts of that? That will also be coming out
in the next few weeks.

MS. LOWMAN: I didn\'t think you would \-- would this be coming out in
the next \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Few weeks hopefully.

MS. LOWMAN: Few weeks. And that I conclude \-- I mean I remember Lee
Anderson was working on what is excessive \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: Right.

MS. LOWMAN: \-- you know, share \--

MR. RISENHOOVER: That\'s part of \--

MS. LOWMAN: \-- kind of things.

MR. RISENHOOVER: If you\'re looking at a specific provision or part of
an IFQ program, what are the pros and cons in doing it one way versus
another? So, hopefully, that\'ll be out soon, too.

MR. RAYBURN: I guess before we move along, where\'s the hurricane stuff
and the coastal hazards? You know, is your shop handling that aspect of
the re-authorization?

MR. RISENHOOVER: That would be great but that\'s mainly for a management
budget offices \-- Gary Risner\'s folks.

MR. RAUCH: Can I speak to that one? There are new provisions dealing
with disasters, both individual disasters and broad regional disasters
like Katrina. We have never had implementing regulations for any of the
disaster provisions. People have come up on a case-by-case basis without
clear criteria and asked us for disasters \-- and in a given year,
we\'ve not been terribly consistent, especially if you go back in time,
about whether we would authorize \-- declare a fisheries disaster. If
there\'s no money when we declare one, then Congress would decide
whether to do money.

We\'ve decided with the new Act that we do no implementing regulations,
both because there\'s a whole new provision on regional disasters and to
give better guidance on existing fishery by fishery disaster. And so
we\'re going to do a similar thing with the disaster provisions to put
out an ANPR, get the list of questions, develop a rule. This is going to
be further delayed from the LAP provision, because they haven\'t started
it yet, but we\'re doing that with the goal toward sometime next year,
towards the middle to end of next year, having a final rule on disasters
similar to the process we\'re going to use on LAPS, which is to get the
list of questions and then to go through rule-making to provide guidance
on that.

MR. RAYBURN: February of \`06 I guess. We talked a little bit about this
at the MAFAC meeting in Fort Lauderdale, and I\'ve drawn up a little
concept paper for Dr. Hogarth and Murowski looked at it and stuff like
that, and they were going to work with FEMA and never really got off the
ground.

But I just \-- I\'d be very interested in that process, because I think
we\'ve already seen, you know, on the third named storm this year
already, so it might be a heavy hurricane. Maybe it\'ll change but right
now it seems to be a heavy hurricane season projected. So I\'d be real
concerned, I guess, if there\'s no advancement beyond where we were, you
know, in \`05 storms as far as dealing with some of the fisheries
issues. And I know certainly Larry\'s group is working with the state
officers, but I\'m not sure necessarily it\'s got through the system,
so.

MR. RAUCH: I think there are \-- there have been \-- in addition to the
new legislation, there have been advances internally in that when those
things happen, we are better able to respond.

MR. RAYBURN: Good. With an assessment of the damages?

MR. RAUCH: With \-- to do this. Because we\'ve had \-- we\'ve learned.
We\'ve got \-- there are still other issues. There needs to be a
regulatory structure that makes the public aware of what criteria we\'re
using, what process to going through it or not.

Internally, I think we\'ve got a lot better at being able to address
these things, but externally, we need to be clear and there\'s still a
number of questions that are unresolved. So I would say we\'re in a
better place than we were in 2005 because we were forced to be there,
but there\'s still a lot of work that we need to do. Eric?

MR. SCHWAAB: Just a comment. I mean it seems like we\'ve moved right
down into the details of the limited access privilege systems when
there\'s \-- just maybe my view of the world \-- there\'s still a lot of
sort of misunderstanding or lack of understanding about sort of some of
the basic opportunities associated with implementing these types of
systems.

And I just wonder if the agency has thought at all about entering into
some kind of broader sort of outreach and information campaign
associated with, you know, what the limited access privilege systems can
do under what circumstances, where the good ones are, maybe where
they\'ve run into some problems, and so, you know, help move the big
picture forward before we \-- or maybe at the same time that we \-- deal
with some of the details.

MR. RISENHOOVER: That\'s a good point. What we have done \-- Chris\'s
group, as the result of a GAO report that said when you \-- the councils
are developing these LAP programs \-- I think they were dedicated access
privilege programs at the time \-- when they\'re developing those
programs, they need to really reach out to the stakeholders and do a
good job of explaining basic concepts and the goals and those types in
the Act.

And we have established, on our website, a LAP clearinghouse where we
put up some of that information as well as we have a stakeholder policy
now for dealing with the development of LAP programs. I\'m going that
extra of explaining, making sure it\'s clear, making sure it\'s
transparent. So we\'ve done some of that, but we haven\'t tackled it as
a high level issue of what the major benefits are.

MR. RAUCH: And let me add another thing on that. Environmental Defense
has recently issued \-- they\'ve done what you\'ve suggested as an
advocacy group, put out a report articulating, in their view, what the
benefits of these programs are and are actively going around the country
to fishing groups where they think it\'s likely to happen and arguing
for that.

We\'re trying to, as we often do, to be \-- while we support LAPs, we
want to be more scientific based or present a neutral view of the facts
and not get into the advocacy. Because there\'s a lot of advocacy issues
surrounding these. Other groups are doing that.

MR. RISENHOOVER: And I\'ll give Laurel a site for the Environmental
Defense reports. You guys can take a look at that. Okay? So I don\'t
know \-- I do have some trigger questions on ACLs that folks could think
about. Or we could take a break.

MR. RAUCH: So here\'s the thought. I know that there was discussion
which I put off earlier. We could have the discussion about what to do
about FishWatch. I\'m not sure how much more \-- I don\'t want to cut
off debate. I\'m not sure how much \-- we had a fairly broad discussion
about ACLs. I would propose that you put up the trigger questions, and
we\'ll see whether there\'s \-- those have already been covered or
there\'s additional comments.

If not, we could take a break and come back and briefly have the
discussion about how we should deal with the issues of secret
information and Eco labeling and things like that in terms of how MAFAC,
as a group, wants to deal with that, because I believe we\'ll have time
before we break for the day. So if that\'s a good proposal?

MR. RAYBURN: Should Mr. Gilmore review the questions on LAPs during this
meeting or you want Gary to do that? So they\'ll be looking at those and
kind of give feedback to the full committee?

MR. RISENHOOVER: Yes. If they want to tackle LAPs or they just want to
tackle ACLs or if there\'s something else that \--

MR. RAYBURN: I\'m sure Mr. Gilmore, knowing him, he would want to have
the whole fish to tackle during the meeting.

MR. RISENHOOVER: He\'ll want as much jurisdiction as possible.

MR. RAYBURN: That\'s what I was trying \-- thank you.

MR. RISENHOOVER: Okay. Just a real quick bit on the ACL. Some of the key
questions we\'re grappling with, and again, our goal is to come out with
something in the July timeframe-ish. You know, I mentioned the number
one comment we got is you need to improve your data. So how should or
could data for stocks be addressed with ACLs and accountability issues
is one of the key things we\'re thinking about.

How could we address both scientific uncertainty and the uncertainty
associated with management when we implement these? So you\'ve got some
stocks that you\'ve got really good information on and perhaps tight
management with good monitoring-reporting requirements, others you
don\'t or you have a mix, how do you deal with that?

How do councils ensure that overfishing is prevented through the use of
accountability measures? What should these accountability measures be.
It could be, you know, you over harvest this year, it comes off next
year. That\'s one. It could be an in-season thing, that you up the bag
limit, lower the bag limit depending on how you\'re doing. Again, it
relates to the science questions above.

So what are the various types available? What we\'ve seen in some stocks
now is we\'ve identified overfishing has occurred. The council gets
busy. We notify them. Two years, three years go by and then you put a
measure in place three or four years down the road. Well, what\'s
happened to the stock during that time? Maybe it\'s not necessary
anymore or something more is necessary. So how do you relate your
accountability measures to the timing?

And then what about recreational fisheries? How do you set an annual
catch limit for them? How should we set an annual catch limit for them?
How should we monitor it? How should their accountability measures work?

How do you take \-- we touched on this \-- how do you take into account
the harvest in state waters? If there\'s a federal ACL that\'s all taken
by the states, do you close federal waters? What do you do in those
cases?

And then how do you set individual sector ACLs? How do you protect those
from each other or do you have them interact with each other into the
overall ACL? So how do the accountability measures work across those?
Maybe one sector has one type of accountability measure. Maybe another
sector has a different type. How do we put that into some sort of
guidance that makes sense?

That was my 30 seconds on \--

MR. RAUCH: Are there any questions for this group? I\'d say the
subcommittee will take up these issues. All right. Laurel, do you have
some announcements before we take a break?

MS. BRYANT: No. I just want to remind folks that are coming in, whether
it\'s staff or members of the public, make certain you sign up so we get
that on the record. That\'s it.

MR. RAUCH: All right. Let\'s take a 10 minute break and we\'ll come back
and we\'ll discuss how MAFAC wants to deal with the secret information.
Be back at four.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 3:53 p.m.
and resumed at 4:10 p.m.)

MR. RAUCH: All right. If we could get started. We had discussed that we
were going to reconvene and address Dr. Hogarth\'s request that MAFAC,
in some manner, deal with the issues that were raised by the various Eco
labeling or seafood information campaigns and issues including our own
FishWatch page. And I\'ve asked Laurel to go down a list of the options,
at least initially, for MAFAC and how they might engage in this issue.
Maybe there are others. But Laurel, you want to?

MS. BRYANT: No list I think. If you\'ll remember a number of years ago,
we established some standing subcommittees so that we could kind of
avoid getting into a continuing process of creating new subcommittees
that then changed and then new. Now we have standing subcommittees that
are broad enough, that can support a variety of subject matters and all
the subject matters that come before the Committee. So I guess MAFAC may
want to consider looking to one of those subcommittees and forming a
subgroup within.

We have also formed ad hoc working groups. The current situation is Rec
fish working group with Bob and a variety of members that are on that.
That\'s another approach that we could utilize. I think in your
deliberations, as you decide on what you might want to do and help us,
is that there are certainly some more immediate or short-term needs as
we are working on that product right now. We\'d like to roll it out in
August, making certain that staff, Alan and Chris and Michael have that
input from you, whether it be consensual MAFAC individuals. I think
those are some things that you need to consider because this is going to
be a dynamic process over the next couple of months.

And there\'s the longer term issues that might be going on guiding this
process, the maturity of both the website as well as some of the longer
term relevant issues like Eco labeling. So I would just present those
considerations and discuss amongst yourselves.

MR. RAUCH: Any discussion on those. Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: I like the idea of, you know, keeping it within the format
of the standing committees that we have and finding a way to cooperate
within those standing committees even as a subcomponent of that. I mean
I would certainly yield to the chairman of those subcommittees, but, you
know, in my mind anyway, the Commerce subcommittee should not take them
away from their Aquaculture initiative but perhaps give them that \--
within that subcommittee, you folks that had some interest in the
FishWatch, I would like to include Eco labeling program \-- could have a
working group within the subcommittee or a sub-subcommittee to deal with
this, open it up for other members of other subcommittees that are not
engaged in particular issues being addressed in those subcommittees to
join in this group.

MR. RAUCH: Any \--

MR. RAYBURN: And I would yield to Mr. Billy and the Chairman.

MR. RAUCH: Chairman, do you want to?

MR. BILLY: I think that\'s a reasonable approach. Maybe what we need \--
we have a Aquaculture working group under that subcommittee. We could
establish another working group that deals with this subject area, and
maybe one of the first tasks the working group could take on is figuring
out what it includes. You mentioned Eco labeling. We\'ve got FishWatch.
You\'ve got this issue of organic coming along \-- what\'s organic, how
seafood safety fits in. So in addition to addressing the specific ideas
of FishWatch and giving advice on that, maybe sorting out some
additional issues that MAFAC could consider at future meetings? And I
would like to \-- I think John Connelly might be a good person to take
the lead on that unless there\'s someone else here that \--

I had one comment before that.

MR. LEIPZIG: Yes. Much like your comments on that, it struck me that
there\'s a lot of issues here and they\'re very much inter-related.
There\'s FishWatch, there\'s Eco labeling, certain issues, whatever.
They all flow together. In Seattle, we had a presentation on what was
going to be the fish marketing program or the fish publication. And one
of the responses was that if we provide people who we want to be
participating in the subgroup program to be able to access the NOAA
labels for a substitute certification approach, not wanting to get into
competition with those entities that are in the certification business.

But I\'m just curious. What\'s the status of that or is anybody
responding and applying for marketing status?

MR. RAUCH: We issued a final rule establishing the procedures for the
Seafood Marketing Act which allows entities to request government
participation in a marketing campaign. So that\'s out there. We have not
had any entities apply yet. But the rules are out there. It\'s
available. It published about two months ago?

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. LEIPZIG: I see that tying into this labeling concept.

MS. BRYANT: I know it\'s on our web page.

MR. RAUCH: Any other discussion?

MS. TOOLEY: Just a question really in that the committees,
subcommittees, I didn\'t find in our materials who\'s on what
committees, and maybe if we had that available, because it seems like
that this particular committee could use sort of, you know, a John
Connelly, a fishing, you know, industry person. And, you know, I think
we\'d want him to be representative \--

MS. BRYANT: And I believe John Connelly has actually asked to be on the
Commerce subcommittee.

MS. TOOLEY: So it might be just useful for us to have a list \--

MS. BRYANT: I\'ll get that \--

MS. TOOLEY: \-- of the names \--

MS. BRYANT: \-- gotten it done.

MR. BILLY: That\'s on our web \--

MS. BRYANT: Yes. I just didn\'t get that one printed and I apologize \--

MR. BILLY: So is it not that this new working group would meet at this
meeting? Maybe Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning.

MS. BRYANT: Tomorrow is the Vision for half a day, and then we have half
a day to break out into subcommittee. One was Aquaculture and the other
was the Vision. I don\'t know if that \--

MR. BILLY: I was thinking Wednesday.

MS. BRYANT: Yours is Wednesday \--

MR. RAUCH: Actually, just to get a sense from the group on the MSA
issues that we talked about, I mean, you know, some of this is just
pretty narrow. You know, law says you have to do some of this stuff and
so it\'s going to happen. Didn\'t seem particularly contentious to me,
and I just wonder if you think an hour and a half Wednesday morning
would be enough to deal with the MSA? And then maybe we could have the
next working group \-- one go at 9 and one go at 10:30 on the FishWatch?

MS. BRYANT: You\'ve got your Rec fish \--

MR. RAUCH: Yes, the Rec fish group and the MSA group are supposed to me
at 9, Wednesday morning.

MS. BRYANT: And I do have three rooms, so it would still work.

MR. BILLY: But you\'re suggesting staggering \-- stagger those two?

MR. RAUCH: I was thinking of staggering those two, and I don\'t know how
much overlap there would be with the Rec folks wanting to \--

MR. FLETCHER: The Rec folks got a pretty busy day.

MR. BILLY: Take the full time?

MR. FLETCHER: Yes.

MS. BRYANT: I think they\'ll \-- probably one group then will be yours
to \--

MR. RAUCH: Mary Beth?

MS. TOOLEY: I was just going to say if everybody agreed with my position
on Wednesday that it could go really fast.

(Laughter.)

MR. RAUCH: Any other discussion?

MR. KRAMER: How many groups are there? There\'s the Monterey Bay
Aquarium is one group, and MRSC is another? Does anybody \--

What\'s that?

MR. LEIPZIG: NFI tried to get something going a number of years ago.

MR. KRAMER: Now is that required by law that sort of thing because \--

MS. BRYANT: I think it\'s \-- I believe it\'s all of them becoming
interrelated.

MR. KRAMER: So I guess, again, I\'m kind of naive on this. By intent,
you know, I\'ve always kind of stayed away from that, but we\'re having
to go through it now with our whiting. You know, whiting is \-- WalMart
wanted certification on the whiting, so there have been customers, we
have to do what they say. And my concern was well, who\'s certifying the
certifiers? So as a \-- as somebody who\'s worked for the tribe for many
years, I\'m kind of biased in favor of National Marine Fisheries Service
because of the good experience the tribes had, you know, particularly in
the Northwest region and looking to them as the trustee, you know,
looking out for the interest of the tribes. And I always felt like, you
know, there should be some sort of official federal stamp of approval on
these through NMFS, not through some group. I\'ll start my own. You
know?

And so, you know, I think there\'s a good chance to maybe step out and
take the lead. And, you know, I see this as a group that could initiate
that, because who knows what the bias and overall objectives and
programs are of these different entities that do the certification. You
know, when you go buy a steak, it\'s inspected, certified, for whatever
reasons, by USDA or a state department of agriculture. Yet for the
seafood, the thing that seems to be \-- have a major role in driving the
market of the fish is some unregulated certification process.

MR. CATES: On that point \-- Randy Cates from Hawaii \-- I\'ve heard
several things today, and one is we\'re an advisory committee for the
Secretary, and seafood \-- the development of seafood card or watch, you
know, websites, we\'re also trying to educate the public. And this whole
certification, I\'ve gone through this for several years now, and I\'ve
experienced it firsthand the, I call it unregulated, certification.
Who\'s really confused is the consumer, and they\'re looking for
leadership and they\'re looking for guidance.

But I think John earlier mentioned that we need to take some of these
issues on head-on and make \-- take a position. Is fishmeal sustainable?
Is it \-- should it be in feeds or not be in feeds? Is Aquaculture \--
in Aquaculture, what is good and what\'s bad? Organic \-- all these are
issues. These are what the customers are asking us. And for me to answer
them, it\'s \-- you know, it\'s well, you\'re the guy producing it. Of
course, you\'re going to say that.

So I would reinforce that the government needs to step in and say this
is safe and here\'s why, and here\'s why we need to do Aquaculture, and
here\'s why you should feel all right on eating it as well as getting
rockfish from a certain area that\'s sustainable. All these are the
issues. We\'ve got to take a position and go \-- you know, the Monterey
Bay Aquarium\'s card is a bit misleading for these reasons. And I kind
of get the sense we\'re kind of uneasy on taking that head-on.

MR. RAUCH: Let me \-- just to follow-up on that, one of the main
rationale\'s for the Seafood Promotion Councils was to correct
misleading consumer information. So that has been part \-- the Seafood
Promotion Councils are designed to be industry-driven but to provide the
government stamp of approval that the information that you hear through
that marketing campaign is correct so the consumers can rely on it.
That\'s in part to address that issue. Did you have?

MR. RAFTICAN: That certification process, that MSC certification
process, we haven\'t gone through it, but, you know, one of the groups
we deal with, American Albacore Fishing Association, did with their
trawl caught tuna. They haven\'t got certification yet and I\'m going to
say they\'ve been in the process for two years. So it\'s not taken
lightly. I know when they did the seafood cards, the seafood cards are
vetted but not nearly as well. And I know they\'re going through a peer
review process right now.

What I\'m saying is to the best of my knowledge, it\'s a fairly good,
fairly intricate process. But to what you\'re saying, USDA does put a
stamp of approval on something and maybe it is time that the government
\-- somebody in charge that, you know, that the consumer can have a
great deal of confidence in. And I don\'t know that the MSC, not that
they\'re doing a good or a bad job, but I don\'t know, you know, the
credibility there. I think, you know, assumes they\'re essentially the
only game in town, so it makes them viable. But as you\'re saying, there
is a void there and it\'s probably something the government should take
on, we should take \--

MR. CATES: I may be wrong, but I think MAFAC\'s taken a position on
promoting Aquaculture is an important thing for the U.S. I think MSC has
said the complete opposite. Might be \-- John Forster would know that a
little bit, but from my understanding, they won\'t certify an
Aquaculture venture.

MR. FORSTER: They won\'t certify it. They decided not to. That\'s not
the same thing as saying you don\'t agree with Aquaculture. So, you
know, we\'re still left without a certifying body, and I agree totally
with you. MSC approach and process is the most thorough of all of them.

But the fact remains you got a whole lot of groups out there who\'ve
appointed themselves. They\'re not audited. They\'re not auditable. They
can change their name tomorrow. They\'re not subject to the electoral
process. At some point, one has to get back to what this whole
democracy\'s about and use the system to provide the auditable advice to
consumers in this case. And I think we\'re all saying the same thing. I
think it\'s very important it be taken on as a challenge.

MR. RAUCH: Is there consensus then to refer this to a working group of
your subcommittee? Do we need a motion or is \--

(Motion called, moved and seconded.)

MR. RAUCH: Any opposition?

(No verbal response.)

MR. RAUCH: Vote? Ayes?

(Chorus of ayes.)

MR. RAUCH: Nays?

(No response.)

MR. RAUCH: Ayes have it. (Motion carries.)

MR. RAYBURN: Would it be helpful to find out who would be interested in
just heading that for tomorrow afternoon. I guess \-- is that when
we\'re going to be doing it?

MR. BILLY: Jim\'s right. We can \-- his business can be finished half of
Wednesday morning. You can take the other half to get started \--
working group so there\'d be the sport \-- Rec fishing for the whole
morning and then the two items.

MR. RAYBURN: So do Aquaculture tomorrow afternoon and then just \--

MR. BILLY: If we finish Aquaculture early, we can at least talk about
it. You know? But people need to know so we\'ll \-- got to try to lock
in by 10:30 Wednesday morning? Or people who want to leave Rec fishing
and come over or divide their time, whatever?

MS. BRYANT: According to the committee rules and regs, for your benefit,
being new, you\'re not locked in to just one subcommittee. That was kind
of a new decision that was made business-wise a number of years ago.

MR. SCHWAAB: Laurel, did you say you were going to bring committee
assignments \--

MS. BRYANT: Yes.

MR. RAUCH: Any further discussion on this?

(No verbal response.)

MR. RAUCH: Any other business before we adjourn for the day?

MR. RAYBURN: If you would pass that to Michael Kelly, I guess, and when
we\'re going to meet so they can be up here as well.

MR. RAUCH: Anything else?

MR. KRAMER: I like the hotel here for no other reason than its elevator.
When I just came from the break, I had bing, bing, bing. All three of
them came to get me.

MR. RAUCH: All right, we\'re adjourned.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter adjourned for the day at 4:31
p.m.)