NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

\+ + + + +

MARINE FISHERIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

\+ + + + +

COMMITTEE MEETING

\+ + + + +

Tuesday

June 5, 2007

\+ + + + +

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

[PRESENT]{.underline}:

Dr. William Hogarth Vice Chairman

Tom Billy Member

Laurel Bryant Consultant

Randy Cates Member

John Connelly Member

Bill Dewey Member

Anthony DiLernia NOAA

Randy Fisher Consultant

Robert Fletcher Member

John Forster Member

Catherine Foy Member

Jim Gilmore Member

Mark Holliday NOAA

Steve Joner Member

Rob Kramer Member

Peter Leipzig Member

Dr. Steve Murawski NOAA

Mary Beth Nickell-Tooley, Member

John O\'Shea Consultant

Tom Raftican Member

Sam Rauch NOAA

Ralph Rayburn Member

Eric Schwaab Member

Larry Simpson Consultant

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

9:13 a.m.

DR. HOGARTH: I think you have Fed Ex labels on the table. If you want to
Fed Ex your stuff home, we\'ll do it. We don\'t know what happened with
Ken Roberts. He cancelled at the last minute this time, so we don\'t
really know what -

Jimmy Donofrio has not attended yet. He cancelled last Friday.
Supposedly if you miss three meetings you\'re automatically off, and he
hasn\'t attended yet. This has been number three or four, so the
breakout rooms for this afternoon are Mount Vernon and Monticello which
are right down here with papers on it.

The Aquaculture people are supposed to be - they\'re help with the
Aquaculture Subcommittee meeting this afternoon, and Vision 20/20 people
are here. Mark is here.

The introduction to this, yes, this was an idea that we had, I had,
after talking to several people within the industry, so, you know -

MS. BRYANT: Can you all see that?

DR. HOGARTH: Are you paying attention to what I\'m saying?

MS. BRYANT: Of course I am.

DR. HOGARTH: Some of the commercial groups have been trying to get
themselves together and form a group called Unity, I think it is, but
they\'re have meetings on both sides of the country, all trying to look
at what the future should look like.

We\'ve got lots of comments from the field about, you know, what
fisheries look like in the U.S. when you have a disaster like the Gulf,
and you didn\'t put money in it, and people say well what should the
fishery look like, what type of infrastructure should you have, you
know, it\'s just needs a lot of questions answered.

I did ask for that blackboard, so really are the answers. I think
Magnuson itself is going to cause some reorganization or restructure of
the fishery because I just see that it\'s a tough bill, tougher than
most people thought, and then you put aquaculture in the mix, which we
feel we have to put in the mix if we continue to let each week to import
more fisheries, fish, shrimp, and as you look at what we import and you
see they have more and more problems with some of the imports, so are we
getting what we thing we\'re getting, and have these - what we import is
being handled so to speak, and I think we, the American consumer, needs
a little more confidence.

I\'m concerned with some areas to see that happening, so it would just
look like we ought to try to put together something that, what we saw in
the future of U.S. fisheries, so, you know we\'ve been in it - I\'ve
been in it now for six or seven years.

> It\'s coming to the end of that term and what we\'ve done or haven\'t
> done, but I think it would be helpful to put some of the things to
> help guide others as they get into this business and Congress as they,
> you know, continue to work with fisheries, so some people say they\'ve
> got to go back in there and refine what they did in Magnuson to
> correct things in Magnuson. I don\'t know that it will be that easy
> for them to go back in Magnuson right now. There doesn\'t seem to be a
> lot of interest by some people.
>
> I know Senator Stevens doesn\'t seem to have much interest in it
> except international. We argued hard on international, I can tell you
> he has a whole list of stuff, and that\'s part of what I was supposed
> to be doing in the future is to work with Senator Stevens on
> international, what he\'s going to do with international of IUU
> vessels are coming up, a big issue, shipment of fish with,
> particularly unions getting involved is more difficult.
>
> So, just thought we ought to have a document that would sort of look
> at where we\'ve been and where we need to go and how can we structure
> or manage this fishery for the future.
>
> I don\'t need to go through all the numbers again about how valuable
> fisheries is, both recreational and commercial, to this country. I
> think we all know that, and we know that trade deficit - we know all
> the things we need to know, except I\'m not sure we know - if we can
> all agree yet on what it ought to look like, what it should look like.
>
> I think this got caught up in the budget process - the meeting, the
> work, which some of us couldn\'t travel, most of us couldn\'t travel,
> and so Tony and Mary Hope and then recently - I think Ralph went to
> that meeting - and then recently I\'ve got Mark Holliday involved
> because Mark had put together sort of a report for us that - earlier
> that helped with lots of things that we - the actual report, and
> Secretary Evans thought it was really a report that we need to use,
> but then we got grand axled because we had money it and you could talk
> with money in the administration but he saw what it would take
> money-wise to fix certain things in the industry.
>
> So they tried to take the money out, but it just never did - got to -
> the attraction that we would have liked for it to have got, so Mark
> has still been involved with that, and part of the Magnuson, the new
> Magnuson, is we have to look at capacity, we\'ve got all these reports
> we have to give to Congress over the next few months and years, and
> one of them is capacity for each of the fisheries, I think.
>
> We thought we had to do this, and to make a long story short, it\'s -
> I think it\'s getting to a pretty good document that questioned IMS,
> what we sort of do with it because it has not gotten input from the
> stakeholders, and the stakeholders that we have in this industry, if
> you give them something, and they haven\'t - they weren\'t part of it,
> then it\'s dead on arrival. It\'s absolutely dead on arrival, and so
> we have to figure it out.
>
> We could have the best document in the world, but until we get some,
> you know, some buy-in or communication to it, so I think that\'s
> something we need to talk - now that we got it, what can we do with
> it, actually do with it?
>
> You know should we use MAFAC members or their meetings in their area?
> Should we have regional meetings or should we - we\'re planning at the
> end of September to have a two and a half day meeting here on Magnuson
> implementation, here in D.C. Could we take one session at the - sort
> of at the end of that or at the first of that and have a session of
> this, so that we\'d have a lot of people in the room that they could
> have to see the Magnuson, and they\'d comment on this document.
>
> So that\'s sort of where I am. You know, I think we need to go through
> it as a group and go work to this meeting but as part of a package,
> the next steps to it.
>
> How do we unveil it? How do we get comments? How do we move forward,
> so, I know you are very open and Mark in particular they\'re working a
> lot lately and staff was up -
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Vince was there.
>
> DR. HOGARTH: Oh, Vince.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Hopefully, just as Bill said, this document is hopefully
> to give some type of direction or at least let the Agency know what we
> think we see on the horizon regarding U.S. fisheries.
>
> The process that was followed to get to the document you see there on
> the screen today was, when we last met in Seattle there was some
> discussions that eventually led to a series of questions or issues
> being identified.
>
> What the 20/20 working group then did was to select approximately 20
> or so of those issues that seemed to be most common amongst most of
> the members - in most of the members\' minds, and we tasked those
> issues out to different members of the work group to write
> approximately a one-page summary of the issue regarding what -
> identifying the issue, where do we see it\'s going, what are some of
> the outcomes. Those - those 20 1-page documents quickly evolved into
> about 40 or so maybe more pages, and another working group met in New
> York in December of \`06, and that work group took the, I guess we\'ll
> say, the unedited versions that were submitted by the committee
> members or by the work group members and edited them and condensed
> them down to the precursor to this document.
>
> After that work was done, then we went back to the shop and we tried
> to do some cut-and-paste and do some editing, and what you see now -
> and the result of that work is the document that you have before you.
>
> This is clearly a draft, and what I would hope to come out of today\'s
> meeting with, is a consensus approval of the concepts that are
> contained within the draft. I don\'t think we have to - we tried
> sitting in New York and editing and putting in commas and dotting i\'s
> and crossing t\'s, and that very quickly, as a group - as a small
> group, a group of four or five, became tedious.
>
> To expect that to occur with a group of 20 something members is almost
> impossible, so that\'s not the purpose of today\'s meeting regarding
> this document.
>
> Essentially what we\'re hoping to come out of - the work group was
> hoping to come out of today\'s meeting is a consensus approval on
> what\'s contained in this document regarding the issues that have been
> identified and the possible solutions.
>
> Once that\'s done, we, myself and staff, Mary Hope, will clean it up a
> little bit more, and I guess we will then circulate it to the
> Committee one last time, and if everyone blesses it, then it will go
> to Dr. Hogarth as Draft 1.
>
> I guess, Bill, once you get it, if you say go ahead with it, then we
> would post it, is that correct?
>
> So then it would get posted, and - on a website. The website right
> there and identified. Michelle, what\'s the name of the website?
>
> MICHELLE: Fish 20/20.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Fish 20/20, so it would be - okay, the Fish 20/20 would
> be posted, and we would circulate an announcement of this document and
> ask the public for some input.
>
> Once we got that input, I guess at the next meeting, the winter
> meeting, we would then consider all those comments and finalize our
> report.
>
> What we do with those comments, I guess, is open for discussion
> regarding the full committee. My role in all this is to try to steer
> the production, not to steer the policy. Let me be very clear on that.
> My role is not to steer the policy. I may have my own ideas, but my
> ideas are no greater or lesser than any other single member here at
> this table.
>
> My role is to facilitate the production of the document and to be sure
> that everyone has an equal opportunity to have input into production
> of this document, and so, if at times I\'ve been a bit tedious with
> you, some members saying, you know, where are your documents or we
> have deadlines and all, it\'s only to try to remain productive,
> particularly to the staff are Mary Hope and Michelle. Thank you very
> much for your hard work on this.
>
> They\'ve been - I cannot tell you how many versions of 20/20 they\'ve
> seen over the past year, let alone the past couple of weeks, and they
> always seem to be able to incorporate additional comments and to bring
> things forward.
>
> So having said all that, folks, I would like to go through the
> document very quickly.
>
> MS. KATSOUROS: Tony, can I interject please.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Yes.
>
> MS. KATSOUROS: This talk about a spectrum of ways of posting it, did
> you want to post it and then ask some questions, are you going to
> bring that up as far as different options?
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, what I would like to do, Mary Hope, is to maybe
> once we get through what we have there, decide what we\'re going to do
> with this.
>
> MS. KATSOUROS: Okay, all right.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: And again, I\'m very open to comments. I want this to be
> as much, you know, where we go with the document that we\'re going to
> deliver to the Agency. Do you we want questions? Do we just want to
> leave it open? I - posting it up - I don\'t think posting it and
> saying okay, folks, what do you think about this is the way to go
> because I think we\'ll get many comments that, while maybe considered
> thoughtful comments may not be able to be useful in the way we\'re
> going to try to construct the final document.
>
> I understand this is a very ambitious project because we have
> divergent views sitting around the table, and we\'re asking for these
> divergent views to come together with a single vision, but perhaps
> that\'s what we should be doing.
>
> We should be considering each other\'s different perspectives and try
> to come together with a unified single vision so that we could give
> the Agency some concrete direction.
>
> I\'ll get off my philosophical horse now, and I guess I\'ll go to
> the - let\'s go to the document itself. Regarding the Executive
> Summary, are there any - does anyone have any comments, would like to
> make any changes, any edits, any additions, any subtractions? I
> understand that it may have been a while since the last time you read
> this, but we have one paragraph, Executive Summary.
>
> (No audible response)
>
> Michelle, can you scroll down to Trends and Impacts on Marine
> Fisheries. Okay, that section, Trends and Impacts on Marine Fisheries
> goes one, two, three, about three and a half, almost four pages. The
> change that I am happy to see is a significant mention of the National
> Offshore Aquaculture Act, and I don\'t know if folks want to take a
> moment or two to look it over again before we continue on.
>
> Are there any changes or suggestions? Vince.
>
> MR. O\'SHEA: I just had a question on six, Ecosystem-Based Management.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Can you identify a page for me, please.
>
> MR. O\'SHEA: Sure, Page 2. Just - and I noticed this on earlier
> drafts, but there\'s really no mention about the cost of collecting
> that data, new systems that need to be established to get that data or
> anything like that. Is that really kind of beyond the scope of this
> paper because that\'s one of the big issues on implementation is,
> where is the data going to come from and who\'s going to pay to
> collect it.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: If you ask me, I don\'t think it is, but again, let me
> emphasize, my voice is one of 21 voices around here. It has no greater
> or lesser impact, and so I look to the other members when I ask, and
> what Vince is saying is, should we be identifying the cost or what
> it\'s going to require to have ecosystem-based management.
>
> MR. O \`SHEA: It\'s just the challenges of identifying the resources
> to do it, that\'s all.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Dr. Billy.
>
> DR. BILLY: It seems like that would be true for a number of the areas
> in this paper, improving and assuring the safety of the product,
> facilitating the further development of aquaculture where there are
> public and private costs associated with all of those.
>
> Maybe one way to deal with it would be to keep in mind and ultimately
> develop an associated budget-type document that would reflect
> estimated costs that might be required to make this a reality.
>
> MR. O\'SHEA: Actually I was kind of just thinking just flagging the
> issue that this isn\'t going to go anywhere unless somebody addresses
> the budget which, you know, if you buy into ecosystem, then you\'re,
> to a large extent, buying into creating new systems to collect data,
> that\'s all.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Mary Beth.
>
> MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: I just wondered, Bill had mentioned earlier there
> was a document that had some budget items in it and ran into some
> problems because of that. Is that where this is going or are we
> talking about something different?
>
> DR. HOGARTH: Well, I would hope that we don\'t put budget numbers in
> each section of the thing here. We may have a statement at the end,
> you know, so that, you know, subtract from what we said up front.
> There\'s a recognition that, you know, full implementation of this
> could have budgetary, you know, restraints and considerations
> something like that so it doesn\'t look like you\'re going to out-size
> the present budget, which we can\'t do, but the users would know that
> they can come back and ask and so you kind of work - you can recognize
> that it does, but you just don\'t say how much.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: I see a lot of heads nodding up and down to Dr.
> Hogarth\'s suggestion. We\'re good with that?
>
> MS. KATSOUROS: Maybe we could call it a requirements section rather
> than a budget section and what would be the requirements.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Why don\'t you join us at the table here so we don\'t
> have to constantly turn around. I\'ll just squoosh over here a little
> bit. Larry.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: Yes, I think all you have to do as far as money is just
> reference ocean policy permission counting in about the money, and
> that will take care of it. I had one item on Page 2, the middle of the
> page.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Before - are you going to leave the money issue?
>
> MR. SIMPSON: Yes.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Well then we\'ll agree that we\'ll put perhaps - rather
> than identify, because there\'s a number of these, there\'s about 20
> different issues that are identified in the document, and rather than
> try to put a cost associated with each of the different issues,
> perhaps we could have a couple of paragraphs at the end recognizing
> that many of these recommendations are going to require additional
> budget, and we recommend that additional funding be allocated. Are we
> good with that?
>
> MR. SIMPSON: And even related to the Ocean Policy Committee, as a
> suggestion.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: We agree on Ocean Policy. Are we good with that? Good?
> Okay, Michelle, could you add a note on that also please.
>
> MS. KATSOUROS: I have it.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Thank you. Larry, could you go on, please.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: Last one for me, Mr. Chairman, Page 2, the middle of the
> page. This overcapacity -
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: This overcapacity has created a race for the fish and
> resulting in lower economic return.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: The other factors that result in those lower economic
> returns I\'d say contributing - contribute to, but other than that, I
> mean, that seems like a linear relationship.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: How about if it reads this overcapacity has created a
> race for fish and has contributed -
>
> MR. SIMPSON: Yes, instead of resulting, I would put which has
> contributed to.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Michelle.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: But I mean that\'s just a suggestion. Use it if you want
> to.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Well, let\'s just put it on the board there, and if
> anyone suggests otherwise, unless anyone objects to it, that\'s were
> it\'s going to stay which has impacted the economic and social life in
> the norm.
>
> This overcapacity has created a race for fish which has contributed to
> lower economic returns. To remove the preposition in, to lower
> economic returns.
>
> MR. SIMPSON: Just a suggestion.
>
> MR. DiLERNIA: Well, so noted and accepted. Dr. Billy.

DR. BILLY: Yes, the top of that Page 2, the last sentence, I think there
should be a period after U.S., than is projected to continue to exceed
supply in the U.S. period, absent then capital A.

MR. DiLERNIA: Capital A, okay. Michelle. Mr. Forster.

MR. FORSTER: A couple of points, first on Page 6, there\'s reference to
the -

MR. DiLERNIA: If I may, okay, why don\'t you go - why don\'t we jump
ahead to Page 6. If we have to go back, that\'s fine.

MR. FORSTER: Okay, I\'m sorry, okay. It\'s just that it talks about
long-term potential of 8.1 million tons for the fishery, and I wonder
where that number comes from in it\'s like further on in the document it
talks about U.S. consumption of six million tons, and, you know, we are
under the impression we have a deficit in seafood here, and we\'ve got
all these imports coming in, and you\'ve got consumption of six million
and a long-term potential of 8.1, and to me that 8.1 is a strange
number, and I wondered what the justification was.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, John, if -

MR. FORSTER: Well, still, I\'m looking at the same job as you, Page 6,
halfway down, just a little less than halfway. The long-term potential
yield of -

MR. FLETCHER: Our copy is different from yours.

MR. DiLERNIA: There\'s been so many copies circulated. That is going to
be a problem.

MR. FORSTER: Well it\'s under the Tab 9, sorry about that.

MS. KATSOUROS: I may be able to -

MR. DiLERNIA: I wanted to ask, now that we\'ve identified that page, if
I could process - point of process, you may all know or may not know,
but basically each of the issues, individual issues, that are contained
in the document before you were tasked out to different individuals, and
folks came forward and volunteered to accept those tasks, so if we\'re
discussing a segment of the paper that you were tasked with writing, you
don\'t have to reveal yourself, but if you - I don\'t know if you want
to or not, but if you could contribute to us, helping us understanding
where that all came from because I\'ll be honest with you, I don\'t know
where all the numbers came from in the document.

MR. FORSTER: I think you may have just hit on it. I think we\'re talking
round weight and edible weight.

MS. KATSOUROS: Right, it\'s not - right, that\'s exactly right.

MR. FORSTER: In which case it needs clarification because otherwise
people would read this through and use to say, hey, hold on. There\'s
8.1 million and six million -

MS. KATSOUROS: Right, but that was edible, it was the total, so we can
make that -

MR. DiLERNIA: How would we change that? What would we say? Long-term
potential yield to U.S. fisheries within the U. S. EEZ is estimated to
be 8.1 million tons per year.

MR. FORSTER: Live weight or landed weight.

MS. KATSOUROS: Right.

MR. DiLERNIA: Round weight.

MS. KATSOUROS: Of which, you know, of which half is used for - which
half is edible and, you know, others used for other purposes.

MR. FORSTER: Maybe just a little commentary on that because the
distinction is often overlooked, and it\'s a fundamental one.

MR. DiLERNIA: We\'re on Page 3, so what we want to do is we want to make
a distinction that it\'s round weight, and we also want to make the
distinction that - put a phrase in there that says -

MS. KATSOUROS: Of which half -

MR. DiLERNIA: Of which approximately half is used for industrial
purposes rather than human consumption. I don\'t want to do half though,
no. Do we have any idea what percentage of that 8.1?

MS. KATSOUROS: No, but put a question mark, and we can look that - that
we can look up. NOAA\'s got those numbers.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, are we comfortable with that, Michelle, a percent.

MS. KATSOUROS: I don\'t know if it\'s half, but it\'s a high percent.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, good.

MR. DEWEY: Tony.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.

MR. DEWEY: On that same point, on the next page, on Page 10, under
Current Situation of the Issue, there\'s a reference there that says
U.S. commercial landings are relatively stable at about two million
tons. Again, I don\'t know if you want to make a similar reference here
that there\'s a disparity, and then the other thing -

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, let\'s just leave that if I may, one step at a time.
U.S. commercial landings are relatively stable at about two million tons
per year from 35 to 77, and you\'re saying that that two million tons is
round weight.

MR. DEWEY: I don\'t know, I\'m just saying you need that same
distinction for clarity.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MR. DEWEY: And then on this same point, I don\'t think anywhere in the
document, at least I was looking for it, nowhere is it stated what the
current harvest level is.

MS. KATSOUROS: I thought we had the current harvest.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MS. KATSOUROS: We have the current harvest level. It just may have come
out because it\'s also been stable over the last -

MR. DEWEY: No, since 1977 landings have more than doubled to -

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, so since l977 landings have more than doubled to -

MS. KATSOUROS: And we\'ll put in the number.

MR. DiLERNIA: We\'ll put four point something million question mark at
this point.

MR. GILMORE: Tony.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.

MR. GILMORE: I\'ll have to leave to go to a counsel appointment. Steve
Murawski, you probably all know who Steve is. He\'s a scientist for the
organization taking part in and can probably answer most of these, but I
will be back with you either this afternoon or the first thing in the
morning. I\'ve just got to make some reports and stuff. Okay?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir. Before Dr. Hogarth -

MR. RAYBURN: Does this hit the mark, or has he seen it yet? Has it hit
the mark or is it relatively -

DR. HOGARTH: Yes, I think it\'s very close. My concern is what do we do
with the next step of thing and so it doesn\'t come down, I just want to
make sure we are in the ballpark. One segment of the seasons is we
didn\'t have any input, come back and talk to us.

MR. RAYBURN: I just wanted to make sure we were not beating it if it had
no relevance to you. Okay, thank you.

DR. HOGARTH: My pleasure, the details maybe, but I think that\'s going
to do more good.

MR. RAYBURN: I just wanted to make sure it was in the ballpark.

MR. DiLERNIA: Mr. Connelly.

MR. CONNELLY: It\'s too bad Bill left on this, but yesterday Bill talked
about some of the differences in how he\'s going to be managing NOAA
Fisheries, and as far as domestic versus international, and he talked
again this morning about Senator Stevens\' focus on international which
will drive some attention to NOAA Fisheries.

I didn\'t see in the document any either glancing reference or any
specific reference to some of the international fora in which NOAA
Fisheries is active, whether it be, certainly withstanding with RFMOs
and the addressing of the IAU-related questions, so I\'m - being new to
this, I\'m not sure if that was by design or not, but it\'s - twice in
the last two days he\'s talked about the need to be focusing offshore
and there\'s nothing in here about that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Let me take a stab at trying to answer that question, and
then put it to the Committee as to what the Committee\'s will is.

We started this process 18 months ago actually. Originally we originated
it in Fort Lauderdale in February of \`06, so it goes back that far, so
those are the questions, and it - the concept was to be - to look at
U.S. fisheries in context of a global market, and I think that\'s where
you\'re coming from because we - I don\'t think there\'s - I believe we
all agree that, you know, our fisheries are now part of a global market
rather than just this little isolationist little country here
considering the amount of imports that we have.

So we talk about the imports, and we talk about the - I think there\'s
some discussion here about balance of trade. There\'s also some
discussion regarding the effect imports have on the net return to
American fishermen. Is that enough or do you see more?

MR. CONNELLY: My question is a little bit different, and I\'m going to
catch Bill as he walks out. Bill has talked about his focus is going to
be on RFMOs which is international fisheries management and increasing
emphasis that Stevens talks about on IAU fishing, et cetera, so it\'s
the fisheries management process outside of the U.S. that NOAA needs to
be involved in and is involved in with partners from State and
elsewhere, so it\'s - the trade issues are certainly reflected in here,
the international food safety questions, but it\'s the international
management issues.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, Dr. Billy.

DR. BILLY: Yes, I\'d like to support what - the point that John\'s
making. It would seem like adding a paragraph or two wherever it\'s
appropriate that would focus on a few things.

One would be leadership worldwide and the conservation and management of
marine resources is an important role that NOAA should have, and then
the second part -

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, let\'s just make a note of that. Unless I hear any
objections, you\'d like to see a paragraph or so expressing NOAA\'s
leadership -

DR. BILLY: Responsibility - or stewardship or conservation management
worldwide, and then the second part of it is the important involvement
as it relates to our supply of seafood. If these international treaties
contribute to stabilizing the supply or contribute in some way, then
it\'s in the consumer\'s interest to ensure that they\'re effective,
these international conventions and so forth, so there\'s - it\'s all
relevant to the supply as well as leadership role.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, just one second while we make sure Mary Hope
has that.

MS. KATSOUROS: Yes, NOAA is a leader domestically and internationally
and as international, what impacts and is important because of the
supply to the continuous supply to the United States.

MR. DiLERNIA: Et cetera, et cetera.

MS. KATSOUROS: Right.

MR. DiLERNIA: They\'re two separate issues. I have Fletcher and then
Steve, you\'re next. Bob.

MR. FLETCHER: Does this support the idea of we\'re about ready to become
actively involved in our third tuna RFMO Western and Central Pacific
Fisheries Commission. We have observers that - a fourth that the IATTC -
so there\'s clearly a presence and in most cases an active presence that
would justify such an approach, and I\'d be happy to be involved in
drafting some language because I\'ve been involved in the IATTCs, but I
think it\'s excellent, and it also supports the idea that a lot of us
have, that NOAA Fisheries should be pushing for an appeal from the 9^th^
Circuit decision that was recently handed down regarding dolphin-safe
tuna.

Did you get that, Steve?

MR. DiLERNIA: Bob Fletcher understands my thinking. He knows I hate
getting tasked with things without volunteers, the right things. He just
volunteered the right, so the question becomes, I mean, we have
individual sections here.

We have different issue papers. Do we want to make this - do we want to
elevate it from a paragraph or two in the document to a separate
identified issue? To that point, Ralph?

MR. RAYBURN: I would suggest that because of the way this has gone, you
know, the international was really brought up to a higher level through
the Magnuson Reauthorization, and I would hate - I mean, my sense would
be we could somehow within this document indicate that during the
process of putting it together, this was elevated up, and, you know,
Hogarth didn\'t start nor was the issue brought up when we kind of did
an issue assessment early on, but, you know, a continuation, once this
was out on the street perhaps then, you know, some commitment for MAFAC
at some level to go into the international and do something, perhaps a
supplement to this based on international but as a separate - while this
is maybe out for public review, something like that, so that would
just - instead of - other than - you know, that would be my thought.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well let me ask, Mr. Connelly, could you work with Mr.
Fletcher and the two may be able to put together a paragraph or two that
can contribute to staff that we could circulate to - okay, if that\'s
acceptable to the rest of the Committee, that\'s how I would like to
proceed with that.

MR. CONNELLY: I\'m sorry, a paragraph or two I think is different than
what Ralph just talked about. I think Ralph was, well -

MR. RAYBURN: I mean I think a paragraph or two that would explain that
it\'s an issue and that in the course of the development of this vision
document, international was brought to a higher level through Magnuson
Reauthorization and stuff like that in it, and we\'re going to proceed
in supplementing this as the process goes on.

That would just be my thought, but however you want to work it, I would
hate for the document to wait for another chapter on international to go
and just -

MR. CONNELLY: I don\'t think that writing a page or a page and a half
about the life in the international is that difficult. I think it\'s -
NOAA has taken - is a leader in somebody\'s RFMO issues, they\'re a
leader in our work in other places, and it needs to be recognized and
highlighted in a public document would be my suggestion.

MR. DiLERNIA: Dorothy, I\'m sorry, Steve\'s been patiently waiting.

DR. MURAWSKI: I think the main reason we\'re involved in the
international forum and certainly Bill\'s involved in this because we
share those fishing resources, and so we\'re trying to be more effective
in the management of those resources, and I think even going farther
that our fishery management objectives like any overfishing need to be
carried more effectively into those forums as well, and so this issue of
leadership gets to the effectiveness of that notion in fishery
conservation.

I think that\'s why U.S. needs to be in this mix because of the
interest.

MR. DiLERNIA: Now, Dorothy, Tom now, Tom first? Dorothy, please.

MS. LOWMAN: Well, I mean, it\'s sort of all what Steve says. I think it
does play an important role in the health of the domestic issues for
those fisheries that rely on those trans-boundary or highly migratory
stock, it\'s certainly a frustration for fishermen, you know, we can\'t
tie them down, so I think that that is an important aspect in terms of
our domestic issues.

MR. DiLERNIA: Tom.

DR. BILLY: Looking at it from the consumer\'s perspective and the fact
that approximately 75 percent of the supply comes from outside the U.S.,
it\'s more than just where we share resources. From a consumer\'s
perspective, it\'s important for consumers that there\'s effective
management of both wild stock fisheries and aquaculture worldwide.

That\'s one of the things that struck me about our conversation about
fish watch yesterday was the fact that we\'re willing to focus on a
report card, if you will, for our domestic fishermen or fisheries, but
we don\'t hold fishery management regimes worldwide accountable to the
same standards, and it seems like we should, and it\'s in the
consumer\'s interest to have that happen, and so I think it\'s not just
where we share common resources and they need to be managed. I think
it\'s the way broader consideration that someday NOAA will get its arms
around in terms of its leadership role in - with respect to the supply
of seafood in the U.S.

MR. DiLERNIA: Bob.

MR. FLETCHER: I think it clearly has become a more important issue in
Congress as seen through the decision by Magnuson Reauthorization to
focus so much, and I think it\'s partly the result of a rather dismal
track record on the part of the U.S. in not being more effective in
those international RFMOs, and part of the problem with that is there is
no accountability, there is no penalty for most of the nations involved
in these RFMOs if they choose not to do the right thing relative to
conservation and management.

Until the time when there is some negative result from them choosing to
ignore the best available science, we\'re going to struggle to get
effective management and, Dorothy, your point is really well taken.

A classic example is that the overfishing on Big Eye stocks in the
Pacific has created a huge problem for the very small little U.S.
fishery that had been focusing on that, and it took a long time and very
difficult situation to get a minimal amount of fish to the U.S. fleet,
and so I think this is a clear outgrowth, the decision by - on Magnuson
Reauthorization, a clear outgrowth of that lack of progress.

When you\'ve got the head of a Central American delegation to the IATTC
also being the owner of nine purse hangers, you begin to see some of the
situation that is faced by the U.S. when we go into these discussions,
so it\'s - in 20 years we need to think about where we want to be.

So I think this is very appropriate to begin to provide this for this
document, and I agree with Ralph, it wasn\'t on the radar before the
discussion that led to Magnuson, so it\'s good that we now - John
brought it up, I\'m really - it\'s got to be there.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s great, so then why don\'t you two fellows get
together, put something down for us, and send it to staff, and we\'ll
include it, we\'ll incorporate it in the document, and everyone will see
it when we send our - I want to come out of today\'s meeting with
something that\'s going to be edited again basically for writing errors
so to speak, and then sent out to everyone, and we\'ll just - maybe
we\'ll highlight this new section on international for folks to look at.

I don\'t want to get into just adding and subtracting topics to the
document because Ralph is absolutely right, we\'ll never get this done
then, and we\'re already probably six months behind where we were
supposed to be, so let\'s go forward.

Okay, all right, so you two gentlemen will get together on that. Let\'s
return back to the document. I mean we\'re up to Page 10 at this point,
any other comments on - yes, sir, Randy, I\'m sorry.

MR. CATES: If I could, I\'d like to go back to Page 5.

MR. DiLERNIA: Page 5.

MR. CATES: Recreational Fisheries, what I see in the document so far,
you talk about commercial fishing, recreational fishing, aquaculture,
but I haven\'t seen anything in subsistence fishing. Where would that
fall in the place because in this document you talk about, on the
recreational side, you want the experience of fishing to replace the
taking of fish, so if you have commercial fisheries and this truly
happened, where would subsistence fishing fall into place?

MR. DiLERNIA: True subsistence fishing, okay, is neither recreational
nor commercial. I think Clem Killian said years and years ago said it
best that, I believe he said it, he said, first we catch fish to eat, to
feed ourselves and then maybe to sell and then maybe to play with later
on, but you know, you catch a fish to eat is Number One, and I couldn\'t
agree with that more.

As a matter of fact, in my fisheries management course at the university
I use that quote a lot. That\'s why I remember it. I just thought I\'d
try to impress you with that.

I don\'t know. That\'s a good question, Randy, and it hasn\'t been
identified in the paper as of yet regarding subsistence fishing. What I
am suspicious of are those individuals that confuse excessive
recreational landings and try to mass them as subsistence fishing.

I see that on the East Coast a lot where individuals say oh, I need so
many of these fish in order to make my fishing trip profitable. Well if
you were a true subsistence fisherman, if you were that needy, perhaps
your money would be much better spent purchasing the fish rather than
going out and trying to catch it and feed yourself with it, so I -
that\'s only my one suspicion that - how that issue becomes masked, and
I think it does an injustice to those true subsistence fishermen.

MR. CATES: Well I think that\'s why we have really three fisheries:
commercial fishing, primary longlining, some near-shore fishing, bottom
fish. Recreational fishing would be - I would term basically tourism,
very small, and even then it\'s not really recreational because charter
boats keep the boat itself, so they\'re commercial, and then we have
subsistence fishing which is probably 95 percent of our fishery.

You go out, you catch, you\'re taking it home for food, and it\'s part
of the - I mean, they rely on it, and I think the difference is in
Hawaii you can go into the ocean almost year-round, actually, definitely
year-round, and it\'s part of the food source. It\'s something that\'s
depended upon especially in the rural areas.

So it\'s missing in here somewhere, and we need to -

MR. DiLERNIA: You understand the issue well. Would you like to try to -

MR. CATES: I think all we need is to -

MR. FISHER: Yes, but the issue, isn\'t the issue he\'s going to - I
mean, under management, you put something to say subsistence fisheries
have to be accounted for longer than 20 years because that\'s the issue.
It\'s not whether you do or you don\'t. The issue is you\'ve got to be
able to account for it, so under management you could add something in
there on Page 5 that says something about subsistence fisheries should
be accounted for in the future, blah, blah, blah.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, all right, you\'ve got the floor, go ahead, Randy.

MR. CATES: Switch to Page 15.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MR. CATES: On the last paragraph there is a talk about the aquaculture
industry has been slow in developing in the United States in part due to
difficulty in accessing capital investment. I don\'t believe that\'s
true. It certainly hasn\'t been an issue for my company - for the three
companies that are in the business, I don\'t think capital investment
has been for the lack of an issue.

I think if you have a good business plan you\'re going to be in
business. What\'s holding us back is permission.

MR. DiLERNIA: I don\'t pretend to understand that if there to be
anywhere through the authorities of the aquaculture protection, so I
will look for the rest to the members and Mr. Cates make a good point.
Do we want to exclude that line, that statement from the document? Do we
want to address it? In what way?

It sounds like what you\'re suggesting, sir, is that it be struck from
the document.

MR. CATES: Okay, well -

MR. DiLERNIA: Mr. Forster.

MR. FORSTER: I completely agree with Randy. I think historically it
could be argued five years ago, capital was a limitation, but so was
technology, and it was actually really a risk calculation more than lack
of money, and now there\'s more general commercial acceptance in the
business community really about aquaculture.

Capital is not a limitation. If one\'s going to talk about limitations
in there, which I think we should, it\'s about the aquaculture building
about the right and the permission to do it. That\'s what\'s holding
back the development of U.S. aquaculture right now, so if we\'re going
to make a point about what\'s holding it back, then I would emphasize
that, not the lack of capital.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, Mr. Connelly.

MR. CONNELLY: I guess I disagree because in the document it says in
part. It\'s not blaming lack of capital as the sole reason and for
large-scale development of aquaculture, capitalists - people with money
are waiting until things are settled up from a regulatory standpoint.
They are not pouring capital into the water for a reason, and the
reason - the reason it hasn\'t grown is because people aren\'t putting
money in the water, and so that is a lack of capital. Money is not
flowing were it to go for large-scale operations.

MR. CATES: What\'s the definition of large-scale?

MR. CONNELLY: More than three companies. You referenced just those three
companies that are operating.

The Chairman of our board, as an example, is an investor in seafood
companies. He invests in pollack, he invests in catfish, he invests in
scallops up in the East Coast. He has operations in a variety of places.
He and his financial partners would love to do something in this area,
but they\'re holding back until things are settled out, so that the
money, the capital, the money, is not flowing into the industry.

MR. DiLERNIA: But the money is available. It\'s just that the regulatory
environment does not encourage the utilization of it.

MR. CONNELLY: It\'s the same thing. Money being held in a bank isn\'t
really flowing into an industry. I mean money is available for me to go
to the moon, but it\'s not happening. I just think the word \"in part\"
covers the fact that we\'re not laying this solely on lack of capital.

As a public document, I just think it\'s important that we have a nod to
the financial market saying that lack of capital is a problem here -
lack of capital investment is a problem.

DR. BILLY: How about the -

MR. DiLERNIA: But, yes, let\'s go here.

DR. BILLY: How about the flow of capital?

MR. FORSTER: You are talking about limitations but it seems to me the
two thoughts should go in hand not be separated. It\'s all going to
affect the flow of capital.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well then why don\'t we just state that. I mean why don\'t
we say that capital or monies are - how about monies are available, but
the regulatory environment does not encourage investing at this time.

MS. KATSOUROS: Or once a regulatory regime is established, or, you know,
then financial -

MR. RAYBURN: This was a quote. This is a quote how to - deciding at the
end of the paragraph which was a NOAA Aquaculture Policy of 1998.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, post op, please, Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: I wrote this part of it, so, I mean I plagiarized as much
as I could. I thought where did I come up with that. I mean, it\'s a
direct - it may not still be applicable, and you may want to express the
fact that\'s it\'s not applicable or change the extent of the quote, but
it\'s extracted from the NOAA Aquaculture Policy of 1998.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, so \`98, we\'re in 2007, that\'s nine years ago.
That\'s a bit consistent with what I\'m hearing around the table about
how the availability of funds has since changed but that the regulatory
climate still doesn\'t encourage the investing of that money. Am I -
John, would you go with that?

MR. FORSTER: Sure.

MR. DiLERNIA: So, well I see you there for a second. If I could just try
to facilitate this, so if we could include somehow in here a statement
that what I just said, which is at one time or - the NOAA Aquaculture
Report of 1998 - while the NOAA Aquaculture Report of 1998 discussed or
illustrated or referenced a lack of funds, since then, funds are more
readily available -

MS. KATSOUROS: Or since then a larger impediment has been the
regulatory - the lack of a regulatory framework.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, since then, you know, the limiting factor has been -
more significant limiting factor has been the regulatory climate.

MS. KATSOUROS: Yes, the lack of the regulatory framework.

DR. BILLY: Why don\'t you just have John draft it?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, John -

DR. BILLY: Rather than trying to write it here.

MS. KATSOUROS: All right.

DR. BILLY: That way we can move on.

MR. DiLERNIA: Bill.

MR. DEWEY: My point was - that I was trying to make is that this
sentence that people are having difficulty sets up a paragraph that
concludes with a recommendation which is to amend the CCF Program to
allow investment in aquaculture, and then we go on, and we have all
these actions, you know, statutory or regulatory actions, to connect
what we\'ve been talking about, yet none of those actually say amend
that CCF Program, so we put this whole paragraph in to build this case
for a new funding stream for aquaculture, and then we don\'t conclude it
with a statutory or regulatory action to actually implement that, and
maybe it\'s not relevant because we\'re hearing discussions here that
maybe revenue capital is not an issue anymore. I don\'t know if that\'s
true, but maybe the whole paragraph comes out because that\'s what that
sentence was trying to set up was this need for capital, changing this
program to accommodate that.

MR. FORSTER: It - just as far as loan funds may be available through
this source. I mean that\'s absolutely a worthwhile thing to state and
to try and organize of course, but as it\'s a primary limitation right
now, it needs to balanced with this idea that it\'s also lack of ability
to go and spend the capital even if you\'ve got it because we\'ve still
don\'t have permits.

MR. DiLERNIA: John, do you want to take a shot at it?

MR. FORSTER: Sure, by all means, yes.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, I think we\'re being very productive. I\'m very
happy to see - I\'m very happy to see where we\'re going so far.

MS. KATSOUROS: I think John is. He\'s got all the assignments.

MR. CONNELLY: John Forster, I\'d get -

MR. RAFTICAN: To kind of jump back to where Randy was before on
sustainable and recreational fishing, if you\'re going to have
subsistence fishing, that\'s one thing. If not, maybe we\'ll look at
some of the things in recreational fishing.

I think first of all I agree with you in your point on, you know,
subsistence versus mass commercial take, and I think under Rec Fishing,
Page 5, Number 3, efforts should be directed to evolve a conservation
ethic and pride. That probably addresses some of those issues, but the
other thing is, you know, Number 4 there, recreational fishing
experience should replace recreational fishing production, I think
that\'s a little strong. I think you have may in there unless you want
to come in and put in a separate subsistence category, but I\'m not sure
you have should replace.

MR. DiLERNIA: I\'ll take a minute, that\'s - being the author of some of
that. Let me tell you where I\'m coming from with that.

Someplace in the document you\'ll see I reference the growth of the
recreational fishing community, and using NOAA\'s own numbers from 1980
to the year 2020, in that 40-year span, the number of recreational
fishermen in the U.S. triples if you look at the traditional growth.

I see some of the recreational representatives here looking up trying to
do the numbers in their head, and those are just, you know, as much as
people are critical of MRFSS data, if that\'s the only source of that
that we have, if you look at the growth of recreational fishing
nationwide, that\'s - we triple the number of recreational fishermen in
the U.S.

Combined with that and supporting that is if you look at - we also
looked at census data, and in that time frame from \`80 to 2020, the
number of individuals living in coastal states increases by
approximately 25 to 30 percent, total number of individuals in coastal
states, so the two facts seem to support each other.

So as a charter boat captain and someone who\'s been in the
recreational - this is my 31^st^ year as captain in the charter boat
business. My last trip was - my most recent trip was this Sunday, so
I\'m still very, very active in it.

I say to myself, what am I going to do when the number of recreational
fishermen continues to grow and our stocks, our ability of our stocks,
to replenish themselves becomes static. I just cannot deliver what
people are used to.

I look at summer flounder in the mid-Atlantic region, and it\'s a
classic example. The stock continues to grow, and we continue to
discourage landings because we\'re trying to reestablish the stock, and
so what I tell - when I speak to groups is I say are you - do you want
to kill fish or do you want to catch fish?

Once you kill a fish, you\'ve caught him. You can catch him more than
once if you don\'t kill him, and is the fun in the killing or in the
catching. Now that\'s a bit strong language, but it gets their
attention, and I think IGFA\'s got a great bumper sticker that says, you
know, a fish is too valuable to kill or, you know, to kill.

MR. RAFTICAN: Catch only once.

MR. DiLERNIA: Catch only once, you know.

MR. RAFTICAN: I\'m not going to argue at all, and it\'s absolutely the
direction we\'re going, but the thing is to put this in. I mean, I look
at fisheries on the West Coast with rockfish populations that actually
,when you have small changes in quotas, it takes recreational fishermen
off the water for, I mean, literally months at a time, and I just think,
you know, let\'s look at it.

The other thing was on you data on licenses, I think right now if you
take - you look, you would probably see a slight increase in the
amount - at level or a slight increase in the amount of salt water
licenses over that first half of that 20-year period, and I don\'t where
the projections are going, but I would just be cautious about that, and
I hate to kind of dead-end this thing.

I mean, that\'s where I\'m going. Not that - the target\'s not bad, but
I hate to put that in hard terms there. I don\'t know, Rob, do you want
to add anything to that?

MR. KRAMER: I would think that that, you know, talking to the tackle
industry and what we\'ll hear in Las Vegas next month, I don\'t know,
they agree that the numbers are as optimistic for growth as NOAA, but,
you know, I think the whole question came up here regarding systems of
fishing and how do we bring that in there, and I\'m not sure you can
meld the two, Tom and Martin and that\'s such a unique type of fishing
activity out there, it may not lend itself to combine with either area.

MR. RAFTICAN: I would agree, but right now they\'re essentially under
that same category, and if they\'re under that same category, you better
make the category broad.

MR. DiLERNIA: Larry.

MR. SIMPSON: You speak to this subsistence issue, I think you\'re making
too big a deal out of it. You transfer - there is such a thing as
subsistence fishing, but you\'ve transferred the enjoyment of catching
the fish to the enjoyment of eating the fish, it\'s still a recreational
kind of activity unless you sell.

Now Tony was talking about his folks who said, you know, I got to have
these fish so that I can make my trip pay for itself, well, they\'re
selling. That\'s commercial.

Now I don\'t know how many of you have ever in July or August
recreationally shrimped, but let me tell you, it ain\'t nothing fun
about it. If you catch it, you put in your freezer to eat, you know, I
mean, so it\'s still recreational activity.

I mean, there ain\'t nothing fun about it, so I mean subsistence fishing
is transferring the fun of catching it to the fun of eating it as long
as there\'s no sale, so I mean it\'s still to me a type of voluntary
enjoyment of the product in a little bit different way. That\'s my
opinion.

MR. DiLERNIA: Catherine\'s next and Randy.

MS. FOY: While I understand what Larry is saying for most of the
country, I think for Alaskans there is a definite difference in
recreational fishing and subsistence fishing, and when we have different
rules and regulations, we can actually go out there with nets and catch
salmon and there\'s certain quotas and number of fish per household, and
I think there does need to be a separate section for subsistence use.

MR. DiLERNIA: So we need - well I think we\'ve agreed that we\'re going
to have a separate reference to the - reference to subsistence fishing
and identify it, put it in and be identified, so let\'s take a look at
what we come up with after that. Take a look at that and let us know
how, you know - this is going to go out to everyone for final comments.

MS. FOY: Right, if you need a writer, -

MR. DiLERNIA: You got it. I\'ll - you just accepted the assignment.
Thank you. Mr. Kramer.

MR. KRAMER: When - to Larry\'s point, when I was thinking subsistence
fishing, I was thinking about Alaska, and I was thinking about Hawaii
not so much, you know, us guys who go out and do both activities there.

MR. SIMPSON: Do they sell that fish, Catherine?

MS. FOY: It is legal to sell the fish.

MR. SIMPSON: I\'m not sure sale is illegal.

MS. FOY: No, yes, and it\'s - they eat and - they can barter too.

MR. SIMPSON: Well that\'s sale.

MS. FOY: Yes.

MR. SIMPSON: If you\'re catching more than you can eat, that\'s not
subsistence.

MS. FOY: But it depends on if you\'re trading it for moose meat or if
you\'re -

MR. SIMPSON: Well it\'s hard for me to, to get that. I mean there are
people - we\'ve had to go from, in our area from how many ice chests of
fish you catch down to the event, to the experience.

MS. FOY: Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: Don\'t bring me into that.

MR. SIMPSON: Charter boats and everything used to be meat fishing.

MR. DiLERNIA: I used to clean fish for three hours at Cox\'s Ledge back
in the Montauck Valley as a deckhand, and if I wasn\'t busy for them
three hours, we didn\'t have a good trip, and now if you go up to -
it\'s a ten fish limit max up in New England on codfish which was - we
have too many fishermen catching too few fish.

MR. SIMPSON: That\'s not an issue of subsistence here, in a different
category, and I think we\'re just making too much of it. That\'s my
opinion, and I\'m going to be quiet.

MR. KRAMER: You may have a solution, Tony. Under the sentence that Tom
pointed out, the recreational fishing experience should replace
recreational fishing production as the primary motivator for
recreational fishing, maybe as a primary, a prime motivator.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good.

MR. KRAMER: The kind of implies that - and I don\'t know that\'s the
case.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s a good point, very good point. I\'ll take that.
I\'m the one who wrote it. I like that better than what I wrote.

MS. KATSOUROS: Move on.

MR. DiLERNIA: Randy.

MR. CATES: It sounded like you were going to put something in here about
subsistence fishing, but back to your point that you don\'t see the
difference. In Hawaii it\'s a different world. The economy is far
different than most places, and many people - it\'s not a choice, it\'s
a matter of putting food on the table, period simple. I mean, the
average, not the average, many low income native Hawaiians cannot afford
to go and buy fish. Fish is very, very expensive, but it\'s an important
part of the diet, and they\'re going to go get it, and they need to get
it.

Now to me and to many people that I\'ve know, that\'s subsistence
fishing. I mean, it\'s hey, guess what, you\'re out of school. Saturday
we\'re going down, and we\'re going to catch food for the week or at
least for a couple of days.

You\'ve got to plan and manage that, how you\'re going to do it.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well does the state - now I have a question. Does the
state recognize that as separate from recreational fishing?

MR. CATES: Yes, the problem with it though is it\'s abused. It\'s highly
abused. Where we start talking about the barter system and all these
things, and it\'s an accounting of it. I mean it\'s a major - our bottom
fishery is closed right now, and a major portion of our bottom fish is
subsistence fishing, so they do recognize it, and it\'s something that
it\'s going to have to be managed and accounted for.

MR. DiLERNIA: Do you have a suggestion on how to eliminate that abuse?

MR. CATES: It\'s licensing, it\'s really about if you\'re selling it. As
soon as you regulate the selling of product, you must have a license.

MR. DiLERNIA: Why would anyone - Catherine is writing that section on
statistics fishing. You may want to make some comments or incorporate
that because I respect and I - cultural and subsistence fishing, I
understand that it\'s necessary, but at the same time some recreational
members of the recreational community do a disservice to those
subsistence fishermen by abusing process.

So if we see, identify, an issue and we see a possible solution to that
issue, then it\'s incumbent upon us - we really rely - it\'s our
responsibility to identify their documents, so why don\'t we do that.

MR. CATES: I mean you\'re really going to have three categories:
commercial fishing which should be regulated, licensed, the right to
sell a product; recreational fishing which I see is not there yet but
will be where we have licensing for recreational fishing; and
subsistence fishing where you\'re only allowed to take it for home
consumption, but you\'ve got to somehow account for that.

If we\'re going to manage our fisheries because in Hawaii it\'s a
major - that\'s where most of the fish is going.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, I sort of hear this side of the table is for that,
but Vince.

MR. O\'SHEA: Yes, Tony, what I\'m hearing is that there\'s a couple of
regional sensitivities to this term and rather than try to solve it
here, just have the document reflect that the issue of subsistence in
some regions is - has unique challenges, for example, in Hawaii and
capture Randy\'s concerns, and in Alaska it means something else, and
have Catherine do it and dispense with it that way.

MR. DiLERNIA: And let Larry not eat shrimp anymore.

MR. SIMPSON: Too much work.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, very good, very good. Steve.

MR. JONER: I can just give you an example of how subsistence fishing is
handled with the tribes, and this is all done through the court process.
It\'s addressed in international policy commission regs, Federal regs,
tribal regs, state regs. It\'s really a developed program, so the tribes
in Western Washington who have treaty rights are given allocations, and
within those allocations are the commercial catch and the ceremonial
subsistence catch.

So with the halibut commission, they actually recognized commercial
catch, recreational, personal use which is take home by the fisherman,
and then subsistence which includes Alaska subsistence and tribal
subsistence, and the way that it\'s handled with the tribal fishery, we
regulate - we get the tribal allocation each year of halibut. Off the
top we take our estimate for ceremonial subsistence.

MR. DiLERNIA: Say that again, you get your trial allocation, and then
off the top you take -

MR. JONER: C and S, ceremonial and subsistence.

MR. DiLERNIA: I don\'t know what that is. Could you take a moment to -

MR. JONER: Ceremonial is when we had that dinner out there last summer,
that was ceremonial.

MR. DiLERNIA: Fabulous dinner, I still talk about it.

MR. JONER: Or if there\'s a wedding or a name-giving ceremony or, you
know the tribal or annual festival of high days, those all go into the
category of ceremonial.

MR. DiLERNIA: Really.

MR. JONER: Subsistence is the individual taking of fish home, so we
actually have three regulations for the tribe, commercial regs,
ceremonial and subsistence, and we account for each of those catches
separately, but all of them are now under Federal law to go on the fish
tickets, so in the case of halibut, in the Halibut Commission Regs which
are then adopted, you know, adopted by Congress under Federal
Regulations and enforced by the NMFS Enforcement Agents.

A tribal fisherman brings in his catch, and all of it has to be landed,
weighed, and recorded on the fish ticket, and then he brings in 5,000
pounds of halibut and sells 4800 and takes home 200, then it\'s 4800
sold, 200 as take home.

Then if we have a ceremonial fishery, we\'ll do a separate regulation,
and an individual will go out and catch the halibut for whatever
function the halibut is going to, but this took a long time to develop.
The vole decision which made out the treaty rights, and it was in 1974,
and it\'s taken us, you know, up until the last years to get this really
all hammered out in a system where all the fish are accounted for.

So subsistence cannot be sold, and we\'ve actually had to regulate the
subsistence take because, like one of the skippers said, these guys are
allowed two halibut per day and were on a five-day trip, and they come
in with their ten halibut averaging 40 pounds, they don\'t even eat
fish, so where is that fish going and then, you know, finds its way into
the market somewhere. So we have to limit the subsistence take of
halibut to an amount that\'s reasonable for take home.

If somebody goes over their trip limit and comes in with 500 pounds of
take home, you know, that\'s a problem because, you know, nobody has a
freezer big enough for 500, so it\'s something we have to stay on top
of, but it\'s all accounted for now, and under Federal Regulations, you
pick up the International Pacific Halibut Commission Regs, the section
for the U.S., it says that all catch must be landed at the time of sale,
all catch onboard vessel must be landed and accounted for on the fish
ticket, and so in their annual accounting, they\'ll have commercial,
ceremonial, all the different categories to be accounted for. That
distinction is there that subsistence cannot be sold.

MR. DiLERNIA: And that\'s making the point if you\'ve got a large boat
and you\'ve got a central location on the dock, I think the point that
Randy\'s making is like when I was growing up we would run a hand set
along the beach and take those silver side and just pop them into a
salad when we got home, and that was - there was no sport to that. We
were catching fish that we were going to eat coming from a commercial
fishing family that\'s what we\'d eat. We ate things - we ate them like
cats, and that probably on the Hawaiian Islands and maybe the Alaskan
region probably - bad choice of words, just people all over the coast
that are doing that is that their own little personal hand set that
they\'re -

MS. FOY: And that\'s monitored and you have a reporting system. There
are number of per species of salmon that are caught, how many halibut
you\'ve got, that kind of thing.

MR. JONER: And we\'ve got the same situation. You have somebody who will
just go out in a skiff to catch a fish for personal use, but they\'re
required to report that to us, and -

MR. DiLERNIA: Is it all reported?

MR. JONER: I doubt it.

MR. DiLERNIA: Thanks for the reality check. Okay, with that - do you
want to take a break? Yes? Okay, that\'s fine, ten minutes? Ten minutes.
Ten minutes. Ten forty we\'ll be back.

(Whereupon the above-entitled matter went off the record at 10:29 a.m.
and resumed at 10:47 a.m.)

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, folks, we have maybe another hour or so that could
be done with this, and I would like to be done with it. You have no idea
how much I would like to be done with it.

MR. GILMORE: Tony, what\'s the idea for the afternoon where it says
working groups on Vision 20/20?

MR. DiLERNIA: Laurel, Laurel, Mr. Gilmore has a question for us. It
says - the afternoon agenda says working groups on 20/20.

MR. GILMORE: On Vision 20/20.

MR. DiLERNIA: Thank you, okay. I think some of the assignments that
we\'ve been giving out, I didn\'t know how quickly this would go. I
didn\'t know how - because it is a consensus document. I\'m really very
proud of folks being able to come together and to be able to blend in a
sense of divergent views and be able to come out with this.

I didn\'t know how easily that was going to happen, so I asked - as a
matter of fact, I think I held my breath as Laurel stamped her foot at
me, and I kept holding my breath long enough because she wanted to have
this discussion and meeting in the afternoon, and I said no, I held my
breath that I wanted it in the morning because I said I could see all
horrific things happening, and us having to write and write and write.

Those of you who know me know I don\'t work past five o\'clock, so I
didn\'t want to work beyond that, so I said let\'s do it in the morning.
I said let\'s do in the morning, and if it has to, we\'ll continue into
the afternoon, so that\'s why that\'s there.

Okay, but -

MS. KATSOUROS: Maybe we\'re not going to stay until the afternoon, I\'d
go back and do my table arrangements.

MR. DiLERNIA: There you go, so and I guess once we break we\'ll get
ready - well, Laurel, why don\'t you go into it now as far as what do we
have for room assignments. Do we have any work scheduled at this point?

MS. BRYANT: We do, we have three breakout rooms available, and we also
have staff that is going to shadow and follow on giving Michelle -
she\'ll have a jump drive to be able to follow whoever is doing the
vision work.

Susan Bunsick is going to follow the aquaculture discussion, and if
there is another, and if there is another working group that wants to
break of, so we have this room, and you will continue to also have
refreshments in the late afternoon, and then we have two rooms along the
left-hand side.

You go through this large room and past those double doors, and on the
left-hand side there are two rooms, the Mt. Vernon and the Monticello.
They\'re both the same size, they\'re very nice conference rooms, so
you\'ve got that for your breakout work.

On - the only thing that Tywanna and I need to make certain of is that
this room, if you were done with this room, I want to make certain that
that projector and the equipment in here gets locked up and secured, so
that\'s my only concern. That definitely cannot walk.

Other than that, you\'re kind of free, on your own, to do the
subcommittee work that you need and want. What would be helpful to me is
to know when do you need me back here tomorrow morning, do you want me
here on the weekend, I can check with each of the subcommittee chairs.

MS. KATSOUROS: I thought you were getting us that computer, Laurel, was
I wrong?

MS. BRYANT: No, I can or - Michelle and I were talking about it, or as I
said a jump drive where you can use your own computer. It\'s entirely up
to you guys.

MS. KATSOUROS: I\'m kidding.

MS. BRYANT: And I didn\'t know, Jim, because you\'ve got your computer,
Mary Hope, on revision work. I know Susan\'s got hers, so Jim doing MSA
and Bob doing Rec Fish, that\'s where I thought you might need a laptop
and a jump drive to be able to do your work.

MR. DiLERNIA: Now to continue along with the agenda, for tomorrow
morning, I see we have MSA and Rec Fish meeting, okay.

The Committee Chairs are comfortable with what has to occur in those
meetings? Yes.

MR. GILMORE: Tony, yesterday there was discussion that - I wasn\'t quite
sure the MSA would take the whole morning, and so we talked about
starting that and going from nine to 10:30 and then from 10:30 to noon -

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s full committee?

MS. BRYANT: No.

MR. DiLERNIA: No.

MR. GILMORE: Just for MSA from nine to 10:30 and then working group
under Tom\'s group that John Connelly is chairing do fish watch,
ecolabeling, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

MR. DiLERNIA: So that\'s your work for tomorrow morning? Yes, okay. Mr.
Fletcher, as far as Rec Fish is concerned, do you need work tomorrow
morning, your committee together? You have - so you have contacted your
committee members, and they know when they\'re ready -

MR. FLETCHER: Tom Boreman will be with us tomorrow morning, and we\'ll
get an update on the work of the operations team, and then we\'ll
discuss the next steps and be prepared to provide a report back to the
full committee in the afternoon.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, so when we break today at lunchtime, we will
not meet together as a full committee until 24 hours later, until 1:00
p.m. tomorrow afternoon, so I just want to make sure that before we
break, all committee members understand they have an assignment - if
they have an assignment, what their assignments are and where they\'ll
meet and put what their responsibilities are, and I\'ll float around,
excuse the pun, between all of the different meeting areas.

MS. BRYANT: And I\'d like to meet with each of the subcommittee chairs
and work groups just so I know where you\'re going to be and make sure
I\'ve got your numbers and want to make certain Dr. Boreman gets here
and knows where he needs to be, etcetera.

MR. SIMPSON: Repeat the two rooms again.

MS. BRYANT: Mt. Vernon and Monticello. There is a large meeting space in
between those two rooms, but you\'ll see them. They\'re nice wood oval
conference rooms, and then again this one will be open as well.

If there\'s another group or somebody wants to meet here, I will make
certain that this is opened up early in the morning. I got here today at
ten to seven, and this was already open and ready to go, so staff seems
to be very responsive here, and they can make certain this is open for
you guys tomorrow as well.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, any other questions? That\'s the process of the next
couple of days. Okay, very good.

Let\'s continue on with the document. Any other comments, suggestions,
changes? I see we abandoned the page-by-page review which is great. I
didn\'t know any other way to do it, but who - Mr. Fletcher?

MR. FLETCHER: I\'d like to make a comment or two on Page 13.

MR. DiLERNIA: Page 13.

MR. FLETCHER: This is the recreational fishing issue.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.

MR. FLETCHER: Just as a kind of editorial comment, I don\'t know whether
this makes more sense or not, but down at the bottom of Section 4, it
says in addition in fisheries which have both recreational and
commercial components, if commercial quota is not harvested, management
should be prepared to reassign the underharvested quota to offset
recreational mortality.

I am a recreational representative on here, but I also am sensitive to
the commercial industry, and this is going to create some problems with
the commercial sector because they can say well, if we don\'t quite
catch our quota well, you\'re going to take it away from us? You can
give to the sports? What kind of a deal is that.

I think just to clarify by changing a few words might make that easier
to accept, and it was my suggestion. If commercial quota is not
harvested, management should be prepared to temporarily reassign the
underharvested quota to provide additional recreational opportunity just
to get -

MR. DiLERNIA: To provide additional recreational opportunities is great.

MR. FLETCHER: And eliminate to offset recreational mortality and
temporarily, it\'s kind of say hey, guys, if you\'re faced with a
situation where you have a problem or you all go out on strike and you
don\'t get to harvest that year, we\'re not going to permanently take
that quota away from you.

Unless a council or whatever decides that they need to do an allocation,
a reallocation, then you go into that battle with the knowledge that
it\'s going to be a temporary, I mean a permanent, reassignment, but in
this case I would suggest that that way it\'s - there\'s more
flexibility to go back to the old quota.

MR. DiLERNIA: I like both of your suggestions, and having authored this,
I want to incorporate your suggestions, but in the Mid, we have some
plans that allow for unused recreational quotas to be transferred on an
annual basis to the commercial side, and that reciprocity does not exist
yet in our fishery management plans in the Mid.

So I\'d like to encourage that. Also, and again I\'m speaking from my
experiences in the Mid, there were times when the recreational - the
demand by the recreational community for fish, say for - I think in
scup, Vince, that didn\'t get caught. There\'s a bund of commercial
quota that just wasn\'t caught, and at the same time the recreational
industry in a sense went over that quota, and if you look at the total
catch, while it might have been within the guidelines, the recreational
community did go over.

So if you could transfer some of that to offset, then we would be within
the -

MR. FLETCHER: The overall -

MR. DiLERNIA: We would be within the overall mortality because that\'s
what we\'re concerned with, the overall mortality, so that\'s why that
section is written there like that, to allow for a transfer back and
forth.

Who knows? Maybe in the future - maybe in the future some of the species
that we go after both commercially and recreationally as the cost of
harvesting increases, as the cost of fuel and everything, it may not pay
to go after them commercially any more.

Commercial fishermen may say no, I\'m not going to fish on that. If
that\'s the case, then why not be able to transfer that to the
recreational sector? So I\'d like to see that back and forth. We\'re not
taking it, we\'re not seizing it permanently, but if we could offset
some. Yes, Pete, and then Mary Beth.

MR. LEIPZIG: Where Bob and I come from, many of the species are not
currently allocated. There\'s sort of an assumption of what the
recreational catch will be, an assumption about what the commercial
catch will be, and that may be very different than other regions and
other councils.

As Bob raised the point, what struck me is that perhaps inserting in
mid-sentence there following the commercial component, where allocations
don\'t occur or have not - currently exist, then there\'s this
redistribution could occur.

We\'re in the -

MR. DiLERNIA: Say that again, I\'m sorry.

MR. LEIPZIG: Where allocations don\'t currently exist.

MR. DiLERNIA: Do not exist.

MR. LEIPZIG: Yes, and you\'ve got these soft allocations, these
set-asides, this redistribution could occur.

MR. DiLERNIA: So you would like - if an allocation doesn\'t exist, you
would like to see the ability to transfer?

MR. LEIPZIG: Sure, in our system I think that would work. We are going
forward now with some part allocations here in the future, and we\'re
doing it in support of an IFQ program, in which case if you were to
start shifting quota pounds that will exist under an IFQ program into a
recreational fishery, where you also have some roll-over provisions of
quota pounds that are unused from one year to the next, you\'re going to
really exacerbate the situation causing new problems that I don\'t
believe are intended here, and to me it\'s just - I would rather provide
great flexibility but do it in a softer manner. Where you\'ve got hard
allocations, you live with those allocations.

Once again, I don\'t know what else goes on around the country in terms
of allocations. It\'s something that\'s new to us.

MR. DiLERNIA: See, okay, see the roll-over aspect of what you\'re saying
results in a banking of quota for a sector.

MR. LEIPZIG: Roll-over is both ways.

MR. DiLERNIA: They also can, if they exceed, okay. I understand what
you\'re saying. I just - okay, how do we capture that?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Tony.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: I think the issue is more keeping optimum yield. You
set optimum yield for the fishery, you want to have mechanisms in place
that allow you to do that, so instead - I mean, I can see how you\'re
concerned the Mid-Atlantic might be that, you know, the roll-over
doesn\'t go both ways. So you need to have a mechanism to allow that to
happen so you can achieve optimum yield for the fishery, and it doesn\'t
matter whether it\'s the recreational sector or a commercial sector or
sectors within those groups. Do you see what I mean?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: So just to have some kind of a statement that says,
you know, to further, you know, achieve optimum yield in fisheries, both
recreationally and commercially, roll-overs of any allocations should be
encouraged, just like that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, I\'m going to take a stab. My section, so I\'ll take
a stab at capturing that in writing.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Jim I think is familiar with some -

MR. GILMORE: I would suggest using words like in-season management or
adaptive management just to emphasize the temporary nature of it, just
to say that to achieve optimum yield, fishery managers should be using
in-season adjustments or adaptive management. MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s
good, that\'s a wonderful way to put it yes. Yes, that\'s fine, that\'s
good.

MR. FLETCHER: Tony, I only have one other comment -

MR. DiLERNIA: In season - I just want to make sure that Mary Hope\'s got
that. Michelle, you got it. Okay, go ahead. Yes, sir.

MR. FLETCHER: I mentioned to Mary Hope, this is just an editorial thing
at the bottom of that page, you\'ve lost part of that.

MS. KATSOUROS: Oh, it\'s been fixed. It\'s on the screen. Now it\'s
fixed.

MR. DiLERNIA: Michelle, can you scroll up to what you were writing?
That\'s why - sometimes that\'s - to achieve optimum yield.

MS. KATSOUROS: Fisheries managers.

MR. DiLERNIA: To achieve optimum yield, in-season adjustments to quota -
okay, adaptive management, excuse me. To achieve optimum yield, adaptive
management measures such as a temporary reallocation of quota should be
available to managers. Okay, for example, I\'d rather go back - okay,
now following that the managers, for example, now strike, go down there,
for example, if commercial quota is not harvested, okay, just keep
striking. That\'s it, good.

If commercial quota is not harvested, management should be prepared to
temporarily reassign the under-harvested quota and provide additional
recreational opportunity. Are we good with that, folks?

MS. KATSOUROS: Yes, and visa versa.

MR. DiLERNIA: And visa versa, good, okay. Additional changes,
recommendations to the document, Randy.

MR. CATES: I have a question, in your document you talk about MPAs and
reserves and different tools for managing them.

MR. DiLERNIA: Do you have a section on MPAs?

MR. CATES: Page 18.

MR. DiLERNIA: Page 18, okay.

MR. CATES: Well we got to see that language that\'s not in here.

MR. DiLERNIA: Oh, okay, I got it, Larry.

MR. SIMPSON: The Number 6 that\'s on the bottom of Page 13 that we
dropped or the document doesn\'t have it. You said you have it up there.
I just wanted to read it.

MR. DiLERNIA: You want to add visa versa to that? Make everybody happy
on that - Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Yes, I just had a quick question on the top of Page
14, the first line, this thought is actually mentioned a number of times
in the document, so I just noted it here, and I was just curious from
Steve\'s perspective, is this accurate?

It appears that the global maximum potential for marine fisheries has
been reached at the same time that the supply of marine fisheries
protein from wild stock has plateaued, demand has increased, so is that
truly the case, we\'ve reached our maximum global potential?

DR. MURAWSKI: I don\'t we\'ve reached the maximum potential, but wild
cod has plateaued. I think part of it is because, you know, we have some
over-fishing scenarios that, you know, we know the issues there. We
thought we could get a little bit more, but not a lot more, you know, in
terms of wild catch, and so we might want to say that slightly different
to say the world wild catch is plateaued.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: The world wild catch has plateaued?

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, so, Steve make that change, it appears that the
global or the world wild catch of marine fisheries has plateaued?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Well, I think it hasn\'t been reached.

DR. MURAWSKI: No, it\'s - we haven\'t achieved its potential because of
the 30 percent of stocks worldwide is where world fishing is concerned.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Right, and that was kind of where my question was
coming from is if we have this - if we have the ability to rebuild
stocks and make landings 30 percent higher rate than they are today,
then that sentence isn\'t correct, is it?

DR. MURAWSKI: We can get more out of world - we can more out of U.S.
domestic but not by a lot. You know, I think, you know, I think that\'s
where this paragraph is going that even if you looked at say the extra,
you know, increment that we get out of wild U.S. fisheries, it\'s not
going to ease the demand.

I think if you worked on this paragraph a little bit -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Yes, I think you\'re right. I mean I think
everybody\'s already agreed that you\'re not going to, you know, solve
the demand issue.

It\'s just several places in the document that this type of sentiment
has been stated in different places, and it just seems just a little odd
to me, and I\'m sorry for making that suggestion because you have to go
through it.

MR. DiLERNIA: Mr. Rauch, I\'m sorry.

MR. RAUCH: On that issue, I note on Page 9 you talk about the long-term
potential yield for U.S. fisheries in the EEZ is estimated about 8.1
million a year and that we are only at 60 percent of the best estimate
of long-term potential yield, so while that\'s not going to meet the 40
million demand is at least 3.2 million additional. If Page 9 is correct,
which undermines the fact on Page 14 we\'re saying we reached the
potential, and on Page 9 we said we were still 40 percent of U.S. wild.
It\'s a little confusing.

DR. BILLY: Also to the point if my memory serves me right, your FAO
statistics for world landings have been about 92 to 93 million metric
tons annually for the last 15 years, so -

DR. MURAWSKI: And there\'s some discussion -

DR. BILLY: Now - fair enough, but the numbers haven\'t changed is all,
is my point, so notwithstanding the fact that there may be room for some
increase in the U.S., it\'s going to be offset by downturns in other
fisheries for whatever reasons it looks like.

MR. DiLERNIA: Doc, can you get us that citation?

DR. BILLY: It\'s in the FAO document 500.

MS. KATSOUROS: I think you need to balance - to use a work term - when
you\'re talking about potential productivity of oceans and economic
impacts or fluctuations in those, you know, environments, you\'re going
to have them all the time, you know, but is the potential there? I mean
if we actually manage it all in a really great way, what\'s your
potential?

MR. DiLERNIA: Is that a question?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well, we haven\'t reached it. That\'s what I\'m saying.
If you actually, you know, it has greater potential if we did a better
job.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MS. KATSOUROS: That\'s what we have on Page 9. It says that we
basically - and that, you know, says that - well Page 9, that we have
it. Page 9 says we have it, and then we go on Page 14. There is a
discrepancy.

MR. DiLERNIA: It indicates it has been to is being, so as far as global,
let\'s get back to Page 14. It appears that the global maximum potential
of marine fisheries has been reached, and what I\'m hearing now is that
with proper management there\'s - we have the potential to squeeze out a
little more. Why don\'t we just put it that way?

MS. KATSOUROS: What did you call it? Squeeze out a little more if the
U.S. production could increase 30 percent?

DR. MURAWSKI: If you look, for example, worldwide an annual discard and
bi-catch is around, somewhere around 20 percent of the annual marine
fish catch, so there\'s another potential point percent if you were able
to solve all of that stuff and keep it, but then, you know, the return
capacity of fisheries, we don\'t really know if it\'s a big number or,
you know, some increment over the top just because of all the
limitations that are imposed, but I don\'t think it\'s doubling the
world marine fish catch by solving all the major problems.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: No, I think that Steve\'s probably right, but it
just - I just think that to make a statement that we actually, you know,
are we maxed out. I just don\'t think we should say that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Tom.

DR. BILLY: You could change that by changing the words has been to is
being.

MR. DiLERNIA: There you go, global maximum potential marine fisheries is
being reached. We\'re approaching it. Mary Beth, are you good with that?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Yes, and then I think you need to address the next
one. It says that wild stocks plateaued. Well, maybe that\'s true
though. That\'s true.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, it appears that the global maximum potential marine
fisheries is being reached. Very good, thank you, Tom. Jim.

MR. GILMORE: On Page 8 under Commercial Fishing, first paragraph, it
talks about contributing \$60 billion, important food source and creates
thousands of job. I\'d like - I\'m guessing it\'s tens -

MR. DiLERNIA: Tens of thousands.

MR. GILMORE: I guess we\'re just saying fishing and not seafood, but
there has to be a better number than thousands.

DR. MURAWSKI: There\'s a census number on the number of people employed
in fishing.

MR. DiLERNIA: Can you get that for us, Steve? Thank you. I did see -
Steve, we got it, right, okay, now we\'ll go back to 14.

DR. BILLY: Now the \"nearly a third\" in that paragraph.

MR. DiLERNIA: Hold on.

DR. BILLY: Page 14, that same paragraph we\'re at.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, at the same time -

DR. BILLY: The FAO recent report is 40 percent, so -

MR. DiLERNIA: So then that first - Page 14 -

DR. BILLY: Top paragraph, aquaculture contributes nearly a third, and I
think that report which is on the next page and cited, FAO Fisheries
Technical Paper 500, it says 40 percent.

MR. DiLERNIA: So then let\'s just say that.

DR. BILLY: 40 to 45, something like that. I use what they have.

MR. DiLERNIA: 43, change nearly a third to 43 percent.

MR. RAUCH: On that point on Page 3 we say it\'s 32.4 percent in 2004. My
point is just to use the same number in both places.

MR. DiLERNIA: Which page?

MR. RAUCH: Page 3, well my page numbers are a little bit off, but this
is in the overview where you would talk about where it went from 3.9
percent in 1970, 27 percent in 2000, just 32.4 in 2004.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, so that should be changed from 3.9 percent of
total production weight by \`70 to 27.1 percent in 2000 and 43 percent
in, what year was that?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: 2004.

MR. DiLERNIA: 43 percent in 2004. Hold on. Okay, have another note
there? Can I see? You got enough work there?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well we got to do the citations to make sure that, you
know, I\'m putting the number with the cite, and then for the one we\'re
going to do like that bottom set, we\'ll do something about the
commercial, you know, employment, you know, looking at the commercial
employment, you know, through the whole system provides x number of
jobs, okay? We\'ll do something about this system, okay, so -

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, additional comments, changes? Okay, I\'ve got, wow,
all right, so let\'s start a list here now.

Randy, Steve, and then Dorothy, and Mary Beth.

MR. CATES: I have a question getting back to earlier it was about the
MAPs and marine reserves. You talk about them in here, and you talk
about some of the new technologies in managing of fisheries, but I see
no mention on stock enhancement, and I\'m curious at why?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: What page are you on?

MR. CATES: Eighteen.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s a great question.

MR. CATES: In my view, that is probably the most important tool that
we\'re going to have in the future for our fisheries, and I haven\'t
seen it mentioned.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good point. I would say the only reason it\'s not there is
because you probably weren\'t sitting at the table when we first came up
with a list of stuff to do, and I mean that seriously not facetiously. I
mean, as our membership changes, different perspectives and views come
to it, and -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Did he just get himself an assignment?

MR. DiLERNIA: He knows he\'s going to get an assignment.

MR. CATES: I\'m not very knowledgeable on it, but I think Alaska is
probably got the best perspective.

MR. DiLERNIA: Actually I wish Don Kent was here right now. Don would
have been able to write a good section on that. Do you know?

MR. JONER: Well I know it needs to be done, and that there are spots in
the U.S. that have very good stock enhancement programs. Florida has
some and I think New Hampshire. They\'re doing work in Southern
California.

If you go to Asia, they\'re - especially Korea, South Korea, they\'re
very well advanced in stock enhancement, and China is even doing it now,
and there\'s great potential there.

There\'s just this fear of what will it do to wild population, and I
guess my answer is it\'s already been done for a while, so I don\'t want
to get started on this.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Could I ask a question?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: To Steve\'s point, so if - we were talking about
MPAs stock enhancement and then of course we were in Seattle and saw
some of the work that they\'re doing out there in stock enhancement, but
I\'m not seeing the direct connection between the two. Am I missing
something?

MR. CATES: Yes, I think all that I was asking was why is it not in
there, not that they\'re related - you\'re talking about MPAs -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: You\'re talking about something different. I get it,
okay.

MR. JONER: It\'s an additional tool, you know, one tool for improving
stock production may be MPAs. Another tool may be stock enhancement.
That could be done together for some species, but it\'s just a tool to
use if you want to. I\'m going to put a plug in for the NMFS stock
enhancement.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, do you want to take a shot at a paragraph,
because one our goals was to keep this to 20 pages, and we\'re probably
already close to 30, and if we grow much more, it\'s not going to be
effective.

We want to produce something that someone will read, and if it\'s too
many pages, people just won\'t read it. Okay, so, Steve, you\'re going
to - you volunteer to write it?

MR. JONER: Yes.

MR. DiLERNIA: Thank you, and I have Dorothy next and then Mary Beth.

MS. LOWMAN: Page 10, the sort of whole issue of capacity or capacity in
connection with fisheries, I find this section kind of really confusing
and a little hard to get the angle of it. For example it says at the end
of the issue statement, increasing operating costs and quotas
restrictions are resulting in further consolidation of fisheries through
closing, and I think it\'s more directly - we have overcapacity in the
fishery, and that, you know, results in having to restrict the quotas, I
mean, there\'s - in some ways the rates of fish increases the operating
costs. There\'s other factors that also increase your operating cost,
and, you know, I think it needs to be a little more direct what the
problem is and whether - sort of, and I\'d be willing to try to rewrite
this.

MR. DiLERNIA: Great, you got it. Thank you, yes, and I agree with what
you\'re saying there, and I thank you for pointing that out. Yes, if you
could do that in the working group today or for tomorrow, so that we
have it for tomorrow. World budgetary limit, Pages 22 and 23, Laurel
points out to me -

MS. BRYANT: Jim Gilmore and I went kind of through some things
yesterday, and so we gave Michelle some corrections, so on Page 22
beginning with Section 1, Issue Statement 3, all the way through Page
23, that has all been deleted.

That was some kind of orphan redundant thing that occurred in the
document I think through cut and paste, and then at the top of your Page
-

MR. DiLERNIA: Slow down, yes, yes, yes, 22 where it says Issue Statement
3.

MS. BRYANT: Number 3, strike that and the rest of that page, and then
strike all of 23. It\'s not that we\'re taking it from the document,
it\'s that it\'s already occurred earlier in the document, and then on
Page 24 at the top, change that to Issue Statement 3. On that it\'s been
corrected, but on the handout that we were given for duplication it was
not.

Jim, what else - and then it\'s - the area that was cut out, Page 22,
just go to - if you want to section, what is it, Pages 11 and 12.
That\'s where that language already exists.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MS. BRYANT: Okay, I\'m done.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good job, very good job. Additional changes, suggestions,
edits? Mary Beth and then Bill.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: On Page 11, Background Issue 2, overview of the role
of technology in promoting conservation and maximizing efficiency in
commercial fishing operations, and, you know, I\'ve done a lot work with
cooperative research in the Northeast, and I was just thinking of maybe
just taking this section and incorporating a little bit more of
fishermen into it, and it might be easier if I just worked on it a
little bit and brought something back.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good, please do it. I have Bill and then John, Bill.

MR. DEWEY: So on Pages 5 and 14 where it\'s talking about aquaculture
regulations at least in terms of \"streamlining\" in both places, and
this word - I find this word can be somewhat controversial because it
insinuates that we\'re trying to get around something and would suggest
that we substitute perhaps coordinated and efficient.

MR. DiLERNIA: By providing a coordinated and efficient regulatory
process.

MR. DEWEY: As opposed to streamlining.

MR. DiLERNIA: Page 5.

MR. DEWEY: Five and 14, there are two places where it\'s used.

MR. DiLERNIA: So we\'ll go to five, Michelle.

MR. DEWEY: I think it\'s on the bottom of five.

MR. DiLERNIA: Which is aquaculture, by providing a coordinated and,
Bill, what did you say? An efficient regulatory process.

MR. DEWEY: And it appears again in the middle of 14, after - Issue
Statement 1. So those are a few editorial changes, and then I had a more
substantive one that I\'d like to put out on the table. It may be
controversial, maybe not, but -

MR. DiLERNIA: You\'ve got the floor, wait a minute.

MR. DEWEY: So some of you folks had a chance to come and observe our
shellfish culture in Washington State, and there\'s a lot of focus, you
know, with the Offshore Aquaculture Act and with NOAA\'s policies in
general towards trying to shift and do more aquaculture in the offshore
to get away from some of the conflicting uses that you run into when you
try to do it in the near shore, but for my industry, we don\'t really
have a lot of options in that offshore area.

We\'re pretty much relegated to that near shore area, and at least in my
opinion there\'s a lot of potential still in that near shore area in a
lot of states. There\'s still a lot of opportunity for growth, but that
won\'t happen if we don\'t proactively plan for it.

If we continue to allow our coastlines to be developed and don\'t start
to preserve areas and protect areas that have aquaculture potential now,
then that future will not be realized. Those areas will be conflicted
out if they aren\'t already.

So some people are aware in the Coastal Zone Management Act under
Section 309 there\'s a provision in there that was added the last time
CZMA was reauthorized, and it provides funding to states in the form of
coastal zone enhancement grants for nine different areas of work, and
the ninth one was actually added when it was reauthorized. There used to
be eight, and the ninth was added I think it was in 1996, and it reads
this is an area where they can get these grants and spend money.

Adoption of procedures and policies to evaluate and facilitate citing of
public and private aquaculture facilities in the Coastal Zone which will
enable states to formulate, administer, and implement strategic plans
for marine aquaculture.

So this is an opportunity for states to get funding and actually do some
comprehensive planning, so what I was going to suggest is on Page 16,
consideration of a new bullet under Preferred State of Issue in 20/20
that might read something like states will have developed comprehensive
near shore aquaculture plans with technical assistance from NOAA
utilizing funds provided by Section 309 of the Coastal Zone Management
Act.

These state plans will protect existing near shore aquaculture from
adverse effects of coastal development and will identify and preserve
areas with good potential for future aquaculture development.

They will also provide coordinated and efficient regulation.

MR. DiLERNIA: Very good, we have to put you on more committees. That\'s
a proposal.

MR. DEWEY: Just to complete that proposal, I would also - I would have
bullets to add to regulatory and to the proposed entities promote that
would complement that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, Bill makes a point of suggestion to include -
properly adds the entire document maybe half a page tops. Is there
anyone there with comments on this one? Any heartburn with that?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Do you think you could give that language to
Michelle so we could read it up there.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, well -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: I mean it\'s not going to happen right now.

MR. DiLERNIA: No, it\'s not going to happen, but what we\'ll do is
you\'ll - in the work group it looks there\'s going to be a 20/20 group
that\'s going to meet this afternoon after lunch.

If you could make that change, incorporate it, so we could bring it back
to the full committee tomorrow afternoon. If there\'s no objections to
including that perspective in the document, then we\'ll go forward with
it.

DR. BILLY: Would it be possible to get all these changes we\'re doing
like this one and others that we talked about incorporated by the close
of business and make available the revised document to us tomorrow
morning?

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, okay, if that -

DR. BILLY: So that we could look at it at lunch time or something?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, that\'s a good request. I\'m going to look to staff
now.

MS. KATSOUROS: We have people that are writing sections, so I mean, are
those sections going to be written and then we have to put them in and,
you know, and then give it to Laurel so Laurel can make copies and you
have it by, I mean, the end of the day.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s - what you\'re suggesting, Tom, is the ideal way
to go. Let\'s see how much we can get done. Let\'s try to push for
something like that, and let\'s see if our members get us what we can -
because I would like to get us what we can - because I would like to
have another document in front of me tomorrow afternoon.

MS. BRYANT: So tomorrow morning we would need it to continue proofing?

MR. DiLERNIA: Well the work group is going to - no, I would have to have
it -

MS. BRYANT: Tonight.

MR. DiLERNIA: You want it tonight?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well we\'d give to Laurel tonight.

MS. BRYANT: I won\'t even be here.

MS. KATSOUROS: Oh, you won\'t be here.

MS. BRYANT: Onshore stewardship awaits us. I won\'t be here, but I will
get you guys taken care of. There is a Quickie Mart right across the
street. There\'s a quick copy Xerox whatever, so I think you guys will
be fine to do that.

MS. KATSOUROS: You have people though that are writing sections like
leadership, you know, the United States as a leader, and, I mean, there
is like four or five different sections that are being written, so -

MR. DiLERNIA: How far more - in a perfect world that\'s what we do. I
just don\'t know if we get the work done in time.

MS. BRYANT: Well we\'ll set it up so that you guys have that. We\'ll get
you taken care of so that you can do that and get copies to everyone.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay. Any other suggestions, changes? All right, John was
next, and then Steve.

MR. CONNELLY: On Page 7 at the bottom, this deals with food safety
questions, and Roman Numeral 3, current situation, and this has a very
negative tone. I\'m not sure if we have even given China\'s situation
right now that we have - public health officials are expressing real
concern about the adequacy of the procedures of seafood safety
infrastructure.

What I\'d like to do, Tony, is just provide Michelle some suggested
language to make that a more positive statement because right now it\'s
very negative -

MR. DiLERNIA: Great.

MR. CONNELLY: And I think that may be misconstrued.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, go ahead, yes, Steve.

MR. JONER: I\'ve been kind of reluctant to bring this up, but on Page 8
it talks about a number of jobs, 65,000, the last paragraph on Page 8,
so it creates - there\'s 65,000 jobs or whatever that turns out to be.

And affords a traditional way of life for many coastal communities. The
reality is coastal communities are relying almost entirely now on
immigrant labor, and in our prospectus which is in Section -

MR. DiLERNIA: I\'m sorry, I can\'t find where you are on Page 8. Maybe
we have different documents again.

The commercial fish - U.S. commercial fishery depends on a long-time
sustainability of fishing.

MR. JONER: So my point is not the 65,000, but my point is going to the
prospectus in Section 8, this document says MAFAC 20/20, this three-page
thing.

Page 2 on that, Section 8, Section 8. I\'m sorry, Tab 8, the second page
of that, approach -

MR. DiLERNIA: And function, scope.

MR. JONER: Okay, the first bullet there , Trends in Financial Markets,
so we ask will there be a sufficient work force, and there\'s an article
in the Washington Post about the problem with the workforce. And because
a whiting fishery, may catch many thousands of tons of whiting, and we
have a floating processor that works for us and then a shore plant, and
the shore plant is all Mexican labor, and all I do is say well please
make sure they\'re all documented workers. You know we don\'t want to
get involved with that, but they\'re talking about how it\'s even
difficult now to find a workforce for that and will there be a
workforce.

So a trend, and I don\'t know how developed it is, but a trend is to
ship fish, whole frozen fish, to China to have them processed and sent
back.

MR. DiLERNIA: You\'re kidding.

MR. JONER: You know, I have personally have discomfort with that, and so
I guess I\'m asking, are we as the marine fish industry going to just,
you know, the Senate is debating an Immigration Bill this morning.

Are we just going to go with what the flow is or are we going to be
proactive and find some maybe - at least identify the problems and look
for some solutions because workforce is definitely a problem.

I don\'t this phrase back on Tab 9 of our document -

MR. DiLERNIA: Where is it?

MR. JONER: Page - Tab 9.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay behind the page.

MR. JONER: Tab 9, Page 8.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MR. JONER: Affords a traditional way of life, and that\'s long gone, a
traditional way of life. What coastal community has a traditional
workforce there, you know, outside of Maine?

Ask how they have it in Kodiak, you know. So my question, my question is
do we address that? That\'s a definite problem. Our floating processor
is like the United Nations now. You know, you can find ten languages
onboard that thing, and that\'s happened in ten years.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, who\'s next? Sam, at this point, Sam?

MR. RAUCH: No, to this point, yet.

MR. DiLERNIA: Tom.

DR. BILLY: I remember a pork processing plant I visited in Nebraska a
few years ago where the company had to translate the sanitation material
into 17 languages. It\'s not unique to the seafood industry. My second
point is this practice has been going on for decades, shrimp processed
in Mexico, pollack processed in various countries. It\'s a widespread
practice, not just for seafood but other foods, so I\'m not arguing
against addressing that. I\'m just saying this is far larger than we may
realize. It has lots of considerations, sort of like the Immigration
Bill.

MR. DiLERNIA: I\'m afraid of this one. I\'m not afraid - I\'m afraid of
the delay in production that incorporating this might introduce into our
product as far as a debate that would occur on this. Perhaps I\'m wrong,
but that\'s just -

MR. JONER: Well I guess I just have a problem with that phrase on Page 8
of affording a traditional way of life. I don\'t think that\'s a reality
anymore.

MR. DiLERNIA: I\'ve got to start here, Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: What sentence reads that language?

MR. JONER: Last paragraph on Page 8, Commercial Fishing.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Oh, okay. I think it does still provide a way of
life. I think your point should be very well taken, and I think maybe
just some acknowledgment, and I\'m not sure exactly where in the
document it should be, is that like other industries in the United
States, labor for production of seafood is an issue and will be an issue
moving forward.

I don\'t think we need to spend a lot of time on it. I think people who
read realize it - I mean in name - you know, a way of life in coastal
communities, fishing is an important aspect of it, so I wouldn\'t want
to take that language out, but I think you need to acknowledge that
point in some fashion because it\'s a major issue.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, I\'m not afraid of that statement regarding a
full-blown section. Does that satisfy your concerns?

MR. JONER: Yes, yes. Because we\'re acknowledging it there.

MS. KATSOUROS Yes, I think you should.

MR. DiLERNIA: Could you write that for us?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well I could if I knew where?

MR. DiLERNIA: What?

MS. KATSOUROS: I mean, I think that it goes someplace else. I\'d have to
think about where it goes.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well if you write the concept, we\'ll find a place to put
it.

MR. JONER: We don\'t really have a spot for the workforce. You mention
the workforce as a major thing in the prospectus in the previous page,
previous document, but we don\'t have it anywhere in this draft that I
can see.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, one of you women write that, and we\'ll find a
place to incorporate it. MR. JONER: Gracias.

MR. DiLERNIA: Sam and then Tom Billy.

MR. RAUCH: All right, I have four things, three relatively minor that I
wanted to ask you about. One, we refer in a number places in the
document to Codex, C-O-D-E-X. We never define it and tell the public
what it is. I think we need to do that for the idea that this is a
public - would at some point be a public document.

Two, on Page 3 we talk about the increase outlook to demand to the year
2050, and on Page 6 we talk about it through the year 2030, and I think
that we need to pick one of those two time horizons and use one but not
use both.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, and before we leave that thought I\'ll look to
the aquaculture folks here, and which one do we pick?

MS. KATSOUROS: Yes, 2030.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay.

MR. RAUCH: On Page 17, I hope it\'s on Page 17 because the document - my
pages are a little bit different than other people\'s. There\'s a
reference under Regulatory Actions to validate the lead agency for
marine and aquaculture to be the NOAA Aquaculture Program.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s not right. That\'s should be right. That\'s
supposed to be -

MR. RAUCH: So that could mean three different things. You could either
have the document be a separate agency, it could be a sub-agency within
NOAA, or you could be intending that it still be NOAA Fisheries and just
a regulatory authority like many other things and be part of NOAA
Fisheries. I just think we need to be -

MS. KATSOUROS: If we just say NOAA Fisheries and just take out the -

MR. DiLERNIA: That would be clear.

MS. KATSOUROS: So we delete aquaculture programs and put in NOAA
Fisheries.

MR. RAUCH: That would be clear enough. And then the substantive thing.
On Page 9 there is a statement under the Current Situation of Issue
which says \"current management practices to rebuild stocks limit the
ability to meet the potential long-term yield estimates and consumer
demand for fish products.\"

I don\'t understand that sentence. I think that the management practices
are designed to achieve the long-term yield estimates. It limits the
ability to meet them now, but you couldn\'t meet them now under current
fishery management practices.

So we put in these rebuilding strategies to build larger fish stocks in
order to achieve these long-term yield estimates and consumer demand,
not to limit them. So I don\'t understand how that works.

Along that line before yield there\'s another -

MS. KATSOUROS: What page was that?

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s on Page 9, and we have to address that before we
leave today. We have to deal with that.

MR. RAUCH: And then on Page 10 along the same issue, under Preferred
State of Fishery by 2020, we say it\'s anticipated that by 2020 we\'ll
have reached the goal of rebuilding and sustaining fish populations
while maintaining diversity. Reaching this goal will result in reducing
excess capacity, blah, blah, blah.

I think one thing that\'s missing from that is one of the reasons that
we\'re doing this is that there\'s more fish stock out there to catch
and to consume.

We have - in all of our rebuilding plans we\'re trying to build to a
future state that we\'ll have more fish than we have now, and so I think
clearly it\'s not going to be enough to meet the worldwide demand, but
it is something, and that gets back to have we met the U.S. capacity
which we say on Page 9 we haven\'t. We\'ve got 40 percent more capacity
to get. I think we need to recognize on Page 10 that one of the
preferred states is not just these limiting factors but is a benefit to
the fishery and the consumer, so with that I\'ll let you -

MS. KATSOUROS: Do you have some specific words that you can give us?

MR. RAUCH: No.

MR. DiLERNIA: Go ahead, sir.

MR. RAUCH: Well on Page 9 I would change Page 9, leave it up to debate,
but I don\'t know why that sentence is in there, but I would change that
sentence to current management practices in the United States are
designed to rebuild fish stocks in order to meet, rather than limit the
ability to meet, because I think that - at least - that\'s my
understanding, my job.

MR. DiLERNIA: We have a suggestion for a change I understand. Does
anyone object to that change, and we\'ll do it right now? There\'s no
objections. Michelle, do you have that change that Sam just read?

MS. KATSOUROS: Do you put in under background?

MR. DiLERNIA: Bob is this a sufficient change?

MS. KATSOUROS: It\'s Page 9.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, Bob -

MR. FLETCHER: You know, in the Pacific Council we found out when we
finally got an appropriate level of science on the Sebastis complex,
that we could no longer harvest at the same level that we had been
harvesting and that we had to reduce our quotas on most of the major
stocks permanently. The stocks just weren\'t as productive as we thought
because we didn\'t have enough information.

So in terms of this sentence, I kind of thought it was referring to that
fact. Now, Sam, you\'re kind of going in a little different direction
with the language you suggested. Kind of a little different direction
that maybe is a little more positive. But I just wanted to put on the
table the fact that my understanding and the experience I have with the
Pacific Council led me to believe that these new approaches to
management have reduced the amount of fish we can take from those
resources off the West Coast.

So I just put that on the table, you know, the language Sam produces is
a little bit different direction than what I was thinking when I read
that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, but you see new approach to management, you just
said new approach to management. What I would say is a more informed
approach or as we\'ve discovered or are better educated.

New approach to management makes it sound like all of a sudden we just
pulled a -

MR. RAUCH: So that was a fact. What happened.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, as we learned more, yes, please, Sam.

MR. RAUCH: It is clearly in order to achieve the long-term potential
which is hopefully in most of these fish stocks, more fish. It requires
short-term reductions.

In addition there will be stocks like that stock in which we were always
overfishing and the long-term potential is below where we\'re fishing
at, and as we learn more, we find that out.

I don\'t mind if we want to reference those two things. It seems to be a
bit more complicated, but it\'s true. I don\'t want to discount that,
but most of our rebuilding plans should be designed to achieve more fish
than we have today not to cut people permanently to less fish than we
have today.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, so -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Tony, to that point -

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, I want to see if I can capture the language that Sam
suggested. Michelle, were you able to capture it or do we have to go
back to Sam here on that?

MS. KATSOUROS: Yes, it was in order to meet instead of limit.

MR. RAUCH: I think it started current management practices. Current
management practices are designed to rebuild fish stocks in order to
meet - that\'s what I would suggest.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well are designed to rebuild in order to meet the
potential landing, long-term yield estimates, consumer demand for fish
products. That\'s good? Great. Very good, okay. All right, now was there
another suggestion you had, Sam? I mean I just -

MR. RAUCH: My other suggestion was to add into on Page 10 of the
Preferred State of Fisheries that there be some recognition that in the
anticipated future state where we have rebuilt everything that one thing
that we would get hopefully in addition to regulatory certainty is
increased fish biomass or capacity in order to meet the needs of both
fishermen and consumers.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well, so at the - right in here, if we put another line in
here, okay, that says upon achieving rebuilt stocks, upon stocks
achieving rebuilt stocks. We\'ll just - great.

MR. RAUCH: I have a different suggestion.

MR. DiLERNIA: Go ahead.

MR. RAUCH: It would be more streamlined. Add to the end of the sentence.
This will result, not result, this - up above the sentence that says
this this will resulted. Take out the d, but this will result in more
certainty to the fishermen and processors, and then I would add at the
end and increased fish populations to meet the demands of both the
consumers and the fishermen.

MR. DiLERNIA: And increase fish populations to meet the demands of -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: To meet both the demands.

MR. DiLERNIA: Both demands.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Is that what you said?

MR. RAUCH: Right,

MR. RAUCH: To help meet, that\'s correct. It won\'t meet the demands
because it clearly won\'t.

MR. DiLERNIA: And here we\'ve got to put in help, to help?

MR. RAUCH: To help meet -

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, good with that? Any comments or suggestions? I have
a list and go back to the list. Tom, Mary Beth, Rob Kramer, and Vince
O\'Shea, so Tom Raftican.

MR. RAFTICAN: One of the things that Randy was touching on before is on
Page 18, many environmental NGOs with traditional fisheries management
has failed. I think an awful lot of what we\'re seeing on the West Coast
is that they turn away from the NGOs on failing of fishery management
when using MPAs as a fishery management tool.

The big thing that we see out there is it relates directly to habitat
management, and this is something that, you know, if you\'re putting a
vision document out, I think that something should be - it may be the
elephant in the room, but I mean you\'re really at zonal management as
opposed to just simply fisheries management.

MR. DiLERNIA: Zonal management?

MR. RAFTICAN: Yes, but I think to ignore it is crazy.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s a whole other concept now.

MR. RAFTICAN: Absolutely.

MR. DiLERNIA: It\'s the elephant in the room.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Tony.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: To that point?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: I think the whole evolution of such a fish habitat
identifying HAPCs, and certainly in New England we use closed areas. We
haven\'t traditionally called them MPAs, but the groundfish for, you
know, rebuilding stocks have been used. They\'ve been used for spawning
measures, and now you lay on top of that, you know, habitat protection,
so I think it\'s evolving and used, you know, often in many areas of the
country. Certainly the North Pacific has been doing that -

MR. DiLERNIA: It answers the question on aquaculture and a lot of
things.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Yes, and I\'m a zoning working group for the
National Marine Sanctuary. I\'m not sure I support zoning in the
sanctuary, but I\'m on the working group.

MR. DiLERNIA: Where in the document, I\'ve read it so many times, I
can\'t tell you. Where - could we incorporate that thought into the
document without introducing a full additional bullet about it?

MR. FLETCHER: Wasn\'t it a management tool? Don\'t we have a -

MR. RAFTICAN: At 18 you\'ve got, you know, basically management tools
and issue statements. You\'ve got one there addressing marine protected
areas as fishery management tools. I would simply broaden that to
include fisheries and habitat management but also bring in the concept
of zonal management.

I mean, I would like just rewriting that one.

MS. KATSOUROS: You can do it right there.

MR. DiLERNIA: Do you want to give it a shot, Tom?

MR. RAFTICAN: Yes, well give me some time.

MR. DiLERNIA: Could you do that this afternoon?

MR. RAFTICAN: Yes.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, read it to the group. Any other suggestions? Rob
Kramer, Vince, and Mary Beth. Kramer.

MR. KRAMER: I pass.

MR. DiLERNIA: Vince.

MR. O\'SHEA: I think Sam brought up a real good point that\'s frequently
missed, and that is the effort to rebuild really as a goal of making
life better for everybody. They\'ll be more fish available for both
sectors. I\'m sorry.

MR. FLETCHER: Trust us, we\'re from the Government. We\'re here to help.

MR. O\'SHEA: Well, thanks for - that\'s my point, and I\'m just
wondering if it\'s really appropriate that that only be sort of buried
in the middle of the document and if that it isn\'t more appropriate
also included somewhere further up front because that\'s really what the
whole direction of the management program is supposed to obtain, so I
don\'t know whether it fits in the Executive Summary or the Trend, but
it\'s no new words. It\'s just those words relocated up front in the
document.

MR. DiLERNIA: It should go in the Executive Summary.

MR. O\'SHEA: And I\'ll accept that assignment. Thanks for making the
note.

MS. KATSOUROS: Okay.

MR. DiLERNIA: Who\'s next?

MR. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Next is Steve.

DR. MURAWSKI: I wanted to bring up an issue that is kind of weak through
here, and that\'s the relationship between ecosystem-based management
and more traditional symbols stock management.

On Page 3 it says for example the third paragraph, the first sentence
was ecosystem-based management will eventually replace single stock
future. I don\'t think that\'s true. I think what ecosystem approaches
will do is better inform traditional stock-by-stock management. I don\'t
think we\'re ever going to lose focus on halibut in Alaska or other
things. We\'ll just do it better, you know, using the ecosystem
approaches.

MR. DiLERNIA: How are you going to change this ecosystem-based
management will -

DR. MURAWSKI: Well I can provide you some proposed wording if you want.
I wanted to continue my little addition here.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s it, all done?

DR. MURAWSKI: I would say instead of traditional single stock I would
say stock-by-stock management, and on Page 10 at the last sentence
before the Proposed Actions it says again making ecosystem-based
management a practical alternative to single species managements in
common.

Then we had a little bit of this discussion before on Page 18. Where we
talked about -

MS. KATSOUROS: Wait, wait, wait, wait, on Page 10.

MR. DiLERNIA: Page 10.

MS. KATSOUROS: Right, let\'s go back to Page 10. It needs the same fix,
okay.

MR. DiLERNIA: Which line, where?

DR. MURAWSKI: On the last line of text before the five proposed actions.
I don\'t think it\'s -

MR. DiLERNIA: Technology advances will be - will be making all sorts
of - makes this management practical in terms of marine fisheries
management. So you want to just take out that line?

MS. KATSOUROS: No.

DR. MURAWSKI: I would say we just augment -

MS. KATSOUROS: Augment stock by stock. That\'s what he had before.

MR. DiLERNIA: Will help, okay, augment. We\'ll augment. Technological
advancements, all right, organize, somehow we\'ve got to put organized
in there. That phrase has to be changed.

Okay, what page? Now you\'re on Page 18.

DR. MURAWSKI: Page 18, and we talked a little bit about MPAs, and
they\'re being pulled out here as a management tool. I would say that
there\'s two comments here.

Number one, just look at MPAs as a tool to enable the ecosystem
approaches. They\'re obviously other things, and -

MR. DiLERNIA: Say that again, Steve, I\'m sorry.

DR. MURAWSKI: Well, you know Issue Statement 1 really focuses on the use
of closed areas and no-take areas, whatever, and certainly that\'s a
tool of ecosystem-based management. It\'s not the only one, and I think
we need to make sure that we don\'t over-emphasize the use of a
particular tool while we\'re doing that.

My second comment is under the revised Magnuson Act we talked about
ecosystem pilot programs. In fact I was called out, and I guess it would
be useful if this document would emphasize the importance of what the
councils have already done, Northern Pacific Council, Mid-Atlantic
Council, South Atlantic, and sort of ask that that be more generally
utilized as an approach by the councils rather than sort of inventing
something new.

That\'s a long way of saying that we\'ve done some work, you know, that
we\'re on a good path with it. We need to make that more generally used
by the council as a management approach.

MR. DiLERNIA: I hear you. I\'m just trying to -

MS. KATSOUROS: So you want MPAs to be more generic, you know, more -
being that\'s one of the many -

DR. MURAWSKI: I think the preceding discussion we had about marine
zoning and other things is a better discussion than focusing on we need
to do MPAs because of the failures of traditional management. Failures
of traditional management are really the implementation parts. We had
the right ideas. Use the tools they have. I mean that\'s my
clarification.

MR. DiLERNIA: Clarification, yes.

DR. MURAWSKI: Tom, are you going to take a crack at rewriting that Issue
Statement?

MR. RAFTICAN: I\'m sitting here thinking I need some help from Mary
Beth, I need some help from Steve, I need some - this is a big issue,
and we need some folks on this thing.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, so -

MR. RAFTICAN: I\'d love to help.

MR. DiLERNIA: This afternoon in the breakout room after lunch.

MR. RAFTICAN: We\'ll have some time in the breakout room and let\'s pull
a group aside in the breakout room because this is - you know, it can be
done discreetly and get it in there.

MR. DiLERNIA: - folks who are working on 20/20 meet this afternoon. Is
there anything else large that we haven\'t - regarding the document
before we break for lunch because when we come back together, we\'ll
work different working groups when we come back together, and we\'re
going to have a 20/20 work group meeting this afternoon, so are there
any other major issues that folks want the whole committee to hear? I
see four hands, so let\'s just work our way up the table. Vince.

MR. O\'SHEA: Yes, you said a major issue, and this is sort of process.
Steve brought out Tab 9 which was sort of the - what did you call that?

MS. KATSOUROS: Statement of Work, that\'s Tab 8. That\'s the prospectus.

MR. SHEA: Right, and I\'m just wondering at some point - or are you
comfortable now that the document as it\'s evolving is mapping over to
that or was there no requirement -

MR. DiLERNIA: Well there\'s that - that\'s a yes and no answer. That
question gets two answers really.

The original I guess Statement of Work that came from the Agency was
very inclusive. Also the request was for us to in a sense produce a
document that was going to be 20 pages or so, and I think it\'s been
impossible to try to find - to produce a document that addresses as much
as the Agency has tasked us with and still limit it to the number of
pages that they\'ve tasked us with.

That\'s been an issue in my mind for quite some time. I\'m comfortable
with what we have right now based on the general advice from Dr. Hogarth
regarding the accuracy that we\'re going in the right direction, and so
while it doesn\'t meet everything that the Agency asked us to do, I
think we are going in the right direction and if there\'s any glaring
errors of omission, we\'ll hear that from the Agency when we deliver
what we\'re producing right now for publication on the website.

Then we might have to go back and write more. I don\'t know, so I think
we\'re going in the right direction, but, you know, who we\'re working
for may come back and say okay, you\'ve done a great job with this,
guys, but we need more. At which point then I\'m going to turn around
and say okay, but we\'re not doing 20 pages anymore, and that\'s the
negotiation that the Agency and we have to have.

MR. O\'SHEA: I don\'t know if this is a suggestion or not, but it seems
to me that if we were given a list of things the Agency said we\'d like
your advice on and we\'re deciding not to give advice on that because we
don\'t have room in the document. Or we think there\'s bigger issues,
that we at least ought to know up front that we\'re not going to address
those issues.

I don\'t have a sense of that right now. I would be happy to go through
the document and just say here\'s the taskers. We hit these, and here
are the things we\'re leaving unanswered.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good.

MR. O\'SHEA: Just on this committee it seems one of the insights this
whole purpose could give is, yes, we\'re comfortable with that. These
items are all higher priority than the three we\'re leaving out.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, I was going to volunteer to do that, but you
beat me to it, so I\'ll let you do it.

MR. O\'SHEA: No.

MR. DiLERNIA: No, no, Vince.

MR. O\'SHEA: Okay.

MR. DiLERNIA: Good, so we\'ll sit together after.

MR. O\'SHEA: Okay, yes, good.

MR. DiLERNIA: I was working my way up the table. Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Just a process question for this afternoon. You\'re
going to have a working group on the 20/20. I don\'t know exactly what
you\'re going to try to address there, and then we seem to have
designated stuff out to smaller groups or individuals.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well folks that -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: So, I mean, I\'m going to be trying to do a couple
of different things, and then in the main group working this afternoon,
what are you going to try to accomplish there?

MR. DiLERNIA: Well there is no main group. In other words, those who
want to come to work on 20/20 will come to a breakout room, and that\'s
where we\'ll work. If you want to sit in the hall and sit in your room
and produce or here and develop your section and then bring it down a
little bit later on and say look, here\'s what I wrote. Take this,
that\'s what - just it\'s like going to graduate school -

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY: Just however, yes, I just wondered if I go hide in
my room and write something.

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, that\'s fine.

MS. KATSOUROS: - You have to be able to take it or give it to whoever is
going to make copies by five o\'clock, because, you know, Michelle will
not be here until late tomorrow - until tomorrow afternoon. She won\'t
be here in the morning because we haven\'t done our table assignments as
yet, because we don\'t have our tables, so -

MR. DiLERNIA: So immediately after completing- from your sense also,
completing issues. Let\'s - when we meet this afternoon, and if you want
to, you know, come down at three o\'clock and say here is what I wrote,
that\'s great. Anything else here? I\'m working my way up the table.
Tom.

MR. RAFTICAN: On the top of Page 6, I just noticed something about Roman
2. It says \"the American aquaculture industry should receive the
financial and technical support equal to that available to American
agriculture industry.\" That\'s not going to happen.

MR. DiLERNIA: I was waiting for somebody to take that one out -

MR. RAFTICAN: That\'s somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 billion
annually, so I would have a simple change.

MR. DiLERNIA: Go ahead.

MR. RAFTICAN: Take the \"the\" out after \"receive\" should receive and
substitute the word similar, and then take out the word equal.

MR. DiLERNIA: The American aquaculture industry should receive similar
financial and technical support -

MR. RAFTICA: To that available to the American agriculture industry.

MR. DiLERNIA: So just put the word similar in there.

MR. RAFTICAN: Yes.

MR. DiLERNIA: That\'s great, done. That was an easy one. Bill.

MR. DEWEY: To that very same point, I participated, it\'s probably eight
years ago here in Washington, NOAA has, periodically has, priorities and
planning sessions with stakeholders, and in one of those the concept
came forward that the United States should be spending one percent of
the seafood trade deficit annually for aquaculture research and
development, and so if you figure our current seafood trade deficit,
that would be roughly say \$70 million a year.

The concept that was discussed and it garnered considerable support
actually in that forum was that you invest heavily now because there\'s
a need, we\'re behind the curve, but as you start to make - have
success, then the funding you need to put towards aquaculture declines
as that seafood deficit declines and your successful in developing your
aquaculture industry.

The next place that showed up was actually in 2002. There was a
Department of Commerce document that\'s entitled The Rationale for a New
Initiative in Marine Aquaculture, and that statement appears again in
that document, so I\'d just like to put that out as an alternative as
far as the yardstick proposed for funding towards marine aquaculture.

MR. DiLERNIA: I think it\'s a wonderful suggestion. I\'ll look to those
who are knowledgeable regarding is that an accurate yardstick or a
couple of - Tom.

DR. BILLY: I like that idea, but it could go into that paragraph about
resource requirements.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, would you try to write that, Bill?

MR. DEWEY: So that it would for aquaculture it\'s going to be added in -
various parts, marine resources -

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, so you want to try -

MR. DEWEY: Other than that, I\'m just - I guess I\'m concerned now if it
goes in there it might conflict with - you know, we\'ve got two
different concepts here.

One is making it comparable to investment the investment in the
agriculture industry.

MS. BRYANT: You said similar and then you could say -

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, the poor court reporter back there. He\'s trying to
figure out what we\'ve been saying all day.

Anything else, any other changes?

MS. BRYANT: Who is working on the resources?

MR. DiLERNIA: Who\'s working on the resources?

MS. BRYANT: Vince, you are, that\'s right, okay.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, any other changes?

MR. O\'SHEA: I thought I was just doing the punch list of what we were
supposed to do versus what we did.

MS. BRYANT: Oh, the prospectus thing. Very early on we discussed a
resource paragraph, and I was just wondering who was tasked to that.

MR. O\'SHEA: We discussed a resource paragraph.

MS. BRYANT: Requirements - you know funding, referencing oceans
commissions, the a funding issue that this was just a -

MR. O\'SHEA: I mean I raised that issue, but it wasn\'t to rewrite a
whole thing. It was just really a sentence that just says this - that
was in context of ecosystems, ecosystem-based approach that\'s going to
require systems to collect data and that\'s going to have resource -
fiscal resource implications, and then other people pick it up and
saying all this stuff has resourcing.

MR. DiLERNIA: Scratch that. Mark.

MR. HOLLIDAY: To the point of looking at the requirements, I think it\'s
important to recognize that more than just dollars are necessary - might
be more than just dollars associated with it.

So one of the questions we asked in the prospectus was, you know, how
should NOAA be preparing for this? There may be changes in governance,
there may be institutional changes or structural changes in and what
NOAA is doing.

The intersection of fisheries and these other sectors, energy sectors,
for example, the role of councils, the role of states. So there\'s a lot
of requirements that may need to be satisfied in order to be prepared to
meet these challenges and the vision that you have come up for 20/20.
That gets to the question of what\'s not just a laundry list, and we\'ve
all seen list of, you know, it\'s going to take \$50 billion to do
something. That\'s what Bill was trying to avoid, but if there are
things that are proposed or required in terms of governance,
institutions, workforce within NOAA or workforce with partnerships that
you could look as a list of requirements to help satisfy these visions,
that would be a helpful addition that\'s not currently there and avoid
the trap of just saying of course nothing will happen unless we get more
money.

I think there\'s a better way to try to approach that, and again, I
think that it highlights some of the intersections of 20/20 for
fisheries with these other things that are going on and other uses of
the environment that - do we want wind farms, or we\'re worrying about
zoning for MDAs, for fisheries. Or aquaculture, well, maybe somebody is
coming with a trump card and say hey, fisheries is way down on the list
of priorities. Is that something 20 years from now we need to be
thinking about and the role of councils in competing with other entities
in the energy sector or minerals management service or other potential
uses for the environment.

So that\'s some of the things that we\'ll tried to be brought in the
prospectus of the bigger picture thinking, not just within fish but the
intersection of fish and other potential conflicting or complementary
uses, and they have implications on people, money, institutions,
governance, and that perspective would be helpful to get feedback on
because a vision that MFAC has for the future of the role of NOAA in
that type of environment.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, anything else?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well, what are we doing with that? What Mark has
discussed.

MR. DiLERNIA: Mark, when we deliver this to you, I mean, do you want to
come back to us? I mean - do it now?

MS. KATSOUROS: Well you can\'t do requirements now, you know, because of
all these issues there\'ll be more requirements, legal, statutory, you
know, labor, but I mean, that takes some analysis. I mean somebody\'s
got to look at your proposal.

MR. DiLERNIA: It\'s a lot of work

MS. KATSOUROS: Right, to do requirements. I mean, you can\'t just do it.

MR. DiLERNIA: Well that\'s for the next committee. Vince.

MR. O\'SHEA: I\'ll take a shot at it.

MR. DiLERNIA: You want to take a shot at it? God bless you.

MS. BRYANT: And you\'ll help? Isn\'t that what you said?

MR. O\'SHEA: I have a work group -

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, all right. I\'d like to break for lunch.

MS. BRYANT: All right.

MR. DiLERNIA: Are we going to meet back here? Laurel, this room is going
to be for 20/20?

MS. BRYANT: For 20/20 today. Now tomorrow morning the rec fish group
will need to be here because Dr. Boreman has a slide presentation, so he
will need this. So tomorrow morning this changes to the rec fish working
group, but the other two rooms are open, and I know NSA and then fish
watch get one. I suspect you may still have some drafting or vision
stuff going on.

You\'ve got the room accommodations to handle that.

MR. DiLERNIA: So let\'s meet today starting at 1:30.

MS. KATSOUROS: Again, I have a constraint for tomorrow morning. I will
be here, but Michelle won\'t, so I want to make that clear, so if we
need anything to be done beyond that.

MR. DiLERNIA: Do we need the projector?

MS. KATSOUROS: Otherwise on Thursday night people will be having -

MS. BRYANT: If they need it, then can we just have this -

MS. KATSOUROS: That would be great.

MR. DiLERNIA: All right, okay, I want to stop.

MS. BRYANT: They need the projector.

MR. DiLERNIA: The aquaculture folks need a projector, and I\'ve got the
20/20 work group, so aquaculture will meet here. You\'ll have the
computer and a projector, and 20/20 will meet in which is the larger of
the two rooms?

MS. BRYANT: They\'re both exactly the same.

MR. DiLERNIA: Okay, it\'s Monticello or -

MS. BRYANT: It\'s Monticello or Mt. Vernon.

MR. DiLERNIA: Mt. Vernon on the other side.

MS. BRYANT: Left side.

MR. DiLERNIA: So what time is your group going to meet, Tom, like 1:30?
All right, so we\'ll start - we\'ll be back here at 1:30.

MS. KATSOUROS: Well Michelle may then leave, and I could just get the
changes, then.

MR. DiLERNIA: I\'m sorry, yes. Folks, please.

MR. HOLLIDAY: You spoke this morning about sort of the next step ahead.
We\'re focusing in the work group this afternoon on the document?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.

MR. HOLLIDAY: But there is a second - what do you do with the document
once you deliver it? We talked about discussing options for posting
things and what gets posted, and the timeline and who does what. Is that
to be discussed in the full committee tomorrow?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, sir.

MR. HOLLIDAY: Because we\'re trying to plan.

MR. DiLERNIA: I would like to have that discussion as a full committee.

MS. KATSOUROS: That\'s tomorrow afternoon, right? Correct?

MR. DiLERNIA: Yes, the way I see it, Mark, is we\'re going to deliver a
product to you, our client, then you\'re going to really tell us how you
want us to handle it. You know, how you want us to deal with it, so we
may have recommendations, but it\'s really the Agency\'s desire as to
how you want to proceed with it.

I\'m going - I would like to take the direction from you if you\'re
comfortable doing it rather that us thinking of making suggestions to
you. Is that okay or no?

(Whereupon the above-entitled matter was concluded at 12:17 p.m.)