NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

\+ + + + +

MARINE FISHERIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

\+ + + + +

COMMITTEE MEETING

\+ + + + +

Wednesday

June 6, 2007

\+ + + + +

The committee convened at 1:30 p.m. in the Springwood Room of the
Washington Court Hotel, 525 New Jersey Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20001,
Anthony DiLernia, acting 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

AGENDA

Call to order\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\....3

RecFish Report\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...4

MSA Report\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...24

Aquaculture Report\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\....27

Fish Watch Report\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\.....37

20/20 Report\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\....73

Future meetings\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...110

New business\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...117

Adjournment\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\...\....119

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

(1:23 P.M.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, why don\'t we begin? Before we get to the business
of today, on a personal note, we received news this morning that the
reason one of our members, Mr. Roberts, is not here is because his
mother died Monday morning or Sunday evening, we\'re not sure. In any
event I think it would be nice if we sent flowers or a plant or made a
donation in the name of Ken Roberts\' mom and I\'ve asked Ralph if he
could coordinate so if maybe we could all chip in five bucks or
something like that and we\'ll send something for the Roberts family on
behalf of the committee. And our condolences. We also already e-mailed
our condolences to the family and I know you all \-- when my folks died
a couple years ago \-- it was so nice to get something from you all to
know that you were all thinking about us and our family and I\'m sure it
will be appreciated. So when you get a chance, during the break,
whatever, please see Ralph and five bucks a head will be plenty enough.

Thank you. As far as today\'s business is concerned, we have a number of
reports that we\'ll be taking and the order that I plan on taking them
in will be RecFish, MSA, Aquaculture, Fish Watch, and then we have 20/20
but we also have to decide our meeting locations, future meeting
locations and times and we may do that before 20/20 because that may
drive some of the additional 20/20 work.

So, having said that, the first committee report is on RecFish and
Captain Fletcher? You\'ve got the floor.

MR. FLETCHER: We had what I thought was a very productive morning
discussing the status of the various elements of the RecFish improvement
program - - Marine Recreational Improvement Program, I think is what
it\'s going by. If you look in your tab twelve, there\'s a copy of John
Boreman\'s presentation that he provided this morning as well as \-- he
provided this to the Gulf Council, and I was really pleased that John
was able to enlist the support of Bobbie Walker, who with Bob Zales, had
been one of the critics of this process because they weren\'t involved
and now Bobbie Walker is involved. She\'s going to be on one of the
working groups.

There\'s a proposed conference or workshop scheduled for sometime in
late July. The plan is moving forward. The operations team under Rob
Andrews has met. They will be meeting again. They will be developing
products. They will be starting to name members to these working groups
that are identified on the second page of the handout under the tab
twelve. The working groups are going to be pulling together a lot of the
real key elements that will need to be addressed as we create a survey
that will have credibility and support from the recreational community.

I was really pleased that John Boreman had gotten the message that if
there isn\'t the inclusion at all levels possible of constituent in-put,
that there may be a rejection and so he has really taken that message
and has worked it through his whole process. And I\'m really pleased
with that. It\'s a lot that they\'re going to have to do that the
science and technology, working with the various members of the
operations team and the executive steering committee are going to have
to pull together. We have a very tight deadline.

But I think working through the process with in-put from all the
regional councils and getting the MAFAC recreational fisheries working
group to provide access to the key players that are in the coastal
states, will maximize the opportunity and I think so far, so good.
There\'s no guarantees.

One interesting thing that\'s already started is they\'re doing a pilot
in the Gulf, dual frame pilot to see how the data\'s coming in, see if
it looks like it\'s a better product and they\'ve already gotten the
results of the first wave, which is March and April was the first wave
they were able to include in this pilot. And by the end of the year
there should be some better information about the results of that.

So things are already out there being worked on. One of the elements of
it was that key council members in the recreational community are going
to be enlisted to try to form an advisory committee of recreational
anglers in each of the councils \-- so that they can understand and get
educated about the process and then talk to their constituencies. It\'s
all about the credibility of the system. It hasn\'t been there. It\'s
got to be brought in and I think they\'ve really laid out a good
process.

Part and parcel of this as you know is the angler registry. And there
are a lot of states that are going to need to do work to try to overcome
some of the areas where they\'re not in compliance. Some states are in
much better shape than others. And John\'s comment was he believes that
working with them, he will be able to get them into compliance,
hopefully in the time frame we have.

They\'ve already sent out a letter to state directors, sharing with them
what NMFS thinks the minimum criteria might need to be for an exemption
from a federal registry program going into that state. And we\'re
hopeful that the states will take this seriously, understand that it is
the law now, and they\'re going to need to try to find ways to get into
compliance.

Currently no program \-- this was an interesting statement that John
made \-- currently no state program meets the minimum criteria to be
exempted from the registry language in the Magnuson reauthorization. But
there\'s a lot of ways, other than legislative fixes, that those
problems can be resolved. So working with the states on an ongoing
basis, John is hopeful that in the end there will be compliance.

NMFS has created what they call a registry group and it\'s headed by a
very bright gentleman by the name of Gordon Colvin, who until recently
was the Director of Natural Resources.

CAPT. DILERNIA: He was the Director of Marine Resources for the state of
New York.

MR. FLETCHER: I met him at the NOAA Fisheries State Directors meeting a
couple of months ago \-- late April or early May \-- and he\'s come on
board now and I think he\'ll do a tremendous amount of good, to be able
to work with those state directors and try to get them into compliance.

As I mentioned earlier, probably the most critical piece of this process
is going to be direct, repeated, ongoing public involvement with the
industry. And I think that the states working with the councils and the
commissions can get all those key players to come to the table and
understand the process and understand how important it is that they get
on board.

And Forbes Darby is going to be critical because he\'s going to be
involved in the communications and education group. He\'s already got a
great background with ASA that allows him to reach out to a lot of
people. What we asked of him is that he develop some kind of streamlined
message, a couple of pages, about this process. And then all of us on
the recreational fisheries working group will take that message and then
modify it so that it\'s coming from us and then go out to the people we
work with and say: this is a process that\'s going to make the data more
user-friendly, make it more credible, make it more accurate, more
timely, and we\'re looking for you to get involved if you have any
concerns, any confusion. We want you to be involved. Kind of embracing
this early on and continuously, hopefully we\'ll minimize the areas of
concern, although we know there will be those out there in your area.

Rob Kramer, who is hugely important to this process with all of his
background and contacts, indicated there\'s a \-- in Florida there\'s a
conservation captain\'s program. To me it sounded like a great way to
get all the for hire people involved because as incentive, if they come
on board and agree to provide certain information, then the state will
advertise for them \-- about who they are, where they are, and what they
fish for.

So these are some of the things that are out there that MAFAC and the
recreational fisheries working group can bring to the table and also go
out and talk to those kinds of groups. So I think we\'re all headed in a
good direction. The public\'s confidence in the process is obviously
previously been missing. But it\'s different regionally and so we
continue to hammer the importance of having the message vary regionally
because there\'s going to be differences. For example, night fishing is
huge in certain areas and not in others.

And then John had one slide that I thought really encapsulated a lot of
this and it\'s in this package. His question was why do we need to
register anglers? And the answer is because we only want to talk to
people who fish. And that talking to people who fish to try to gather
data on what\'s being caught and who\'s fishing, how much they\'re
fishing, just makes sense. It\'s intuitively common sense.

And it\'s one of the things that drove me crazy for years when I heard
about that random digit dialing program. This is going to overcome a lot
of that and I think that the registry \-- hopefully a lot of the states
will be able to modify what they do and meet the minimum criteria. And I
think in the end most of them will.

The process is moving forward. The work groups are being created by John
and Rob Andrews and there will be a get-together, perhaps in late July,
where these groups will begin to work on creating a product. And so our
next meeting should be really enlightening in terms of where we are,
because we have to be a long ways down that road.

We\'re right now shooting for June of \`08 to have a tentative draft,
final package that will be going out for public comment and then be
ready for a bill to adopt by the first of January of 2009. So we don\'t
have a lot of time left.

I was pleased to \-- one of the big things and Randy Fisher really
brought it home \-- he said we have to set ourselves up for success, not
failure. And the sure way to fail is not to have the funds available to
do the kind of work that needs to be done to gather this information. It
was \-- clearly it\'s going to take more money. And John indicated that
half of the money allocated this year for Magnuson Act reauthorization
is going toward this recreational daily improvement in the registry
program.

MR. CONNELLY: In the President\'s budget for next year.

MR. FLETCHER: For next year. And then in \`09 there is going to be an
emphasis on this whole process. So we\'re hopeful that some significant
dollars will be available there but I think all of us are concerned that
once we develop this project, if there\'s not the funds to implement it
then we\'re no better off than we were before we started the process.
And I know you understand that.

So that was the kind of the wrap-up for the meeting. We\'re going to
have an executive steering committee conference call tomorrow. And then
in the months to come, get to do the hard work of pulling together this
product.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Thank you for your report. Dr. Hogarth?

DR. HOGARTH: We\'re lucky that John Boreman decided not to retire and
take over this project. He wanted to just retire and we convinced him
not to because this is one of the biggest issues we have. There is
absolutely no faith in that recreational data. And the biggest concern I
have is that when we get through this, to get the money we\'re going to
have to have people not taking pot shots at it. So the outreach to get
everybody on board is going to be key. If we got a group in Texas or a
group in Virginia or a group in somewhere, that\'s just going to take
shots at it, then it\'s going to be more difficult.

And it is going to cost. One of the problems we\'re having right now
with the old Magnuson reauthorization is a lot of people think that,
well it\'s reauthorizing \-- that\'s it. The work is ahead of us in the
reauthorization. It\'s costly. It\'s a very costly reauthorization. The
people have seemed to forgotten that. It\'s just \-- we reauthorize it.
It\'s done. Move on. And it\'s not true.

I think the group has done a good job of putting together \-- we\'ve got
good teams. We\'re lucky that Gordon Colvin wanted to retire and come
with us and John is talking to another state director that\'s, will be
active for one of these groups. We\'re trying to reach out to the states
because we feel like it\'s with the registry, a lot of the reasons we
need the states. We need that and we need the commissions and the
councils. And the commissions have already done a lot in straightening
out some of the recreational stuff. We just need to continue to build on
that. We need MAFAC\'s involvement. We can\'t let it drop. We can\'t let
it lose any momentum and we\'ve got to keep the outreach. The outreach
is just one thing \-- is just critical because nobody believes today so
if we don\'t get the buy in, then we\'ve got some problems. So thanks to
everybody.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Questions for Bob \-- I have a couple, but I\'ll hold
off until committee members. Questions for Bob Fletcher? None? Well, I
have two for you, Bob.

First of all, Bob, is there any discussion, and I don\'t expect them to
do it now because they have a lot more to do in getting this up and
running, but has there been any discussion about trying to in a sense
recalibrate past landings. Because one of the, I think, goals of this is
to try to more accurately understand the landings that are the fish \--
well, I guess we\'ll say mortality that\'s affected by the recreational
community. Is there, has there been any talk about doing a retrospective
and going back and looking at landings from previous years, once this
has been up and running for a couple of years and possibly recalibrate
or re-understand the behavior of the recreational community in the
previous years?

MR. FLETCHER: Well, let me just put it this way \-- on the west coast,
we\'ve been under a new survey system for about four years now and for
several of those years we\'ve been doing dual surveys. MRFSS has
continued to work while the new system has been up and running \-- an
attempt to address exactly the point you raised. I don\'t know, Randy
\-- is he here? Randy, do you have any thoughts on if that has been
accomplished?

MR. FISHER: Well they\'ve looked \-- basically they\'ve tried to figure
out whether the new system would come up with the same number as the old
system did. And the answer really is no and the reason we can\'t really
compare them in many cases is because management has changed so much.
We\'ve gone to a basically different management scheme on the West Coast
in a number of the fisheries, and as a result of that, it would be very
hard to go back and try and compare oranges and oranges. So in some
instances you can, but overall we figured out that you really can\'t do
it, at least in the West Coast. And the main reason is the changes in
management over that period of months.

CAPT. DILERNIA: And the steering committee hasn\'t had any discussions
about any of that?

MR. FLETCHER: No.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. Pete?

MR. LEIPZIG: Randy, I can appreciate going back and doing the
retrospective that Tony was looking for, but when Bob said there was
parallel data collection for four years, were they producing the same
answer during the four year period or different?

MR. FISHER: Fairly close to the same number. If you look at certain
waves, for instance, some of them will be the same and some of them are
different.

MR. LEIPZIG: You don\'t know which one is right.

MR. FISHER: Right, that\'s exactly right.

MR. FLETCHER: Our attitude is recreational anglers is the new system, is
better and results in a lower number of catch than the MRF system was
projecting. So we thought that what we were looking at made more logic.
It was more common sense and closer to what we thought might be what our
harvest impact was.

CAPT. DILERNIA: My second question \-- a little bit different \-- I
guess I\'ll rely on the three commission directors here to possibly
answer first. It\'s my understanding that all coastal states basically
have a recreational license except for basically those states in the
northeast. Is that correct? For the northeast regions and Hawaii. Okay.
The federal registry is going to be designed to be implemented, should a
state not enact their own angling registry system, is that correct?
Okay.

Now, your implementation date is January of \`09, which happens to come
right after local, state, and federal elections in November of \`08. And
I\'m just anticipating that that federal registry might be necessary
because I could see, I could envision opponents of the registry on the
state level getting to local legislators during an election cycle. And I
could see some of those because I would believe that it would be
required as an act of the state legislature and an act of the governor
to have registries, angler registries in those states in the northeast.

And I could see this program getting bogged down a little bit, I guess
you\'ll say, in local politics as some folks advocate a state registry
in the northeast and other individuals who in the state legislature may
have to support it, are running for re-election. It\'s not really all
that popular in the northeast. So I could see it \-- and by the way, my
career started in fisheries management in 1980 opposing the saltwater
fishing license in New York state - - that was 1980. That was my first
thing I was ever asked to do by industry. And now I think I\'m probably
the biggest supporter of a saltwater license in New York state, many
years later. I\'m absolutely convinced it\'s necessary.

But there is still significant amount of resistance and I could see,
possibly in the northeast, the state systems not being online for the
January \`09 start-up date, so I would strongly suggest that the federal
process be really well in place and planned because you might have to go
that route in some of those states in the northeast, having come from
there. Mr. Kramer?

MR. KRAMER: Tony, I think the whole analogy between the saltwater
license and what\'s going on here are very relative. If I\'m an angler
in one of those states, you could theoretically look at it as such that,
do I want to play a larger part in determining how I\'m managed and how
I\'m counted and how fish are counted in my fishery? Or do I just want
to fall back to the federal registry thing? So I see, we talked about
this earlier, as being a potential carrot for some of the other states
to more aggressively pursue a state remedy for this as opposed to a
federal remedy for this. That\'s how I\'m going to sell it from a
recreational angling constituent group, is that you\'ve got an
opportunity to drive the bus or ride on the bus. You pick.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I couldn\'t agree with you more. I support that, I
support it completely, but I also know that, coming from the northeast
it\'s an emotional issue. Should we separate the rationale \-- the
rationale for it makes perfect sense and it\'s obvious, it\'s logical,
it\'s the way to go. Unfortunately there\'s a certain amount of emotion
that also drives this and I would be very disappointed should my state
not adopt recreational saltwater fishing license in time for this to be
implemented. All I\'m just saying is, I\'m cautioning the feds that sit
here, that just make sure everything\'s in place because I could see it
getting stuck in local politics. Just getting ugly in local politics.

MR. FLETCHER: Let John comment. John, how do you foresee the
implementation of a federal registry in the absence of any support from
the state? You don\'t see you having something ready to drop in place on
January 2^nd^, do you? Of \`09?

MR. BOREMAN: Right now the plan is to have a system ready for people to
start enrolling or registering in January of \`09. We may have to do it
\-- I don\'t know if at that point we\'ll be ready to go nationwide but
at least we\'ll have some parts of the country, maybe parts that are
further along with the state license program, to drop something into
place. Listening to this discussion, it\'s going to be problematic
because the registry itself only applies to recreational fishing in the
EEZ \-- between the 200 miles. And there\'s no state license for
intra-waters. We\'ll have contact information but for only a fraction of
the people who will be fishing in that state and that\'s going to be a
major problem.

We have a sales campaign, a marketing campaign, and that\'s one of the
reasons why we\'re bringing Gordon onboard because he\'s right in the
middle of it. He has been for thirty years. So he understands the
politics, he understands the issues, who he needs to speak with and part
of his job \-- I just finished writing his p.d. \-- part of his job is
outreach. A major part of his job is marketing style. Because these are
issues we\'re going to have to tackle and they\'re serious issues.

CAPT. DILERNIA: You couldn\'t have picked a better man for the job,
really. I think Gordon is \-- I\'ve worked with Gordon for so many
years. He\'s ideally suited for it. I\'m just \-- if I \-- that
political pulse that I see up in the northeast, what happens there I
think \-- there\'s a potential there for a problem. And that\'s why I
just mention it to all of us so that we\'re aware of it.

Thank you, Captain Fletcher. Is there any other \-- Dorothy? I\'m sorry,
Mary Beth!

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Thanks, Tony. I think I\'m kind of sensitive to that
as well and have heard some of those kinds of comments. In Maine I\'m
really not sure where we\'re at as far as doing anything. I haven\'t
heard of any specific actions that would produce a saltwater license in
the state of Maine. I\'m sure they\'re having those discussions on a
state level at some point. I would imagine that if you wrote to all the
commissioners, that they\'re having discussions at the department.

But the state of New Hampshire has already moved forward and gone out to
public hearings to have a saltwater license. They only have about
fifteen miles of coastline but at least it\'s one \-- state.

MR. FLETCHER: I just want to comment on it. I understand that this
process is not going to require the state to have a saltwater license to
be exempt from the registry. If you have some kind of state registry of
anglers, which would fall short of licensing approach, as long as you
can provide some relatively accurate count of anglers fishing in the
ocean, through whatever process, that might be enough to get you by. I
don\'t know \-- they need the contact information so that they can talk
to anglers, rather than go out to a body of people and wade through them
to find out who fishes.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY One quick question, because I really haven\'t
followed this too much. How do you deal with tourists?

MR. FLETCHER: With what?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Tourists.

MR. JONER: Tourists.

(Laughter)

MR. FLETCHER: Everybody in California that goes fishing on my boat has
to have a license, regardless of where you\'re from. But -

MR. SIMPSON: One or two day license? Out of state license?

MR. FLETCHER: It\'s a matter of counting anglers and however the state
chooses to do that, I think.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Any other questions for Captain Fletcher? Well, on
behalf of the committee I\'d like to thank you. Your work and Mr.
Kramer\'s work on this has been extensive. In the past year since we
last met you\'ve been to a number of meetings and you\'re really totally
uncompensated. You\'ve gone to a lot of work representing our committee
and I want to thank you, sir. You couldn\'t have picked a better man for
the job to do this and you\'re proving us right, really. Thank you.

MR. FLETCHER: Well I like to thank Vince and Larry and Randy, too.
They\'re right there, right knee deep in it with the rest of us.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Thank you. Our next agenda item \-- MSA. Mr. Gilmore?

MR. GILMORE: I\'ve got a written report that I\'ll show up on the
screen. Laurel has me -

CAPT. DILERNIA: Homework.

MR. GILMORE: We have a written report. A number of MAFAC members,
including members of the Magnuson-Stevens Act subcommittee, met with
Alan Risenhoover to continue our discussions of implementation of MSA
reauthorization and the committee offered the following recommendations
and comments.

First bullet point, the group urges NOAA fisheries to make clear that
fishery management plans do not need to be amended simply to reflect the
annual catch limit nomenclature, adopted in the implementing
regulations, but only to insure consistency of the FMPs with the
concepts in Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization and the new national
standard guidelines. Our purpose there was simply to avoid a make-work
for already stressed regional fishery management councils just to \--
you\'re using MSY instead of over-fishing level and your terminology is
consistent, then you\'d be deemed consistent with the new regulations.
You\'d just have to use the identical terms.

Second bullet point, the group urges NOAA fisheries in consultation with
NOAA General Counsel, to advise the regional fishery management councils
on which FMPs are deemed to be in compliance with the revised national
standard guidelines. A member of our group, who will remain nameless,
said 2010 is shaping up to be a train wreck. We said let\'s try to avoid
train wrecks. That seems to be a pejorative term. Let the councils know
which of their FMPs have adequate catch limit, accountability measures
in them as the process goes along, as NOAA is doing the analysis under
the draft of the environmental impact statement in other places, so we
can found out where we stand on a council by council basis.

The group urged flexibility in the revised national standard 1
guidelines for circumstances where their data pour stops within a
fishery, subject to annual catch limit requirements. The group urges
NOAA fisheries to recognize and provide flexibility for situations where
an annual catch limit set below an overfishing level might be exceeded
in a year without an adverse biological impact. So that would be a
situation where, to use a north Pacific example, where the total catch
levels are always set at or below an ABC level, which is always set
above/below an overfishing level. So if there is a situation where you
go over the annual catch limit, which are far below an overfishing
level, you want to be sure we have the flexibility in the guidelines
there to avoid a penalty situation.

The group strongly urges NOAA fisheries or supports NOAA fisheries\'
plan to hold public workshop in the fall to discuss developments
relating to the MSA implementation that would be focused, as you can
see, on the annual catch limit language and our discussions. But
certainly the limited access privilege programs need issues and others.
It\'s a great plan \-- hold a public workshop and let people see what is
coming down the track and get acclimated. That\'s the report of our
merry band.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Any questions on behalf of the committee members for Mr.
Gilmore? I see no questions \-- do you want to offer these
recommendations in the form of a motion?

MR. GILMORE: Yes, I would.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, we have a motion from Mr. Gilmore that these
recommendations be supported by the committee and sent to the agency.
Seconder was Mr. Leipzig \-- Pete. We have a motion on the floor. Is
there any discussion on the motion? Okay. Not seeing any discussion on
the motion, I\'ll put it to a vote. All those that support the motion
say aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: Opposed? Please make a note that the motion was
supported without opposition. Okay. Thank you for your report.

MR. GILMORE: We like to tie them up in a nice bow for you.

CAPT. DILERNIA: That\'s wonderful, thank you. Thank you very much. Next
item on our agenda: aquaculture.

DR. HOGARTH: Could I just \--

CAPT. DILERNIA: Yes sir.

DR. HOGARTH: The reauthorization of Magnuson is a big, big burden, so to
speak, on us \-- particularly Alan and sustainable fishery. It\'s about
eight pages of things that we have to within certain timeframes.
Nobody\'s realizes it takes money to do this because you just
reauthorize it and do it. And so Alan is doing a tremendous job of
getting this stuff done but it is going to be a very tight, tight
schedule and we need lots of in-put. Some of these things are really
going to be controversial and to try to meet what we think Magnuson says
and what some other people think Magnuson says. And you\'re all aware
that the environmental group had a great deal in getting Magnuson passed
and they have some difference of opinion between us and maybe even the
Hill on what\'s in it. So it\'s going to be a difficult couple years for
the sustainable fisheries. That plus keeping everything they got on
their plate moving. It\'s a good deal \-- it\'s just a tough deal.
Thanks.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Thank you. Dr. Billy, are you ready? Your report \--
aquaculture.

DR. BILLY: I\'ve handed out the summary report of our discussions
yesterday afternoon. Our discussions were largely in the form of updates
by the aquaculture staff from NOAA on responding to the policy
recommendations and other recommendations that the committee forwarded
to NOAA last July. Following that format then, as you can see here in
the summary report, they basically informed us of where things stood,
progress that was made in various areas, and I\'ll just highlight some
of these. You can see it in detail here in the report.

In terms of the ten year plan, the initial emphasis there was the idea
that \-- of importance of NOAA thinking ahead and developing a strategic
plan \-- where it\'s headed, what its role is going to be, where it
should put its emphasis. They have in fact completed a fully vetted ten
year plan. It\'s finished and approved and it\'s in the final stages of
being printed and will be available shortly. It\'s attached to this
summary report.

We went on then to the whole idea of increasing budget resources for the
aquaculture program. The summary is here. While there hasn\'t been any
significant influx of new money, it\'s clear that they\'re working hard
to use the money that is available effectively and leverage it wherever
they can, and I\'ll come back to that in a couple of minutes.

One important small but significant recommendation was the idea of
getting a separate line item in the President\'s budget solution. It\'s
clear how much money is being asked for \-- how much is being spent in
this area. That\'s been accomplished now, at least in terms of the
budget that the President submitted to Congress for the next round.

In our discussions, the working group talked about some of the
impediments to additional U.S. marine aquaculture, and ended up focusing
on several areas, one of which was the inadequacy of the NOAA budget in
this area, the importance of hatchery capability to the further
development of aquaculture in the U.S., and the lack of a coordinated
and efficient license process to permit new operations. Now obviously,
in part that\'s what the legislation is designed to address. This is one
of the priority areas among the others I\'ve mentioned that were
discussed by the working group. NOAA\'s also been working hard to
identify research priorities and reaching out to various industry
groups, state aquaculture representatives, trade associations, the
science centers in NOAA fisheries, and others. They plan to continue to
do that.

We also had a brief discussion on stock enhancement and one of the
particular points that was made was the importance of publicly funded
research assistance to better understand how that can work and be a
useful tool in fisheries management. That area is addressed in some
detail in the ten year plan.

Next area of discussion was for NOAA to, on behalf of the entire federal
government, launch a broad marine aquaculture development initiative and
one step toward that end was the idea the committee came up with of a
national summit on aquaculture. As indicated here, that\'s planned and
scheduled for this month, the 26^th^ and 27^th^. They were able to share
with us an outline of the agenda for that meeting. They\'ve indicated
that the MAFAC committee will be invitees to the summit and we\'re
encouraged to attend. And the focus of the summit will be the business
side of aquaculture \-- looking at the impediments to further
aquaculture development, the availability of capital, and other issues
that impact the commercial development of aquaculture.

We went on and talked about some of the other steps that have been taken
by the NOAA aquaculture staff, including the establishment of a
aquaculture points of contact group, which has helped improve
communication already and is expected to continue to improve
communication. The NOAA has focused on identifying other government
agencies that could be more supportive of aquaculture. One example here
in the report is NIST \-- the National Institute of Science and
Technology \-- the former Bureau of Standards, that has a grant program
for advanced technologies and they have apparently agreed to include
aquaculture in their solicitation of proposals.

They\'re also working to enhance their knowledge of and relationship
with other groups interested in aquaculture, including those from the
environmental community, various research institutions, both public and
private.

Another category where we addressed a set of recommendations to NOAA was
revisiting Chapter 22 of the U.S. Commission final report to Congress
and there has not been any significant progress in this area to date.
They\'ve been focusing on these other areas, but it hasn\'t been lost.
It is their intent to move in this area as they continue to move
forward.

Mike Rubino then sort of updated us on the new aquaculture bill that\'s
been introduced in the House. I understand from Bill that it may be
introduced in the Senate very shortly.

DR. HOGARTH: Tomorrow.

DR. BILLY: Tomorrow. That\'s very, very shortly. There\'s a good
possibility of hearings some time in July to get the process started.
There\'s expression of support, general for the legislation, from
various groups around the country, but also some opposition. Some of the
opposition is \-- you can find it under tab 11 in our ringbinder
notebook, in the form of a letter to some of the Congressional
committees.

We then focused on certain aspects of the bill now pending in Congress
and several people that are in the aquaculture business or are very
close to it, encouraged a legal review of the bill from a business
perspective and felt that it could reveal some interesting potential
traps, if you will, from a business perspective that would impact the
interest and willingness of investors to put money into this area. NOAA
was encouraged to explore how to do this kind of a legal review from a
business perspective and Mike Rubino again offered drafting assistance
or whatever\'s appropriate in terms of \-- if there are ways to clarify
the language or improve it. They would be willing to help in that
regard.

Another important observation came out. Bill, I think you in particular
and others in NOAA leadership, should think about. And that is as people
on a day to day basis interact at the regional or local level with NOAA
staff in the aquaculture area, they often get this feedback of
resistance or reluctance to be involved in aquaculture because they see
it as having a conflict with other mandates of NOAA in terms of
management of resources or other concerns that NOAA staff raise. It
could be helpful to some form of communication that makes it very clear
that this is not only a legitimate area of involvement but a priority of
the agency in terms of work in this area as appropriate.

We did discuss certain other provisions of the act. I\'m not going to go
into these. Got some clarification of some of the language. And that
pretty well summarizes our discussions \-- the list of attendees is
provided here and I\'ve also attached or note that there was another
hand-out on the table titled \"How the National Offshore Aquaculture Act
Addresses Environmental Issues.\" So you should add that to your \-- at
least it\'s available here, so I assume it was passed out. So that\'s
the report.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Dr. Hogarth?

DR. HOGARTH: First of all, I want to thank MAFAC because they\'ve been
very active in this and \-- and I think we\'ve tried to react and I
think the Admiral \-- they had a meeting and follow-up. The Secretary of
Commerce, is this his \-- one thing, he\'s really gotten behind this.
He\'s had several meetings with the business leaders. He was very much
in favor of making sure that he was here for the summit. He will kick
the summit off. It\'s a \-- the bill we\'re sure will be introduced
tomorrow in the Senate. I don\'t know that they\'re going to change it.
They may add some provision \-- may opt out for Alaska because Senator
Stevens is running for re-election and he\'s got the state that says
they\'re opposed to aquaculture even though I was up there last Friday
and everywhere I went, all I saw was aquaculture, honestly. But they
really seem to be \-- and what we\'re trying to do is work with both the
House and the Senate on how the amendments will be done, so we can do
like we did with Magnuson \-- work with House side on a bill and then go
to the Senate and be adopted. But we are standing by, Sam and Michael,
to make any drafting assistance they need.

It appears that the House is trying to have the first round of hearings
on July the 8^th^ and we\'d like to make sure the MAFAC is involved in
that\-- if we have any input into who testifies that week of July 8^th^.
I think it\'s \-- I hope this bill can get through. I\'m concerned if it
doesn\'t \-- then what it means then to the groups that oppose it,
particularly start in on imports and this type thing would just create
one problem to another problem.

So I think we have to look at this bill and look at it very carefully to
make sure that we can look at the business aspects, look at the legal
review we can do, and the environmental concerns I think can be
addressed pretty easily, personally. I think we can. One of the parts of
the summit was to try to have some of the science and that type of part.
I was told that after IWC that this was one of my priorities to ICCAT
but this was supposedly would be one of my jobs, and to work closely
with Michael to see we can get this bill through. We need input; we need
support. And MAFAC has done a great job and I want to thank you all for
that. Comments have been on point and have really helped to direct us.
Thanks.

DR. BILLY: I move that the report be adopted.

MR. RAFTICAN: Second.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Chair, we have a motion from Dr. Billy and second from
Tom Raftican. Is there any discussion on the motion? Any questions for
Dr. Billy?

MR. DEWEY: I guess it\'s discussion on the motion. I just wanted to
highlight a part in the report that Tom didn\'t bring out necessarily,
but it was certainly part of the discussion and it was a compliment to
your staff for doing an excellent job and for progressing on MAFAC\'s
recommendations. But also for me personally, as far as observation on
the legislation, they\'ve done a great job at trying to take the input
from all the various constituent groups and find a balance to try to
incorporate into the new draft of the legislation.

DR. HOGARTH: Thanks. It\'s a small group. The aquaculture team is small
and they have a lot to but it\'s a very effective group and they\'ve
done a great job \-- but they\'ve got a lot on the plate and you have to
put priorities on some of it, like Chapter 22. Something there to review
but it\'s just, right now the legislation, trying to react to that is
\--

CAPT. DILERNIA: Any other questions or comments before we vote on the
motion? Dr. Billy? Any discussion? Seeing none, all those that support
accepting the report say aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: Opposed? Seeing no opposition the motion is adopted.
Thank you. Okay, we\'re moving right along here today. It\'s pretty good
\-- we\'re a very efficient bunch here. Laurel is saying because we had
so much time to do our subcommittee work and she\'s right. That was a
good model that we followed.

MS. BRYANT: Trying to keep it simple seems to work better.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, our next item for discussion is Fish Watch and my
dear friend from Texas is not here. Oh, there he is!

MR. RAYBURN: You may remember from the discussion on Monday that we had
a presentation on Fish Watch. There were several points that folks
wanted to deal with, so with the committee\'s agreement we set up a
sub-working group within the Commerce subcommittee and set that meeting
up for 10:30 this morning. These are the people that were there: MAFAC
members and staff, at least during a portion of our discussion, and a
couple of visitors as well.

Chairman Billy started out the meeting and kind of reflected on setting
up the working group and then passed it to me. I made an original
statement on what I wanted the focus of this session to be. And that was
about the last time anybody cared about that.

We had general discussion that covered a lot of bases and it was
probably good. I tried to extract \-- hopefully this is the right slide
and it may not be. No, it\'s not. But anyway, the idea was to cover the
issues that would be involved in Fish Watch and we did cover from
basically the idea of certification to the organic issues with seafood
to the health and safety aspects of seafood and then consumer education.

I\'ve got another slide \-- this one reflects on the notes I was taking
and some of those may not be relevant to the discussion, but the general
end items on this are here \-- the outcomes. We felt like that the Fish
Watch group should be maintained as a subcommittee. There were a lot of
opportunities in our discussion to cover a lot of bases besides just the
initial roll-out of the Fish Watch website that\'s planned.

There was strong discussion on encouraging NOAA fisheries and NMFS to be
more forceful as they support their activities against folks who would
be detrimental to it. I think everyone \-- there\'s a great show of
support to validate the work that National Marines Fishery Service, NOAA
fisheries is doing in fishery management and it should be proud to stand
up for them. And the industry would stand up for them and they encourage
them to stand up as well.

Then the Fish Watch was just considered to be one of those tactics in
promoting fishery management effectively within our nation. We had back
and forth discussion about certification, what role this may be
competition with in the private sector and all that but ultimately, as I
said, I think the Fish Watch program gives MAFAC a broad purview to
discuss a lot of issues relevant to the seafood industry, both
internationally and domestically.

We looked at the content of the website and came up with some
suggestions to the staff, looking at perhaps a hierarchy of personal
preferences. When you go to a seafood, it\'s price, quality, and
sustainability so we thought if you hit the bullets, the price is
already there in the marketplace but maybe look at the quality which
would include various aspects of the fish, the seafood product \-- maybe
something in preparation of the product, nutritional value and any
cautions that might be there like pregnant women shouldn\'t eat this and
stuff like that.

That may constitute a fairly common set of bullets right under the name
of the species that occurs in the text on the bigger species items.
Staff indicated a desire to have about thirty species when this is
rolled out and the target date for that is still August 5 at the New
Orleans Seafood Competition. In that regard then they\'re requesting
additional species to be added to the list and they also request a
review of the pages both of those species and some of the common pages
on that website and those comments should be forwarded to Michael or
Katie \-- Michael Kelly. They\'re working on this project and I think
their contact information is listed at the back of the Power Point that
they gave us on Monday.

Ideally they would like to have all of that as soon as possible. By the
first of July staff intend to send the pages back out to the working
group for review so that they can be finalized with the target date of
that roll-out August 5^th^. That will include a press conference and
other activities around the New Orleans Seafood Competition in July.
There\'s an interest in trying to start working up the hype on this with
various promotional items.

Mr. Chairman, that completes the report.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Very good. Thank Mr. Rayburn. Do you have any motions
that you\'re offering for consideration today?

MR. RAYBURN: I think my one motion would

be \-- most of this is informational, but the motion to maintain, I mean
I would make a motion that this report be accepted or be received,
whatever the right term is.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Received.

MR. RAYBURN: Received.

CAPT. DILERNIA: We have a second?

MR. JONER: I\'ll second.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Second by Mr. Joner. So we have a motion that the report
be received. In other words we have it. Doesn\'t necessarily mean that
members support every single item in it. That would be the accepted
report. Dr. Hogarth?

DR. HOGARTH: I really appreciate the discussion that took place this
morning. I thought it was an excellent discussion. I\'ve been one of
those that don\'t think we do enough on seafood promotion. I don\'t
think we\'re out there promoting the healthiness. I get some criticism
for even supporting the National Academy of Science study but I thought
it\'s worth it. And I think we are the U.S. experts in fisheries and we
should be and we are. And I think we need to take advantage of that and
I think, you know, provide the consumers with the proper information on
the healthiness, the helpfulness, and all of seafood. We\'ve been
struggling internally. We really have.

So how\'s the best way to do this? As I said to the small group this
morning, I really get concerned when I look at red, yellow, and green
because it really doesn\'t depict what\'s really going on in the U.S.
and the way we manage our fisheries and all.

I\'d like to see MAFAC stay involved in this because I think what we\'re
doing August the 5^th^ is sort of the beginning. I think the expertise
we have in this room will be valuable to us as we move forward. And we
want to move forward. And so I would hope that MAFAC would stay involved
in this issue for us and with as we move forward.

We sponsored the seafood cook-off in New Orleans. We have been doing it
and this year we\'ve added a extra day for a few cooks to come in, and
not just have chefs but little dishes that will be simple to fix so
we\'re trying to say fifteen minute dinners type thing on the second
day. We\'d like to roll something out on this at that meeting because
we\'ll have a lot of press there and Southern Cooking is going sponsor
that this year and it\'s a good venue to get something out. So that\'s
why we were sort of pushing some. We need to do it now, not two years
from now. I\'d like to see more done on this before I leave. I do hope
MAFAC will stay involved and we\'re going to push it internally to get
it done.

So thanks for the discussion. It was excellent and we need to move
forward and do more.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Are there any other questions or any discussion on the
motion that we have? Mr. Dewey.

MR. DEWEY: We had some great discussion, I agree, particularly on the
certification and Dr. Hogarth, I think you were out of the room when
Rod, you made your comment at the end on the MSC certification. That was
an eye-opener to me and I think it\'s worth repeating here for Dr.
Hogarth\'s benefit.

MR. GILMORE: Well, the comment that I had made, for the benefit of
everybody, we\'re involved in the MSC program \-- Alaskan pollack\'s
been certified. Our experience \-- I don\'t know if I can short-cut the
four year long process here but I\'ll try \-- an assessment team of
three people came in and reviewed the fishery, the fish stock, the
health of the fish stock, the impact of the fishery on the ecosystem,
and the management system.

And those three people were experts in various fields, some of which
actually had to do with Alaskan pollack, but not two-thirds of the team.
At the end of the day, he came up with some very uncomplimentary
comments about the management of the fishery. At the same time, the
National Fishery Service could not have been more professional, more
collegial, more generous in the time and the resources they committed to
help this assessment team over four years get its work done. And that
same dedication has gone through for the cod fishery, for the halibut
fishery, for fisheries up and down the east and west coasts of the
United States that were involved in the program.

Our motivation in getting into it was to get a third party validation
because important buyers came to us and said it\'s important to us that
there be a third party validation for it. And that was motivation enough
for us.

My feeling is National Fishery Service - - this isn\'t a two-way street
right now with a stewardship council and it should be. What I\'d like to
see is NOAA fisheries approach the MSC and say this program has to work
for us. We just can\'t have three people come in and visit a fishery and
pretend they know more than hundreds of dedicated managers and
scientists that are involved in the conduct of these fisheries day to
day. I would like to see a situation where one aspect of this assessment
is a check mark for the fishery management system. This idea of
originating it with an Australia fishery in the program \-- I\'d really
like to see it catch fire. Just an overall check mark for the management
system on a country-wide basis.

I think the MSC owes that to National Fishery Service and the work that
it does to come and say that this meets our standards. And have them
saying we\'re going to turn over all our staff time and resources to
help you assess these fisheries on an individual basis. You\'ve got to
make this program more practical and effective and useful. We want a
check mark for NOAA fisheries. Any fishery in the United States that
gets in this program, know they go through an openly transparent
management process \-- check mark for that.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Care to respond?

DR. HOGARTH: No.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I have a list to speak. Mr. Connelly, you\'re next.

MR. CONNELLY: Sure, just \-- by way of truth in advertising, I\'m on the
Board of Directors of the Marine Stewardship Council, at the strong
urging of my good friend Gilmore. So with that as a word of caution or
whatever, Bill I think you did \-- I think a meeting between yourself,
the Canadians, New Zealand, Australia, etc. with MSC staff and the
Chairman of MSC would at a minimum provide a good opportunity for the
staff at MSC to understand the stresses that the program places on you
and your peers in other countries.

Just as a reminder to folks, MSC has three parts: the first is what does
your stock look like? The second principle is: does it impact the
ecosystem and do you understand those impacts? And the third is: do you
have a management system in place? And what Jim is suggesting is we
believe the U.S. management system is an excellent system. We do a good
job with it and to have others come in in a three person team and second
guess the hundreds of people up in the Alaska Science Center or
Northwest Science Center and other places, is a little bit of a bold
move.

On the other hand, Bill, having it done \-- MSC was up with the Canadian
government last week \-- their staff was. You could have an individual
meeting with them. New Zealand could have an individual meeting. But I
think if the governments went in collectively to MSC, it might have more
of an impact. DR. HOGARTH: So Australia, New Zealand, Canada?

MR. CONNELLY: Just our initial list: Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
potentially Norway, not Iceland. But I think it would send a strong
signal that MSC is a program that\'s here to stay. It is a brand that a
number of our companies have and fisheries are getting some value out
of. But MSC also understands that they have some improvements that they
need to make. And your staff is just going to get called on more and
more as more U.S. fisheries enter into this program. It might be a way
for you to save some of your own staff\'s time.

DR. HOGARTH: I know Doug got somewhat frustrated at the, in particular,
all the demands and no responses, in particular when they came in with
their research and demands on the fisheries. Didn\'t seem to be based on
much.

MR. GILMORE: There are a few aspects of this thing that you would want
to discuss. One of these is these conditions that they \--

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. Mr. Simpson. Larry.

MR. SIMPSON: Just wanted to endorse Jim and John\'s comments. I was \--
I\'m as interested as others, in some of the Gulf areas on some
fisheries of looking at certification, MSC and other certifications on
certain fisheries. I understand this process is very expensive, and
they\'re getting a lot of work from the federal government and charging
a great deal. I hope that Fish Watch will have at some point some kind
of credibility maybe to stand along with other certification type
projects, programs, for fisheries that aren\'t necessarily quite as
expensive and by the nature of that animal, out of reach to certain
fisheries.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Dr. Billy, you next?

DR. BILLY: I\'d also like to endorse this idea and suggest we go a step
further and put it in the form of a recommendation from MAPAC, that NOAA
be encouraged or urged to organize a meeting among the countries that
were mentioned to explore reciprocal recognition of the management
regimes that are in place in those countries in return for the support
and assistance that NOAA fisheries and the other fishery agencies in
those countries provide to MSC.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I appreciate the offer, Dr. Billy. Right now we have a
motion on the floor that was made by Mr. Rayburn regarding our receiving
his report. Once we clear that motion then I\'ll turn to you to make
another motion, if you could make that \-- take a moment to write it
out. Is there any other discussion on this case?

MR. CATES: I\'m a little bit confused by this talking about MSC and
making a recommendation \-- National Marine Fisheries, go and engage
with them. Because at the same discussion, there was much talk about
National Marine Fisheries being the leader and the authority on
fisheries and that we don\'t need to go to these type of organizations.
They should be coming to us.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Let\'s just try to keep this clean, housekeeping-wise.
I\'d first like to act on Ralph\'s motion. Then we\'ll have Tom\'s
motion. Because it sounds like your comments \-- you\'re speaking to the
motion that Tom plans on making.

MR. CATES: I\'m referring to the comments that you were making earlier,
about MSC and encouraging Bill to engage with them.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mr. Rayburn?

MR. RAYBURN: As to my motion, I apologize \-- a lot of this discussion I
did include in the notes I was taking but in the \-- what I presented to
the committee was synthesized and I\'d be happy to put more of the notes
in. There was a lot of discussion about different items like this and
certainly more emphasis on where NMFS should position themselves as a
leader of fisheries and validation of all fisheries issues. I left that
out but I could certainly include it in the notes. I think the
conversation here includes that. I apologize to the people at the
meeting that I didn\'t refer to that.

CAPT. DILERNIA: What I\'d like to do, just to keep this clean, is I\'ll
take a vote on receiving Mr. Rayburn\'s motion and then because Mr.
Billy\'s about to make a motion that\'s going to require an action on
our part, whereas receiving of his report doesn\'t require any action on
our part. So is there any other discussion on receiving the report from
the Fish Watch work group?

Okay, if there\'s no discussion on that I\'d like to take a vote. All
those that support receiving the report from Fish Watch, please say aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: Anyone opposed? Show that the report has been received
by the committee. Okay, now as Dr. Billy\'s writing on a motion, I
understand that there\'s some discussion \-- additional discussion on
this topic. Mr. Cates, do you want to add any more? I also have Mr.
Connelly next after you, sir.

MR. CATES: Maybe I got a little confused on this, but on one hand what
we were saying in the meeting earlier was National Marine Fisheries is
doing a good job. The United States is managing our fisheries and we\'re
the leading authority. And that these groups should come to us to get
the scientific information.

On the other hand we\'re saying that with this particular group, we
encourage you to go to engage in this discussion which is contradictory
to what we were discussing in some of the other groups. So I\'m just
trying to get some \--

MR. CONNELLY: What I meant, earlier in the day I think we were talking
about \-- NOAA does a very good job managing our nation\'s fisheries. We
would like them to be more forceful in defending themselves. Industry
regularly talks about the sustainability of our nation\'s fisheries. We
appreciate the work that Bill and his team has been doing to become more
aggressive in this area \-- countering the B.S. that occasionally is out
there. On MSC though specifically, they come to NOAA fisheries and ask
for a ton of data for each fishery that\'s being developed, under this
principle free, which is the analysis of do you have a management system
in place for any fishery.

Our thought is \-- we would like to or it would be a good discussion for
Bill and his other peers from other countries to go to MSC and say you
asked for all this information from us in order to satisfy this
principle free in your system. We consider ourselves to be a well-run
\-- have good solid management systems in place and would basically like
a pass on you examining principle free because we think we do a damn
good job.

Right now there\'s \-- right now MSC relies on NOAA and these other
countries to give them data. Canada and at least one of their
significant fisheries has said we\'re not working with you anymore. And
there\'s a struggle with industry on that because industry is now six
years into a certification program, part of it because the government
has not provided the certifying team the information.

So there\'s \-- both sides have a need here. And what we\'d like to do
is for well-run fishery programs, and there are some countries that have
generally well-run fishery programs, do not have the MSC systems worked
by groups that want to achieve their means that they haven\'t been able
to achieve even through the regulatory process, the legislative process,
or even here in the litigation process.

I\'m not sure if that answered your question.

MR. CATES: I support that, but I\'m just \-- there appeared to be a
contradiction. But I understand support. I mean I basically agree that
NOAA needs to stand up and say this is what the facts are. Because there
is so much misinformation out there. And leverage that. But if we\'re
going to do that, we\'ve got to do that with all the groups, too.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mary Beth?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY I just had a question. Jim spoke to us about this
briefly. When you were going through the certification process, at one
point they put out the plan for public review and I went and read
through part of it. One of the things that seemed to be of concern were
the conditions and then obviously that you\'re going to come back five
years later and then see if you\'ve met the conditions and if you
haven\'t met the conditions, then you might lose your certification. And
it seems like you\'re better off never having a certification versus
having one and then losing one.

It seemed a lot of the conditions were things that the fishery was not
going to be able to meet \-- that the agency was going to have to meet
them. And that to me seemed to be a terrible position to put both the
fishery and the agency in, from a third party source. I don\'t know
where you go with that.

MR. GILMORE: What Mary Beth is referring to is that you are scored on a
number of indicators \-- in our case there were 72 indicators by which
the fishery was evaluated. If you scored 80 or above on those indicators
then you\'re home free. If you score below 60 on any one of them, your
fishery fails. If you score between 60 and 80 on an indicator, then
there are these conditions to bring your score up.

We were in the position - - Alaska salmon \-- the client was the state
of Alaska, so the manager of the fishery, and so the discussion was how
you change your Alaska salmon management to beat our standard. In our
case, as Mary Beth points out, most of the conditions were \-- the
National Marine Fishery Service were the management authority and they
just ended up calling it \-- sometimes it was the council, sometimes it
was the agency \-- should do this. And there we were, A-sector of the
Alaskan pollack industry as the client. So you write up an action plan
saying okay, we\'ll go talk to the agency. Never hurts to ask.

But the process itself is, I thought, deeply flawed because they would
come up with conditions, and you know Commerce doesn\'t appropriate the
money, the agency can\'t do it \-- physically can\'t do it, legally
probably can\'t do it, and so the research \-- the best example was you
shall conduct an experimental fishery on the past \-- on sea lions.

What you need to do is you need to go into these areas that have been
closed under the SA and trawl in those areas, so we can determine \--
you just ended up in a really ludicrous situation where some of the
things were silly and some of the things were illegal, some of the
things were unnecessary, and really, the situation we need to get to, if
the United

States fisheries are going to get into this program in a big way, is
that\'s part of the conversation it has to have with the Marine
Stewardship Council.

You have to say it cannot be so arrogant as to come in, with three
people, looking at a fishery on and off over a year long period and
pretend you know more than U.S. laws, U.S. regulations, Congressional
appropriations policy, etc. You need to just say, look, it\'s a nice
political safety valve for you to have a condition because you\'ve got
environmental stakeholders engaging in the process and you can take some
of the political strain away from the certification by saying \-- and
here are a bunch of conditions. That\'s just not, to me, pun intended, a
sustainable program. I think the agency just needs to \-- and the
agencies from around the world need to say that \-- is we welcome your
third party validation but we\'re not interested in this type of
arrogance. We just won\'t tolerate it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Dr. Holliday.

DR. HOLLIDAY: I just wanted to, just by point of information, and
Bill\'s already agreed that we take this discussion forward and work on
it. But about two years ago, Bill issued a policy with respect to
private sector labeling of fishery products in reaction to the situation
with the certification for pollack. Basically our position is stated as
the Magnuson Act identifies the nation\'s standards for sustainable
fisheries management. We\'ve got national standards. We\'ve got an open,
transparent process with the council system that insures only
peer-reviewed science is used to make scientific recommendations that is
then developed into objectives \-- goals and objectives that are
publicly discussed and published, in a rule-making that\'s the notes
from common rule-making.

And those are the standards by which U.S. fisheries are to be judged. A
private third-party entity, whether it\'s MSC or anybody else, is agreed
to establish whatever certification process they wish to. In many cases
industry finds a reasonable case to be made to be certified by them. But
Bill\'s policy and our statements to MSC and our discussions with them
have said we\'re not going to torque our research programs, our funding
profiles \-- I mean, we have a federal budget process that identifies
priorities about what data we collect, what stock assessments we
conduct, what analyses are necessary to support the councils and the
process as identified by the Magnuson Act. So those are the standards
and those are the measures and those are the indices by which we are
held accountable to Congress and to the nation for success in fishery
stewardship.

We respond to anybody\'s request for information for data under
applicable law. We can\'t refuse to give MSC data. We give them access
to data analyses as we would anybody else under the Freedom of
Information Act, though we don\'t want to set up a relationship where
we\'re spending our precious stock assessment scientist\'s time
responding to specific taskings from the private sector to establish a
certification.

This just by way of background \-- it\'s not a new issue for us. Bill\'s
been very assertive and we\'ve met with MSC in the past and discussed
these positions. I think the notion of collaborating with others and
reinforcing the position that our standards for sustainability and our
measures of success are written in statute.

We have a process and we have the councils that identify publicly the
goals and objectives for each fishery. We have peer-reviewed science. So
there\'s a fair amount of institutional infrastructure set up already in
the U.S. to insure that we know which fisheries are sustainable. We know
what three categories of science, management, and research are essential
to \"certify something\" as sustainable by the standards that Congress
has set for us. So just a little bit of background to \-- it\'s not
something that we\'re just uncovering today.

DR. HOGARTH: Just to that point \-- I think it came out, Jim, because
you all, Doug and Jim \-- figure it had to. But Canada has mentioned
this to me, so it probably wouldn\'t be a bad idea to get the government
together. Because Canada mentioned the problems they\'ve had with some
of it. To take it a step further, with the four governments getting with
them, it would probably be more effective right now.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. Looks like you have a motion prepared, sir.

DR. BILLY: NOAA fisheries is encouraged to organize a meeting between
MSC and several countries, to be selected by NOAA to explore explicit
recognition of the respective participating countries\' fishery
management regimes as a whole by MSC.

CAPT. DILERNIA: We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second by Mr.
Gilmore. Okay, Laurel is about to type that motion for our review up on
the screen. And I see there\'s already a discussion list. Larry Simpson?

MR. SIMPSON: Question \-- is this and should this only be limited to MSC
certification?

CAPT. DILERNIA: The question is to the group or to the motion?

MR. SIMPSON: To the group, yes.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Anyone care to \-- Mr. Gilmore?

MR. GILMORE: I guess for all practical purposes, I mean the MSC is the
game in town from a certification standpoint and obviously there are
official lists out there which \-- when somebody depended on research
and a nice printer. I think practically speaking, if other certification
programs become viable, it would probably be good to have the same
discussion with them.

MR. SIMPSON: Another question is, is MSC desired by a marketing need and
why couldn\'t NOAA fisheries just say you\'re a sustainable fishery?
It\'s instead of.

MR. GILMORE: It\'s what makes the market happy. The market is out there
dealing with environmental NGOs and looking for ways to assure people
they\'re buying sustainable sources and this third party validation \--
they\'ve been around for ten years, they\'ve got money behind them,
they\'re well-organized and people in the marketplace are being
recruited to support the program and encourage their suppliers to join
with the fun. And I should say we have realized benefits in the
marketplace from this. We\'ve gotten into markets we weren\'t in before.
We\'ve maintained markets. It may cost but there has been benefits.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. We have a motion upon the screen: NOAA fisheries
is encouraged to organize a meeting between MSC and several countries to
be selected by NOAA to explore explicit recognition of the respective
participating countries\' fishery manager regimes as a whole by MSC.
Motion was made by Dr. Billy and seconded by Mr. Gilmore.

Discussion - Mr. Kramer?

MR. KRAMER: Yes, I\'m not sure I totally understand the whole motion
here and while I sympathize with the industry, I guess I\'m not really
seeing why this is a MAFAC issue. I understand where you guys are coming
from. I understand the bind it puts you in out there. I think I would
kind of fall back to what Mark had mentioned, is that there are some
laws in place. I agree 100% that NOAA fisheries is doing a good job
managing fisheries with respect to everything else out there but I see
it more \-- this is more of an industry thing, an industry impediment
that they need help from Bill and company to kind of address \-- not
necessarily an overall MAFAC thing.

I see the relationship when we\'re talking about Fish Watch and I would
agree that, like Larry said, let\'s all work on that and let that be the
number one game in town. It makes more sense to me. Maybe I\'m
misunderstanding the motion here.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I have discussion list. I have Mr. Rayburn and Dr.
Billy. Ralph? And Tom, right after him.

MR. RAYBURN: In our discussion to your point, I think the idea was
really, in my opinion anyway, that the National Marine Fishery Service
was the authority and source of information on the status of stocks and
the sustainability of those stocks. And the management being the set-up
for it. If there\'s a third party out there second guessing, then
that\'s not what we want it to be. It\'s like NMFS says it\'s right and
we trust that.

It kind of goes back to the discussion I brought up on Monday. I was
visiting with some of these MSC folks, not at the depth that Jim and
others have worked with them, but their comment was \-- because I was
pushing to have NMFS be the source of \-- why can\'t NMFS, with all the
money spent on that, say that this is sustainable and the marketplace
accept that sustainability? And the comment back from MSC was, well, the
public wants a third party to come in and validate the government. They
don\'t want the government grading themselves necessarily on how
effective they are in their management.

Well, that\'s the position and I raise that at our meeting today as a
reason for why MSC thinks there\'s a field of operation there for them.
It seems to me such a meeting as this, where you have these countries
that have a very robust fishery management program, need to \-- I think
what was brought up earlier, they need to stand up and say this is it.
We\'re doing this and it\'s good. You shouldn\'t be here second guessing
us.

And apparently, you could speak to it \-- there\'s a check they have to
make in the MSC, whether or not it\'s being managed or not or properly.
That should be an automatic check if it\'s a fishery under \-- and I
think Jim mentioned this in our meeting \-- automatic checks when they
come to that. They don\'t even have to look. If it\'s under the
management plan, the U.S. is an automatic check that it\'s being managed
because of the robustness of that system.

I think it kind of relates to that and not necessarily just an industry
effort, but it\'s all our efforts just to validate that we\'re trusting
NMFS and if they say it\'s sustainable in the process then we accept
that as our national position.

MR. KRAMER: So do you not then meet with the other organizations that
are out there, so-called grading and potentially disagreeing with how
our fisheries are managed currently? Like anybody else, to me, MAFAC
needs to \-- we need to look at the whole picture.

MR. CONNELLY: The difference is the other groups are just taking
existing data and making judgments \-- they take whatever data they want
and make judgment. MSC, while we understand Bill and his established
policy on how they\'re going to interact with MSC or a like group,
they\'re actually drawing resources. They\'re drawing stock assessment
team resource time away from NOAA fisheries in a way that the other
groups aren\'t. That\'s really what we\'re after. It\'s protective of
Bill\'s resources and his team\'s resources, in a way.

MR. KRAMER: I guess this may be a legal question then. At what point can
you say we\'re not going to provide you what you\'re asking for.

DR. HOGARTH: Well they ask for it \-- they could get stuff but they\'d
have to pay for it. This has been an open process with us, that we just
work with them because we felt like it\'s beneficial to the industry as
a whole. We\'ve spent a lot of time explaining the system and working
with the system. It was a lot of time and effort. But by the way, we
have met with some of the cards. I\'ve met with Hewlett-Packard of
Monterrey within the last three weeks. I don\'t know if I got anywhere,
but we met. We met in my office, and we talked a great deal about it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. I have Ralph Rayburn, Tom Billy, Tom Raftican, and
then Laurel.

MR. KRAMER: I\'d like to repeat what I just

said.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Done. Tom?

DR. BILLY: I think there\'s another interested party in this and that\'s
the consumer. It seems to me it\'s in the consumer\'s interest to not
have NOAA\'s resources used in these third party processes if they\'re
not going to recognize the kind of fishery management regimes that are
in place are effective. It leads to misinformation and misunderstanding.
There are many of us that think consumers should be eating more seafood.
These kinds of things get in the way of that. If there\'s a way to get
broader recognition of the management regimes so that this third party
process could be expedited, more efficient, both in terms of NOAA
resources and in general, that would be helpful.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Tom Raftican.

MR. RAFTICAN: I think this is \-- I want to follow up on what Ralph is
saying. I think that when you\'re \-- and I\'m asking the question as
much as stating a point \-- you\'re essentially saying MSC is going to
kind of check the box on NOAA management of fisheries. I think the
people here in the room are comfortable with NOAA management of
fisheries, but we know that when MSC looks at a fishery, they spend
about three years looking at it. I think the downside of this is we\'re
essentially asking MSC to grade NOAA fisheries.

And what if they go, well you made most of the categories but we\'d like
you to do this? Or you\'re put in a situation \-- I think that puts us
in a very peculiar situation. I would think about that before entering
it. I\'m not sure but it \-- if they come to the table and say well,
yes, you\'re managing and most of your fisheries are okay. All of a
sudden you\'ve got a third party that\'s this dictating fishery
management in the United States and I\'m not comfortable with that.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. One, two, three.

DR. BILLY: I think MSC is already doing the grade and we\'re asking them
to do the opposite. Just cut that out and accept the system. They\'re
going to do it regardless so we\'re proposing a different approach.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Jim and then Steve.

MR. GILMORE: The MSC has three principles and then 23 criteria to meet
that and then on a fishery by fishery basis, they\'ve developed these
indicators. So they come in and they evaluate a fishery all the way from
soup to nuts on that fishery. I think what we would avoid is having
nitpicking council by council or stock by stock evaluation of the
management.

And say, look, your principles and criteria are set up for fisheries
that are open and transparent and rigorous regulatory, rigorous appeals
process, etc. \-- we\'re the best in the world. We want a check mark. We
don\'t want you coming in on a case by case basis and by management
authority. We\'re going to provide you information as marketers. That\'s
what the agency\'s response is to a reasonable request. Now you can draw
the line wherever you need to if they, if it becomes burdensome. But
they\'re going to respond to reasonable requests, so the marketplace is
going to ask the industry to engage in this program. But what we\'re
saying is just give us the third party, independent validations and
these people know how to manage fish.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Steve, then Laurel.

MR. JONER: I guess, you know what Tom said, back to on Monday when I
first brought this up and the discomfort I had with having this third
party who\'s not really accountable to anybody, come in and evaluate our
fishery and our management. I know at some point I\'m going to have to
sign, raise my right hand and \`til death do us part, I\'ll manage the
fishery the way you\'ve described. I don\'t \-- there\'s no way I want
somebody else to.

Frank Lockhart tells me \-- good job on managing your fishery \--
that\'s good enough for me. But I just have a real discomfort, even
though MSC is the existing authority for that, of having NMFS be placed
under that authority. To me that says we\'re assuming that they\'re here
to stay and they are the game in town. I think some of us this morning
expressed a strong interest to have that change and Fish Watch become
the game in town.

I know Bill knows what to do and to watch out, but I don\'t necessarily
think it\'s the best approach, to have this third party grade NMFS when
we really want NMFS to be the one doing the grading.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. Laurel, you had your hand up.

MS. BRYANT: I will let the group interview. I won\'t step in.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY I was recently asked by someone whether or not they
thought it was a good idea to consider supporting, starting the
certification process for a particular fishery and my reply was \--
under the MSC standards \-- my reply was, philosophically when you look
at all the fisheries across the nation, I don\'t particularly agree with
their process. But the reality truly is that it benefits the marketplace
and you probably should do it.

That doesn\'t mean that I think \-- I wish that particular process was
not in place because I think that it benefits fisheries that have money
and those that don\'t lose out. I don\'t think it\'s an equal access
system. But I also was told that Jim was going to fix that system. And
maybe he\'s got John to help him now. So we can hope for that. But I
think it is a reality \-- it\'s there.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, I\'ve got Dr. Hogarth and Randy Cates.

DR. HOGARTH: I just wanted to say if MAPAC has some concerns about
should we or not do this motion, I will just tell you that after I
think, from my perspective, it\'s something that we should do. I will
probably do it regardless.

(General laughter.)

Mainly because I think it\'s something that\'s just putting a burden on
our people and we do have a policy and I think you\'d be more effective
to get other governments to sit down with us. I say that because I saw
concern from some MAPAC members of whether this is an area you should be
in or not. I\'m just saying, if it helps I think this discussion has
been good. If you feel like you don\'t want to do it, I think we\'ve
heard it very clearly that we do need to do it from our perspective
because other countries have come to me also, particularly Canada.

Don\'t take that to say I\'m not paying any attention to MAPAC \-- I am,
but I\'m just trying to help you out in the discussion that you\'ve had.

DR. BILLY: Mr. Chairman.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Yes sir.

DR. BILLY: Given the commitment I\'ve just heard that this is going to
happen regardless, I withdraw the motion.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Does the seconder agree?

MR. GILMORE: Yes, I agree.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, motion is withdrawn. Shucks, I thought we\'d pass
it and we\'d say let the AAs do what we\'re telling them to do.

DR. HOGARTH: You may just want to put it in the minutes that you
discussed the issues.

MS. BRYANT: I\'ll put it in the notes. It will be in the summary report
and why.

WB: And we\'ll report back to MAFAC on the results of the meeting.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Very good. Okay. We have, under the topic of Fish Watch
we took the Rayburn report as received. We had our motion that Dr. Billy
made and withdrawn. We had discussion. Is there anything else on the
topic of Fish Watch before we move on?

MR. JONER: I just had a question. You\'re having the roll out in or the
announcement in New Orleans. Will you be at the L.A. seafood show in
October? You already have a booth there. And if you\'re there, I\'ll be
out front of the convention center with a big sign saying go see Bill\'s
booth.

DR. HOGARTH: We plan to be there.

MR. JONER: Okay.

DR. HOGARTH: By the way, I\'m a judge in New Orleans for the show this
year. I did it last year, just real quick, and by tradition number
eleven \-- you\'ve got ten more to go. And he come at you every ten
minutes it seemed like, but that\'s the way you get them.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mr. Cates.

MR. CATES: I\'d just like to comment regarding Fish Watch. At least our
industry would like it to be the leading authority. The industry wants
leadership. But also the consumer \-- and this is an issue that hasn\'t
been discussed too much here but was earlier \-- I believe the consumer
\-- we have an obligation to the consumers, to give them factual
information and to take on some of the misinformation. I gave the
analysis earlier of some groups say don\'t eat farmed salmon. Well when
that consumer is making the choice that week whether to eat seafood or
not, because of this information, we have an obligation to that consumer
to give them the health benefits of why he should or shouldn\'t.

That\'s an important issue that I think \-- the most important thing
that Fish Watch can do. It\'s not only just to say that our fisheries
are sustainable and healthy but also the reason why you should eat this
over another product.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I was distracted for a moment. I\'m sorry. I heard your
point, too. Okay, next agenda item. We have two other agenda items
before we get to new business. One is 20/20 and the second is the
scheduling of our future meetings. I\'m not sure how to take these in
which order because \--

MR. FLETCHER: Why don\'t we take a break and then you can put them in
any order you want?

(General laughter.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: You got a break. Fifteen minutes.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Why don\'t we begin? Rather than doing calendar, let\'s
turn out attention to 20/20. I said there was a little uncertainty which
way we would go, but I think we\'re best off starting off with 20/20.

Let me tell you, as this is a \-- you must all realize this is the first
time we\'ve ever met as a group regarding this document. There has been
discussions. There\'s been some theoretical talk. There\'s been work
groups I\'ve met. But this is the first time the entire committee has
ever met regarding this document. I think we\'ve made quite a bit of
progress.

The discussion all along has been to produce a report that provides our
vision to the agency. But there\'s always been a desire on the part of
the agency that we also obtain outside advice, outside in-put as we
consider our final report.

The document that we worked on two days ago has gotten quite long; it\'s
about thirty-plus pages, maybe at this point. We\'ve done a number of
amendments and it still needs more work. There was a concern regarding
posting this document \-- delivering this document and posting it for
public comment at this point because it\'s really not done and we\'re
not going to have - there\'s only so much wordsmithing we can do while
sitting around this table.

The suggestion was made by Dr. Holliday, give him full credit and I
think it\'s a fabulous idea and I hope the committee supports it, that
what we post on the web at this point is the 4-pager \-- it\'s two
pieces of paper but basically a three and a half pager itself, that sits
before you. Web content: vision 20/20 \-- the future of U.S. marine
fisheries.

I would suggest that we take a moment to review it because I am going to
ask for a motion and that it be accepted for posting on the web.
Essentially what this does is it takes our \-- it describes the process
that we\'re going through. It takes the table 1 from our report which
are the findings and general recommendations regarding commercial
fisheries, recreational fisheries, management, and aquaculture \--
basically it takes the initial bullet, so to speak, from each of those
topics and lists them and asks a series of questions.

The individual who comes to our website \-- visits our website is
encouraged to respond to these questions. Are they via through the
website itself or via snail mail? This process that Dr. Holliday has
described will let us go out and get public in-put, not restrict
individuals\' ability to give us advice, and at the same time, our full
document we can hold in reserve as we continue to work on it and revise
it.

So that\'s the plan that I\'m suggesting and I\'m not sure how we should
go about this. If there\'s any suggestions or changes \-- should we have
a motion to accept this process? Mr. Raftican?

MR. RAFTICAN: Just one quick change on page 3. Recreational fishing
number 4 \-- this was covered yesterday actually in here and
recreational fishing experience should replace recreational fishing
production, landings. Here it has \"as the prime motivator.\" We\'d
change that to \"as a prime motivator.\"

CAPT. DILERNIA: Yes, and I think there are a couple other changes that
should be made because of these \--

yes, Mark?

DR. HOLLIDAY: Just a point of information. The materials on page 3 and 4
should reflect \-- don\'t currently reflect what\'s in the draft that
was produced overnight. So I wrote this up yesterday afternoon while you
were working on it. The intent would be to substitute the material that
would be current based on the working group.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mary Beth, I also \-- I\'ll ask you to make your point.

DR. HOLLIDAY: Well, we\'ll find the actual version that\'s in the full
working document.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY It sounds like I don\'t need to make a motion for
changes because he\'s going to refer back to this.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I just want to make sure that your concerns are \-- very
good, thank you. Rob Kramer.

MR. KRAMER: I have a question on the overall process here and help me
remember back eighteen months ago or however long when we started this.
The whole premise of obtaining public in-put on this \-- was that our
original charge from the beginning? Or was this specific document that
Bill was looking for from MAFAC as representative of the fishing
constituencies out there? And if that\'s not the case as it was, it\'s
always been \-- we want to pull public in-put into whatever we create
here. I think you\'re going to get a lot of different opinions from a
lot of different angles. How you pull all that together and we could
potentially be looking at multiple more months and drafts \-- just a
process question.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Thank you for asking that question. I sincerely mean
that. The original charge from Dr. Hogarth was for MAFAC to produce a
report. What he has \-- and it will be our report \-- what he has asked
us to do and he\'s come back into the room, and he\'ll add to my
response, was that as we are developing our report, we should also be
willing to or make ourselves available to listen to other individuals.
Folks on the outside. Once we receive that advice, as individuals or we
consider it, we could either accept it, reject it, modify it, or
whatever. But the report will be a MAFAC report.

Yes, do we open a can of worms so to speak by asking for the public to
give us advice? Perhaps, but we are in a sense a public body and we are
responsible to listen to the public. They\'re our constituencies that
many of us represent. To be inclusive, this web process has been
designed. In our process of it being inclusive, if we decide to exclude
some advice that we get because we just don\'t agree with it. We hear it
but we say no, we\'re not going to go with that \-- that\'s our
prerogative.

MR. KRAMER: I guess I have two thoughts on that. One is, I don\'t know
about my colleagues but I have been talking to the industry some about
this issue. I have been getting some feedback from the recreational
constituents out there on what they envision the world to look like in
2020. And I hope that I incorporate and have incorporated some of that
in some of my comments into this.

And the second thing is my personal philosophy has always been that if
you ask for in-put that you should either take it or you should explain
why you\'re not incorporating it. Again, that\'s a two-way street. Just
some thoughts there \-- I know this document \-- we\'ve been working on
it for quite a while and the reality is that the world has changed in
the last eighteen to twenty months. So it\'s like shooting at a moving
target as we\'re going along here.

I think some of that I\'m already seeing \-- some of the new in-put from
the newer members in here and other things. I guess I\'m just looking
for a stop sign at the end of the road here.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Well, let me \-- a little bit more of the calendar time
line that I hope to be able to follow. And again, if you review it, we
really didn\'t get started on \-- a year ago, we sent our questions out.
Nine months ago, eight months ago, we received our responses, final
responses to our questions to committee members. Six months ago a small
group met, constrained by budget \-- individuals traveled on their own
expenses some \-- to revise the initial comments.

There have been a couple of conference calls in those eight months in
which things have been discussed. Revisions have only been made within
the past two months. The writing phase has only been for about six to
eight months and we missed a meeting. We also lost a meeting in this
process.

While it seems to be a long time since we first had the concept, as far
as producing is concerned I\'m proud of what we\'ve been able to produce
so far. Randy?

MR. FISHER: I really appreciate the question, too because I\'m concerned
a little bit. If we go out and we just sit and we have seen a letter
already show up that was signed by a number of organizations not liking
aquaculture. Let\'s pretend like they all get on the bandwagon and have
a whole bunch of people sign letters and we come in. Then we get to a
point, how do we respond to that when we made a recommendation and this
20/20 document that\'s a device to him about where we think this is
going?

I think we\'re just asking for trouble to some extent.

MR. KRAMER: If I could follow up to Randy, I think it\'s a good point
we\'re not saying that the agency should not consider those comments
from other diverse groups out there but we as a body can come together
here and form consensus around a document that says okay, we are MAFAC
and here\'s our take on life. And maybe take that, too. There\'s two
different ways to continue forward in this.

DR. HOGARTH: Well, yes this is a MAFAC report which is what we asked
for. In trying to make sure that, a lot of times, you have the greatest
report in the world but the industry, some will say we never saw it. We
never had the opportunity to comment. And so we\'re trying to prevent
that.

We could take this as a MAFAC report and send it out and just say MAFAC
prepared this and we\'re just seeking additional comments. Then just
take those comments and do what we want to with them or either bring
them back to you in December and say, based on the comments we got, here
are the broad areas to which we got comments in. And here\'s a
suggestion \-- are you willing to incorporate this into your report? I
think the deadline on this, in my opinion, would be the December meeting
because that\'s the next time you get together.

Hopefully we could send it to you \-- my goal would be to send it to you
way ahead of that, with here are the comments and here\'s what we
recommend. You can meet all as a group or you could say we accept or we
don\'t. We stand behind that report. I think I\'d like to see the
industry \-- I\'d like to at least have an opportunity because those
things I\'ve tried to do, I\'ve tried to be real open and let people
comment.

But it is a MAFAC report and I think it\'s a good report, honestly. I
think it does what we ask for. I just think we\'re taking it one step
further to say, here is a website \-- if you want to comment, comment.
And then we\'ll take those and come back to you. I\'d rather come back
to you with them than just take them and for us to make a decision
whether to accept them or not. We could give you suggested changes based
on that and you could say you don\'t think that reflects what you all
want, but it\'s still your report. I want it to be a MAFAC report.

And I want to use it to both direct what we do the rest of our term
here, but after elections we\'ll be asked for transition documents and
things like that and I think this will be a good document to use for
transition. You have a new President one way or the other and they
always ask for documents and I think this would be a good document to
utilize for the transition team. That\'s a couple purposes for it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: I think \-- so what I understand Dr. Hogarth is saying, I
wonder if another option to what you\'d suggested, Mr. Chairman, would
be that you give a certain time for folks to review this document and
insure that the in-put that they submitted over the last few days was in
fact transcribed into the report. When that time expires then the
committee that you have established for this report will go through it
and make whatever kind of wordsmithing changes and stuff like that you
may have. You might send it out once more for the committee. Give us
time certainly for everybody to come back and if you get a majority of
consensus response, forward it to Dr. Hogarth for him through his
processes to send it out to his other constituent groups, as whether
they be councils or whatever, for further in-put or something like that.
But I don\'t think we as a body should be soliciting public in-put at
this point, if you follow what I\'m saying.

We would be submitting basically \-- to shorten it up \-- we would be
submitting this report to Dr. Hogarth in our advisory role. It\'s up to
him to do with it what he wishes. If he would like to have it validated
or screened by the councils and others, that\'s his choice. We\'ve made
our in-put as the councils have made their in-put or anybody else. And
then if he is gracious enough to come back to us and help us understand
what the concerns are that we might have missed, I think that would be a
helpful exercise.

Again, that would be up to him and his decisions in managing the
fisheries. If that makes sense and if it does I \--

CAPT. DILERNIA: What you\'re suggesting is, don\'t post the two-pager.

MR. FLETCHER: That\'s correct.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Do not post the two-pager. Take the thirty-pager home.
Get comments back to me inside of two weeks.

DR. BILLY: Set a deadline.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Set a deadline. Then send this to the agency.

MR. FLETCHER: I think the one other step, Mr. Chairman, if I may, at
least in my vision would be if that first whatever review, seven
day/fourteen day review, would be by those that made in-put and maybe
perhaps folks who had, because we haven\'t seen this, to vet it out, if
there\'s any significant controversy over any in-put that\'s been made,
then that would be brought to the attention of the group. But you and
your executive committee set up for this project, would be the final
assembler of the document. Perhaps send it out for a final bite of the
apple to the folks and maybe not everybody\'s going to agree but if you
get a majority, then you send it forward to the agency.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Tom.

DR. BILLY: I like the approach of providing this committee a couple
weeks to review this, particularly the new material that\'s been
prepared. We haven\'t \-- some of us haven\'t seen. Then I think drawing
on the executive committee to have a process then to take whatever
in-put comes in from the committee and finalize this thirty-page
document, whatever length it is.

This two-page document, web content, seems like a nice outline for a
Federal Register notice that NOAA fisheries could publish that mentions
that there is a document available on a website and what the website is
and solicit public in-put as Bill suggested. And then once that comment
comes in, it could be organized, analyzed in some way by the staff,
provided to the committee prior to our next meeting in December. We
could then consider the public in-put and decide our reaction to it in
terms of any changes we would make to this document and finalize this
document at our next meeting in December, based on that further public
in-put.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Dr. Holliday?

DR. HOLLIDAY: I guess a couple points. I think we were trying to take
advantage of the fact that exempt status of MAFAC to try to utilize the
group to arrive at a consensus of both the committee and other
stakeholders and so using you as a venue to get additional comments on
your work product, rather than getting it back to us and forcing us into
\-- then not seeking a consensus from people defeats part of the purpose
of having an outside entity provide us this advice in the first place.

At some point it blurs the line between it being a MAFAC outside third
party \-- pardon the reference to our previous discussion \-- but an
outside perspective because we\'ve already done things like this inside.
Bill explained yesterday how we wanted to try to make sure that we\'re
getting this external perspective.

If I may, just to elaborate on a point that Tony was making earlier
about why we\'re trying to go for the web content and what it meant. We
weren\'t proposing to have the entire document revisited to people. I
wasn\'t proposing to post the whole thing but the general findings and
recommendations were being put out there to test the waters of \-- would
this be seen by a broader range of constituents as a blueprint for
moving forward, but limiting it to those trigger questions. The trigger
questions keep it confined to things that may be helpful to MAFAC in
concluding your document.

You can take the comments that come in and interpret them as you like
and if they support what you\'re trying to do or they give you new ideas
or they just confirm the obvious, they\'re your comments and they\'re
helpful to you. If you have other trigger questions that you think might
be useful, you should use them.

So this was a straw man to try to refine a process of broadening \-- I
know you\'ve all gone back to your organizations and associations and
sought in-put to derive at this draft. But there are other entities that
we thought would be interesting to test the waters to see if there\'s
commonalities or there are differences in how people rank or prioritize
or review these different areas in the four themes of commercial
recreational management and aquaculture.

If not, that\'s fine too, but I think it was \-- at the outset in our
scope, statement and Vince, if you\'ve had a chance to go back and look
at the August scoping document, but we always had anticipated in the
charge to MAFAC that this step or this phase would take place. It\'s not
a new request at the eleventh hour. I\'m just trying to lay out where we
were coming from in proposing this idea for getting some additional
in-put via the web, rather than a bunch of personal meetings or face to
face workshops.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Dr. Billy.

DR. BILLY: Nothing in the process I outlined or the process that a
couple other members have outlined changes what the charge is or that in
the end this will be a MAFAC document. Some uneasiness has been
expressed about MAFAC going through the web or any other mechanism,
soliciting comment, and instead having the agency do that through
readily available process \-- Federal Register notice. Using this
outline, which is I think a good approach \-- it highlights the general
findings. It poses some useful questions that will be in-put back to
MAFAC, not to the agency. MAFAC will consider that in-put and make
whatever changes it deems appropriate to its document and then submit it
to the agency.

It in the end will be a MAFAC document with public in-put. But you\'re
helping us by soliciting the public comment through a different process
than MAFAC posting it on a website.

MS. BRYANT: I think what Mark is saying though is that we can probably
use the MAFAC web page that we\'ve established. It\'s a natural place to
go but the agency would still be doing it. We can do it through a
variety of things \-- and getting things electronically is always
easier. Then it\'s easier to organize and all that, so I think you guys
are both saying exactly the same thing. Just wanted to point that out.
Agency solicited, but it might be through a variety of doorways or
portals.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: I guess I\'m a little confused about several things, but we
won\'t go that far. To get to what we heard on Monday was, we can\'t
respond to the public. If we get response from somebody, we can\'t send
them a letter back. We can\'t say anything because if we do so we\'re
representing the Administration\'s position \-- I heard the guy say
that\'s totally against \-- Your role is to deal with the administrator
and the government and not the public. Except in public meetings like
this, so we\'re either sending people letters or we\'re not sending
people letters as MAFAC. I think Rob\'s right and if you ask people to
come and give you information, you have to make them feel like their
efforts are worthwhile by thank you from MAFAC. And we\'re prohibited by
law from doing that.

MS. BRYANT: No you\'re not prohibited by law by sending a thank you. It
would be \-- that\'s a separate issue, really.

MR. RAYBURN: That is certainly what I heard. Any formal response to the
public on behalf of MAFAC is illegal. That\'s what I heard him say. Any
formal response to the public on behalf of MAFAC is illegal. So either
we can do it or we can\'t do it. But we can\'t just do it when we want
to do it and we can\'t not do it in public.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Bob Fletcher.

MR. FLETCHER: I just want to say I didn\'t hear exactly that. What I
heard was what Laurel did in response to the letter was appropriate.
What Laurel did was respond to the letter and say thank you for your
in-put. We appreciate it. We\'ll take it under consideration and MAFAC
will receive copies of your comments and that\'s okay. If we\'re going
to put this on the web and we\'re going to say tell us what you like,
tell us what you don\'t like, give us some information \--

MS. BRYANT: And you\'re doing it at the behest of the agency.

MR. FLETCHER: And it\'s coming to MAFAC on behalf of NOAA fisheries.
Laurel can respond to them when they\'ve sent it in and say, got your
in-put \-- it will be submitted. It will be considered. Thank you very
much. That\'s okay. We just can\'t respond to the body of the
information provided and say this is good or this is bad or anything
like that, but we can, through Laurel say, hey, MAFAC got your in-put.
We appreciate it. We\'ll consider it.

MS. BRYANT: And the way we do FR notices in many instances, right, and
with this you create a database of all those that submit comments and
then when it\'s final and you\'re done, you consider it. You send a mass
one out saying we\'ve considered it. Thank you all for your in-put. Here
is the final thing. Here\'s a link to it. I mean, that\'s generally how
we do things.

MS. LOWMAN: But all through it, you\'d give us your response for why you
did or didn\'t put in their comments and that\'s what I think I\'m
hearing. That we don\'t want to get into that.

MS. BRYANT: No. And I don\'t think you have to. It\'s not an FR notice.

DR. BILLY: And when Laurel did that appropriate action, that was part of
the Administration, which she is \-- not an advisory unit. MR. SIMPSON:
Takes a one, half a dozen of other to make a decision.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I can make a decision. I just want to make sure
everyone\'s had their opportunities to express what they feel. I need to
hear \-- I\'m not afraid to make a decision, that\'s for sure.

MR. FISHER: To me it raises another kind of interesting question to me.
Since I\'ve been on MAFAC for what \-- 230 years now \-- looking good -
not a day over 227. I mean we\'re asked to do something by the
Administration. We\'re asked to give comments on what we think is going
to happen and you\'ve had a lot of very good people on this committee,
and so that\'s a value. To me it\'s \-- if you want to ask everybody in
the world then go out and ask them, but you\'ve got a certain number of
people that are giving you information, then why do you have to go out
and ask everybody else?

It\'s almost kind of like an insult to the people around this table, to
some degree. Because that\'s why they\'re here. So I don\'t know when
you shut it off, but it seems like to me a lot of work has gone into it,
they did their best shot, and we\'ve all talked to our own people so
this seems to me like maybe it\'s over with and we should sign off or
something.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Ralph, did you have your hand up?

MR. RAYBURN: Yes, I did.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Go ahead.

MR. RAYBURN: Were Dr. Holliday and Dr. Hogarth saying the same thing or
were they two different options? I heard Dr. Hogarth say submit it to me
and I\'ll send it out for public. And I heard Dr. Holliday say you all
send it out and then give it to me later.

DR. HOGARTH: I think it is a little bit different. I was trying to take
part of the workload. I think what Mark is saying, it\'s you all\'s
report \-- do you want us to filter the comments? I think that\'s his
point. It\'s you all\'s report. Should we filter the comments back to
you? And I was sort of offering to collate the comments and get them
back to you. So it is a little bit different.

MR. RAYBURN: It doesn\'t matter \-- I just thought \--

DR. HOGARTH: They ought to be seen as filtered comments because it\'s
your report. I think it\'s an excellent report but we don\'t want to be
seen to his point and I agree with you, it\'s filtering the comments. If
we collate them, is that filtering? Do we make a decision on it or just
give them back to you? Say here are the comments we received and let you
all do what you want to. Knowing that you all are not full time to
MAFAC. You have other jobs and we\'re not paying you. You\'re doing this
graciously for a trip somewhere twice a year. But you\'re taking leave
from your other jobs.

CAPT. DILERNIA: I am going to hold off on picking on you then, Vince.
Rob?

MR. KRAMER: I have two questions, Bill, and maybe that will help me to
figure it out. The first one is, what is going to be your primary use
for this document?

DR. HOGARTH: It\'s going to be to guide what I knew were my last how
many months I\'m here, okay? And use it to try to talk to the councils
and to the Hill and other people about it. So it\'s a sort of \-- to try
to re-direct this. We go through Magnuson \-- it\'s guidance so we
should have official \-- and the last thing is, I would like to say give
this to the transition team as \-- devise your committee, and look at
this at what fisheries should be \-- to help guide the new people that
come in in January 2009.

MR. KRAMER: And for those two purposes, you feel that it would be a
better tool for you if we had a more formal process for soliciting and
potentially incorporating the general public\'s comments?

DR. HOGARTH: Rob, I\'m very sensitive I guess, maybe oversensitive to
the fact of \-- we seem to have a group of constituents that, unless
they think they\'ve had a finger in the pie, so to speak, then they
don\'t accept it. So I think for you to meet this, I think how we put it
out and what we say \-- we could say many things that you all submitted.
We think it\'s extra important for guidance. We\'re just seeking any
additional comments that the constituents would like to make and they
will be submitted to MAFAC or having them submitted directly to MAFAC.
That\'s the issue here.

Yes, I just think it gives it a broader \--

we say broad and how many people really do? I think it\'s just an
additional step I think to make it more accepted.

MR. KRAMER: I guess my recommendation would be kind of follow along the
lines of what Tom was suggesting. Give us two weeks with this. If you
want to post this other thing on the website and Laurel responds back
from MAFAC saying thank you very much. Then we look at whatever comments
those are in the December meeting. I guess that would be thought.

DR. HOGARTH: Here\'s what I thought would work quick. By July 15 you all
do what you want to with this report. But we get a final report, a draft
final report from MAPAC. Sixty days \-- August and September it\'s on
the website for sixty days. And then the month of October \-- whoever
\-- we can get Tony and a small group just to sit down one day and go
over the comments with Mary Hope and Mark and put them in a form for
MAPAC. Then November 1^st^ we submit it to all of you for your review so
that when you get to the December meeting you\'ve seen all the comments
and decided which ones you think are relevant and which are not. We can
still utilize MAFAC as Tony and a small group that\'s a steering
committee or something, that work with Mary Hope and Mark and Laurel and
we just \-- so it\'s still a MAPAC. We\'re not filtering.

MS. BRYANT: And then go to full committee after that in December?

DR. HOGARTH: November 1^st^ it goes to them and then in December it\'s
over with.

MS. BRYANT: It\'s over with and then we get it published.

DR. HOGARTH: We\'ll get it. We\'ll make copies and we\'ll publish it as
a MAFAC report to us.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Good.

DR. HOGARTH: Press release \-- we\'ll do a big press release and
everything is good to have this out. We\'ll do a press release and send
it out.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: Yes, thank you. Well then the National Marine Fishery
Service will be doing the public comment.

DR. HOGARTH: We would do it with the \-- as I say, it\'s up to you all.
Do you want to go to your website and the comments come in and then we
get with the small group steering committee that Tony and Bill have been
working with and Mary Hope and Mark. And take those so that they\'re not
filtered, so they won\'t be perceived as filtered. But put them into
some form. Then submit them to the full \-- by November 1^st^. So I
think it\'s up to you all. Do you want to go to your website, do we set
up? I think it will probably be better to go to your website and we have
a way to get those.

MS. BRYANT: It\'s NMFS website.

MR. RAYBURN: I think it would be of value it seems for the \-- and maybe
this is all redundant \-- for the comments to come in to the NMFS,
because there may be stuff we receive that we wouldn\'t dare put in that
report. And you\'re never going to see it if we get it and you all never
get it. And you should get it. The people are making a response. You
should get it. Even though it may be off in left field.

DR. HOGARTH: We can always say that MAFAC has asked us to submit this
for comment and come back to us and these comments will be sent directly
to MAFAC.

MR. RAYBURN: At least you\'ve seen them and we may disregard this.

DR. HOGARTH: We\'re still using that process. I think I\'m getting Mark
nervous over here. Tony and somebody, you know whoever this group you
all have, to work with Mary Hope and all, like we\'ve been doing.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, so it\'s agreed then that the two -pager is being
posted. Vince?

CAPT. O\'SHEA: I wanted to see if I understand the logic here. We\'re
now going to go get public \-- run this by the public, get their
comments.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Just the bullet points that you see there on the
two-pager.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: And with the potential for those comments to eventually
perhaps get incorporated into the document.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Correct.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: Then why are we rejecting the comments from the agency of
things to put into the document?

CAPT. DILERNIA: Are we? Are we rejecting comments from the agency? I\'m
sorry \--

CAPT. O\'SHEA: I thought the eight point thing that I reviewed \-- the
strategic thing \-- I thought the answer on that was where did these
come from? We\'ve been working on this for two years. This is too little
too late. We can\'t put this in.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Well, to that point now, what I was going to suggest \--
a little bit different than what\'s being done here \-- was to follow
the process that\'s been outlined by Dr. Hogarth and complete the report
that\'s in production now by December. At that time deliver that report
or publish that report and at the same time initiate phase 2. And in
phase 2 take the eight points that we received from the agency a couple
of months ago \-- a few months ago \-- and initiate the development of a
second document.

And that\'s, quite frankly, when I was referencing I was going to come
back to you and pick on you, that\'s where I had planned on going with
that \-- was to complete the document that\'s in production \-- because
that document was initiated and that was being produced before we
received the written directives from the agency. Complete that \--
because I hate to scrap all that work \-- complete that by the process
that we have that\'s been described. Then once that\'s delivered, we can
initiate another document that addresses what Mark has asked us to do.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: Why wouldn\'t that same logic apply to comments we get
from the public? In other words we\'ve already started the document.
We\'ve put a lot of stuff in the document. We\'re just getting the
public things.

CAPT. DILERNIA: It could. It could. We could turn around after we saw
the comments and say no.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: I mean I\'m being facetious because I think it ought to
go the other way. If we\'re going to now open this document up for
in-put from the public \-- I think there\'s some good stuff in that
piece of paper and I don\'t think it would be that hard to address some
of those issues in the document. You\'d get the best of both worlds.
You\'d improve the 20/20 vision and you\'d come closer to a product that
the agency says we\'d like some answers and thoughts on this question.

CAPT. DILERNIA: If that\'s where the committee wants to go \--

CAPT. O\'SHEA: I\'m not saying where the committee goes \-- that\'s \--
I understood yesterday saying enough is enough \-- we\'re going to get
the product out the door. But if you\'re going to go the other way and
say now we\'re going to let the public \-- if we\'re going to let the
public have in-put to the thing, then why can\'t the agency have in-put
to it?

DR. BILLY: Point of information \-- at least three members here are
sitting here wondering what document you\'re talking about. What eight
point document?

CAPT. O\'SHEA: Tab 8.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Behind tab 8.

MS. BRYANT: This was the thing that they did in response to the MAFAC\'s
request for written guidance. We had that kind of discussion in July and
everybody was uncertain and off on a different page and that\'s where
this document \-- that was the genesis for this.

MR. DEWEY: It wasn\'t comments on a prepared document. It was requested
guidance on how to proceed.

MS. BRYANT: What does Bill want? Remember there was a lot of confusion
at that meeting, so this was what resulted.

MR. DEWEY: So it wasn\'t reacting to a draft document.

MS. BRYANT: Yes, there hadn\'t been a draft yet.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Rob Kramer.

MR. KRAMER: Based upon what Bill just told us on how he intends to use
this document, correct me if I\'m wrong, Bill \-- I would think that you
would want just one document.

DR. HOGARTH: Yes, I think \--

MR. KRAMER: It\'s not that you could ignore the rest of the plan when
you\'re making these decisions and passing the torch. But I would think
that a single document from this group, that not only addresses the
things that we\'ve already done but maybe does what Vince says too and
incorporates some of these other questions that have been laid out under
tab 8 in there, too. We have some of the answers to some of these.

DR. HOGARTH: Rob \-- all of you have not been involved in the whole
process. We provided probably a dozen or more documents to the
subcommittee, the small group that worked on this \-- background
documents that we had prepared. And they utilized those in putting this
together. So that\'s what the in-put we had was \-- documents to let
them review through in putting this together. That was the in-put we
gave, was the white papers we put together basically on several things
that document what we prepared earlier and aiding in the process. This
was simply for in-put to this subcommittee to put the original document
together, is what was intended.

I think we did say \-- and in here we talk about one to two pages
attached to it, so I don\'t think, in hindsight, I think this was better
to have one document. This is a very concise document. It\'s probably
going to be more effective than having a bunch of attachments to it.
It\'s effective to have the document \-- a short, concise document that
people will read.

CAPT. DILERNIA: That being the case, what we have produced so far has to
be modified significantly \-- to respond to the questions behind tab 8.
Maybe.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: Well, it depends on what level you want to go into.

DR. HOLLIDAY: On the last paragraph under tab 8, it says \"The trigger
questions were neither required nor exhaustive, but represent the broad
scope and level of inquiry desired by NOAA fisheries for MAFAC\'s
effort.\" So it was an attempt to establish the level \-- big picture
questions, not in the weeds, cross-sectored, not just fisheries but how
would fisheries be affected by other sector uses of the resources.

The trigger questions weren\'t point by point \-- have to be included in
the MAFAC report. It doesn\'t say that. It says they\'re neither
required nor are they exhaustive but it was to give people a sense of
\-- I\'ve said it already, the big picture view of the future of
fisheries.

So in response to does it require a significant revision to answer those
eight questions, no, that\'s not what we were asking for but we\'re
asking for an evaluation of those drivers or those trends that you can
see and \--

DR. BILLY: I think this document does that. It responds to that.

MR. JONER: Yes, I think we went through this the other day and I
remember pointing out a couple things that I wasn\'t sure was covered
and we had that discussion. I went through it and in my mind, it\'s
essentially covered. Not line by line, but the concepts are covered.

DR. HOLLIDAY: After all it\'s your product. What were the drivers that
you felt were important to understand and report on?

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay. Is your question answered, Vince? That you asked?

CAPT. O\'SHEA: I mean I\'m not trying to drive this whole thing. I\'m
trying to line up what the agency\'s asking for and what we\'re trying
to give them. I offered yesterday or two days ago to go through this and
I have a slightly different view. And I understand and take that we
weren\'t required to answer all these nor were we limited to these. But
I think these are some really terrific strategic level questions and I
think that there\'s been some opportunity as this current paper has
evolved to weave some of these strategic questions in that aren\'t dealt
with right now.

I get six and a half of these eight were not addressed in the document
as I looked at it a day ago, two days ago. I defer to \-- I\'m an
advisor here, not a member so I\'d be happy to defer to whatever the
group would like to do. But I\'m also willing to help facilitate or
work, take pen to paper, or whatever, to get something that lines up
both with the advice MAFAC wants to give and what the agency is asking
for. The consensus is \-- asked and answered. Then that\'s the
consensus. That\'s fine.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mary Beth.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY The time line that we\'re talking about currently is
for people to take this home, think about it, have \--

CAPT. DILERNIA: Thirty-pager.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Right. And to think about it and any additional
changes we want to have it back in by July 15. I just wonder if perhaps
a suggestion is that when people, particularly those sections that they
are working on, to take a look down through these, and not talking about
major changes, but just thinking about taking these concepts. Not all of
them but \-- and bringing to what\'s there.

CAPT. DILERNIA: By July 15.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Yes, any suggested revisions and strictly only those
ones that you think are appropriate for whatever topic it is. I hadn\'t
looked at this and then looked at this and now I think I wouldn\'t mind
doing that.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Comments?

CAPT. O\'SHEA: One other thing and this is going to probably \-- I know
how we got here with this document but I know there\'s concern about the
length of this thing now. You\'ve expressed concern about the length and
Dr. Hogarth has as well and I share that concern. But it just seems to
me that, for example, sixteen pounds of fish per person is mentioned
four times in this document. And in a twenty page document \-- I just
use that as an example. I think there\'s opportunity here to tighten a
lot of this up. There\'s a lot of aquaculture here and we have real
strong feelings around the table about aquaculture. The point is
aquaculture is an emerging issue and it\'s contentious and it\'s the
wave of the future but there\'s significant problems that need to be
addressed.

And then you go from \-- in my sense, we\'ve spent a lot of time
building up to that without putting as much time into these eight
strategic things. So what are you going to do about that? That\'s one of
the things that, in its current state right now, says that I think you
could have both, what Mary Beth said \-- kind of look at this and then
look for opportunities to tighten this thing up. If we\'re directing it
to the agency, a lot of this stuff we don\'t have to put in there
because you guys know it already, I think.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Anyone \-- and I\'m encouraging members to respond to
the thirty-pager that you have now. And to have those comments and those
responses in by July 15.

What\'s going to have to happen then is myself or a group of others,
myself and another group are going to have to take all of your all
comments that you send to us and try to then weave that in. Because we
try to respect the authors\' intent and to weave that into the document.

Sometimes we may have two different authors from the committee
contributing things that are in conflict with each other and you want
to, because they\'re not there to defend or whatever, you try to respect
\-- well, Vince you were there. You sat through the process. And so we
respect the authors\' intent as much as possible and try to include and
try to edit it down. And so that process will occur again.

Bill, when did you want to post it and when did you want it from us?

DR. HOGARTH: What we were saying, sometime first of August, about August
1^st^.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, so that gives us two weeks, only two weeks after
you send it to us. And actually one week because I\'m not even in town
the last week of July, the first week of August.

DR. HOGARTH: Well at least we can make it simple a little bit, but your
goal would be the December meeting to finalize it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: And you want it on the street or you want it \-- you
want the two-pager posted or the entire document posted before the final
one.

DR. HOGARTH: Well I think that depends on what you get as a final
document, because Vince has made some good points. If he ends up doing
that and you all accept it, it will maybe take a little bit different
approach than it is now. I think after we get the comments you\'ll have
to have some leeway to decide what to publish. Personally.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, Dorothy had her hand up first then I see Jim.
Dorothy?

MS. LOWMAN: Well, I was just wondering where we could send one
electronic copy to because it makes it easier to track changes and send
them to you.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Mary Hope will send it.

MR. KRAMER: Real quick, just a follow-up on what Vince said. Maybe a
suggestion might be to tighten things up if any of the authors of
certain sections feel that it\'s redundant or not absolutely necessary,
if they could voluntarily pull that out to help tighten up the document,
that might be a way to get closer to the original target of twenty.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, so what is going to happen is, twenty members are
going to send us back the full document. If you do it, please use your
track changes in Word because the woman behind me here is going to be
getting twenty separate documents that somehow she\'s going to have to
merge into one. We\'ve had some errors already \-- you know you look at
your screen and you\'ve got twelve boxes at the bottom of your screen.
Twelve different documents trying to pop up, copy, and move over into a
master, so it gets to be a bit much. So please, try to use your track
changes so we know where they are.

We\'re now down to July 15 to get them to Mary Hope. We will send you
all an electronic version of this. You\'ll have something to read on the
airplane going home. July 15 you\'ll have your changes to us and we\'ll
have the document done as soon as possible, incorporating all your
changes.

Anything else on this? All right.

DR. HOGARTH: I just \-- I really appreciate what you\'re doing. I think
it\'s going in the right direction. I hope you\'ll take time for the
finalization because I think we\'re very close. It\'s just a matter
finding the form you want it in. I think to do what I want to do with
it, it\'s getting very close. But it needs you to finalize.

CAPT. DILERNIA: And also, to everyone who\'s participated in conference
calls, has sent stuff to us, people that I\'ve badgered over the phone
\-- \"send me things\" \-- people who have traveled on their own
expenses to New York to work on this \-- thank you very, very much. I
really appreciate it. And I\'m sure the product that we produce will be
something we\'ll all be very, very proud of.

Okay, before we get to new business, we have the topic of our next
meeting or meetings \-- dates and locations. Any suggestions?

A couple of folks have \-- I\'ll offer this and let you folks decide.
I\'m not lobbying for it at all, but I\'ll offer it. A couple of folks
have asked me if we could again have a meeting at Christmastime in
December in New York. I can arrange for government rate. Understand that
December in New York typically goes for \-- Christmastime in New York
typically goes for \$400-\$600 a night, hotel rooms nowadays. If we do
it after December 16^th^ or the 17^th^ \-- whatever that Monday is \--
we can get government rate. So if you all did want to come to New York
at December, I don\'t know if anyone has a calendar there \-- the
17^th^, okay, so you would meet \-- the first day would be December
17^th^. You would do 17-18-19.

What we could offer you in New York \-- I mean, I\'d like to go to a
nice warm climate in the wintertime, but I\'ll be very happy to host
again because we enjoy hosting, my wife and I \-- we can offer you a
trip to the New Fulton Market which is not in Fulton Street anymore \--
it\'s up in the Bronx.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: Can we just check one thing? Check the North Pacific
Council.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY I think it\'s earlier.

MR. GILMORE: It\'s the week of the third.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Yes, okay.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: And then the Mid-Atlantic Council is the following week?

MR. GILMORE: I don\'t keep track of that one.

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Yes, the Mid-Atlantic always meets in December.

CAPT. O\'SHEA: So it would be the week after those two councils meet.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Yes. Again, I\'m not lobbying for it at all. I\'m laying
it out there because it is a possibility if you want to do that. We
could get to New York and we could get you there at Christmastime at
government rate. So no one can be critical. There\'s no junkets or
anything involved. It is all government rate. It\'s all on the up and
up. Or you want to go to a warmer climate or a different time of year
\-- I\'m happy and fine with any and all of that. But some members had
asked me and I said well sure, if you want to come back to New York,
we\'d be happy to have you.

MR. CATES: Is warmer above 60 degrees?

MS. NICKELL-TOOLEY Let\'s go to Randy\'s.

(General laughter.)

CAPT. DILERNIA: Last time they were there it snowed \-- what you had a
foot of snow or something when you folks were there?

DR. HOGARTH: Let me just say \-- last year we scheduled to go to New
York and there was that problem with budget and not everybody \-- we
couldn\'t spend money. Tony had worked on that meeting and we just had
to pull out because we weren\'t allowed to spend money. The agency is
fine to go wherever you want to go. New York is fine \-- I don\'t expect
any problems going there. So if you want to go to New York, it\'s fine.
If you don\'t, suggest some other place.

MR. SIMPSON: St. Thomas.

??: That might have some problems.

DR. HOGARTH: I\'m still responding to Senator Colburn about 2001 MAFAC
meeting in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, wherever the hell it was.

MS. BRYANT: St. Thomas.

DR. HOGARTH: St. Thomas.

MS. BRYANT: We had all the answers but \--

CAPT. DILERNIA: Ralph.

MR. RAYBURN: Something like that, it probably wouldn\'t be possible to
get the rate on the weekend before, would it?

CAPT. DILERNIA: I don\'t think \-- those are shoppers\' weekends and
Macy\'s is right across the street.

MR. FLETCHER: We\'d be in 34^th^ Street?

CAPT. DILERNIA: Yes, that\'s the hotel we would use. It\'s not a luxury
hotel but it\'s clean, it\'s neat, it\'s central, it\'s Midtown, and
we\'ve worked with it before and they\'re happy to have us. They give us
the government rate. Even that week \-- anything after December 15
typically in New York City shifts down price-wise because folks want to
be done with business before December 15. When you do see government
groups coming into town at Christmas, it\'s after December 15. So I
might \-- because the 15^th^ is the Friday \-- Saturday? I might be able
to get the weekend before at government rate. I\'m not sure. But I do
know that definitely that Sunday night, the 16^th^ we can get that for
folks coming in town for a meeting.

MR. RAYBURN: So Christmas is what, Tuesday?

MR. GILMORE: Are we going to get crossways trying to get flights home on
Friday?

MS. BRYANT: I think it\'s \-- the earlier the better.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Pete?

MR. LEIPZIG: We had talked at a previous meeting about New Orleans.
Recognize the hardship that Bill had gone through and that sort of fell
through. We missed a meeting, but certainly come December, I think it
\-- for my temperature of blood \-- tends to begin to satisfy what I\'m
looking for as opposed to New York.

And New York on the Fourth.

MS. LOWMAN: Yes, the 4^th^ of July in New York and your party.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Oh you are all invited. We can meet July 5^th^, 6^th^,
and 7^th^ if you want in New York. I\'m very happy. But you are all
invited. So July of \`08 in New York, July 4^th^. What day \-- do you
have a calendar on you? July \`08 \-- I want to see where we are on
that. July 4^th^ is the Friday. Okay, so if you wanted to you could all
come in \-- do 1,2,3 July \`08 in New York. Fine by me. Last year we had
300 people. We\'ll probably have around 325. With MAFAC we\'ll have \--
we\'ll go to 400.

DR. HOGARTH: This year, December have it in New Orleans or Tampa. If you
have it in Tampa, I\'m home. Let\'s see what we can work out in New
Orleans. Let\'s see what we can work out.

MR. RAYBURN: December though, you think?

DR. HOGARTH: December. We can use the same week? Let\'s just say it will
be that week and next week, we all will find out where we can get the
best deal or if you can get into either one of them. It\'s not as easy
sometimes getting to New Orleans we found out with the last \--

MR. RAYBURN: That would be the week of - early part of July, end of
June, early part of July? New York?

CAPT. DILERNIA: It would be July 1, 2, 3 or June 30, 1 and 2. I need
July 3^rd^ to get ready.

MR. RAYBURN: You need time to get ready, yes!

CAPT. DILERNIA: So June 30, July 1, and July 2.

MR. FLETCHER: Are we going to be okay? We\'re not going to get into a
budget fiasco, I take it.

DR. HOGARTH: Honestly, they, with the politics the way they are and the
elections coming up, they\'ll have a budget in \`08. I just hope it\'s a
good budget. The President\'s budget is a good budget. I hope we can get
it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Okay, we have dates and locations. Very good, folks. Do
we have any new business for the committee? Laurel has some business.

MS. BRYANT: I\'m going to send you guys \-- I haven\'t been able to but
I will by tomorrow \-- I don\'t know if all of you remember an article
written by Boris Worm a year or so ago, regarding the 90% of blah, blah,
blah. We\'ve been working, Dr. Murawski, Dr. Methot, Galen Tromble, have
been working on a response to that. It got published in
[Science]{.underline} magazine a couple of days ago, along, as it turns
out, with three other articles from three other organizations also
taking issue with the science and the assumptions made in that article.
So I will \-- I just wanted to give you that heads up.

Dr. Murawski brought a copy of it to me yesterday and I left it on my
dining room table this morning. I\'ll send you the link because it\'s
all of the articles, not just that one, and I wanted to call that to
your attention because I think this is a group that should be aware of
those, particularly when you\'re doing the drafting you\'ll be doing.

CAPT. DILERNIA: It\'s too bad these reports did not receive the same
press that the original report received.

MS. BRYANT: We\'re working hard, but you\'re right.

DR. HOGARTH: We might do a press release.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Because they just kill us \-- you know it\'s negative,
Bill, when you come up with three other reports that counter it, all of
a sudden it gets buried. It\'s not our fault.

DR. HOGARTH: Really, I thought this was an excellent meeting of MAFAC.
Everybody just got in and worked and we really went through the issues
and everyone, thank you. Because I know all of you are busy and it\'s
been a little bit disorganized since we had the budget thing. I\'m
really impressed with the way everybody worked and thankful for all the
people who worked. We got the issues and we\'ll keep it up.

We\'ll make sure that the December meeting has some meaningful things on
it. If aquaculture, if we can get it through, then we need to talk about
regulations and stuff. That will still be a topic for us. Then there
will be a lot more on the marine rec stuff that hopefully will be
further down the road.

Thanks, I just really want to thank you because I know it\'s not easy
for people to take time out and do it.

CAPT. DILERNIA: Also, as we break up I remind everyone if anyone wants
to contribute to sending a gift over to Ken Roberts\' for his mom, see
Ralph Rayburn now \-- five bucks, whatever, that would be great.

We are adjourned until December 17^th^. Thank you all.

(Whereupon, at 4:40 P.M., the above-entitled matter concluded.)