country including many thousands in the five gulf states who fish for red snapper which is the subject of this case who are just like everyone else who fishes from their own boat or friends boat in fact sometimes you can be on their own boat one day and on a charter the next this case airs on the surface to be a dispute between two fishing interests but it's actually more than that the case also involves an ongoing dispute between the five gulf states and the federal government over the proper way to regulate  to states regulates the rents napper season in their own state wanderers which in the gulf of mexico extends nine miles out from the shore of each state currently about on and off of the entire red recreational red snapper fishing in federal water over the past two decades from three hundred sixty five days a year to nine days a year at this time the states of all responded by increasing their red snapper fishing season on them says no legal authority to control state fishing seasons so the federally federal fishery management program has to accept the regulatory decisions of the five gulf states has a voting member on the gulf of mexico fishery management council which on with namath's regulates the federal fisheries nim's has a member on the council as well amendment fourteen followed a very forty without him support to supporting was an eight to eight deadlock with all five of the state representatives voting against amendments forty the nimbus representative at that time announced that he was going to vote in favor of amendment forty haploid the alabama representative said that they he would changes vote if they limited amendment forty to a three year trial period from two thousand and fifteen to two thousand  which appears the taps seven in our record excerpts and we would urge the court to read that letter very carefully that lays out all of the m texans that the states and to both we think this state federal conflict is really the key to the case because if you read the decision on amendment forty as well as the briefs in this case you can see that nemesis essentially blaming the states for the need to adopt amendment forty eight saying if states had just followed the federal regulations then they wouldn't have had to do that that conflict also explains the configuration of interests in this case there are two national the statute has a plane meaning the recreational red snapper botha quote shall include stronger fishing and all recreational fishing must and when that single vote is reached within that single voter there's no special treatment for her federally licensed chart of its versus recreational fishing from a private boat or state licensed charter boats there are about six thousand state chartered state license charter boats about thirteen hundred federally licensed all forms of recreational fishing compete equally under the single quota no part fishing does not include charter fishing contrary to the words of the statute the result is that the federally licensed charter boats now have their own quota giving them about two million pounds  for their exclusive use during the year and a fishing season which is five times longer than the fishing season available to live at recreational fishers there's nothing in the statute though is there that  big subdividing of recreational fishing between charter and private there's the statue does not on its face address that other than the requirement that the recreational fishing boat shall include charter fishing which excludes are there for the ability of the agency to establish a third for charter fishing that does not include for that is that for the for reckless charter fishing boat or that is not art of the recreational quota which is what they did not nymphs has three answers to why they recreational sector and so they say using the word component rather than the works sector is what allows them to get around section eight hundred eighty three the problem with that document you know the doesn't refer say the recreational fishing sector doesn't use the word sector it says recreational fishing shall have a quota and that quota shall include charter fishing so using com rather than sector is simply irrelevant to the words of the secondly they say and this is contradictory to their first argument they say the component botha's actually don't matter because memphis also adopted a own little recreational boat which is the s of the two components the charter component and the private recreational component so here's how i answer that argument this is as if a mother says to her son you can have to cut the says to her daughter who's older you can have four cookies so those are the rules if the mother says and between the two of you you can only have six cookies the mother has not sent me things and i change the rules because the boy has to stop at two and the girl has to stop at four so they have to stop at six regardless of whether there's also a separate rule that says the combined total is six the combined recreational total is really window dressing which is evidently intended only to attempt to satisfy section eighteen eighty three g but it has no regulatory effect  caught so they have to stop at the six million which is roughly the mind will burghardt us of whether there is a a combined total or not so it the compain total which they seek to seek refuge from the statute has no regulatory effect or meaning and they make the point in fact what they're doing is they say we're doing the same thing we could do if th the third and them's argument is that we did not provide evidence of that congress intended the plain meaning of the statute and it's certainly true that the congressional reports do not say anything about this issue one way or the other but that's not the point the point is that when a statute has a plain meaning you don't have to have proof from congressional report that congress intended the plain meaning plain meaning is  the agency to assess specified and analyze the economic and social acts of their decisions keyword i would suggest specify in the next key now two thousand and eight and amps and the gulf council knew that they had no down on the economic and social impacts of creating a separate sector which they then called sector separation even later changed the terminology to component however you can tell just by looking at the agency's websites and them sats in florida has a whole economics branch of people what the impacts might have been but instead for a period of seven years they did absolutely nothing to try to assess or specify or analyze the economic impacts and when it came time to make the decision they said well we can't do it because we don't have any data but it's kind of like the you know the famous story of that a child who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court is an orphan it's a self inflicted wound they chose not to have the data and they shouldn't be able to say since we don't have the data we don't have to do the analysis d literally applies more fish is better than less fish which could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered just specifying impacts or an on thing impacts it's an obvious statement that they knew from the very beginning doesn't tell you anything our third claim is that the decision to allocate the charter fisherman two and a half times what they are c chain was based on a an explanation that literally makes no sense the explanation was weak or use they chose to use thirty year old data from what what the different groups were catching thirty years ago and thirty years ago the charter fishermen were catching a much higher percentage than they are today it's changed dramatically over thirty years i don't think you exhausted  time with michelle felt turman who is a student at the two lane law school represents interveners a charter fisherman and she's here with a professor of benefits and what it first talk about the statutory interpretation issue the language of section sixteen u s c eight hundred eighty three d which is reprinted at that page is seventy eight or brief i think it's very straightforward it says that the plans for the red snapper fishery after recreational fishing and that parents article clarifies that recreational fishing quote for the purposes of this subsection shell includes charter fishing and quote and then finally the separate quotas when they reach have to result in a prohibition on the retention of fish for the remainder of the fishing year so the pellets here are focusing on the parents that it will if that recreational fishing shell includes heard of fishing but is this court is held in cases like peters versus ashcroft parent physicals and legislation or properly read is simply explanatory not substantive directives and that's exactly what this one does here it's not self evident what doesn't do any work beyond that now a minute forty which is what's being challenged here does nothing that congress dealt with in section eight hundred eighty three d it doesn't alter that the separate quotas for the recreational fishing and the commercial fishing that congress required those quotas still exist and they still have meaning if the recreational fishing reaches the recreational quota then fishing has to retention of  and our argument is not based on the use of the language sector versus components we simply use that language to clarify that the overall recreational quota applies to the recreational sector and then the agency in order to implement that and make sure it's not being exceeded has established sees some qualities which is something that commonly does in in fisheries and the agency simply said you've got to have a separate quota from the record for the recreational the overall recreational fishing the city the commercial fishing they have had a quota for commercial fishing before but not one for recreational congress wanted one for recreational as well but it waters even after the federal season closes and there's nothing the skin can really do about that so what was happening is that the charter component which once the federal season closes has to stop retaining red snapper they they were subject to this very short season which got shorter each year because the pipe vessels were able to fish in state waters and many of the states were extending their seasons  some all year long and also the private vessel component is an open access fishery anyone can can go out in and fish for red snapper while the charter component  is there's a moratorium on new permits so because they're so different the minute forty decides that you should separate them regulate them separately and have a separate quota for each and that has a number of advantages it has conservation advantages because the studies show that there is a lower rate of discards for the charter component than the private vessel component and it has fairness components because what had been happening is the charter component had been getting a smaller and smaller share you know starting back in the late eighty's it harvested about two thirds of the red snapper overall cats and by two thousand and thirteen it was down to around sixteen percent so this was a way to reestablish some some some fairness and to promote conservation goals and this is under the statute not to have done either either way is within the   protect the fishery and carry out the purposes of the act so with regard to the economic and social impacts there is a great deal of data in the fisheries impact statement about the economic social impacts as a district court said there is substantial doubt it there in the district court goes through that of pages fifteen and sixteen up its decision and what the controversy was about here was economic effects it's likely that the charter component will receive some economic benefit compared to the recent years where it's fishing has been so constrained it's basically return to the situation of a few years back which is which is it's fair and conversely there will be some economic impact on private vessels because there will be less fish available for them in the federal areas but they won't be able to continue to fish in state areas and impact would really be meaningless there is just too many unknowns too much unpredictability and the statute does not require a point to fight economic analysis it simply says that the that the agency has to assess the took to base the quotas just on the recent years is really unfair because those years reflect some regulatory changes that have been quite unfair in the charter sector those changes are th longer state seasons and the fact that there's a moratorium on charter boat permits and charter boats have been forbidden from fishing in state waters after the federal season is closed and so because of those changes it's only fair to at least use some down there from the older years before those changes took place so it explained the it's rationale and the statute doesn't require anything more than that for  better or for worse it sounds a lot like these rolling political polls that we hear where they drop off the old days and add some new ones so that it's a mixture of the old and new it is and there's a there's a lot of discretion in making that sort of judgement but that you know as as i say the more recent years were given more weight and there's a long discussion of this in the fisheries impact statement which is which is in the record and he looked at seven different alternatives for use of data and no rational basis to consider historic data in addition to the recent nato in determining the allocation but your honour's one purpose of this amendment is to save the small businesses that make up the federally permitted charter fleet the council on the secretary explained in the fishing impact statement on page sixteen two nine to the record that a reason for a minute forty is to discontinue the decreasing proportion of landings from federally permitted for hire vessels and an associated likely decline in social benefits your hono these small businesses are at risk due to the challenges that they faced because of preeminent forty regulations as a stated in the record on page sixteen three to two over half of the recreational quota was projected to be caught outside of the federal season in two thousand and fourteen the federally licensed charter fishermen are mandated that they cannot fish when the federal season is closed which means that when half of the quota is projected to be caught during state seasons the charter fishermen and the people who rely on them to access the federal waters to fish can't go fishing captain bill staff testified that my user group the federally permitted vessel is the only user group that can catch red snapper today i can take my boat out anybody else can go to florida texas louisiana some other non compliant state and fish and in addition to that there's been a more tour am on the number of federally permitted charter fisherman which limits the number of of those fisherman there's no such limit on the private insurers so in light of these restrictions which only impact the federal charter fleet the question becomes why does it matter why do we need to save these small businesses and the answer to that your honour's is is simple the federally permitted charter fishermen are the only way for the every day normal person who doesn't own their own boat to in order to get to federal waters you have to go a minimum of three miles and in texas and florida you have to go nine in order to get that far out you have to you have to own a boat capable of safely traveling that far out in the ocean and it's simply not the case that everyone can afford such a  bill staff testified on page ninety one there last year he took about twelve hundred people fishing most of them cannot afford their own boat another commenter on page sixteen five port forty stated that every american citizen deserves access as they do not o access this fish they depend on the for hire vessel and on top of all that there's a lot of people that come from inland parts of the country that want to fish in the federal waters of the gulf of mexico they're not coming down here with their own offshore but they depend on the to be able to take them to access this fish there would also be a safety component wouldn't there that the chargers would have a lot of safety protections that possibly private yes sean charter vessels wouldn't have you're going out with professional captains crew that the mayor of orange beach alabama stated that after about two days on the beach tourists are looking for something new to do and the charter industry is a big big part of that another captain captain michael testified on page ninety nine five i have a group of amputees in wheelchairs i take them fishing during the federal snapper season but this year the trip a lot of the snapper season and they canceled because they couldn't catch anything and your honors in addition to providing access to the to the public to this fishery the charter industry also helps improve the conservation of the fishery from one thousand nine hundred seven to two thousand and thirteen the recreational landings exceeded its quota by eighty eight eighty eight percent of the time fifteen of the seventeen years but the charter industry results in less waste it's uncontested in the record that the relative number of dead discards is lower for the charter industry than it is for the private anglers thus by preserving the charter industry you improve the conservation of the fishery by reducing bycatch and also discard mortality the bottom line is that the secretary in the council had good reason to consider historical data in addition to the recent data because that historical there represents a time before the regulatory system with a charter fisherman as such a disadvantage this industry deserves to survive because it's the only way for the public to access the federal waters and go fishing and it also helps improve the conservation of the fish the resulting allocation is well supported in the record and therefore should be upheld fishing and hadn't gone through the combined total ruse employed call it then you'd have to say section eight hundred eighty three was not fucked it has to mean something the something is the charter for the charter fishing boat it has to be part of a combined recreational quota the reality is it's not the reality is it is treated separately it has its own cap there is no connection between the charter and the private recreational camp it's not what the statute  on prevail answer that first fall under the chevron contacts we're focusing on and step on is there a plain meaning our answer is there is a plain meaning let's give them that fine that's caught this case the parent thought a call doesn't reverse anything else it adds a clause and there is no law no rule that says a parent means if you can have a separate quota for charter fishing and that is a part from the quota for recreational fishing and that one of