matters or information that pertains to national se-
curity, employment matters, litigation, or other rea-
sons provided under section 552b of title 5, United 
States Code. Interested persons shall be permitted to 
appear at open meetings and present oral or written 
statements on the subject matter of the meeting. 
The Advisory Panel may administer oaths or affir-
mations to any person appearing before it. 
(2) All open meetings of the Advisory Panel 
shall be preceded by timely public notice in the Fed-
eral Register of the time, place, and subject of the 
meeting. 
(3) Minutes of each meeting shall be kept and 
shall include a record of the people present, a de-
scription of the discussion that occurred, and copies 
of all statements filed. Subject to section 552 of title 
5, United States Code, the minutes and records of 
all meetings and other documents that were made 
available to or prepared for the Advisory Panel shall 
be available for public inspection and copying at a 
single location in the partnership program office. 
(4) The Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 
U.S.C. App.) does not apply to the Advisory Panel. 
(e) FUNDING.—The chair and vice chairs of the Com-
mittee on Ocean Science, Education, and Operations an-
nually shall make funds available to support the activities 
of the Advisory Panel. 
SEC. 505. MARINE ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH. 
(a) ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACHES.—The Admin-
istrator shall work with the Committee on Ocean Science, 
Education, and Operations to identify research efforts for 
improving ecosystem-based management efforts to protect, 
maintain, and restore marine ecosystem health while ac-
commodating human use and occupancy. 
(b) MARINE BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH PROGRAM.— 
As part of this effort, the Administrator, in cooperation 
with the Office of Naval Research, the National Science 
Foundation, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the 
Environmental Protection Agency, and other Federal 
agencies represented on the Committee on Ocean Science, 
Education, and Operations, shall establish and maintain 
a ten-year interagency research program to assess and ex-
plain the diversity, conservation, distribution, functions, 
and abundance of marine organisms in the world’s oceans 
for the purposes of— 
(1) understanding the patterns, causes, proc-
esses, and consequences of changing marine biologi-
cal diversity; 
(2) improving the linkages between marine eco-
logical and oceanographic sciences and guiding eco-
system-based management efforts, so as to protect, 
maintain, and restore marine ecosystem health; 
(3) strengthening and expanding the field of 
marine taxonomy, including use of genomics and 
proteomics; 
(4) facilitating and encouraging the use of new 
technological advances, predictive models, and his-
torical perspectives to investigate marine biodiver-
sity; 
(5) using new understanding gained through 
the program to improve predictions of the impacts of 
human activities on the health of the marine envi-
ronment, and of the impacts of changes in the 
health of the marine environment on human well- 
being; and 
(6) enhancing formal and informal outreach 
and education efforts through research-generated 
knowledge, information, and tools. 
(c) PROGRAM ELEMENTS.—The research program 
established under this section shall provide for, but not 
be limited to, the following: 
(1) Dynamic access to biological data through 
an ocean biogeographic information system that 
links marine databases, manages data generated by