The project provided critical support to NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in its efforts to fulfill its responsibilities under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act related to essential fish habitat (EFH).  In this project, NMFS developed information about fisheries under each Council's jurisdiction and provided this information to the fishery management councils to prepare amendments to fishery management plans to identify EFH, describe adverse impacts on EFH, and recommend actions that should be considered to ensure the conservation and enhancement of EFH.   Saltonstall-Kennedy funds were divided equally among the NMFS Regional Habitat Offices and supported coooperative efforts with the fishery management councils to describe the quality and quantity of information needed to: (1) develop plans for collecting and analyzing the necessary EFH information, (2) establish priorities by which a council's fishery management plans were to be amended, and (3) allow councils to incorporate EFH management into fishery management plans.  In addition, protocols were developed to identify threats to EFH, and these protocols were implemented by the NMFS Regional Habitat Programs, the individual states, and the fishery management councils.  The efforts undertaken as part of this project made it possible for the fishery management councils to develop EFH amendments for fishery management plans by the legislatively mandated deadline of October 1998.