1
 1                      TRANSCRIPT OF
 2           MARINE FISHERIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE
 3                 HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE
 4                        (Day Two)
 5               South Pacific Ballroom # 1
 6                 Held in Honolulu, Hawaii
 7                          On
 8  
 9               Wednesday, January 12, 2005
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                                                       2
 1                        I N D E X
 2      State of the Fisheries Overview -  
 3      Dr. Bill Hogarth                               3
 4  
 5      Cold-Water Corals
 6      Status of the Science - Dr. Tom Hourigan      60
 7      Management in Action - Dr. Ricky Grigg        81
 8      What are the Policy Issues - Dr. Michael
 9      Sissenwine                                    97
10  
11      Budget FY05 & FY05 - Gary Reisner            128
12      Office of Constituent Services - Gordon Helm 164
13      Recreational Fisheries Program -  
14      Forbes Darby                                 208
15      MAFAC - Mission and Planning - Laurel Bryant 245
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                                                       3
 1                                           (8:45 a.m.)
 2            (Wednesday, January 12, 2005)  
 3            MR. OSTERBACK:  Okay.  Good morning, 
 4  everyone.  It's 8:45.  
 5            First off, I guess for everybody that was 
 6  involved in putting together the festivities last 
 7  night, that was something.  (Applause)  
 8            On our agenda, at 8:45 on the State of the 
 9  Fisheries Overview from Dr. Hogarth, we'll start 
10  there because yesterday by the time we wrapped up I 
11  think we'd covered the ecosystem report as far as we 
12  want to at this time.  So I'll turn it over to Dr. 
13  Hogarth.  
14            (State of the Fisheries Overview)
15            MR. HOGARTH:  Thank you.  I want to take 
16  the opportunity while we're together, and we have 
17  some new members, to go over where we were and where 
18  we are, and things we did accomplish.  
19            After a lot of discussion yesterday, the 
20  presentations, I took some out and some we'll run 
21  through very quickly.  But part of this, too, will 
22  be -- at the end of it, there will be some things 
23  when I was sitting on the plane one day -- and 
24  that's dangerous for me to do that -- and I made 
25  this list of things I thought we ought to do in 
                                                       4
 1  2005.  Some of them are pretty comprehensive.  So 
 2  I'd like to discuss those with MAFAC.  
 3            I think some of them we would need MAFAC's 
 4  involvement as the advisory body that you are, and 
 5  you've been very helpful to us.  
 6            You've seen all this about our mission, of 
 7  course.  Our mission is the stewardship of marine 
 8  living resources through science-based conservation 
 9  and management and the promotion of healthy 
10  ecosystems.  
11            We are the oldest conservation agency in 
12  the nation.  I think it's something to be proud of.  
13  We celebrated our 130th anniversary in 2001.  I 
14  think we probably have as many challenges right now 
15  as we've ever had.  I think particularly over the 
16  next couple of years we have tremendous challenges 
17  and tremendous opportunities.  I think we have the 
18  opportunity now as the stocks are rebuilding to 
19  really come up with a plan for fisheries for the 
20  future for sustainability, for operating this as a 
21  business, to get out of somewhat micromanaging 
22  fisheries, by assigning fishermen catches or quotas 
23  and bycatch quotas, and letting them be more 
24  responsible for when they fish, make good use of the 
25  market to fish.  
                                                       5
 1            I just think we have tremendous 
 2  opportunities to look at new ways of managing, and 
 3  new technology.  I hope that's the way we go.  
 4            I know this Administration is very much 
 5  interested in that program.  
 6            Just for a little brief summary, you've 
 7  heard me say it before, and I'll say it again, this 
 8  is over a 60 billion dollar industry.  Gross 
 9  national product, over 60 billion.  
10            We have a tremendous recreational fishery, 
11  with over 17 million participants, who make about 65 
12  million fishing trips and have an economic benefit 
13  of more than 30 million, 349,000 jobs and over 12 
14  billion in related personal incomes.  It's a large 
15  business.  
16            It's also an industry that's growing.  If 
17  you look at saltwater fishermen, it's the number one 
18  outdoor recreation in this country.  So far, it's 
19  continued to grow, which in itself brings us some 
20  problems that we have to address, like 
21  catch-and-release mortality of the fish that I think 
22  we'll have to get more involved in in the future as 
23  we look at the recreational fisheries.  
24            When you look at our commercial fishery, 
25  we still have -- in 2003 New Bedford, Massachusetts 
                                                       6
 1  is still our number one port.  A lot of that is 
 2  based on scallops.  
 3            Then you have Dutch Harbor, of course, in 
 4  Alaska.  Then Louisiana.  We have a tremendous 
 5  fishery in Alaska.  
 6            If you look at the top commercial species, 
 7  it's still shrimp, followed by crab, lobster, 
 8  pollock and scallops.  
 9            As far as volume, of course, no one 
10  touches Dutch Harbor in Alaska.  
11            The top commercial species in volume is, 
12  of course, pollock.  That's been a very stable 
13  fishery.  Then menhaden, salmon, cod and then 
14  flounder.  These stay pretty constant.  
15            The only thing that's happened in 
16  commercial fisheries lately is the consumption in 
17  the U.S. used to be tuna.  The consumption in the 
18  U.S. now is shrimp, the number one species.  
19            Things we're getting more and more 
20  concerned about is our exports and imports.  You can 
21  see by the green line, the light line, we are 
22  importing more.  The trade deficit is approaching 11 
23  billion dollars.  We're importing now somewhere 
24  between 75 and 80 percent of all the seafood.  
25            This is a reason we think aquaculture has 
                                                       7
 1  a vital role in the future as we manage wild stocks 
 2  and stabilize those while we use a combination of 
 3  aquaculture and wild to become more self-sufficient 
 4  in seafood in this country.  We think it's extremely 
 5  important for all of the industry.  
 6            NOAA's mission, I think I won't go through 
 7  this, we'll just skip this because you heard about 
 8  it yesterday.  
 9            You heard how we fit our budgeting in the 
10  ecosystem, we have many of the programs there.  We 
11  won't spend any time on that this morning because 
12  you've heard it.  
13            But I do want to talk a little bit about 
14  rebuilding fisheries.  I think we're starting to see 
15  some progress here.  I think it's something we all 
16  want to see.  
17            We have the responsibility for managing 
18  over 900 stocks of fish.  We still have a number of 
19  unknown status.  I think about 25 percent or more of 
20  all of the stocks we have variable information.  
21            But 17 major stocks over the last four 
22  years have been removed from the list of overfished.  
23  We've dropped from 56 to 39.  Over 93 percent of 
24  them that remain in overfished stocks have 
25  rebuilding plans in place.  The number of species 
                                                       8
 1  subject to overfishing has decreased by about 48 
 2  percent.  
 3            Last year I think we removed ten stocks 
 4  from the overfishing list, which is the most we've 
 5  done in one year, in 2004.  
 6            It's critical here I think to make sure 
 7  that we get rebuilding plans in place.  We have some 
 8  49 FMPs now in place.  I think the second part of 
 9  this is to make sure that the public realizes that 
10  if the seafood is on the market, there is a 
11  rebuilding plan in place in this country.  So 
12  they're being managed for sustainability and they 
13  should be able to feel safe in consuming seafood.  
14            We are in the process now -- I think we're 
15  making a lot of progress in targets in the process.  
16  I think four years ago when I took this job we had 
17  70 lawsuits per year.  We were winning less than 45 
18  percent.  We are now winning about 78 percent.  
19            If you look at last year, we were up 
20  around 90 percent.  
21            A lot of this is because Congress has 
22  given us money to invest in the National 
23  Environmental Policy Act and we've been able to 
24  train people, and all.  I think that's why some of 
25  the discussion yesterday about the Magnuson versus 
                                                       9
 1  NEPA, I don't think any of us are trying to get out 
 2  of that process, we're just trying to make it more 
 3  streamlined.  Because it does take over two years to 
 4  get a fishery management plan in place.  That's just 
 5  really too long.  
 6            I mean, by the time we get it in place the 
 7  data is outdated.  So by the time you get something 
 8  in place, you really -- you almost need to start 
 9  over again because the information has changed so 
10  much.  So we need to be able to move quickly.  
11            Also, we are the group that has pioneered 
12  the use of electronic technology for rule-making and 
13  receiving comments.  We think that has worked very 
14  well.  
15            Partnerships.  We've been trying to make 
16  sure that we move to ensure national and 
17  international stewardship goals.  We have led a 53 
18  nation effort to conduct the International Census of 
19  Marine Life.  We've awarded over 70 million dollars 
20  for projects to be done outside, and we've funded 
21  some additional resource surveys for over 2,000 
22  charter days at sea.  
23            Even though we're building new vessels, we 
24  will always be dependent upon the use of charter 
25  days at sea.  We think it's extremely important.  
                                                      10
 1            At the community level, as far as habitat 
 2  and restoration projects, this is an extremely 
 3  popular program.  We've provided around 25 million 
 4  dollars since 2001 to over 650 grass-root projects.  
 5            I think if you look at the number of 
 6  manhours that we've had, we've had over 50,000 
 7  volunteers that have contributed about 250,000 
 8  community service hours to help us increase the 
 9  essential habitat and just really involved in 
10  stewardship.  
11            Sea turtle conservation.  Sea turtles 
12  continue to be one of the issues that we have to 
13  deal with on both coasts.  We've been working to try 
14  to lower the risk of extinction of sea turtles to 
15  allow the shrimp and longline fisheries that are 
16  worth some 450 million dollars a year to take place.  
17            We have worked with the fishermen in the 
18  Gulf and the South Atlantic to develop a new turtle 
19  excluder device, which is a fishing device.  When I 
20  talk with the fishermen, they say, well, it does 
21  work but we can't keep putting these big holes in 
22  our nets.  So it's probably the largest hole we've 
23  ever put in a net.  
24            But it is a good net.  Those that were 
25  fighting us tooth and nail over this device now like 
                                                      11
 1  it.  We had to make some modifications to the size 
 2  of the flap, and all, but it's working extremely 
 3  well now to exclude the turtles.  
 4            We've also been working with the industry, 
 5  both in Hawaii and in the Atlantic, for new 
 6  techniques with circle hooks and other longline 
 7  practices to reduce the take of loggerheads and 
 8  leatherbacks.  
 9            We've also taken this internationally.  We 
10  presented this at ICCAT.  We've gone to countries 
11  like Ecuador and had workshops, and we're continuing 
12  to work on sea turtle conservation.  
13            I'm hoping before Scott Burns leaves here 
14  this week that we'll have an MOU with World Wildlife 
15  to be looking at nesting beaches and how we can 
16  restore nesting beaches on an international basis.  
17  I think that's an extremely important program.  
18            We cannot win this war on turtles by 
19  ourselves in this country since we're about five 
20  percent.  But we can use our expertise and avenues 
21  we have internationally to rebuild at nesting sites.  
22  I think that's a key.  
23            This Council out here in Hawaii has done a 
24  tremendous amount of work internationally.  We have 
25  to continue this work.  
                                                      12
 1            We're also trying to work, too, with our 
 2  gear people with new technology for the fishing 
 3  industry, to work with them.  We have a slight 
 4  problem now with the scallop fishery, and we're 
 5  working with that fishery and the turtles.  
 6            Improving science.  In the Agency we've 
 7  sort of looked ahead to -- I think Mike said this.  
 8            We've looked ahead to what we saw in the 
 9  Ocean Commission on it.  We have separated our 
10  science from our management.  Mike is in charge of 
11  all the scientific programs.  We do have a few 
12  glitches within the Agency, there are some programs 
13  that are still within the office, and all, that 
14  you're looking at.  But we have I think really 
15  improved the quality of our science.  
16            Our stock assessments, we feel that we are 
17  really getting people involved through the process 
18  we use now; SEDAR and the other types of programs 
19  where we get the public involved in states, and 
20  other scientists.  
21            We now have more observers than we've had 
22  ever.  I think we placed onboard observers I think  
23  from 45,000 days in 17 fisheries in 2000, to we now 
24  cover 32 fisheries, with over 60,000 fishing days.  
25  So we feel like that is extremely important.  
                                                      13
 1            We have used over 2,000 days at sea for 
 2  charter vessels.  We were able to charter on the 
 3  West Coast, for example, where we were doing surveys 
 4  for the groundfish once every three years; we've 
 5  been able to charter and do those on an annual 
 6  basis.  
 7            We've spent over four million dollars in 
 8  new economic and social science data collections to 
 9  help us in our assessments.  We have developed more 
10  sophisticated and really up-to-date fishery 
11  assessment models.  We're even looking now at models 
12  on the West Coast to take into account environmental 
13  changes, which I think will be very important for 
14  the future.  
15            We have implemented our Science Quality 
16  Assurance Program within the Agency to make sure 
17  that within our scientists and laboratories, that we 
18  are accredited and that all of our scientists get 
19  peer reviewed.  We feel like the science should be 
20  peer reviewed and all science programs be peer 
21  reviewed. 
22            In 2005, I think it's going to be a really 
23  big year in fisheries, as far as the Hill is 
24  involved in Magnuson-Stevens.  They'll be pushing 
25  for ecosystem-based management. 
                                                      14
 1            But there are several things that I think 
 2  we have to do internally.  
 3            Highly migratory species on the East Coast 
 4  is managed by the Secretary through the office 
 5  internally.  Bluefin tuna and the data collection 
 6  for bluefin and marlin, and overall in highly 
 7  migratory species, we need a better coordination and 
 8  a better program in place.  
 9            We made some assignments.  This one, by 
10  February 28th we're looking at how we can improve 
11  the overall management of the highly migratory 
12  species and how we can get a better control on the 
13  East Coast than what we do there.  
14            The other thing I'm extremely concerned 
15  about is succession plans for international 
16  commissioners.  We have a lot of commissioners that 
17  the Agency is the commissioner.  For example, I'm 
18  the commissioner for ICCAT and I'm the commissioner 
19  for IATTC.  We need to look at succession plans to 
20  start training people.  
21            Rollie Schmitten, for example, is the 
22  Commissioner for IWC, International Whaling 
23  Commission.  Rollie is already smiling as to when a 
24  certain date this year will occur so he can retire 
25  from us.  We need to look at who's sitting in the 
                                                      15
 1  wings to take over IWC.  We don't have these type of 
 2  positions with real good succession plans.  I think 
 3  internally we have a little bit, but overall we 
 4  don't have the succession plans that I think we 
 5  need.  
 6            So Rebecca is coordinating all of the 
 7  international activities internally, coordinating 
 8  with the State Department and Bill Brennan 
 9  (phonetic). 
10            We just hired an Office Director for 
11  International to try to bring international 
12  activities back together.  
13            If I can find an SES position, that will 
14  be elevated up to I think where it should be.  
15  Because internationally is where these games are 
16  played.  Fisheries is global, and we have to be 
17  prepared to play in that global arena and be real 
18  prepared.  
19            We need to look at our observer program.  
20  Not only the observer program, but cooperative 
21  research, statistics and some of our science and 
22  social science.  This doesn't really affect ya'll or 
23  anybody in the public.  But we don't have -- within 
24  the Agency we're not consistent on how we do these 
25  programs.  I think we need to be consistent.  If 
                                                      16
 1  it's in the Science Center at one place, why is it 
 2  in the Region in another place, and how we 
 3  coordinate these programs.  
 4            The observer program is growing.  It's an 
 5  extremely important program and we need to make sure 
 6  the training and all of the observer program is 
 7  top-notch and we need to make sure that we 
 8  coordinate these and have them in the proper place.  
 9            We have some Science Centers that are 
10  doing Statistics.  Some Regions are doing 
11  Statistics.  Cooperative Research in one region is 
12  in the Regional Office, and most others is in the 
13  Science Centers.  So these are just internal things, 
14  but we need to get it straight so everyone knows how 
15  we operate and some policies.  
16            We don't have a lot of policies 
17  internally.  We're trying to get those in line so 
18  that everybody knows how we operate.  
19            The Office of Constituent Services, we 
20  want to upgrade that office and really get it back 
21  to the level.  We've sort of let people leave and we 
22  have not really revamped Constituent Services to 
23  meet the objectives.  So Gordon is working with John 
24  Oliver, and we hope to have that done, a plan for 
25  that office, by the end of February.  
                                                      17
 1            Some of the other things that we need to 
 2  look at are recovery plans and targets.  There's 
 3  been some concern that we really -- the public is 
 4  not aware of the recovery plans and the targets for 
 5  several of the species, particularly some of the 
 6  turtles.  
 7            There are plans, the targets need to be 
 8  updated.  So we will be looking at this quickly and 
 9  see how we can do this.  
10            I don't know why I can't talk this 
11  morning.  I guess the councils gave me a hard time 
12  at 7 o'clock.  (Laughter)
13            One of the other things, we developed 
14  about a couple years ago an intergovernmental 
15  office.  It appears there was so much overlap 
16  between us and the Department of Interior and us 
17  sometimes, on the West Coast particularly with the 
18  timber industry and Bureau of Reclamations and all, 
19  just a lot of overlap.  So we put a person in an 
20  intergovernmental office to try to work out some of 
21  this overlap to quit having to do some joint 
22  management of some of the species, particularly Fish 
23  and Wildlife Service.  Jim Mackie (phonetic) is 
24  doing that, just took the job.  He's just moving 
25  from the West Coast.  There will be some overlap 
                                                      18
 1  between Laurie Allen and the Office of Protected 
 2  Resources.  
 3            We want them to develop an operating plan 
 4  so we won't have us -- needing to come in and tell 
 5  us how to coordinate.  I think this will be 
 6  extremely important as we work through some of these 
 7  overlapping issues with the other agencies.  
 8            The next is we needed to develop some 
 9  criteria guideline on IFQs for discussion with the 
10  Fishery Management Councils and others.  We had a 
11  workshop several years ago to talk about IFQs.  At 
12  that time there was a moratorium and we couldn't 
13  move forward.  
14            It seems like the moratorium is gone.  I 
15  think the IFQs, any type of market-based type 
16  process will be allowed, but we're going to have to 
17  have some guidelines.  So we would like to see these 
18  developed.  
19            I can tell you this Administration is 
20  extremely high on looking at this type of 
21  management.  We've been told by the White House.  
22  We've been told by the CEQ to get the work done.  In 
23  fact, we've been pushed to try to get an IFQ plan 
24  developed and in place in two months, which you 
25  can't do with any process that we have.  But we are 
                                                      19
 1  working on this.  
 2            Also, what came out of the Ocean 
 3  Commission -- many of these came out of the Ocean 
 4  Commission, too.  But one thing the Ocean Commission 
 5  really wanted was a Council Training Program.  They 
 6  wanted that Council Training Program developed by 
 7  someone outside.  They felt like we should get 
 8  outside help.  
 9            We are in the process of assigning the 
10  contract to look at council training.  We'll have a 
11  program put together hopefully for this next round 
12  of council orientation.  
13            I also feel very strongly about a national 
14  permit system.  Our fishermen have to go too many 
15  places to get permits, and they're not consistent.  
16  Some regions charge.  Other regions don't.  There's 
17  just a lot of inconsistencies.  
18            We have put together a policy sort of 
19  internally.  We put together a permit team to look 
20  at a national permit system so that fishermen -- 
21  it's almost a one-stop permitting, and also we're 
22  looking at even bar-coding these permits so the 
23  enforcement can just scan them and know which 
24  permits the person has.  
25            It just needs to be more efficient.  We 
                                                      20
 1  have the technology today to do more than a piece of 
 2  paper you put in your pocket and have to worry about 
 3  it getting wet and falling apart, and things like 
 4  that.  So this is something that can be done and can 
 5  be done pretty easily I think.  
 6            The other is I really am pushing Rebecca 
 7  and Mike and our Regional Administrators and Science 
 8  Center Directors to sit down with the councils and 
 9  develop a five-year plan.  What do the councils 
10  expect to be doing over the next five years, and 
11  then update that on an annual basis so that we are 
12  all on the same page, we can go forward in the 
13  budget process out years for what's necessary to get 
14  the job done, that we are providing them with the 
15  science and the administrative help that they need 
16  to get things done.  
17            Some of them are further ahead than others 
18  in getting these developed, but we will have a 
19  schedule by the end of March to have these plans 
20  done, and then they'll be updated on an annual 
21  basis.  
22            The other is sort of more of an internal 
23  type thing.  We do still have some problems with the 
24  Hill on the way they feel we do our budget 
25  internally, on how we allocate the money, but also 
                                                      21
 1  how we account for the money we're spending with 
 2  base budget.  So we will have a much more rigorous 
 3  budget process internally.  
 4            I have met with each of the offices on 
 5  their budget.  We will bring each one of the Regions 
 6  in shortly to go over what they think their spending 
 7  plans are, what they plan them to do and then what 
 8  we expect them to do and then how we will account 
 9  for it at the end of the year.  
10            The next one is -- this will be more than 
11  just a series of policy discussion papers.  Distinct 
12  Population Segments have been used for a long time.  
13  On the West Coast it was salmon.  We divide these 
14  salmon up into what we say are Distinct Population 
15  Segments.  
16            It's coming over now to the marine 
17  mammals.  Some of the concern I have is that as you 
18  get more technology and are able to through DNA and 
19  other genetics now to separate these animals into 
20  smaller and smaller groups, what are we going to 
21  have soon, but spread out Distinct Population 
22  Segments.  It's going to be so widely spread that I 
23  don't know how we're going to manage.  
24            We need to go back and look at this way of 
25  managing, this way of dividing up populations.  Is 
                                                      22
 1  it the best way to do it?  What does it mean in the 
 2  future?  
 3            This one to me is extremely important for 
 4  us to get done.  I think it's something that's 
 5  coming to light when you talk about resident 
 6  populations of killer whales or transient 
 7  populations of killer whales, and all this.  
 8            Then when you try to manage those as 
 9  Distinct Population Segments, I think it's going to 
10  present tremendous problems in the future.  So we 
11  need to really get together.  I would like to 
12  develop a policy on how we're going to handle these 
13  across the Agency.  
14            The other one that -- I don't want Bob 
15  Fletcher to see this because -- the next one, but we 
16  will have a workshop on managing recovering 
17  populations.  We are I think as we rebuild this --  
18            MR. FLETCHER:  Did you say that the sea 
19  lion is a recovering population with a straight 
20  face?  
21            MR. HOGARTH:  Well, wait a minute.  
22            MR. FLETCHER:  How about exploding?  
23            MR. HOGARTH:  We have to look at -- a lot 
24  of the fishery stocks are also recovering and 
25  reaching some levels that we haven't seen in a long 
                                                      23
 1  time.  
 2            I think we're beginning, I believe, to do 
 3  a much better job of rebuilding these stocks than we 
 4  are doing in managing the stocks once they are 
 5  recovered.  
 6            I think there's a number of fish, and then 
 7  how you get past this as they recover, to not try to 
 8  -- you'd like to catch more, but we haven't gotten 
 9  to the final stage of where you should be.  I think 
10  we just need to look at management of recovering 
11  populations.  
12            Also, the allocations of populations as we 
13  get larger populations, we need to look at the 
14  allocation issues.  
15            But mainly, we need to look at how we 
16  manage recovering populations.  
17            That, Bob, I think it does include marine 
18  mammals.  It includes fish.  It includes all of 
19  them.  Particularly, when you go to ecosystem-based 
20  management, then you know that people need to know 
21  how you're going to manage each recovering stock.  
22  It's going to be extremely controversial in some 
23  instances, but I think we can't continue not to 
24  address it.  So we're going to take it on.  
25            The other things, activities for 2005, 
                                                      24
 1  there is a Council National Meeting.  This is Chris 
 2  Oliver and the councils.  We're helping with it in 
 3  March, a lot of it on Magnuson Reauthorization.  
 4            We do have a State Directors Meeting in 
 5  April.  We meet with all the State Directors every 
 6  two years.  This will be in April in St. Pete.  Fish 
 7  and Wildlife Service has agreed to come.  So we're 
 8  trying to get those so all of us can work together.  
 9            Of course, we're meeting with Council 
10  Chairs and Executive Directors in April.  We have a 
11  lot of issues on the table there to talk about.  We 
12  want to talk about operating more business-like and  
13  we want to talk about IFQs and lots of things that I 
14  think we could do a little better at.  
15            We're going to have a National Data 
16  Workshop.  Steve Murawski from our shop in Preston 
17  Pate, North Carolina, the State Director.  
18            I think there are ways to be more 
19  consistent in data across the country, both 
20  commercial and recreational.  
21            I think you heard Louis Daniel talk 
22  yesterday about a state trip ticket that North 
23  Carolina has and the amount of information you can 
24  get from it and how you can see what you're doing.  
25  I think this is a possibility across the country, 
                                                      25
 1  both for that and for recreational.  
 2            We feel like that something has got to be 
 3  done in recreational for us to get better data.  
 4  Licensing, we support.  This Administration supports 
 5  it.  But we think the first goal of that should be a 
 6  state license, not a federal license.  
 7            I say that -- as a matter of fact, the 
 8  last time I was here Kitty orchestrated about a 
 9  1,000 people in opposition.  Come to find out, I 
10  wondered how she got so many people here, she had a 
11  local station give away a free trip to Las Vegas.  I 
12  didn't know that until the end of the night.  
13  (Laughter)  
14            But we do think if you're going to manage 
15  the recreational you really need to have a way of 
16  accounting for the fishermen that fish.  In the 
17  survey that we used, it's a random call and it's 
18  phone based, and it's not a very good way.  We need 
19  to improve our recreational data.  
20            This next one, Capacity Workshop.  Several 
21  of the industry people, particularly on the East 
22  Coast, came to us through Mary Hope and said they 
23  would like to have a workshop that was run by the 
24  industry to talk about capacity issues.  I think 
25  this is just an East Coast thing because on the West 
                                                      26
 1  Coast Pete has already gone through that process.  
 2            But on the East Coast we haven't gotten 
 3  very far.  I think it's an important issue and I'm 
 4  willing to try to fund that issue to get this 
 5  discussion going.  So if they want to do it, we're 
 6  planning to do it.  
 7            You heard about Magnuson-Stevens 
 8  Reauthorization.  That's continuing.  We need input 
 9  there.  
10            Aquaculture, we do have legislation.  I'll 
11  talk a little bit about that tomorrow, that we plan 
12  to get into it this year, offshore.  We've hired an 
13  Aquaculture Coordinator, Michael Rabino.  This is 
14  again extremely a controversial issue.  It seems 
15  like wherever you talk about it, it's both ends.  
16            But I don't think this country can afford 
17  not to have a good open discussion on aquaculture.  
18  I just don't think -- if you want to be 
19  self-sufficient in seafood, then I think we've got 
20  to make sure this is something that we can do 
21  without impacting our wild harvest and those that 
22  are involved in the wild harvest.  I think there's a 
23  place for both.  
24            We want to get some pilot projects going.  
25  We've been working very hard with Don Kent.  He gets 
                                                      27
 1  disgusted with us I think about every three months 
 2  because it's not moving fast enough.  But we do want 
 3  to look at these offshore rigs for cage culture.  
 4  There's lots of possibilities.  We just need to 
 5  really push for aquaculture and make sure it's done 
 6  environmentally sound, and I think we can.  
 7            But that's where we are.  You'll see a lot 
 8  more about aquaculture tomorrow at Oceanic Institute 
 9  and things that have been done.  
10            This is an extremely important issue to 
11  us.  I'm having to find money to put into it.  So 
12  far, even though the Administration is pushing it, 
13  we haven't been able to get much money at all.  So 
14  we're carrying this ourself.  
15            The last thing is Steve Murawski is going 
16  to have some workshops shortly on fishing 
17  mortality-based management rather than biomass.  I 
18  think you talked about National Standard 1 
19  yesterday, on how we manage biomass.  I think it's 
20  much simpler if we look at fishing mortality rates 
21  for management.  I think we should have this 
22  discussion in workshops.  If we can't do it 
23  internally, then it's something we need Magnuson 
24  Reauthorization to look at.  
25            But I think managing by fishing mortality 
                                                      28
 1  is much better understood by the public, and I think 
 2  we can have good results.  
 3            Everybody shows this vessel.  
 4            Right now we do have money basically for 
 5  all four vessels.  We need to give a lot of credit 
 6  to Secretary Evans for fighting for the budget for 
 7  all four of the new vessels.  This is the first one, 
 8  which will go to Alaska.  The second one goes to New 
 9  England.  The third one is somewhat in question.  It 
10  may go to the Gulf, except the Gulf really wants a 
11  shallow draft, and we feel like the West Coast needs 
12  the third one.  So it depends on if we get money for 
13  the fifth vessel, which would be a shallow draft, 
14  and then it would go to the Gulf.  
15            These are all state-of-the-art vessels, 
16  about 59 million dollars.  But they're the latest in 
17  technology, super quiet, and everything.  
18            So I present this, and we will be talking 
19  to MAFAC.  We think that some of these issues would 
20  be good for MAFAC to be involved in.  
21            The other thing we're doing is we have 
22  signed two contracts with National Academy of 
23  Science.  One of them is for recreational data.  
24            The other one is we've signed a contract 
25  with them -- Tom, you may know the group's name 
                                                      29
 1  better than I do, but it's with the medical side of 
 2  the National Academy of Science to look at 
 3  contaminants in fish, primarily mercury.  I think we 
 4  have to look at this issue and get the proper 
 5  information in front of the American public.  
 6            There's so many restaurants and things now 
 7  saying, don't eat this and don't eat that.  I think 
 8  the information on which this is based is not really 
 9  good and we're doing a disservice I think to the 
10  American citizens because we know seafood is very 
11  healthy.  So we need to get the right message.  
12            So, hopefully, that's something that maybe 
13  this group would like to look at overall on how you 
14  present that -- you know, as we get that 
15  information, how do we present it.  
16            I know Tom is doing some work with the FDA 
17  along the same lines.  We've had a meeting and tried 
18  to coordinate that, but that's something else that 
19  we're doing.  That's probably about another 12, 14, 
20  months away before they have any results.  
21            But there's a lot of things in fisheries.  
22  The only thing I'll say in closing is I hope we're 
23  making progress.  I feel like we are.  I think we've 
24  had some rocky road.  We've tried to open up the 
25  Agency.  
                                                      30
 1            You heard about the war yesterday in 
 2  Alaska.  It definitely was, because I was there and 
 3  I watched and heard it.  There was somewhat a little 
 4  bit of that out here earlier when we tried to do 
 5  Section 7.  So I think those days are behind us.  I 
 6  think we're trying to be more open and work with the 
 7  industry in a more open and transparent manner, both 
 8  recreational and commercial.  
 9            That's where we are.  If you have any 
10  suggestions to me, or things you feel like we have 
11  not addressed or that we should address, I would 
12  love to hear them.  
13            The next couple years I think will be very 
14  exciting.  
15            MR. FLETCHER:  A comment and a question, 
16  Bill.  
17            First of all, I want to tell you that Bill 
18  Fox has been tremendous in the Southwest Center 
19  working with us on cooperative research.  
20            You mentioned how these new vessels, new 
21  research vessels, are not going to replace 
22  cooperative research.  We saw a perfect example of 
23  that in the Southwest Region where the DAVID STARR 
24  JORDAN got involved in acoustic research, acoustic 
25  technology for stock assessments, and Glen Franke 
                                                      31
 1  worked with the DAVID STARR JORDAN, where as the 
 2  DAIVD STARR JORDAN would run transects with the new 
 3  acoustic technology.  Then Glen Franke would come 
 4  right behind with the ROV, kind of documenting the 
 5  makeup of the schools that the DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 6  was identifying through the acoustic technology.  
 7            I think it's really a smooth relationship.  
 8            MR. HOGARTH:  That's been really good 
 9  work.  
10            MR. FLETCHER:  It's excellent, it really 
11  is.  
12            Well, Bill Fox has said, in three years I 
13  believe we will have gotten enough information where 
14  we can complete this experimental work and have a 
15  new tool for stock assessments.  So that's really 
16  going well.  
17            My question is, the old bugaboo, the 
18  California sea lion.  Now that we're looking at 
19  Reauthorization of the MMPA, isn't there some 
20  responsibility on the federal government's part to 
21  begin to get involved again in trying to develop 
22  some nonlethal deterrents?  
23            Because these stocks don't go away.  
24  They're continuing to get worse.  The interactions 
25  are worse at all levels.  
                                                      32
 1            It seems -- and Don Kent's people have 
 2  done some great work on documenting the population 
 3  at the outer islands.  But we're just totally unable 
 4  to deal with the problems.  It's gotten worse and 
 5  worse.  
 6            We're going to be pushing on the Congress 
 7  to look at some way, perhaps creating a pot of money 
 8  if that is at all possible, so that the private 
 9  sector can work on nonlethal deterrents.  
10            But right now it's a horrific problem.  
11            MR. HOGARTH:  Well, I think that is one of 
12  the responsibilities.  I think we have to look at 
13  nonlethal deterrents and ways to -- because if we're 
14  going to look at ecosystems, again, we might have to 
15  look at the total ecosystem.  
16            I think it is, nonlethal is the only way 
17  this country will go, in my opinion.  So I think 
18  that's acceptable.  
19            Now, a lot of times they laugh at me 
20  internally, I think sterilization is still something 
21  -- it's difficult, but I think it's something you 
22  could probably use.  If you know the population well 
23  enough, I think there's probably something you could 
24  do with sterilization.  
25            MR. ROBERTS:  Bill, putting two things 
                                                      33
 1  together, your comments about IFQs and also managing 
 2  recovering fisheries.  
 3            Is it left up to the councils or is it a 
 4  NOAA Fisheries policy that that's going to be 
 5  developed?  
 6            Let me give you an example.  If an IFQ 
 7  program is established and the population is 
 8  overfished, or whatever, and it's going to be 
 9  recovering over time, as that stock recovers and 
10  puts twice as much total allowable catch on the -- 
11  over a period of five years or ten years, is it 
12  assumed that the IFQ shares are going to relate to 
13  the recovered population?  Or is the recovered 
14  population, a share of that, going to be maintained 
15  for some sort of diversity goal or some other sort 
16  of economic goal?  
17            I think that question will be pretty 
18  fundamental when you have an IFQ program or a buyout 
19  and also a recovering stock, what's going to happen.  
20            MR. HOGARTH:  I think there's a couple 
21  ways that could go.  
22            I think in most of these fisheries now we 
23  have limited entry.  People have come out with that 
24  sort of thing.  They are there.  
25            It's up to the council, primarily.  But we 
                                                      34
 1  need to gather some data.  Do they allow some of 
 2  these people back into the fishery?  
 3            But I think, also, do it at an arbitrarily 
 4  low level on a lot of these quotas that they will 
 5  get.  So I think there will be a certain percentage 
 6  that the -- I think will be sort of -- like Alaska's 
 7  done, if you get to a certain point, you're going to 
 8  have some say to a certain percentage you wouldn't 
 9  allowed to be harvested, I think.  
10            But I think it's a combination of what we 
11  allow and what Congress may allow, and say, look at 
12  IFQs.  But I think this is why we need to have this 
13  discussion and an open discussion.  Most of the IFQs 
14  we've had designed so far is with the fishermen's 
15  input.  The red snapper in the Gulf is really with 
16  the fishermen's involvement, with referendum both at 
17  the front and the end.  
18            I think there's a lot of possibilities. 
19  That's why we have this discussion.  
20            MR. ROBERTS:  I would think the guidelines 
21  when you developed them would need to address that 
22  specifically.  
23            MR. HOGARTH:  One of the big things that 
24  I'm hearing more and more is the concern -- and this 
25  can easily be taken care of.  The concern is that 
                                                      35
 1  there will be no more small fishing vessels in the 
 2  fishery.  I think definitely that is one that could 
 3  be very easily taken care of through this process.  
 4            MR. OSTERBACK:  Bill, could I add to your 
 5  -- because I'm familiar with -- you know, we do a 
 6  lot of IFQS in Alaska.  
 7            A couple things that happened probably 
 8  that you're asking about is, before they started, 
 9  say, on halibut, they went and started looking at 
10  what other countries have done.  Some of the things 
11  that had happened in IFQs in different places was, 
12  one of them that they looked at is they actually put 
13  it out in poundage, and then the resource dropped 
14  and then the fishermen sued the government because 
15  they didn't have the poundage.  
16            So the way it turned out is halibut went 
17  with units.  So your units fluctuate as your stock 
18  fluctuates.  
19            Or if somebody gets in, like when they did 
20  halibut, they also did a community development 
21  program called CDQs.  That portion was taken out.  
22  So then your units was divided into what was left.  
23  So there's always room for it to change.  
24            So you only get issued so many units, and 
25  that's divided into what's there.  That keeps it 
                                                      36
 1  from people saying, no, I actually -- you gave me 
 2  20,000 pounds and I want my 20,000 pounds.  
 3            MR. HOGARTH:  Other comments?  Do you 
 4  think we're going the right direction?  
 5            MR. RAYBURN:  Bill, how much is really the 
 6  fisheries deficit on the radar screen at the 
 7  Departmental level?  Is there a theme -- and in 
 8  Commerce?  
 9            Is there a theme in that that the 
10  objective of fisheries is really to provide to the 
11  overall commerce of the country; and if so, then 
12  doesn't that fit with the development of 
13  aquaculture, the development of products that will 
14  offset that deficit?  
15            I guess my point, is there a vision within 
16  the Department, within the Agency, that at some 
17  point in time this program of management is just a 
18  process?  
19            The real objective I suspect is to get to 
20  the point where you have sustained populations over 
21  time, and then what is the input to the commerce 
22  based on those sustained populations and how much 
23  more has to be made up to offset the current deficit 
24  or the projected deficit.  
25            Is that the theme?  Or is it still so 
                                                      37
 1  wrapped up in management that --  
 2            MR. HOGARTH:  Some of that is right now -- 
 3  because we hear it from several places.  
 4            One is that the Admiral has given me a 
 5  goal, for example -- I'm sure he's talked with the 
 6  New Secretary, and all, but a goal of reducing the 
 7  deficit over time through aquaculture and wild 
 8  harvest together.  
 9            This Administration has looked very hard 
10  at sustainability.  They feel like you have to get 
11  sustainability here and get more self-sufficient in 
12  seafood.  There is a lot of concern about the 
13  imports of seafood for security reasons right now.  
14  There are lots and lots of concern.  
15            So the Administration has put a lot on 
16  capacity, the stabilization.  Or you need a buyout 
17  or don't need a buyout.  We've got another buyout 
18  there in the longline fishery in Florida, to try to 
19  stabilize that.  
20            And IFQs, they feel like if you went to a 
21  market-based type of a system, that the fishermen 
22  have more control, that they will make a better 
23  living, the markets will be supplied more evenly.  
24  There won't be this up and down in the markets and 
25  relying so much on imports.  
                                                      38
 1            So I think there's a push to be more 
 2  business-like I think, both in decisions that we 
 3  make, but also in decisions that the fishermen make.  
 4  They don't want to go fishing today because the 
 5  price of fish is 50 cents.  Tomorrow it may be a 
 6  dollar.  So more decisions they make, rather than us 
 7  micromanaging.  
 8            We have really gotten to a point for 
 9  micromanaging, to let everybody have a little bit of 
10  the fishery and the maximum that they can get out of 
11  it.  
12            And there's a push for opportunities for 
13  recreational.  This President is an avid 
14  recreational fisherman and he's told us that he 
15  wants to make sure the recreational fishermen are 
16  getting a fair share in the management process.  
17            So I think it's a business.  I think this 
18  Administration looks at it as a business totally.  
19  So that includes trade and the whole thing.  
20            MR. RAYBURN:  And recreation fits into the 
21  commerce well.  
22            MR. HOGARTH:  Jim Cook.
23            MR. COOK:  I hope my voice lasts through 
24  this.  
25            I'm not sure this is the right place to 
                                                      39
 1  raise this issue, Bill, but I will do that anyway.  
 2            You're aware that bigeye -- overfishing is 
 3  occurring on bigeye in the Pacific, and you're also 
 4  aware that that is the major catch in Hawaii and 
 5  other Pacific Island areas that are under the 
 6  control of our region.  
 7            Under SFA we have certain criteria that we 
 8  have to deal with.  
 9            You know as well as I do what the status 
10  of the new Convention is.  
11            My concern is that the fishermen who fish 
12  for tuna under the U.S. jurisdiction are going to 
13  run up against some sort of SFA-motivated action 
14  exposing them to litigation, as well as exposing 
15  them to a loss of the catch.  
16            I would like the Agency to be thinking 
17  very carefully about what they're going to do about 
18  that, because as a group I don't think we mind at 
19  all being part of the solution to make sure that we 
20  have healthy stocks here.  But we know all too well 
21  about the two percent solution, and our fishery here 
22  has lost 100 million dollars in the last five years 
23  doing basically nothing for turtles.  So we don't 
24  want the same thing to happen, and we're very, very 
25  conscious of it.  
                                                      40
 1            I just want to lay that on the table, 
 2  because this is coming down the track.  We have 
 3  worked very hard out here to make the market.  It is 
 4  the largest fishery we have.  We don't want to go 
 5  down the same path that you and I have been going 
 6  down for the last five years.  
 7            MR. HOGARTH:  That's a good point, on the  
 8  international side, is that we know where a lot of 
 9  the small bigeye are being caught in the Atlantic, 
10  and probably the Pacific, too.  We've been trying to 
11  push for capacity controls, and also we're trying to 
12  get rid of some gear in the Atlantic in the bigeye 
13  tuna fishery.  They were catching small fish, 
14  particularly in the Mediterranean.  Get rid of drift 
15  gillnets in Morocco, for example.  
16            So, yeah, I think we have to -- we do have 
17  a tendency to subject our fishermen to more 
18  stringent regulations than is done internationally.  
19  But we have to keep pushing capacity issues 
20  internationally.  
21            We are taking that up with ICCAT this 
22  coming November.  The IATTC has already addressed 
23  it.  
24            But I think there could be international 
25  conferences where we have to get together.  
                                                      41
 1            MR. COOK:  Are we going to get ratified 
 2  this year?  
 3            MS. LENT:  Actually, we just heard this 
 4  morning that our Secretary of State has signed the 
 5  package and it's gone to the President, who will 
 6  pass it on to the Hill.  So, hopefully, that will be 
 7  soon.  
 8            I should also note that there were a lot 
 9  of people worried about this bigeye tuna thing now 
10  that we've sent the letter.  
11            One of the initial steps that is happening 
12  this week is just some conversations between the 
13  folks at HMS in the Atlantic who have had bigeye 
14  tuna overfishing and overfished for some time.  
15            In this case, we have overfishing only in 
16  the Pacific.  
17            But I think the idea is to take the 
18  approach that was taken in the Atlantic, which has 
19  not been subject to litigation, which is to say, 
20  United States knows what kind of reaction fishing 
21  mortality could take to remove overfishing, and take 
22  that to ICCAT year after year after year and say, 
23  let's get a bigeye tuna rebuilding plans.  We 
24  haven't gotten it.  
25            But in the meantime, the measures that we 
                                                      42
 1  have in place, such as limited entry, which you 
 2  already have here in Hawaii, and other, minimum 
 3  size, that type of thing.  Those types of measures 
 4  that are already in place in the Atlantic are 
 5  sufficient for the United States to say, hey, we've 
 6  done the best we can, but we will continue to fight 
 7  for an international rebuilding plan, and we haven't 
 8  been challenged on that.  
 9            Also, when the National Standard 1 
10  Guideline Proposal for changes come out, hopefully 
11  next month, there is a particular clause on 
12  international fisheries.  So everybody should be 
13  watching for that, and give your input in it; how 
14  best to handle our requirements to stop overfishing 
15  and rebuild stocks when we are just one of the 
16  fisheries, and sometimes five percent, or whatever.  
17            I believe that the situation for fish 
18  under Magnuson-Stevens is different from the 
19  obligations that we have under ESA, which led to -- 
20  as pointed out -- shutting down our fishery, even 
21  though the majority -- more than the majority is 
22  someplace else.  
23            So watch for those notes, and I will 
24  remind the regions that this needs to be discussed 
25  at council meetings, as well as the preparation for 
                                                      43
 1  international meetings.  
 2            Thank you, Mr. Chair.
 3            MR. OSTERBACK:  Tom.  Then Bob.  Then Mel. 
 4            MR. BILLY:  This month the Department of 
 5  Health and Human Services and the Ag Department are 
 6  reissuing the National Dietary Guidelines.  
 7            Included in that is a recommendation that 
 8  consumers eat two meals a week of seafood.  In round 
 9  numbers, with 90 percent of the population that eat 
10  fish and shellfish, on average they consume about 
11  one meal a week.  So from a national policy 
12  perspective, essentially it's being recommended that 
13  consumers double their consumption.  
14            Now, that's the current situation.  
15            Bill referred to a project that I'm 
16  working on with FDA, and also National Academy of 
17  Sciences.  
18            For the first time we're doing a very 
19  thorough review of the health benefits of seafood.  
20  I'm already amazed at the information that is out 
21  there from the medical community regarding research 
22  that has been done in this area.  
23            When this project is finished, I can 
24  easily foresee a situation where five years from now 
25  when the government is reconsidering the National 
                                                      44
 1  Dietary Guidelines it would be reasonable to expect 
 2  that that number of two meals a week be increased to 
 3  three or four meals a week some five years from now.  
 4  So the comments that Bill made about imports and 
 5  satisfying domestic demand, if in fact these things 
 6  are to occur there's going to be an enormous demand 
 7  for increased seafood consumption, whether it from 
 8  wild stocks or aquaculture or imports, or wherever.  
 9            So I've got a hunch that NOAA and perhaps 
10  with some advice from this committee, we need to be 
11  looking at how that demand is going to be met over 
12  the next five years or more.  
13            MR. FLETCHER:  Bill, I know that, at least 
14  on the Pacific Council, there has been a real 
15  concern because with going to a biannual groundfish 
16  cycle, it is set in stone in some peoples' minds the 
17  regulations would not be able to be changed unless 
18  information came out that stocks were not as healthy 
19  as they thought, and then the regulations would 
20  become more restrictive.  
21            But if information and data came out that 
22  the stocks were recovering, in some peoples' minds 
23  that wouldn't allow for the relaxation of the 
24  regulations.  That for a while was a real conflict.  
25            Now I'm wondering whether or not there 
                                                      45
 1  will be any resolution of that.  Because in the 
 2  minds of fishermen, if the information showed stock 
 3  recovering, even though you're in a biannual cycle 
 4  there should be an ability to provide more 
 5  opportunity.  And yet, in the minds of some of your 
 6  staff, that wasn't an option, but you could reduce 
 7  if stocks were shown to be in trouble versus what 
 8  they had shown earlier.  
 9            MR. HOGARTH:  That's one of the problems I 
10  think they have in Magnuson right now.  
11            We are looking at framework actions.  
12  We've had some problems with the attorneys on 
13  framework actions.  That's something we've tried -- 
14  Rebecca has been working quite a bit on, to see how 
15  we can do that.  I don't know if she's got answers 
16  yet or not, but it's something we want to make sure 
17  that the Magnuson Reauthorization is clear on, 
18  because we do get mixed signals.  
19            I think there is a way to do it through 
20  Notice of Action.  You can do some things that the 
21  council sets it up that way.  That's the way I think 
22  to do it.   
23            MR. FLETCHER:  It only seems logical to 
24  me, Bill, that if the data indicates that the best 
25  available science says the stock are in better 
                                                      46
 1  shape, there should be an opportunity -- especially 
 2  with all the cutbacks over the last few years in the 
 3  industry.  
 4            You heard Jim, we're not immune from those 
 5  kind of cuts and the economic hits that have 
 6  resulted.  
 7            MR. HOGARTH:  Well, I know the New England 
 8  Council has given the RA some ability to do some 
 9  things through Notice of Action.  It can be done.  
10  Yes.  
11            MR. MOON:  Thank you, Bill.  
12            I thought we had some excellent 
13  discussions yesterday about the ecosystem-based 
14  approach ideals and perhaps the Agency taking a very 
15  aggressive role at implementing parts of that.  I 
16  think that is an excellent step.  
17            But as far as the add-to activities list 
18  for 2005, I was concerned about the inclusion of 
19  tribal involvement, in particular those in the 
20  Northwest and Great Lakes, and even adding the 
21  Alaskan components to the plan for having 
22  consultation with the tribes.  
23            I know often we find that the council 
24  process primarily focuses on non-Indian allocation 
25  and non-Indian distribution of catch, those types of 
                                                      47
 1  activities are good.  But often we find ourselves 
 2  talking directly with NMFS or NOAA Fisheries on how 
 3  to deal with our fishery allocations.  
 4            Because of that, we find ourselves being a 
 5  sort of a super-minority in a lot of these council 
 6  processes.  I say that in a positive way, because I 
 7  believe we can bring a lot of good information to 
 8  these processes.  We just need to be provided an 
 9  avenue to have those exchanges.  
10            Most often, they do not take place at the 
11  council process.  
12            So I would strongly suggest that perhaps 
13  -- and in planning for needing information, that a 
14  formal consultation take place outside of the 
15  council process through the Science Director, pretty 
16  much the way we do them now, and that we try to get 
17  a perception from those Regions about where they see 
18  their goal in the ecosystem approaches and how they 
19  would be able to contribute to that, and also what 
20  other participation is.  
21            Often we get sort of a second to a 
22  stakeholder type of involvement, and they need to 
23  take the approach that way.  So I just suggest we 
24  try to  --  
25            MR. HOGARTH:  That's a good idea.  
                                                      48
 1            Randy.  
 2            MR. FISHER:  Thanks, Bill.  
 3            I guess I saw up there that you're going 
 4  to meet with the Regions bringing in - is that on 
 5  the 2007 budget?  
 6            MR. HOGARTH:  No, it's going to be 
 7  probably in 2005, too, we'll have them account for 
 8  the budget, and how we get feedback.  
 9            MR. FISHER:  The essence of the question, 
10  when I look back I know that you hate it when we go 
11  in and try to lobby for line items or more, because 
12  it seems like we go around you.  
13            But the situation now is becoming a little 
14  more critical because I'm convinced on the West 
15  Coast that we're not going to make statistically 
16  sound data programs if we don't get more money.  
17            So the question is, when you bring in the 
18  Regions, I'm sure they have a laundry list 7,000 
19  miles long to burn up all your money.  So how do we 
20  get involved in that so that we at some point go to 
21  OMB and say, listen, we need to fix some of this 
22  stuff.  
23            MR. HOGARTH:  We're trying to resolve that 
24  now.  Some people think it's by invitation only, but 
25  on March 2nd there will be a Stakeholders Meeting in 
                                                      49
 1  D.C. as the beginning of the 2008 budget process.  
 2            People are able to come and say, we need 
 3  -- here is what we think NOAA needs to be doing,  
 4  this is the management that we think NOAA needs, and 
 5  all.  The Admiral is a part of this process.  
 6            He talked to the councils this morning, 
 7  but he's involved.  
 8            That's one way to get in early in the 
 9  process we're going through.  
10            Now, let me say this.  I don't have a 
11  problem with people going to Congress and getting 
12  what they get.  The only problem is when I get 
13  somebody comes up and says, aha, when they get it.  
14  That bothers me.
15            MR. FISHER:  Right.  
16            MR. HOGARTH:  But if it's an add-on, so 
17  you can get something done, I think it's great that 
18  you can get it done.  It's only because of the aha.  
19            I'm hoping -- Jack is working very hard to 
20  try to find ways to open up the ecosystem part of 
21  the budget, to get input.  So you'll probably hear 
22  more from him in this process.  
23            MR. FISHER:  Well, if you look at the 
24  future and if you look at some of the things we 
25  need, I mean the information we get on VMS will be 
                                                      50
 1  very helpful.  I mean, I can see this stuff coming.  
 2            And the states just don't have any money 
 3  to put in to make these things happen.  So it's got 
 4  to come from somewhere.   So it's a priority-listing 
 5  process within the Agency I believe, to some extent, 
 6  and we don't get to play that game.  
 7            MR. HOGARTH:  Well, the program should be 
 8  taking that, too.  I mean, Sustainable Fisheries and 
 9  all, if you look at the programs we have, they 
10  should be carrying that message forward.  You give 
11  it to them.  They should be carrying this message 
12  forward, too, to the Goal Team.  We depend on the 
13  programs to carry it also.  
14            Eric.
15            MR. SCHWAAB:  Bill, you mentioned a couple 
16  things about recreational data.  You mentioned the 
17  NAS study and then you also mentioned the prospect 
18  of uniform or standardized coastal -- a question and 
19  a comment.  
20            I just wondered on the NAS study, if you 
21  could say another word or two about what the focus 
22  of that is, and what the time frame is.  I heard you 
23  say 12 to 14 months, but I didn't understand if that 
24  was for that study or the MRFSS study.
25            MR. HOGARTH:  The recreational has about a 
                                                      51
 1  year left.  
 2            We went to them because we honestly are 
 3  trying to find the best way to do recreational data.  
 4  For ten years I've heard nothing but complaints, 
 5  particularly with the information on marlins, but 
 6  it's turned over now to summer flounder and others, 
 7  that the information is just wrong.  
 8            So we really went to them with a series of 
 9  questions and things.  They are in the process right  
10  now of getting their team together.   We have 
11  nothing to do with who they choose to be on that 
12  team.  
13            They will be talking to fishing groups, 
14  and all, and come back to us with recommendations on 
15  how they think we can do a better job to collect 
16  recreational data.  We've made lots of changes and 
17  spent lots of money.  
18            Recently we've given most of it to the 
19  commissions, and all.  So it's there.  
20            The National Data Workshop is to sort of 
21  go hand-in-hand with this to see what we can do both 
22  on commercial and recreational.  Because we know the 
23  states have a lot of good commercial process.  But 
24  then they don't all have the same.  So we know on 
25  the East Coast, the CSP is doing a lot in the 13 
                                                      52
 1  eastern states.  We'd just like to see if we can 
 2  coordinate with all this, and is there a system in 
 3  this country that could be put together to make sure 
 4  that we're getting the most reliable data.  
 5            It could be compared with each other, so 
 6  to speak, did you say the East Coast caught this or 
 7  this state caught this.  With that comparison, you 
 8  can say the other state did the data comparison -- 
 9  you can make a data comparison.  
10            MR. SCHWAAB:  My comment, and it's really 
11  a concern, as you referred first to the Ocean 
12  Commission Report, I think I heard it a little bit 
13  in your comment today that I think there's a lot of 
14  good reasons for coastal licensing, for recreational 
15  fishermen.  
16            But one of the concerns I have, and I 
17  think a lot of people see it as sort of a panacea 
18  that, in and of itself, it's going to solve this 
19  recreational data collection issue, and that came 
20  across very clearly in the Ocean Commission Report.  
21  They thought, well, this is the way that problem is 
22  going to be solved.  
23            In fact, the way the traditional 
24  recreational survey work is done, and that will only 
25  solve sort of the front end of the problem, and it's 
                                                      53
 1  not the most expensive aspect of the problem.  But I 
 2  think that we ought to be careful to -- we ought to 
 3  be careful about allowing that idea to exist out 
 4  there, that the recreational license is going to 
 5  solve our recreational data problem.  It's not.  
 6            It's going to take a lot of money and a 
 7  lot more hard work in figuring how to standardize 
 8  and improve that --  
 9            MR. HOGARTH:  Particularly, I think in 
10  rare event species, it definitely is.  I think the 
11  license -- a common database slowly will be much 
12  more accurate as far as most of the species.  
13            But rare event, we do have a problem.  
14  We're still trying to figure out how to account for 
15  -- and marlin is mostly catch and release on the 
16  East Coast and the Gulf.  So it becomes more 
17  difficult.
18            MR. RAYBURN:  First, she just stepped in, 
19  my colleague, Malia Rivera, is here from the Sea 
20  Grant Program, the Extension Leader in Hawaii.  I 
21  want to introduce her to the Committee. 
22            There's been a couple things from your 
23  presentation.  I seem to recall that November a year 
24  ago or so when you met with the Sea Grant Directors 
25  you indicated you may invite them to the State 
                                                      54
 1  Directors meeting, and I didn't know if that was 
 2  still on the possibility or not.  
 3            MR. HOGARTH:  I have talked to Ron, but I 
 4  don't know if you --  
 5            MR. RAYBURN:  Okay.  I wouldn't 
 6  necessarily be looped into that.  I just wanted to 
 7  remind you.  
 8            Then, the Capacity Reduction Workshop that 
 9  you mentioned on the West Coast, there is some 
10  interest, I mean because of the shrimp business plan 
11  that you developed, and all.  There is a little bit 
12  of activity on capacity reduction in the Gulf, a 
13  possibility for the shrimp industry.  My colleague, 
14  Gary Graham, was attempting to set up a workshop in 
15  Brownsville/Port Isabel on capacity reduction.  So 
16  if there is something developed on the East Coast, 
17  maybe if you could keep us in the loop.  We'd really 
18  like to have some observer there to kind of see how 
19  it goes.  So if you kind of keep that in mind.  
20            As I said, this is a plan that you 
21  developed, Bill.  You know how it is when you throw 
22  things out like that, it takes a while for it to 
23  gel. But it seems like the shrimp business plan that 
24  came out, maybe there is some opportunity there in 
25  getting a capacity reduction program, at least 
                                                      55
 1  people thinking about it, how it might develop, so 
 2  all is not lost there either.  
 3            MR. HOGARTH:  I agree.  
 4            By the way, some of the shrimpers, during 
 5  this tsunami thing, in the Gulf called and wanted to 
 6  know about transferring boats or giving boats to 
 7  Indonesia.  
 8            MR. RAYBURN:  Is that right?  
 9            MR. HOGARTH:  That there's so many idle 
10  boats that they thought that it would be best to do 
11  that.  
12            Under Tab 15, just so ya'll know this, we 
13  work very well with Sea Grant on the Fishery 
14  Extension Enhancement.  Just for your information, 
15  there's projects here that have been funded through 
16  Sea Grant's Extension Program.  It would be 
17  interesting, if you want to look at that.  
18            There's going to be one right now on 
19  seabird bycatch in the Pacific Ocean from Sea Grant.  
20            MR. RAYBURN:  What tab is that?  15.  
21            These are the projects in that Fisheries 
22  Extension Enhancement that Jim Murray mentioned at 
23  the last meeting.  About two million dollars that 
24  were taken out of the overall budget, it was 
25  somewhat of an unfunded mandate.  So these are 
                                                      56
 1  projects that have been funded to date.  This just 
 2  came out the other day, I believe.  
 3            MR. BRYANT:  Right.  From Jim.  
 4            MR. RAYBURN:  He had to wait until all the 
 5  processing was done.  
 6            But, I mean, there was a discussion at the 
 7  last meeting about Sea Grant and the MAFAC being 
 8  more engaged in selection of these types of efforts 
 9  to make sure that they apply well to the regions, 
10  and stuff like that.  
11            So I think Laurel and Jim are still 
12  working on coming up with a relationship, but there 
13  are other types of initiatives like this that would 
14  be appropriate for MAFAC to be engaged in in a 
15  review type status.  
16            MR. HOGARTH:  I'm going to have to run.  
17  After a couple more questions I have to go do a 
18  conference call on LNG, said the ecosystem is not 
19  working in the Gulf of Mexico.  
20            MR. KRAMER:  Just a quick question, and it 
21  may be better for Rebecca, Bill.  
22            Our international membership often looks 
23  to the U.S. fisheries managers for guidance, 
24  assistance and leadership on issues.  One of the 
25  areas that I've heard of the biggest concern are 
                                                      57
 1  these tuna grow-out operations.  
 2            I mentioned to you, Laurel, that I've been 
 3  spending some time in the Mediterranean area, and 
 4  there's a huge concern over there.  
 5            I was wondering if there are any plans in 
 6  2005 within the Agency to either find out more about 
 7  this, and what specifically you might be doing to 
 8  address some of these issues.  
 9            MR. HOGARTH:  There will be a meeting in 
10  April, an ICCAT meeting.  Part of that meeting will 
11  focus -- it will be a bluefin meeting to look at 
12  management, but it will focus on the farming issue 
13  also.  That will be in Japan.  I think it's the week 
14  of April the --  
15            MS. LENT:  Bill, you're also going to 
16  Morraco.  
17            MR. HOGARTH:  Yes.  We're also planning a 
18  trip to Morocco to look at some of the operations, 
19  and a couple other places, for the same things.  
20            MR. KRAMER:  I'm receiving some 
21  information from them, photographs and things like 
22  that.  
23            MS. LENT:  Their concerns have to do with?  
24            MR. KRAMER:  Just the lack of fish in the 
25  Mediterranean, and seeing these operations on some 
                                                      58
 1  of these commercial vessels that have typically been 
 2  in port at certain times of the year and gone down 
 3  and circling some giant schools of juvenile fish.  
 4            MR. HOGARTH:  They're towing some of these 
 5  fish 600 miles, and the mortality associated with it 
 6  is really a big question.  ICCAT will be looking at 
 7  this issue further.  
 8            We discussed it extensively at the last 
 9  meeting, and it will take a lot more action.  I want 
10  to go look at some of the operations.  But we are 
11  very much involved and very much concerned about 
12  these operations.  
13            Part of the March forum, we wanted to see 
14  if we could get a couple of hours on there to talk 
15  about bluefin tuna, and what's happening in New 
16  England.   
17            MR. SISSENWINE:  You're talking about the 
18  Maine Fishermen's Forum?  
19            MR. HOGARTH:  Yes.  
20            MR. SISSENWINE:  That's scheduled.  
21            MR. HOGARTH:  Okay.  Good.  
22            Before I leave, because I won't be here 
23  for the next presentation on Deep-water Corals, I 
24  want to tell you this is really a priority of NOAA, 
25  itself, and NOAA Fisheries and the Administration.  
                                                      59
 1            I think the councils have really stepped 
 2  up to the plate and are doing a great job in looking 
 3  at this issue.  I think New England has already 
 4  taken some action.  South Atlantic is.  Hawaii is. 
 5  Alaska is.  So this is an important issue.  
 6            Our point in this is, do we think there 
 7  are a lot of areas -- potentially a lot of areas 
 8  that haven't had fishing, never have had fishing  
 9  and haven't been impacted by fishing that we can 
10  protect.  We think these are Essential Fish Habitat 
11  and unique in a lot of ways and they need to be 
12  protected.  
13            So we're very happy to actually see that 
14  at the councils, and I want to thank them for what 
15  they've done, that they're addressing this issue.  
16            It's one that we would like to see a lot 
17  of attention given to, both from the U.S. and 
18  internationally.  
19            Internationally, we did not agree to the 
20  proposal to ban all corals.  We did say that we 
21  would be very receptive to looking at areas that 
22  haven't been impacted, and to look at those areas.  
23  But we think -- so sorry I'm not going to be here 
24  for the discussion, but I've been summoned.  So 
25  thanks a lot, and I'll be back probably in about an 
                                                      60
 1  hour.  
 2            MR. OSTERBACK:  Okay.  Now that Bill's 
 3  gone we can have a break.  No.  
 4            I'm going to change the schedule a little 
 5  bit.  I think Laurel has got a few announcements, 
 6  things she needs to do.  Then I think we'll go ahead 
 7  and take our break and then come back and do corals 
 8  right up until lunch so we don't break right in the 
 9  middle of that.  
10            (Brief logistical announcements by Laurel 
11  Bryant)  
12            (Brief break taken)  
13            MR. OSTERBACK:  Okay.  We're going to go 
14  into cold-water corals.  We'll go up to lunch with 
15  this.  
16            If you look at your agenda, the way we'll 
17  do it is Dr. Tom Hourigan will lead off with it.  
18  Then Dr. Ricky Grigg will go second.  Then Dr. 
19  Sissenwine will finish third.  
20            So the floor is yours, Tom. 
21                   (Cold-water Corals)  
22            (Status of the Science, What Do We Know)
23            MR. HOURIGAN:  Thank you very much.  I 
24  appreciate this opportunity.  
25            As Dr. Hogarth mentioned, cold-water 
                                                      61
 1  corals, also known as deep-water corals or deep-sea 
 2  corals, are increasingly important and during the 
 3  last several years have increased in the minds -- or 
 4  increased in the importance in the minds of many 
 5  people.  
 6            Today I'm going to give a little 
 7  introduction to cold-water corals, a little bit 
 8  about cold-water coral ecosystems in the United 
 9  States.  I'm not going to be speaking too much about 
10  cold-water corals here in Hawaii and the Pacific.  
11  Dr. Grigg has done a lot of the basic research over 
12  a lifetime on that, and we're really very privileged 
13  to have him come and speak with us.  
14            I'm also going to speak a little bit about 
15  some of the research that's going on and some of the 
16  management challenges we're facing and some of the 
17  recommendations that have come out in recent reports 
18  and commissions on this.  A few things on recent 
19  international issues, this is not just an issue that 
20  is affecting our work here domestically, but it's 
21  really taking the center stage internationally as 
22  well.  
23            Then after Dr. Grigg's talk, Mike will be 
24  leading us through some of the issues for MAFAC's 
25  consideration.  
                                                      62
 1            As I mentioned, cold-water corals, also 
 2  known as deep-sea corals, have actually been known 
 3  by fishermen who have been hauling these up in their 
 4  fishing gear for a long period of time.  There's 
 5  some work going back to the 1800s on this 
 6  scientifically.  But it's really only in the last 
 7  decade that work on this has accelerated and become 
 8  better known.  
 9            There are hundreds of species of corals 
10  which exist in colder waters.  Many of these, 
11  however, are branching corals.  Some of these occur 
12  individually, but some of them occur in thickets 
13  that actually form habitats, coral-reef like 
14  structures.  They provide habitats in some cases for 
15  thousands of other species.  
16            In most cases these grow much more slowly 
17  than the more well-known tropical corals.  Because 
18  of this, damaged corals or reefs may take decades to 
19  centuries to recover.  
20            They're found in all oceans and between 
21  depths of 40 meters to over 2,000 meters.  
22            Some of the groups which are included in 
23  this -- and it is a variety of different groups, the 
24  stony corals, the Scleratinians, which are the 
25  corals we usually think about as creating the 
                                                      63
 1  tropical coral reefs.  There are a number of genera 
 2  which are particularly important.  Some of these 
 3  form, as I mentioned, reef-like structures.  
 4            Some Lophelia reefs off of Norway, the 
 5  largest one which has been measured is 35 kilometers 
 6  long and 2.8 kilometers in width and 30 to 40 meters 
 7  in height.  
 8            In addition to stony corals, however, 
 9  there are octocorals, which include precious corals 
10  which are harvested here and elsewhere for jewelry.  
11  There are sea fans and bamboo corals.  This group is 
12  probably the most abundant of the cold-water corals.  
13  There are also octocorals that occur in shallow 
14  waters.  
15            In some cases, they occur individually.  
16  In other cases, they do form thickets and may be 
17  associated with sponges and a lot of other 
18  organisms.  Also some of these corals can be very 
19  old.  Some of the Parigorgia species, individual 
20  colonies have been aged at 300 to 500 years old.  
21            Other groups are lace corals, which are 
22  hydrocorals and black corals, which often occur sort 
23  of in the shallower end of the deep-water corals.  
24            Why should we care about these?  
25            In essence, although they're fascinating 
                                                      64
 1  from their own viewpoint, really what has captured 
 2  peoples' attention has been the habitat that these 
 3  create for other species.  More and more we're 
 4  seeing comparisons to the biological diversity on 
 5  shallow-water coral reefs.  Many of these we're just 
 6  starting to learn about all the species that are 
 7  associated with them.  
 8            But in many cases, thousands of different 
 9  species of invertebrates, fish and others.  This 
10  biological diversity suggests that many of the 
11  associated species may be important for new 
12  pharmaceuticals or other natural products.  
13            In other cases, also we've identified 
14  these structures, these habitats, as important for 
15  commercially-exploited species.  
16            I'll mention, however, that in many cases 
17  this link has not yet been made.  Whether this is 
18  because commercially-exploited species are not 
19  really using these extensively or it's because we 
20  just haven't done the research because of the 
21  expense that is involved in looking at some of these 
22  deeper water habitats.  There's still a lot we don't 
23  know.  
24            Finally, the coral themselves are being 
25  looked at as indicators of past climate change.  
                                                      65
 1  Because they set down calcareous skeletons they 
 2  contain information about water temperatures and 
 3  water conditions at depths below where we've been 
 4  looking as far as records of surface temperatures 
 5  and conditions.  
 6            This just shows North America.  I put this 
 7  slide up here primarily just to show that these 
 8  resources occur off all of the coasts in the areas 
 9  of all of the councils.  I put it not on this slide, 
10  but including Hawaii and the Western Pacific.  
11            Some of the recent work -- and I'll go 
12  through this very quickly.  Over the last five 
13  years, four years, exploration for the NUR Program, 
14  the National Undersea Research Program, through the 
15  Ocean Exploration Program, and others by NMFS has 
16  increased tremendously.  
17            In the New England area there's been a lot 
18  of work recently over of the last four years on the 
19  New England seamounts, which are revealing important 
20  coral resources and really fascinating associated 
21  biota.  
22            This is one of the maps which is over 
23  here.  These were prepared a couple months ago at 
24  the request of some congressional staffers.  
25            What this shows is -- and I don't expect 
                                                      66
 1  you to see this here, but later during the break you 
 2  can take a look at these.  It shows some of the 
 3  areas where there are known coral aggregations along 
 4  the Coast of New England.  You can see that many of 
 5  these are at the shelf break or in canyons or on the 
 6  seamounts.  
 7            This shows areas where there are existing 
 8  trawling or scallop threshing occurring.  
 9            There have also been recent discoveries in 
10  the South Atlantic and in the Gulf.  NURP and NOAA 
11  Fisheries have been leading expeditions recently to 
12  the Oculina reefs off Florida.  These are unique 
13  habitats that have been shown to be very important 
14  for a number of species, fish and shrimp.  This is 
15  also the first deeper water coral habitat which was 
16  protected as an HAPC by a council.  
17            It's sort of the shallowest of the 
18  deep-water coral communities.  
19            In addition to the Oculina reefs, however, 
20  off the shelf are important Lophelia reefs.  These 
21  are the same species as these large reef structures 
22  which occur off of Norway and the Northeastern 
23  Atlantic.  We're just starting to look at these.  
24  Over the last two years there have been some recent 
25  expeditions, these off of North Carolina.  
                                                      67
 1            There's also mounds of Lophelia which are 
 2  being researched by the USGS in the Gulf.  
 3            Perhaps the most exciting research and 
 4  resources that have been looked at with regards to 
 5  deep-water corals are on the Alaskan Seamounts and 
 6  the Aleutian Islands.  Tremendous amount of corals.  
 7  Some of the trawl survey data indicate that Aleutian 
 8  Islands may harbor the highest abundance and 
 9  diversity of cold-water corals in the world.  
10            These are mostly octocorals.  There are 
11  some 70 corals there as well.  NOAA Fisheries and 
12  the North Pacific Council are looking at these as 
13  areas for new HAPCs.  
14            This map here, which is also up on the 
15  wall over there, shows all of these green dots are 
16  areas of corals and bryozoans, which have been 
17  identified through observers on trawls.  This shows 
18  some of the distribution of that.  
19            Also in Hawaii, deep-water corals, 
20  especially the precious corals, the black corals 
21  have been known here for a long time.  Dr. Grigg 
22  will be speaking more about this.  
23            The Western Pacific Fishery Management 
24  Council is the only council which actually has an 
25  FMP and an active sustainable management program for 
                                                      68
 1  the collection of precious corals.  However, new 
 2  research which has been accomplished just in the 
 3  last couple of years in the Northwestern Hawaiian 
 4  Islands and some of the seamounts are discovering 
 5  new coral resources in deeper areas that were not 
 6  known, new species and new associated communities.  
 7            There are also some interesting places 
 8  that have been discovered by putting critter cams, 
 9  little video cameras, on endangered monk seals, 
10  which revealed the last couple of years that they 
11  actually go down to these deep gold coral areas and 
12  forage around these areas.  
13            As I mentioned, there's a sustainable 
14  harvest of precious corals, black corals, here in 
15  Hawaii.  One of the things of concern is recently 
16  there has been an invasive snowflake coral from the 
17  Caribbean which is attacking Hawaiian black corals, 
18  and it really is endangering what has previously 
19  been a sustainable harvest for these species.  
20            Some of the areas that have been 
21  identified as important areas for research are 
22  listed here.  This is actually here from a summary 
23  in a Deep-sea Coral Workshop which was held in 
24  Galway, Ireland a couple years ago in 2003.  
25            One of the top priorities identified is 
                                                      69
 1  mapping these areas.  Because they are deep in a lot 
 2  of cases we don't know what's down there.  We don't 
 3  know where these areas are.  So there's a need for 
 4  synoptic, low-resolution mapping of areas where we 
 5  suspect some of these corals may be.  
 6            There's also a need for finer-scale 
 7  mapping and characterization of the areas where we 
 8  know that there are corals.  
 9            If you look at the map for North New 
10  England, which are based not on trawl bycatch but 
11  just the scientific studies, you'll see that there 
12  are some canyons where we have identified that 
13  there's corals because there have been research 
14  submersible work done there.  There are others which 
15  may be very similar, but because we haven't looked 
16  at them we don't know what's there.  
17            We also need to understand linkages of 
18  fishery species with these deep-sea coral habitats. 
19  As I mentioned, in the case of Oculina, in part 
20  because it's shallower, in the 80 to 100 meter 
21  range, it's been identified as very important to 
22  snappers and groupers.  
23            For many of these deeper areas, we haven't 
24  made that connection yet.  This is one of the things 
25  that councils have identified for us as a priority 
                                                      70
 1  for their action.  
 2            We also don't know a lot about the basic 
 3  biology and ecology of both corals and the 
 4  associated species; what is the biodiversity in 
 5  these habitats and what are the growth and 
 6  reproduction strategies of the corals that create 
 7  these habitats.  
 8            We also need to assess the vulnerability 
 9  and resilience of these communities to disturbance.  
10  I mentioned already, deep-sea corals are indicators 
11  of past climate change.  
12            So what are the conservation concerns?  
13            First of all, the biggest threat by far 
14  and the biggest impact currently is from fishing 
15  gear, especially trawl.  Bottom-set gillnets and 
16  longlines are also known to entangle these corals.  
17  In some cases there are also concerns about pots and 
18  traps.  But certainly, trawling is known to be the 
19  biggest impact to these resources.  
20            There are also other threats, such as oil 
21  and gas exploration and development, cables.  A 
22  number of the councils are starting to look at these 
23  as well.  
24            I mentioned the slow growth rates, which 
25  in many cases mean extremely long recovery times, 
                                                      71
 1  much longer than you or I or our children or our 
 2  grandchildren may be around.  
 3            The good news is that a lot of these 
 4  deeper areas haven't been trawled.  So there's an 
 5  opportunity here to understand these resources 
 6  before they're destroyed.  
 7            Flip side of that is that trawling is 
 8  expanding into some of these areas, and this is a 
 9  big concern for a number of the councils.  
10            So we have an opportunity both to look at 
11  these resources and to conserve these habitats 
12  before they're destroyed.  
13            I mentioned that there's been a lot of 
14  growing concern recently.  In your packets, there's 
15  a cold-water coral timeline which shows some of the 
16  activities -- selected activities in the U.S., as 
17  well as internationally.  This has really 
18  accelerated within the last year or two.  
19            The front page of that timeline is from 
20  1800s to 2003, and the second page is all 2004.  
21            Over the last three years the United 
22  Nations General Assembly has called for urgent 
23  action to improve the management of seamounts and 
24  undersea features, and has specifically cited 
25  deep-sea corals.  
                                                      72
 1            In September of 2003 there was the Second 
 2  International Deep-Sea Coral Symposium, which 
 3  brought together a lot of the science that we have.  
 4            In November of 2003 the Deep-Sea Coral 
 5  Protection Act was introduced in the Senate in the 
 6  last session.  The following year a similar bill was 
 7  introduced in the House.  
 8            In February of 2004 over 1,000 scientists 
 9  released a consensus statement at an American 
10  Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting 
11  urging increased protection of deep-sea corals.  
12            In March of 2004 Oceana petitioned the 
13  Secretary of Commerce to protect deep-sea corals and 
14  some habitats from trawling.  
15            In September of 2004 the Ocean Commission 
16  released a report that identified conservation of 
17  deep-sea coral communities as a priority.  
18            No one is really the principal federal 
19  agency entrusted with conserving and managing these 
20  resources.  I mentioned Department of Interior, NMS 
21  do have responsibilities as far as oil and gas 
22  exploration and mineral exploration.  
23            But when it comes to fisheries impacts, 
24  the buck really stops here.  
25            Really, there are only the two major 
                                                      73
 1  mandates that we have for this, are in the 
 2  Magnuson-Stevens Act, fisheries management in 
 3  federal waters, and most of these deeper water coral 
 4  resources, unlike the shallow coral reefs, occur 
 5  within federal waters.  
 6            The second mandate we have is under the 
 7  National Marine Sanctuaries Program.  Some of these 
 8  important resources are being discovered in existing 
 9  sanctuaries.  Many of them, however, lie outside of 
10  the existing sanctuaries.  
11            I mentioned that the Fishery Management 
12  Councils are increasingly active in this area.  I 
13  think every single one of the councils have 
14  activities going on on this.  
15            West Pac was really one of the leaders in 
16  conservation of these resources, going back to 
17  banning of fish bottom-trawl gear in the Western and 
18  Central Pacific back in 1983 based on some of the 
19  experiences from foreign trawlers on seamounts and 
20  other.  
21            They also banned the use of nonselective 
22  gear in precious coral harvest.  Regulations on that 
23  were finalized I think in 2002.  
24            I also mentioned the South Atlantic 
25  Fishery Management Council established the Oculina 
                                                      74
 1  HAPC in 1984.  This was really the first -- 
 2  globally, the first protected area for deep-sea 
 3  corals that was established.  This was expanded in 
 4  2000, and is currently doing a lot of work working 
 5  with NMFS and NOAA Undersea Research Program getting 
 6  information and considering the establishment of 
 7  additional HAPCs in areas to protect deep-water 
 8  corals.  
 9            North Pacific Fishery Management Council 
10  has been responding to new information which has 
11  been coming in from research on these coral areas.  
12  They already put aside huge areas, not necessarily 
13  specifically for protection of deep-water corals, 
14  however this information went into their 
15  deliberations.  
16            The Sitka Pinnacles Marine Reserve was 
17  specifically identified as one of these areas where 
18  there were important resources, and is now reviewing 
19  information on new HAPCs.  Many of these are focused 
20  on area seamounts and undisturbed coral beds.  
21            New England Fisheries Management Council 
22  just last year recommended the closure of canyons 
23  which were known to be particularly important areas 
24  with corals, closures to monkfish trawling.  
25            As I mentioned, each of the other councils 
                                                      75
 1  is at some stage or another looking at these issues.  
 2            This was a recommendation of the Ocean 
 3  Commission, Chapter 21.  I think coral reef 
 4  ecosystems and deep coral ecosystems were the only 
 5  ecosystem type which got its own chapter in the 
 6  Ocean Commission Report.  
 7            In that report they highlighted not just 
 8  shallow-water coral reefs, but also deep-water coral 
 9  communities, and called on NOAA to be the lead 
10  agency in looking at these and especially 
11  emphasizing the need for additional research.  
12            Couple of other recent reports which also 
13  highlighted deep-water corals:  
14            The Pew Commission Report recommended 
15  prohibiting the use of mobile bottomfishing in 
16  habitat areas known to be especially sensitive to 
17  disturbance for such gear, including but not limited 
18  to coral reef and deep-water coral habitats.  
19            Also to prevent the expansion of mobile 
20  bottom gear into geographical areas where it's not 
21  presently employed.  
22            The National Research Council and their 
23  Report of the Effects of Trawling and Dredging 
24  Seafloor Habitat identified many of these biogenic 
25  habitats, such as corals, are the ones which will 
                                                      76
 1  most likely to be disturbed by trawling and also the 
 2  ones which would likely be the slowest to recover 
 3  from such a disturbance.  
 4            They recommended a balanced combination of 
 5  management tools, including fishing effort 
 6  reduction, modifications to gear design, 
 7  restrictions in gear type and, specifically, 
 8  establishment of areas closed to fishing.  Closed 
 9  areas effectively protect biogenic habitats, for 
10  example, corals, bryozoans, hydroids, sponges and 
11  seagrass beds that are damaged by even minimal 
12  fishing.  
13            One thing that I would like to emphasize 
14  here.  I've been talking most of the time about 
15  deep-water corals.  Increasingly also people are 
16  talking about the importance of deep-water sponge 
17  communities which also form these three-dimensional 
18  structures, which appear to be very important for 
19  associated species.  
20            We know even less about many of these 
21  sponge communities.  Some of them have recently been 
22  protected in Canada and Australia.  But as far as 
23  their recovery times, we really don't know that 
24  much.  But it's something that we'd appreciate your 
25  input on as well.  
                                                      77
 1            I mentioned the Oceana Petition.  I won't 
 2  read through all this.  It is in the package of 
 3  information.  They show the cover sheets and letter 
 4  which came to the Secretary.  
 5            I will note, however, three pieces here 
 6  which are in bold really incapsulate a lot of the 
 7  recommendations that are coming to the Agency.  
 8            Designating the known areas as Essential 
 9  Fish Habitat, Habitat Areas of Particular Concern, 
10  and closing these to bottom trawling.  
11            Number three, identify areas that haven't 
12  been fished in a period of time and close these 
13  areas to bottom trawling.  
14            And then also, monitor bycatch to identify 
15  areas that are currently being trawled that maybe 
16  should be protected.  I'm paraphrasing here, but you 
17  can read this yourself.  
18            Some of the coral reef activities that are 
19  upcoming in 2005.  Our office is preparing the first 
20  report on the state of U.S. cold-water coral 
21  ecosystems.  We're working with a number of 
22  researchers in different regions, and we're hoping 
23  to have this done by November of this year.  This 
24  will be the first opportunity to bring together in 
25  one place all of the information that we have on the 
                                                      78
 1  distribution and state of these deeper coral 
 2  ecosystems.  
 3            This summer, NOAA and the Canadians and 
 4  Europeans are beginning an international 
 5  collaboration in the North Atlantic to look at some 
 6  of these deep coral communities along the Gulf 
 7  Stream area.  From South Atlantic, some of them are 
 8  being discovered in Canada and then in the Northeast 
 9  Atlantic, with the work of the Europeans.  
10            There are a number of other Ocean 
11  Exploration research cruises planned for 2005 
12  looking at deep-water corals.  
13            Finally, NOAA will help sponsor the Third 
14  International Deep-Sea Coral Symposium, which will 
15  be held in Miami in November of this year.  This is 
16  really an opportunity for United States researchers 
17  to come together with their international colleagues 
18  and look at where we are.  
19            NOAA has been increasingly trying to 
20  respond to these issues which have been raised.  Our 
21  research on cold-water coral ecosystems has greatly 
22  intensified over the last five years.  Between 2001 
23  and 2004 the number of projects funded by the 
24  National Undersea Research Program and Ocean 
25  Exploration on deep-water coral systems have 
                                                      79
 1  tripled.  
 2            We also help organized a major workshop 
 3  and funded a major workshop in Galway, which I 
 4  mentioned.  
 5            In 2004 NOAA established a formal Deep-sea 
 6  Coral Team, which I'm the co-chair of, along with 
 7  John McDonald from Ocean Exploration.  It's a 
 8  NOAA-wide team to coordinate NOAA's efforts, and 
 9  it's under the NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation 
10  Program.  It's one of the nine programs under Jack 
11  Dunnigan's Ecosystem Goal Team.  
12            So that's sort of a summary of a little 
13  bit of what we know and what we're doing right now.  
14            I mentioned that this is really an area of 
15  international concern as well.  
16            There is increasing scientific interest as 
17  well as conservation interest on what's going on on 
18  the high seas.  One of the leaders on this has been 
19  ICES, and Mike Sissenwine has been one of the main 
20  U.S. representatives to ICES.  ICES produced a major 
21  report in 2002 for the Europeans and the European 
22  Union on activities to conserve these resources.  
23            There's growing concern about human, 
24  especially fishery, impacts on vulnerable marine 
25  ecosystems, including cold-water coral ecosystems.  
                                                      80
 1            I mentioned the calls in the U.N. General 
 2  Assembly, and many of these calls have been to adopt 
 3  an interim moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.  
 4  The U.S. has not supported this, but we have 
 5  supported -- we do realize that there are real 
 6  issues involved there, and we're working with our 
 7  partners and others to deal with that.  
 8            Part of what is constraining us to some 
 9  extent in the international negotiations is we want 
10  to make sure that what we're doing domestically is 
11  congruent to what we're trying to do on the 
12  international arena.  
13            Issues being raised at numerous 
14  international fora, including the FAO Committee on 
15  Fisheries, also the Convention on Biological 
16  Diversity, which the United States is a signatory, 
17  but is not a party.  
18            As I mentioned, many of these concerns are 
19  valid concerns about unregulated fishing, trawling 
20  on some of these deep-water ecosystem seamounts and 
21  such.  Although these must be addressed, the U.S. 
22  does not currently support an all-out moratorium.  
23  We are looking at working with the regional 
24  fisheries organizations on trying to address these.  
25            We are looking for input from MAFAC also 
                                                      81
 1  on where we can move forward on this.  
 2            So that's the presentation I was going to 
 3  be giving.  Now I'll turn it over to Dr. Rick Grigg.
 4            (Management in Action)
 5            MR. GRIGG:  Well, good morning, everybody.  
 6            This is certainly a pleasant opportunity 
 7  to be able to recount some of the history we have 
 8  been involved with over the past 45 years, actually.  
 9            But what I'd like to do this morning is 
10  not just talk about that, but go back, if you will 
11  indulge me just a minute, maybe 25,000 years.  
12            Precious corals.  Red coral commerce 
13  (phonetic) in the Mediterranean is the oldest 
14  fishery known to man outside of incidental fishery 
15  itself, but an organized fishery, as far as we know.  
16            On a larger scale, the first evidence of 
17  this really comes from around the 10th Century A.D. 
18  with the Arab fishery in the Mediterranean.  
19            In the Pacific this fishery started in the 
20  early 1800s.  In 1803 it was discovered off Japan.  
21  For 200 years it's been an active fishery in the 
22  Pacific.  In Hawaii, which I'll talk mostly about 
23  this morning, it was discovered in 1958.  So it's a 
24  45-year history here.  
25            Interestingly, the first part of that 
                                                      82
 1  history is one of dredging, devastation, 
 2  destruction, unregulated.  It's not a very good 
 3  story.  I can answer questions about that if you're 
 4  interested.
 5            It so turns out, though, that the flip 
 6  side of that problem, at least in the Mediterranean, 
 7  is the tremendous fecundity of Corallium rubrum, the 
 8  red coral commerce.  That species has been harvested 
 9  for over 10,000 years.  And it's still a fishery, 
10  which is amazing.  And it's been harvested 
11  destructively with dredges.  
12            Now they have divers that dive with mixed 
13  gas to 300 feet, which is amazing.  I once tried to 
14  go down with them, but didn't quite make it.  But 
15  they're still harvesting that species of coral in a 
16  much more responsible way.  
17            They rotate grounds now.  The FAO has 
18  control of that fishery and it's no longer an 
19  unregulated fishery, as it was for thousands of 
20  years.  
21            So I'll be talking, given that brief 
22  background and history, so as to give you an idea 
23  that this is not new.  
24            Now, why it has burst upon our 
25  consciousness as it has in the three to five years I 
                                                      83
 1  think has something to do with the history of coral 
 2  reef science, which in this case -- and this subject 
 3  area goes back to 1997, at least, to the Year of the 
 4  Reef.  
 5            In that year, as you probably all 
 6  remember, the United States initiated or formulated 
 7  an International Coral Reef Task Force.  For about 
 8  the first five years of that body, what was done was 
 9  mapping, monitoring and assessment of coral reefs, 
10  mostly in the United States but also around the 
11  world.  It was a very successful and continues to be 
12  a very successful program.  
13            Then around 2001 or 2002, the attention 
14  was -- let's say, there was added attention to coral 
15  reefs in shallow water to what was going on suddenly 
16  on the deep reef, in the twilight zone, on 
17  cold-water corals.  This came about as a result of 
18  media coverage having to do with the destruction of 
19  bottom trawling, laying of pipeline, mostly off 
20  Norway, some I believe off Georges Bank.  
21            Some of our work here which emphasized the 
22  devastating effect of the Taiwanese and Japanese 
23  dredgers off the Emperor Seamounts, which were wiped 
24  out in 1970 through '80.  
25            So I think it burst upon our consciousness 
                                                      84
 1  three to five years ago, and I'm absolutely 
 2  delighted to see this upswelling of interest now 
 3  that's taking place as far as observing and 
 4  conserving these valuable resources.  
 5            Most of them need absolute preservation.  
 6            There's a few species that can be 
 7  harvested sustainably.  
 8            Now, the take-home message here is that we 
 9  can harvest, in general -- and this is pretty --  
10  for black, gold, pink and red coral here in Hawaii, 
11  about three percent of the biomass on a sustainable 
12  basis.  
13            Now, that value, three percent, I would 
14  suggest might be used as a proxy to cap bycatch in 
15  some of these other areas.  I mean, it's going to 
16  happen.  There's going to be bycatch, unless it's 
17  totally banned.  All bottomfishing, totally banned.  
18            If that happens, then there won't be any 
19  bycatch, of course.  
20            But if there is, as an interim measure, 
21  that might not be a bad guideline.  
22            So given that little background, that 
23  little preamble, let me begin my presentation by 
24  pointing out, first of all, the center of the 
25  fishery for 4,000 years was the Mediterranean Sea.  
                                                      85
 1  This is Corallium rubrum, the red coral commerce.  
 2  That is a valuable species, maybe four to six 
 3  hundred dollars a kilo, something like that.  
 4            This is a small colony.  Thin branched.  
 5  But still, that's pretty valuable.  
 6            The red coral in Japan, I've seen colonies 
 7  this high at 300 meters all along this.  It can sell 
 8  for as high as $10,000 a kilo, $10,000 a kilo.  
 9            So the worldwide industry today is worth 
10  about 300 million dollars.  Here in Hawaii, it's 
11  worth about 50 million dollars.  It doesn't employ 
12  that many people, unless you count the salespeople.  
13  Then there's about 1,000 people who are involved in 
14  the entire industry.  
15            But as far as the lack of area and divers, 
16  in fact, the black coral divers, there's only four 
17  left out of 30.  Well, I don't want to tell you what 
18  happened to the other 26. (Laughter)  
19            In Hawaii, you can see the resource 
20  stretches all the way up to the end of the 
21  archipelago.  In truth, it goes all the way up to 
22  Kamchatka on the surfaces of the Emperor Seamounts, 
23  but most of that has been plundered by the Japanese 
24  and the Taiwanese in the '70s.  
25            This points to the need for a bilateral or 
                                                      86
 1  trilateral or multilateral agreement to ban dredging 
 2  of precious coral, absolutely imperative.  
 3            So that includes black, red and pink and 
 4  gold coral.  
 5            I think the next slide is a little closer 
 6  view of some of these species.  
 7            This is black coral, a shot taken at about 
 8  200 feet looking straight up at the sun.  It gives 
 9  you an idea of how large these colonies can get, 
10  maybe four or five meters.  
11            This is red coral.  It grows about half a 
12  meter, much more valuable than black.  Black sells 
13  for about 35 dollars a pound.  This is 500 dollars a 
14  pound.  
15            Gold coral.  Again, fast-growing, about a 
16  centimeter a year, compared to other deep-water 
17  species.  It gets up to about two meters.  I've  
18  seen them as wide as three meters.  Absolutely 
19  beautiful.  The living tissue is chartreuse, but 
20  once it's been cleaned it looks more like this next 
21  slide will show.  That sells for about 500 dollars a 
22  pound, something like that.  
23            So in Hawaii we're talking about, as far 
24  as black coral, beds around Kauai and then in 
25  between Molokai, Lanai and Maui.  This is the 
                                                      87
 1  largest concentration of black coral.  The MSY is 
 2  about 10,000 pounds, 5,000 kilos.  
 3            They've never exceeded that, by the way.  
 4  In 47 years, never exceeded that.  That's why I 
 5  think it's sustainable.  Although, there are some 
 6  problems that are occurring, one has to do with an 
 7  invasive species.  Very interesting.  I'll show some 
 8  pictures of that.  
 9            Then there's a pink coral bed right here 
10  between Oahu and Molokai with gold coral as well.  
11            Another bed off Keahole, mostly gold and 
12  red.  
13            Then there's a seamount down here called 
14  Cross.  That's very prolific with gold and a little 
15  bit of pink.  But mostly gold.  
16            This just repeats, a little bit in closer 
17  detail.  The Kauai black coral bed, the Maui black 
18  coral bed.  These are depths around 200 to 250.  
19  Actually grows to about 320 feet, but the divers 
20  don't go below around 225 or 250, that's why there 
21  are only four left.  I mean sorry, that's not funny.  
22  (Laughter)
23            There's another bed off South Point 
24  recently discovered.  
25            Now, this is below the shallow-water reef.  
                                                      88
 1  It's the twilight zone.  We're talking about way 
 2  down here where the light is about one to two 
 3  percent.  
 4            Here is the Au'Au Channel between the 
 5  Islands of Maui and Molokai.  That's the largest 
 6  bed.  That's where most of the activity has taken 
 7  place for the last ten years.  There used to be a 
 8  fishery on Kauai, but that has ceased to exist 
 9  because the divers all got the bends.  
10            Now, the two divers that discovered black 
11  coral in 1958, as I already mentioned, this is a 
12  Jack Ackerman, formed Maui Divers of Hawaii.  Larry 
13  Windley.  Larry Windley got bent.  He was totally 
14  paralyzed from the hips down.  
15            He was so demoralized that two years after 
16  that -- I'll tell you the story.  
17            Two years after that he got on a catamaran 
18  in Lahaina and he sailed right out between Kahoolawe 
19  and Lanai on a bearing of 180, and never stopped.  
20            This is the bed.  It's a fantastically 
21  interesting area.  It varies between around 300 and 
22  100 feet.  Here you see -- I think in the next slide 
23  there was a depth -- here it is.  
24            We're talking about 30, 40, to about 70, 
25  80, somewhere in here.  In other words, all of these 
                                                      89
 1  ridges and drop-offs associated with those ridges.  
 2  Along these drop-offs there are undercuts that were 
 3  created by the sea level when it was lower.  As most 
 4  of you probably know, we'd just come out of an ice 
 5  age 20,000 years ago.  
 6            So at these depths, about 10 to 12,000 
 7  years ago, the sea was down here and these were 
 8  shallow basins.  You could actually walk from Maui 
 9  to Lanai had people been here.  Because the reefs 
10  were unable to keep pace with the rapid rise of sea 
11  level, so the coral reefs drowned leaving a 
12  carbonate foundation that is an ideal habitat for 
13  black coral.  
14            Through this channel the currents rage up 
15  to three, four, maybe even a little higher, knots.  
16  Of course, they go to zero at the tide change where 
17  it reverses and goes the other way.  So that's when 
18  the divers try to make their dives, when there is no 
19  current.  
20            (Brief technical interruption)
21            MR. GRIGG:   You can see these undercuts 
22  here.  These are notches cut by sea level.  These 
23  are 55, this is 58 meters.  And we've dated that, 
24  that's about 9.5 thousand years ago.  So we're 
25  looking at a fabulous history, geologically at 
                                                      90
 1  least, and now biologically.  
 2            This gives you an idea of what sea level 
 3  has done over the last 120,000 years.  It reached 
 4  this low point -- actually, this graph is a little 
 5  off -- it's about 21,000 years ago.  You can see how 
 6  fast the sea level rose.  
 7            This is, of course, the basis I think of 
 8  the Great Flood in the Bible.  Look at this, 120 
 9  meters.  That's what, almost 400 feet.  Just think 
10  in the Mediterranean how many cities were flooded.  
11  Noah's Ark.  I don't know.  (Laughter).  
12            Anyway, the coral is down here in what we 
13  call notches.  I thought that would be interesting.  
14            You know, we've not just done biology.  
15  We've looked at the science of this whole question 
16  of deep-water corals.  
17            Now, we started out with black coral 
18  because it was the shallowest.  Here are a couple of 
19  students of mine measuring some colonies that were 
20  tagged.  You can see this little float here with the 
21  number.  We return every year.  
22            It turns out about two inches a year.  
23  We've discovered that they had growth rings that are 
24  annual.  In fact, all of these precious corals have 
25  annual growth rings.  How convenient.  All that 
                                                      91
 1  we've studied; red, pink, gold and black.  
 2            From this, we can calculate from size 
 3  their growth rate, not just having measured, but 
 4  calculated. 
 5            Here we are looking at size structure.  In 
 6  order to get mortality, which you need to plug into 
 7  a model to calculate MSY using the standard models,  
 8  you need mortality, you need growth, you need 
 9  biomass.  So this just shows what is involved to 
10  produce a graph like this.  
11            This is mortality.  So if you know 
12  mortality and you know growth and you know 
13  recruitment, you can measure that.  Then you can 
14  calculate MSY.  
15            This is what it looks like.  This is with 
16  95 percent confidence limits.  
17            What the middle curve tells you is you get 
18  about 1,000 grams per recruit.  So if you know what 
19  your recruitment is, you have to know that, you 
20  calculate, MSY.  That's exactly what we've done.  
21  We've done it for black and for pink.  
22            Now, for gold, we don't have the mortality 
23  data.  So I've used Bellan's (phonetic) formula, and 
24  that gives you a rougher estimate of MSY.  
25            So this is how it's harvested.  Kind of 
                                                      92
 1  crudely, but it works.  
 2            There are perils down there.  I put this 
 3  in as kind of a joke.  (Laughter).  But 
 4  interestingly enough, this picture was taken along 
 5  the Coast of Maui.  
 6            (Laughter).  I couldn't resist.  
 7  (Laughter)
 8            You know, I came face-to-face with one of 
 9  these guys 13 feet long once.  It was about like 
10  that, and I had a tree that I'd cut off because I 
11  was measuring growth rings, and whatnot, and I held 
12  it up like this, blew my float bag with my other 
13  hand and I went to the surface, 200 feet, like that.  
14            It worked, obviously.  (Laughter) 
15  Interesting story.  
16            Here's the problem that's come to our 
17  attention in the last three years.  In 2002, we 
18  discovered an octocoral, which is Carijoa riisei, 
19  that was introduced to Hawaii in 1976 -- no, no, it 
20  was '72, on the hull of a ship from the Caribbean.  
21  Since that time it's spread throughout the high 
22  Hawaiian Islands.  
23            Look how abundant this is.  It's growing 
24  all over the bottom.  Not just on black coral 
25  colonies, but it's just devastating.  
                                                      93
 1            But fortunately it's only in very deep 
 2  water.  This is a very light-sensitive species.  It 
 3  only occurs in the shaded habitat.  So you find it 
 4  only around 70 to 110 meters, something like that, 
 5  and that's the bottom of the distribution of black 
 6  coral.  
 7            I think the next slide has a couple -- 
 8  here's a black coral colony totally covered.  You 
 9  can see what the impact is.  
10            This stuff grows -- you don't believe this 
11  -- a centimeter every month.  Yeah, 12 centimeters a 
12  year.  So a bed like this can -- this is just on the 
13  bare bottom in one year.  
14            And it's something -- I have a PhD student 
15  working on this, and we've taken dives year after 
16  year.  We're following very closely the effect of 
17  this on black coral, and we think it's already 
18  diminished recruitment.  Therefore, we've 
19  recommended an increase of the size limit from three 
20  to four feet.  
21            The Council has adopted that officially in 
22  an amendment, but the State is saying, well, we want 
23  to conduct our own survey and be sure.  So they're 
24  doing that this summer.  They're changing the size 
25  limit.  
                                                      94
 1            This just shows from 75 to about 100 
 2  meters.  That really is where Carijoa -- it's not a 
 3  problem where the divers dive, which is less than 70 
 4  meters, fortunately.  So we'll see what happens 
 5  there.  
 6            We survey the beds with submersibles.  
 7  Over the past two years we've spent about 35, 40 
 8  hours in bottom time.  We really got a good handle 
 9  on what's there.  
10            This shows you the size structure of black 
11  coral in '75.  Notice all these big colonies.  In 
12  '98, well, it's been trimmed down.  But recruitment 
13  is still pretty good here.  This drop-off in Year 1 
14  is because you can't see those tiny little colonies.  
15            They're down in the cracks, you know.  
16            However, notice in 2001 this gap here is 
17  getting bigger.  I think that that's an indication 
18  of recruitment starting to fall after.  
19            And -- wait, wait.  Look how far we've 
20  gone.  We've gone to down to Age 14.  
21            Well, this stuff reproduces at Age 12.  
22  That's ridiculous.  We've got to push that size 
23  limit back up to at least around 20.  I've been very 
24  strongly advising the State to do that.  
25            I hope they will.  I really do.  Because 
                                                      95
 1  this is an important fishery.  The black coral 
 2  fishery alone is 33 million.  It's the State gem.  
 3  Well, you know, there's a culture here.  It's 
 4  important to a lot of people.  So we need to 
 5  conserve it wisely.  
 6            So to move on, I'll try to move a little 
 7  faster here.  
 8            This is pink coral.  You've all seen this 
 9  in the marketplace.  This is what it looks like on 
10  the bottom.  It grows in isolated colonies.  There 
11  are beds -- this is the Makapuu Bed at about 400 
12  meters.  Now we're down in deep water, cold-water 
13  corals.  There's 93 species of Gorgonians alone in 
14  this bed, 93 Gorgonians alone.  
15            I can't say how many other invertebrates.  
16  But obviously, many more than 93.  
17            Well, I've already covered this in my 
18  preamble.  Red coral commerce was the first fishery 
19  -- organized fishery we think known to man in the 
20  Mediterranean.  
21            What we've done with red coral and pink 
22  coral -- since it's a little hard to swim down 
23  there, 400 meters, we estimate its height using a 
24  device such as this, and then calculate a structure, 
25  and knowing the size, you can convert to age and 
                                                      96
 1  calculate mortality.  We've got growth.  MSY.  
 2            There it is.  So we put out a weight 
 3  limit, a size limit on the pink coral populations 
 4  around Hawaii, and the gold coral, by the way.  
 5            It's been sustainable for 40 years, 
 6  although I should tell you that that fishery has had 
 7  its ups and downs, meaning that at the present time 
 8  it's dormant.  The reason is that it's so expensive 
 9  to operate a submarine.  Not just the insurance, 
10  which is obvious, but in fact we've lost a few 
11  lives, that's why the insurance is so high.  
12            But there's peril.  This is rough water.  
13  This is out in the channels.  This is 400 meters.  
14  We go down in one-man submarines.  It is scary down 
15  there.  
16            So this part of the industry has sort of 
17  waxed and waned, and right now it's dormant.  But 
18  with the demand and the beauty of this product of 
19  the ocean being so great, I'm sure it will start up 
20  again.  
21            This will give you an idea of what was 
22  devised in order to selectively harvest the coral, a 
23  basket with a hydraulic cutter.  Showing a typical 
24  day's catch.  It might be about 50 to 100 pounds.  
25  At 500 a pound, well, you do the math.  It's pretty 
                                                      97
 1  good on a good day.  
 2            But what about the zeros?  There are 
 3  zeros.  
 4            (Brief technical interruption)  
 5            MR. GRIGG:  To give you an idea of the 
 6  diversity of the product, pink, black gold.  Let's 
 7  take a closer look at gold.  This is a little more 
 8  attractive on this one.  Gold coral.  (Laughter).  
 9            I think it explains the attraction of 
10  precious corals with the public at-large.  When 
11  people come to Hawaii, they buy precious coral -- 
12  and the last slide, I think explains without too 
13  many words why it's worth about 50 million dollars.  
14            Thank you very much.  
15            If there's time for questions, I'd be 
16  happy to answer them.  
17            MR. OSTERBACK:  Okay.  What we're going to 
18  do is do the last presentation and then take 
19  questions.  
20            MR. GRIGG:  Thank you.  (Applause)  
21            (What are the Policy Issues)
22            MR. SISSENWINE:  Okay.  Really, this isn't 
23  the first presentation, it's just three or four 
24  slides here which is to perhaps prompt a discussion.  
25            So we've heard about what NOAA is doing.  
                                                      98
 1  We've heard some very interesting historical facts 
 2  about these corals, as well as what is being done by 
 3  the Western Pacific Council to deal with its 
 4  precious coral fishery.  It's really very important 
 5  stuff.  
 6            Now we go back to sort of the more 
 7  bureaucratic type slides just to lay out the issues 
 8  that Dr. Hogarth and that the Agency and all of you 
 9  need to think about.  That is the way these are laid 
10  out is basically what sort of research needs are 
11  there in this one.  We can pause and get any 
12  comments -- questions you have about research, 
13  and/or comments you have about it, and then go on to 
14  policy issues, legislative issues, and so forth.  
15            So in terms of the research, again, we've  
16  identified priorities:  
17            For mapping;  
18            We certainly consider that there's need to 
19  better understand some of the functional aspects of 
20  these communities; how do they function in the 
21  ecosystem, how important are they;  
22            To assess the vulnerability and the 
23  resilience once the stressors are removed.  
24            There is an issue of the degree of 
25  endemism in the coral-water coral communities.  It 
                                                      99
 1  is generally accepted that in the more isolated very 
 2  deep-water communities on seamounts throughout the 
 3  Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and so forth, that 
 4  there's a very high degree of endemism, meaning  
 5  unique species in each place you look.  Of course, 
 6  this is an issue with respect to biodiversity.  
 7            Impacts on one seamount might be 
 8  eliminating an entire species forever.  
 9            So this issue of endemism is important in 
10  terms of what sort of policies you put in place in 
11  terms of protecting these.  The issue of endemism on 
12  continental shelves is one that might be quite 
13  different.  One would be expected to be quite 
14  different from what you would expect to see on an 
15  isolated seamount in very deep ocean areas.  
16            So these are research questions that we're 
17  dealing with.  
18            We have put a very high priority on the 
19  mapping.  Frankly, I think there's relatively little 
20  research focused on understanding how these habitats 
21  actually function -- how these ecosystems actually 
22  function as habitats for resource species.  There 
23  are various studies that identify what resource 
24  species are associated with it, but that's not 
25  establishing how they function.  
                                                     100
 1            There are some obvious vulnerabilities.  
 2  It's pretty obvious that when a heavy trawl gear 
 3  goes through and basically smashes up the cold-water 
 4  corals that they are vulnerable and there are 
 5  impacts.  It's less obvious what that means to 
 6  something like biodiversity.  It's obvious what it 
 7  means to physical structure.  But it's less obvious 
 8  what it means to biodiversity and other functional 
 9  aspects.  
10            The issue of resilience and recovery, 
11  there are some studies where areas that have been 
12  closed to fishing have been tracked for -- I guess 
13  in New England, it must be going on a decade now, 
14  and there obviously is some recovery, but my 
15  understanding is it's far from complete recovery.  
16            Now, there are literally an infinite 
17  number of different types of situations in terms of  
18  species, depths, community structures, and so forth.  
19  So it would be improper to draw any general 
20  conclusions from a very short list of studies on 
21  resilience and recovery.  
2