NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE JOINT MEETING OF THE BILLFISH AND HMS ADVISORY PANELS Thursday, June 10, 1999 1:00 p.m. NOAA Science Center 1301 East-West Highway Silver Spring, Maryland PARTICIPANTS: Irby Basco Nelson Beideman Randy Blankinship Raymond Bogan Karyl Brewster-Geisz Jose Campos Maumus Claverie Jack Dunnigan James Donofrio Bob Eakes Robert Fitzpatrick Sonja Fordham John Graves Robert Hayes Robert Hueter Ed Irby Pete Jensen Gail Johnson Rob Kramer Rebecca Lent Steven Loga Linda Lucas Gary Matlock Joe McBride Charlie Moore Russell Nelson Ellen Peel Corky Perett Richard Ruais Carl Safina Mark Sampson Robert Spaeth Alan Weiss Peter Weiss David Wilmot John Wingard Robert Zales C O N T E N T S PAGE Welcome/General Information/Overview of AP Meeting Objectives 8 Summary/Overview of HMS Framework Issues 11 Presentations & Discussion: Time/Area Closures 21 Public Comment 153 P R O C E E D I N G S MS. LENT: Good afternoon and welcome. Okay, welcome. Please take a seat. I believe this is like our 16th or 17th meeting if you count all the advisory panels, and it's probably the third or fourth joint meeting. Probably most importantly, this is our first joint meeting of the APs, or any AP meeting, since the final FMP and amendment and rule have been out so this is the start of our new beginning which is using our blueprint and moving forward. For those of you I haven't met yet, my name is Rebecca Lent. I am the chief of the Highly Migratory Species Management Division. Gary Matlock was planning on being here today but he had an unexpected court date and he's not here, nor is Miriam McCall. Jack Dunnigan, who is our moderator for this joint meeting, gracefully gave up the one seat left on the plane this morning so that I could get here on time and he'll be here in about an hour and Jack Dunnigan will be our moderator. Just on other housekeeping issues, you've all got your agenda. We will be circulating a packet of information relative to how to get your refund. It's a very important process. Be sure and follow all the directions. Also, I would note that tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock we will have a meeting for only folks on the HMS AP. It's open to the public so billfish are welcome to come, but because we're discussing an issue that's relevant only to the HMS FMP that will be the priority is to call on those folks to speak and then we'll hear from folks on the floor as well. And just relative to the agenda then, I'm going to speak for probably much less than an hour. We want to move right into some of our presentations relative to the time/area closures. After the break from 4:00 to 6:00 we'll have a public comment period and I hope that all of the members of the public, and perhaps even more importantly, the members of the AP will stick around to listen to the comments from folks from the floor. Before we go any further, I would like to go around the table. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. LENT: Yeah, just a quick announcement regarding handouts. We'll have more copies of the billfish amendment and volume three of the FMP later this afternoon. Apparently there has been a bomb scare or some kind of a scare and they had to evacuate our building. A PARTICIPANT: It was a fire. MS. LENT: It was a fire scare. That's better than a bomb scare. Thank you. And we can't get back in there. Or, can we get back in now? A PARTICIPANT: Yes. MS. LENT: We're back in. We're back in business. Okay, so let me go around the table starting on my left. MS. LURES: I'm Katherine Lures. I work with Miriam McCall in NOAA GC. MR. SUTTER: Buck Sutter, Billfish Team leader. MR. BLANKENSHIP: Randy Blankinship, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department from Brownsville, Texas. MR. KRAMER: Rob Kramer, Florida Department of Environmental Protection. MS. PEEL: Ellen Peel, the Billfish Foundation, Fort Lauderdale. MR. MOORE: Charlie Moore, South Carolina DNR. MR. NELSON: Russell Nelson, Director of Marine Fisheries, Florida. MR. HUETER: Bob Hueter, Mote Marine Laboratory. MR. JENSEN: Pete Jensen, Maryland Fisheries and the Mid-Atlantic Council. MR. FITZPATRICK: Robert Fitzpatrick, Maguro America. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water Fisherman's Association. MS. JOHNSON: Gail Johnson, fishing vessel Seneca. MR. HUDSON: Russ Hudson, directed shark. MR. SPAETH: Bob Spaeth, Southern Offshore Fishing Association. MR. SANOVA: Miguel Sanova, chairperson, Caribbean Fishing Council. MR. WILMOT: David Wilmot, Ocean Wildlife Campaign. MR. DUNN: Russ Dunn, Ocean Wildlife Campaign, filling in for Carl Safina. MR. LOGA: Steven Loga, Tuna Fresh, Incorporated, Louisiana. MR. GRAVES: John Graves, Virginia Institute of Marine Science representing the ICCAT Advisory Committee members. MS. LENT: And just -- and Corky. And Ed, do you want to introduce -- A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MR. CLAVERIE: Mau Claverie, Gulf Council. MS. LENT: Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, let me just do a quick recap of the meeting objectives. This is something that Gary wanted to do this afternoon but, as I said, he wasn't able to be with us. The objective of the meeting is to focus on two issues that we want to work on for continued management of highly migratory species, and these are issues which could be addressed through the framework provisions of the plan. The first issue is time/area closures for reducing bi-catch and the focus there is on juvenile swordfish and billfish as well as other factors and fish, and the second issue is the cap on the purse seine bluefin tuna quota allocation. As we review these issues, we would expect advisory panel members to base their input and their comments on how the various options for addressing these issues could help us or not help us meet the objectives of our fishery management plan. The new world order is we now have a Fishery Management Plan for highly migratory species. We have Amendment One for billfish. We are also managing some of these species -- well, tunas for the first time -- under Magnuson-Stevens so we have to consider for all of the species what the impacts are, what are the aspects relative to the national standards, so keep those in mind. I'm going to do a quick overview of the framework process and of the objectives in a second. And we know that there is a lot of interest in many other issues other than these two. We would ask that as those issues come up we just keep a list of them and that we discuss them tomorrow afternoon when we have a space on our agenda for other topics. In fact, we want to make sure that tomorrow afternoon we have a chance to get some input from the advisory panel and, if possible, from folks on the floor. And we'll hear from the folks tonight on other priority issues that you think we need to address. As I said, the final FMP is not the final word. It's our blueprint for the future. It's our framework under which we're going to operate, and we know that there is just as much, if not more, work ahead of us than we had in getting these plans together. Okay? So that's relative to the objectives of the meeting. Any questions on that? Mau. MR. CLAVERIE: Rebecca, do you have any corrections or addenda to the regulations because, if you do, we'd like to hear them tonight before thinking about it overnight. MS. LENT: I don't have any pre-prepared, but we will have a technical amendment shortly. And, Mau, if you have a list we'd be pleased if you could help us. Any other questions relative to the objectives of this meeting? (No response.) MS. LENT: Okay, then let's move on into a quick summary and overview of the framework issues. Now, we had available for handouts the sections of the FMP and the amendment that discuss the framework procedure for these plans as well as the objectives, and in the case of billfish we had the objectives in the original FMP, plus the new ones under amendment one. So pull those out and keep those in front of you. Again, what we're trying to do is make sure that as we discuss these issues we make an argument for or against how one option might or might not help us meet that objective. So the framework provisions under both HMS and billfish allow us to make adjustments to the regulations in a fashion that involves rulemaking, proposals, public hearings, final rules, all sorts of analyses, slightly more quick or slightly more expediently than under an amendment process, but not much. The amendment process -- the rulemaking process under Highly Migratory Species is pretty thorough in terms of its input and meaning. The adjustments to these regulations should meet the management objectives of the FMP as well as the national standards. You base the needs for adjustment on the annual safe report as well as deliberations that we have right here in the advisory panel and, again, tomorrow afternoon we'll be looking at other hot issues as they come out. By the way, as you know, we already have our first proposed rule issued under the framework provisions of the plan, and that is a proposed rule relative to the use of spotter planes in bluefin tuna, so that we're already underway with our blueprint for the future. The FMP and EIS which we've already prepared constitutes the safe report for 1999 and then each year starting in the year 2000 we'll have a new safe report. In the case of time/area closures, I just want to add a quick footnote relative to the public comments. Virtually all the comments we received from the recreational constituency, from the commercial constituency, from the environmental community, indicated that the time/area closure that we had proposed would be ineffective. One of the biggest concerns was that it was too small and that there might be fishing around the edge and that the displaced effort would just obliterate any benefits from this time/area closure. So we went back to the drawing board and we've conducted some more analyses and it's in the light of those new analyses that we wanted to, as soon as we could, call this meeting because this is an issue that we considered top priority. It really needs to be addressed and, indeed, it's been a criticism of the FMP since it's been out. Now take a look at your management objectives in the HMS FMP and billfish FMP. Just very quickly, you might want to check off some of those, first of all, that we feel would be relevant to looking at time/area closures. Under the HMS FMP there is the objective to minimize to the extent practicable bi- catch of living marine resources. Obviously, that's a key point here. There are also several objectives related to overfishing and rebuilding of these stocks. If we're reducing juvenile mortality or bi-catch mortality, we're contributing to rebuilding. We also have an objective to minimize to the extent possible economic displacement and other adverse impacts on fishing communities as we transit from overfished to healthy ones. That's relevant as well. And, of course, objectives related to the ICCAT -- to implementing ICCAT recommendations. We do have an ICCAT recommendation that says we should minimize the bi-catch of juvenile swordfish as well as billfish. And in the billfish FMP, again, minimizing bi- catch and discard mortality, all the objectives related to overfishing, minimizing the adverse social and economic effects to the extent practicable, ICCAT implementations and, from the original FMP for billfish, maintaining the highest availability of billfish to the recreational fishery. Under the national standards of course for bi- catch, which you want to refer to as National Standard Nine. National Standard One is also relevant, optimum yield. National Standard Eight, taking into account the effects on communities. National Standard Ten is also an issue as we look at time/area closures, safety at sea. We want to make sure we're doing what we can to minimize the effects on the safety of fishing vessels. For the purse seine cap we'll be talking about this again starting tomorrow morning at 8:00. We'll have, of course, public comment and discussion at 4 o'clock today. Objectives in the HMS FMP that might be relevant: minimizing to the extent practicable economic displacement and other adverse impacts on fishing communities; providing the data necessary for assessing fish stocks; consistent with other objectives of the FMP, managing for optimum yield, to provide recreational opportunities, preserve traditional fisheries, et cetera; better coordinate domestic conservation and management of the fisheries considering...historical fishing patterns and participation. Under the national standards, some of the standards you might want to consider in evaluating options relative to the bluefin tuna purse seine cap, conservation and management measures should not discriminate between residents of different states, allocations should be fair and equitable, et cetera. National Standard Five, no measure shall have economic allocation as its sole purpose. National Standard Eight, again, a sustained participation of communities, minimizing adverse economic impacts on such communities. So that's just a little bit of background and encouraging you to rely upon the FMP objectives, rely upon the national standards as you review those and interpret them relative to the different options we have for the issues that we're discussing. That helps us write a better rule, if indeed we proceed with rulemaking, and it helps us support what the different alternatives would be, the pros and the cons, and how they help us with our fishery management objectives. Okay? Any questions relative to that? Yes, Mau. MR. CLAVERIE: As you are aware, I want to add another criteria but it's really probably a subset of one. Do we do that now or later, and just how do we go about doing that? MS. LENT: Why don't you go ahead, Mau. MR. CLAVERIE: Okay, I've got to get my act together because I just got these papers. Objective one in the billfish plan is -- not objective, problem. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) microphone (inaudible). MR. CLAVERIE: Okay, sorry. All these mikes work different. Is that okay? A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MR. CLAVERIE: Can you turn the thing up? Okay. In the billfish plan problem one, not objective one, problem one, is intense competition for the available resource between the recreational fishery for billfish and the other fisheries that have a bi-catch of billfish. And I want to add that in as a subcriteria under one of the objectives in the billfish FMP but I'm looking through to see which one. It's the one about - - apparently number eight. I think that's where it would go. I'm not locked in on that. There might be a better place elsewhere. MS. LENT: Okay, thank you, Mau. MR. CLAVERIE: So I don't know how that gets done but -- MS. LENT: You've made that statement on the floor and when folks are discussing the pros and the cons I think -- hit that button again, Mau -- we can consider that. The emphasis is on reducing bi-catch of juvenile swordfish and billfish. There are other factors to consider including protected species, including economic displacement, safety, interaction between different gear types. That's certainly part of the discussion in the pros and the cons. Any other comments relative to this? And, Rich, why don't you introduce yourself. You missed -- MR. RUAIS: Rich Ruais, East Coast Tuna Association. Sorry for being a few minutes late. Are you on the agenda right now or are you past that? I just had a comment on the agenda. MS. LENT: Well, I guess we didn't do a formal adoption of the agenda. Would you like to do that? MR. CLAVERIE: (Inaudible.) MR. RUAIS: Thank you, Mau. I appreciate that. MS. LENT: Go ahead. We sort of went over it quickly. MR. RUAIS: Okay. Well, the comment I had was that on the draft agenda I recall there was an item on the second day where there was going to be a presentation on the purse seine cap and now I see that it's just a discussion. And that's fine with me. I'm not suggesting you need to do any kind of a presentation, but if there is going to be anything from the agency though, I was going to ask that you put it prior to the public comment period today rather than wait until tomorrow, recognizing that it would probably be short whatever it was you were going to do anyways. MS. LENT: Thanks, Rich, for that comment. In fact, the main points that I wanted to make was here we go, we have something we can do under frameworking, what is frameworking all about, what are the management objectives and the national standards that apply. So I folded it into what I just did and there is certainly no problem with sort of doing a recall at 4 o'clock if we need do. Okay, since Rich is here why don't we go down and -- we missed some introductions. Linda, do you want to say good afternoon? MS. LUCAS: Linda Lucas, Economics Department, Eckerd College. MR. WINGER: John Winger, Department of Anthropology, University of Memphis. MS. LENT: Bob and Rusty, do you want to introduce yourselves or are you going to be incognito? MR. SPAETH: I already did. Bob Spaeth, Southern Offshore Fishing Association, Madeira Beach, Florida. MR. HUDSON: Rusty Hudson, directed shark, Daytona Florida. MS. LENT: Did everybody around the table then -- okay. If there are no more questions, we are going to proceed to agenda item -- well, I guess the presentation and discussion on time/area closure. Again, for those of you who missed the introduction, Jack Dunnigan is on his way here and he will be moderating the discussion. We're going to start with a presentation of the analyses by the National Marine Fisheries Service. After that, I'm going to ask the AP members if they have presentations they would like to make or someone on their behalf to come forward as well. So, Karyl, why don't you come on forward. And I believe everybody has handouts relative to your presentation, right? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I'll try to speak into this but if I miss for some reason, just let me know. As Rebecca was saying, we are trying to do some time/area closures. We have two goals on this: first, to reduce the discards of juvenile swordfish; and our second goal is to reduce the discards of billfish. So when we first start with this, we need to take a look at where the discards are occurring. So I plotted out some maps. This is for swordfish discards between '96 and '97. Everybody should have these. These are by quarter. The same symbol on each map means the same amount of fish. Some maps don't have the symbol simply because there weren't any fish caught within that range. For swordfish discards, as you can see, most of them seem to occur in quarter three and four right along the east coast of Florida. We've seen this before in some of Jean Kramer's stuff and what we proposed in the draft FMP. I've also plotted out blue marlin. The billfish, as you'll see, is different than the swordfish in that we actually have two areas to look at. We have the Gulf of Mexico and we also have right off the east coast of Florida, but they are slightly different time frames than swordfish. The swordfish happened on the east coast of Florida in the third quarter and the fourth quarter. For billfish we're looking at quarters two and three for the most part. And you have it for sailfish, the same sort of thing, and the same type of thing for white marlin. So this is just a quick overview of where we're looking. Based on these maps, I picked out some areas to look at. I'll start with the swordfish time/area closure. Before I actually go over the areas, I'd like to show you what we like, what we're looking for, if you turn to the graph labeled SWO-3 up at the top. I'll wait till it looks like everybody has it. You should have two packages, one with billfish stuff and one with swordfish stuff. Okay. These graphs are a little bit hard. First of all, anything above zero percent actually means a reduction in the number of fish that we're seeing so, for instance, this top bar going across, swordfish discards, we actually can get a reduction in discards up to about 20 percent. Anything below zero percent is an increase in the number of fish. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It's an increase in the number of fish throughout the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. It depends upon what fish. If you look at these pluses going down, they are pelagic shark discards so, in that case, it would be an increase in the pelagic shark discards. But you can also see the bays are down below zero percent. That's an increase in the number of bays kept. Does everybody understand that? No. A PARTICIPANT: On the bottom axis, months closed, is that if you close it for one month, two months, three months? And what month is it? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. What this is is this is looking at it cumulatively and you see the numbers ten, eight, twelve, nine. So if you close October, this is the percentages you would expect. If you close October and August, those are the percentages you would expect. And so by the very end you're closing all the months. Why they're in such a weird order instead of going January, February, March, is because I sorted it by discard per unit effort, so October has the greatest swordfish discard per unit effort, followed by August, and May has the lowest discard per unit effort. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right, the swordfish discards. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: In October you can get about probably 4 percent reduction over the entire Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico if you close this particular area. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: No. If you close October and August, eight and ten, both of those months together, you'll get probably an 8 percent reduction in swordfish discards. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water. As a general comment to Rebecca, Rebecca, I've been working with this stuff, you know, pretty intensively for quite a while, but just sitting down here and getting this stuff is very difficult even for me. I know it's got to be difficult for the rest. But, Karyl, how is this different from the information that we got two years ago and one year ago and six months ago in presentations from Jean Kramer? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Are there substantial differences or -- A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) microphone. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I didn't realize it had gone off. It's a very different analysis. It's taking into account different areas. It's taking into account displacement, and it's taking into account all the landings throughout the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and all the discards. So we've expanded the analysis based on a lot of the comments we received on the draft FMP. MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay. And this is still just through '97? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All of this incorporates '96 and '97. We chose those years because in '95 the weird change between the season occurred. MR. BEIDEMAN: Did you find substantial differences, because what we've been working on is Jean Kramer/Jerry Scott's analysis of, you know, basic areas where over 50 percent of the catch is discarded dead as hot spot areas. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. We didn't look at any of that. This is straight -- this is everybody, everything that has been recorded landed or reported discards. It's not limited between 50 percent of the sets occurred in this area and 25 sets a year, or what your criteria -- MR. BEIDEMAN: Right. So this is not hot spot. This is more scattered -- scatter-gun? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I started with those plots that I showed you and then I picked areas from that. And right now I'm trying to explain how these graphs work. MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay, thank you. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead. A PARTICIPANT: So real basic here. This SWO-3 means that the percentage is the percentage of that amount of fish that is caught in the area bounded by the SWO-3? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yeah. I'll be getting to what the actual areas are. A PARTICIPANT: Okay, I'm getting ahead of you then. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yeah. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead, Ellen. MS. PEEL: Before we move on, I just want to make sure -- you know, I hate to ask something that's probably perfectly clear to you but -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: No, not necessarily. MS. PEEL: For instance, on swordfish where you've got the open triangle, to get a 15 percent reduction, is it reading it correctly to say you'd have to close October, August, December, September, November and March, it looks like, to increase -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes, you would need to close -- MS. PEEL: To increase what? Discards? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. MS. PEEL: To decrease your discard? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes. MS. PEEL: Okay. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead. MS. PEEL: I just wanted to make sure I was reading the -- decreasing discards or increasing retention is what you're -- or increasing discards. All right, okay, I just wanted to make sure I was reading it right. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. A PARTICIPANT: Karyl, you said you sorted -- the order of the months is sorted according to least discard per unit effort to the most discard per unit effort? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: The greatest discard to the least discard per unit effort. A PARTICIPANT: So -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes, so October has the greatest and May has the least. A PARTICIPANT: Of what, though? Of swordfish? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Swordfish discard per unit effort in that area. A PARTICIPANT: So what do all the rest of these plots on this particular graph mean? Do they mean anything since they are dealing with other species? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. If -- you're looking at the swordfish discard line. A PARTICIPANT: Right. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: If you want to maximize the reduction in swordfish discards, you would go over to, I guess that's June, and if you close the entire year in this area up to June you would see not only a reduction in swordfish discards of about 20 percent; you would also see a reduction in sailfish discards of about 15 percent, a reduction in white marlin discards of almost 5 percent. So it's taking into account what else is being landed in the area and how well they're doing, because we're trying to reduce the swordfish discards and hopefully billfish discards as well, but without really affecting what else is being caught. A PARTICIPANT: Okay. Now I understand that. Now I understand arithmetically why you would plot this the way you did, but from a management perspective is that practical to pull months, you know, different times of the year, and order them in that way? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We need to choose some time for a time/area closure. This is one way of doing it. We are also looking at quarters but I haven't quite figured -- finished that analysis yet. We're looking at the entire year. MS. LENT: Let me just add to that. In fact, when we're discussing the pros and cons of different options, obviously from an enforcement point of view and facility of planning and everything, it would be preferable to have consecutive months. In fact, we often find that the months are clustered and it makes sense. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead. MR. PERETT: I apologize. I'm still not -- MS. LENT: Please say your name before you speak. MR. PERETT: Corky Perett. Can we take one of the lines on swordfish on -- or let me use the swordfish discard, again the open triangles. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes. MR. PERETT: On the left we start with month ten and it looks like it's around 5 percent. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes. MR. PERETT: And as we go forward, ten to eighth month, it's a cumulative thing. I'm correct so far. Well, then would you explain to me how after ten months we get to June and we're approaching roughly 20 percent, how does it then go down when you've got two more months in the year? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It's all because of the displacement. The displacement does funky things. MR. PERETT: But it at best has got to stay even if there is no discards whatsoever during those latter two months of April and May. How does it actually go down? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It goes down because the boats are being displaced into areas that during April and May have greater effort. Go ahead. MS. LENT: Let me just add a point to Corky's -- this is something that's very important. Relative to everything else you've seen prior to this except for the bluefin time/area analyses, these numbers take into account displaced effort. They say let's close this area and this time and this -- close this area in this time. But it doesn't assume that those sets go away. It assumes that the sets are going to be made somewhere outside the area, and there's an assumption made about where those sets will be redistributed. That's why it's the net effect. It's a very important difference with what Jean Kramer has done in the past. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It also has to do with the catch occurring in the entire Atlantic and Gulf. A PARTICIPANT: The entire Atlantic or the US of A? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: U.S. Go ahead. MR. MOORE: Charlie Moore, South Carolina. If you look at, like, white marlin discards, if you look at that one, and it seems to indicate that as you go below the line you have more fish, I don't see how it decreases. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It doesn't decrease the white marlin. I'm sorry, did I say -- MS. PEEL: You said earlier it did. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I'm sorry. I meant this line, which is the swordfish kept. I must have just mispoke. MS. PEEL: Yeah, you said white -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Sorry. Go ahead. MR. NELSON: Russell Nelson. How did you handle displacement of effort? I mean, that seems to be a fairly important -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. I started with this area that I'll call SWO-3. I assumed that all of the hooks that were in that area, if we closed it during a certain month, went anywhere within 4 degrees of that area. So four degrees outside that area in all directions. And that area kept its same catch per unit effort and discard per unit effort; it just happened to have more effort. MR. MOORE: So you distributed any direction in four degrees? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Any directions four degrees outside that area. MR. MOORE: Was there a basis for that assumption? I mean, some kind of -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We can change that assumption. MR. MOORE: Well -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That's what I started with now. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead, Nel. MR. BEIDEMAN: What Russell is saying is, you know, very important. At the last meeting, you know, we had discussed that the preliminary information on observer coverage for the FMP proposed area was like 23 dead discards per thousand, south of that 38 dead discards per thousand, north of that 17 discards per thousand, and north of that area 13 discards per thousand. So it's very important where that displaced effort may go and factors such as these are small boats that really can't fish far from shore and the Gulf stream goes out as you go north would suggest that they'll basically move toward the south, at least the smaller boats, into the 38 per thousand rather than the 23 or 17 or 13. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: This says they can go south as well. It's distributed equally in the area of four degrees around this area, so they could go four degrees to the south or four degrees to the north. That's included in the analysis. MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay. A PARTICIPANT: It makes a big difference. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Sorry. Go ahead. MR. CLAVERIE: Can you break out how many of these discards and kepts are within the 50,000 line or shallower? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I haven't done that yet. MR. BEIDEMAN: No, because they can't really break into the one degree but I would say none unless it's, you know, a piece of gear that's gotten away or something but really don't drift up into 50 fathoms. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Are there any more questions? Okay. A PARTICIPANT: A clarification. Did you say that these numbers represent the percentage of all swordfish, not just swordfish discarded in that area? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That's correct. A PARTICIPANT: So these curves represent a percentage of all swordfish? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All the swordfish reported, yes. A PARTICIPANT: Rebecca, is it your intent to have this panel suggest to you some percentage reduction or are you going to suggest to us that you have some target percentage reduction in mind? MS. LENT: Well, this is for the time being, based on these very preliminary analyses, this would be our preferred alternative. We obviously have more work to do and more analyses to conduct. We need to hear from you indeed on what you think is a good goal and what are the trade-offs and what about the assumptions. As Russ and Nelson have pointed out, we have to make assumptions about displaced effort. Are there better assumptions to make? Give us some suggestions. A PARTICIPANT: I guess I'm confused. What is the preferred alternative you're talking about? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: SWO-3 for swordfish. A PARTICIPANT: Pardon? MS. LENT: This chart that's SWO-3 out of the options that we've analyzed so far -- and there is plenty more analyses we can do -- but this appears to be the most appealing right now, but we need to hear from you about the pros and cons about it. A PARTICIPANT: I'm still confused. There's a lot of choices there. There's one month, two months, three months, four months, five months, six months -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I was getting to that. A PARTICIPANT: And they have some percentage. So has anybody from the stock assessment side given you any advice on what a 5 percent reduction does to the stock rebuilding or the rebuilding schedule versus 20 percent? MS. LENT: Well, we know what replacement yield is and we know what current yield is so we can make some assessment ourselves within this panel as to how much this contributes. That's an important goal but, again, the overarching goal is reducing bi-catch as much as we can to the extent practicable, et cetera, et cetera. Now, SWO-3, as Karyl points out, depends on which months you're going to choose, but it's the one that appears to have the biggest bang for the buck. It's able to go the highest. We have to look at all the effects and all the assumptions. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. This one goes pretty high and it also doesn't really impact a lot of the other -- the catch or the discards -- all that much. What we've been looking at is going all the way up to the Asentope (phonetic) up to June, so everything would be closed in this area except for April and May. Unless we have changes of assumptions, we have ideas from the panel of where else to look and what else to look for. Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Karyl, I'm sorry but my mind keeps drawing me back to the information that we have been working with over the past couple years, Jean Kramer's documents that I'm most familiar with. And what Jean and Jerry had done is laid out, I believe, eleven two-degree squares where over 50 percent were discarded. And I believe the bottom line of that was if you shut all these down it would amount to about 28 percent reduction without redistributing the effort and only 7 percent reduction with a basic redistributing of the effort. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That's because they did it a very different way. They had the criteria of your 50 percent in those areas. We do not. A PARTICIPANT: Again, just to make sure that I got it right, what you did was for this SWO-3 area, the total number of swordfish caught is the percentage -- that's the 100 percent from which the other things - - and then you took the total number of sailfish caught and figured your reductions and discards in the total number so that each species has a total number from which you got the percentage, right? A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Again, a clarification. Looking at SOW-3, am I reading this correctly that if you close SOW-3 for the entire year, right, you would get a reduction in discards of swordfish by about 18 percent and you would reduce the actual swordfish catch, total U.S. catch, by 6 percent? Am I reading that right? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That's correct. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: That number, the total number of swordfish kept, that is -- that number is from the entire U.S.? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All of this is from the entire U.S. A PARTICIPANT: Oh, okay. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All of this is relative to the entire -- MR. BEIDEMAN: I have a question. It's a more general question, probably for Rebecca, and it cuts across all the different proposals that I've heard of. And that's, you know, how do we close areas that are beyond our EEZ, you know, in Bahamian waters, et cetera? I mean, how is that done? You know, what is the relevance of that? MS. LENT: Well, we haven't found a way to do that yet. Actually, the way this analysis is done, there is just some big chunks taken, including like Indianapolis. Obviously, you just sort of, for purposes of the analyses, you cut out some chunks. If indeed we go forward with proposals, that would have to be worded in such a way that anything that's not in the EEZ is not relevant. I mean, if it's in somebody else's EEZ it's not relevant. A PARTICIPANT: Could we close it outside of our own -- on the high seas? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yeah, to U.S. fishermen we could close it beyond the EEZ, yeah. Thanks, good question. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Now, is everybody clear on how these graphs work, because this is the whole basis of what I'll be showing. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yeah, we'll walk through more examples. Go ahead. MR. CLAVERIE: I think I'm clear but I'm not clear on what use we're going to make of these. This is just the basis for something else so that we get to some practicality? I'm assuming that the way these graphs are set up is if you wanted to maximize the bang for the buck you would pick the months that are numbered here that show the greatest increase in percentage change of swordfish discards, and I don't know about the decrease in swordfish kept. In other words, if you look at the line between ten and eight, it goes up pretty good on swordfish discarded. A PARTICIPANT: What graph are you on? MR. CLAVERIE: I'm on SWO-3, the one we've been discussing. So I assume that means -- I don't know which month that is. I assume that means if you close the tenth month you get the biggest increase, you get the biggest number -- I don't know what you would say. You get the biggest decrease in swordfish discarded in one month of any month on this graph because it's the steepest slope. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. CLAVERIE: It's sort of that way, okay. A PARTICIPANT: Sorted. MR. CLAVERIE: Oh, sorted. MS. LENT: Sorted that way. The why it goes October, August, December, September, November, is Karyl arranged for these plots such that the one that appears first is the one with the highest swordfish discard per unit effort, then the next highest, then the next highest, then the next highest. It's not a random order here. MR. CLAVERIE: Except towards the end it goes down. MS. LENT: That's because of the displacement, displaced effort. As the displaced effort goes out into other areas, it may be pushed off into areas where we didn't have as much effort before and, in fact, we have high rates of discards. The fishermen have been avoiding those areas purposefully so you get into some kind of declining returns. Remember that all of these numbers are net. It's not just what you lose by taking that effort out of that area; it's what you lose by displacing effort from the hot spot to the next closest area. That's very important because a lot of the things we've looked at before don't have that displacement. Until you know that, you don't know the net effect of a time/area closure. You need this information. And in terms of your first question, Mau, you know, you're starting to understand but you don't know what it's all going to lead to. I think this gives us some numbers, get a start to say where are we zeroing in. It's not just hot spots. It's more than hot spots. It's where do people go when they avoid the hot spots. What's the net effect? And if you can help us with assumptions on a better way to deal with displacement, we need to hear about that, too. Trade-offs. There is a lot of trade-offs. We're going to have some increase in discards of other things that we don't like. We want to know about that, too. MS. LUCAS: Linda Lucas. Can you tell me intuitively why SWO-1 and SWO-3 sort of look a lot alike? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That has to do with the areas of (inaudible) and areas of (inaudible). Sorry. I'll be getting into the areas as soon as everybody is clear on what these graphs mean and do, and then I will show what the areas are and the other results from those areas. A PARTICIPANT: SWO-3. And if my objective was to reduce blue marlin discards, I'm assuming I would be focused on the months of June, July, and August. Am I reading this correctly? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: What this is showing is I pretty much focused on swordfish discards for these areas, billfish discards in the other areas that I chose. So there is -- you are getting pretty good for the sailfish and for the blue marlin in certain months in here. A PARTICIPANT: It looks like October, August, December, September, and November are blue marlin and then it gets worse for them after that. Now, these months are -- you go from October to August. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. PERETT: Thank you. Corky Perett. Let's try again, back to basics. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. MR. PERETT: SWO-3 is a geographic description. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. MR. PERETT: And all these pluses or minuses as to whether it's discarded or kept only refers to this geographical area? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes, for this -- MR. PERETT: I got -- wait, wait -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: So this graph -- MR. PERETT: Wait, that's where I'm going because -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Well, it refers -- the percent discards and everything are all relative to the U.S. catch but what we did is we only closed this area during these months. MR. PERETT: So -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It's all relative to the U.S.. MR. PERETT: So for SWO-3, and we'll take that first month -- again we'll work with swordfish because that's the one we're talking about the most thus far. In the month of October, the discards at roughly, say, 4 percent and the kepts swordfish are, say, 2 or 3 percent. Now, in that geographical area -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: In that area -- MR. PERETT: And we have the others that show what it is for SWO-1 and so on. Okay. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. If you close that area, that's what the reduction will be. MR. PERETT: Thank you. MR. CLAVERIE: How do you define discards? Is that dead discards or all discards? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It's total discards, both alive and dead. MR. CLAVERIE: Is there a mortality -- an observed mortality different at different times of the year or different areas? I mean, is that considered in this? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: This is total discards. It's not taking into account whether we're discarding dead or alive. MS. LENT: That's a good question and I ask if anybody here might want to comment on that. I'm not aware and we'll have to ask the science center of whether there might be a difference in the percent of swordfish discards that are dead relative to certain times and areas. As far as I know, there's none. Maybe Bill or other -- MR. CLAVERIE: The fishermen ought to be able to come in on that if the scientist can't because they've seen them. It's pretty well -- I mean, if you're just going to keep bait live you have a much better chance in a cooler water than you do in a warmer water. And I assume that that's true with all fish. I don't know. Maybe John can tell us or something. There may be a substantial difference or there may not in the mortality, actual mortality involved, and that's what we really have to get to. So if we can do that, maybe we ought to. I don't know if we can do it. MS. LENT: But, Mau, I think for purposes of this discussion we'll assume that where we have the highest rate of discards we probably have the highest rate of dead discards. There could be some variations therein, but that's a really good question and we'll follow up on that. MR. CLAVERIE: Well, the highest rate of discards is in a cool month, the tenth month, and so that may be the highest rate of live to dead on the discards. I'm just guessing, you know. I mean, it may be totally different from that in the swordfish fishery. A PARTICIPANT: I'm having trouble with the months the way they are arranged. I understand that starting right out looking at SWO-3, October is the month that has the biggest reduction in swordfish discards. However, as you go along and the months are so out of sequence -- and maybe I'm interrupting your presentation here and you would have explained it -- but how do we figure out consecutive months? I'm having trouble with that. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: The rate of discards. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Okay, that's right. But even so, it's still hard to get from the graph to know what block of months or -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Karyl, I'm looking at sword four and I'm imagining that the split at 33 may have come out of conversations that I had with you as far as the difference between 32 and 33, and 33 and 34? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay. Well, if I can give folks a tiny bit of background. Without getting into the pelagic longline industry proposal, it goes up to 34 degrees. And some fishermen raised that, you know, the area between 33 and 34 really isn't that much of the problem. And we looked up those numbers and from 33 to 34 we're looking at approximately 370-some, I think it was 377, dead discards over a six-year period, and the area from 32 to 33 is 3,700. A large difference. MS. LENT: Before Karyl starts this, I would ask everybody to please look at the screen. This is absolutely critical to understand. The SWO-1, SWO-2, SWO-3, SWO-4, that's sort of a progressive range. Please pay attention to what SWO-1, 2, 3, 4, means. Thank you. A PARTICIPANT: Is SWO-3 (inaudible)? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I'm getting there. We start with the FMP. That's what we have originally proposed. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. And SWO-3 is this entire block going from 76 to 82 and 24 through 33. It's the entire block including the FMP area. SWO-1 is the entire block from 74 to 82 and from 24 to 33. So SWO-1 includes SWO-3 and the FMP. It is not just the skinny little rectangle. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That goes back to why SWO-3 and SWO-1 look pretty much the same on the graphs. Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Is there any consideration given that, you know, depending on, you know, what areas are closed, there may not be a displacement of effort? I mean, some of those boats may just be out. MS. LENT: These are good points, but let's finish the definition of these four areas and then we'll come back to that. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead. MR. BASCO: Irby Basco, Texas. Do you have any kind of numbers of the SWO-3 area only of numbers of swordfish discarded? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I don't have an overhead of the numbers. I have it on the computer back on my desk. That's how I did all those graphs. MR. BASCO: I was wondering if somebody made note of those numbers here on the panel. MS. LENT: We can calculate those. Actually, if you open up your FMP to the total amount of discards in '96 and '97 and calculate what that percent reduction would mean because all these percentages are relative to the total amount of discards, total amount of landings, et cetera. MR. BASCO: Okay, thank you. A PARTICIPANT: Okay. So SWO-4 goes from 22 to 36 and 76 to 82, so SWO-4 includes SWO-3 and the FMP? A PARTICIPANT: And it definitely includes (inaudible). MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It doesn't include 1 and 2. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: And then SWO-2 is this entire big block. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Everything. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: SWO-1 goes from 74 to 83, and 24 to 33. They are very big areas. They are not these little rectangles. They are the big area. Everything includes SWO-3, basically. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Yes, the FMP is the smallest and then the SWO-3. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: 33 comes just about to Charleston, huh? That's why we chose 33 so we weren't cutting across -- A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: So when I did the displacement, what I did is when you're looking at SWO-3, fishermen could go four degrees north, four degrees east, four degrees south, and four degrees in the west in the Gulf of Mexico. And that was the same for all of these areas. They could go four degrees in any direction. Go ahead. A PARTICIPANT: You only took the effort that existed within a closed area in that time frame and moved it within that time frame outside the area? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Correct. A PARTICIPANT: You did not look at the fact that maybe in the next month effort that had been suspended during one month would be back in the same place or there would be an increase in effort the next month? You didn't do that? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We didn't do that. A PARTICIPANT: Okay. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We could. And going into Nelson's point, no, we did not take into account that some of the people in the middle of SWO-3 wouldn't be able to move out. Does everybody understand how these areas work? MR. BEIDEMAN: A good point was just brought up to me that I tried to bring up before. If you close this entire area, due to the nature of those boats that are basically coastal fleet boats, there isn't one boat that I know of -- (End of Tape 1, Side A.) MR. BEIDEMAN: -- would have been in that area that would have the capability of fishing outside of that area. So you can eliminate the effort. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Along with looking at these areas for swordfish, I took what I had from the Blue Water proposal. I'm not going to go over their proposal. I just tried to take their area, or as close their area that I could, and I did the same sort of analyses. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: You should have a copy of this somewhere. A PARTICIPANT: But we don't seem to have (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Karyl, just to point out to folks without getting into the proposal, these blocks are a little bit different than what the actual proposal is, okay. On the BWFA-1, the south-southwest corner is a tiny bit different and the BWFA-2, that's a one and a half by one degree that goes to 87.30, not 87. You know, this is plenty for visual. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: So these are pretty close approximations. So in the SWO package or somewhere in the package you should have the analyses for all of these blocks, and all of these were sorted by swordfish discard per unit effort. A PARTICIPANT: I don't see a discard -- I don't see an analysis based on these -- these. Do you have one? A PARTICIPANT: These? I don't (inaudible). A PARTICIPANT: Karyl, do we have the analysis and changes in landings or discards by species for the Blue Water? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: They should be in -- we made photocopies of them. A PARTICIPANT: Does anybody have them? A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: I've got that but we don't have the -- A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: No, it would come from us. It wouldn't come from Nelson. (Inaudible.) Go ahead. MR. CLAVERIE: Karyl, are all of these analyses strictly for '96 - '97? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All of these are just for '96 and '97, yes. MR. CLAVERIE: Do you have the information for more years than that? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We could do more years. The reason we didn't is because of the season. It changed in '95 and we wanted to make sure that we had equivalent effort to look at, and '96 and '97 were very similar. MR. CLAVERIE: Well, I can't speak for the east coast but in the Gulf it can vary substantially from year to year, particularly the billfish situation. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. I did look at '96 and '97 and they were pretty much the same. MR. CLAVERIE: No, but if you go back to as far back as you can go, you'll find that the location of billfish can vary substantially from year to year. It depends on currents and swirls, and those change from year to year. Where the fish are this year may not be where they are at all next year. A PARTICIPANT: I presume on the Blue Water graph, the one that says BWFA-1, that the last point that isn't numbered is October. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Again, without getting into the proposal much, this would just be from the closure of the areas. This would not be the additional benefits accrued by eliminating the effort through buyout. MS. LENT: Just a comment to that effect. Even though that effort, the vessels that are bought out wouldn't be in the fishery any more, if we assume that we're still going to be harvesting our full swordfish quota, we would still have some sets being made over and above -- you know, some of those sets would be replaced and so some assumptions are made to that effect. A PARTICIPANT: Now, and this was just -- I'm assuming, and please tell me if I'm wrong-- this was just a static analysis looking at snapshots in time. You didn't, for instance, the cumulative discards in one year did not then roll in to increase availability, increase size in fish the following year and -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Just static snapshots of points in time. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Okay, so it doesn't model -- you're not trying to model shifts in the population which might be affected by changes in discards or -- okay. MS. LENT: Again, Russ, I would invite everybody, not just you, to take a look at what the yields are right now for swordfish and what the yields could be if we reduce these dead discards relative to replacement yield. Where does it get us relative to that? That's what these number can help you with. We don't have a dynamic model but I think we've got the most useful information we've had to date that helps us figure out what's the best way to do a time/area closure. There's a lot more analysis we can do, but this is pretty good. A PARTICIPANT: To that, Rebecca, my point would be that when you're looking at some of these static snapshots that you see has a fairly substantial reduction in discards of undersized swordfish and also reductions in total harvest, that in the long term it's likely that if the discard reductions are three or four times what the short-term reductions in harvest are from the snapshot, in the long terms you're likely to see increases in harvest or accumulation of your quota in a quicker time period because what you're saving in the discards is going to be growing and creating higher abundances and higher densities of larger-size fish in subsequent years. MR. BEIDEMAN: Only on 9 percent. A PARTICIPANT: Just to confirm, the BWFA-1 assumes no displaced effort because it assumes a buyout; is that right? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: No, (inaudible). A PARTICIPANT: It does? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It keeps turning off on me. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: This does not assume a buyout. None of these analyses do. It always assumes displaced effort. A PARTICIPANT: It seems like in the Blue Water -- and it's not that great a difference in geographical area -- October goes from first to last. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I'm not sure if that is October. It would make sense that it is. I would have to go back and check. It might have just been a mistake on my part when I was filling in which blocks it's supposed to graph. It might have been October should be at the first and all the numbers should be moved down. A PARTICIPANT: I think that's probably closer to right. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That would make sense, but one of the missing months is October. A PARTICIPANT: Could I clarify the comment you just made? I'm pleased to see there is no linkage here with a buyout, but even if an improper linkage had been put here you could not assume no effort. As Rebecca just clarified, the catch, the landings, are going to remain the same unless we change our law; therefore, the boats that are fishing outside this area are going to increase their effort. So I don't understand why you said because you did not assume a buyout you therefore displaced effort. Even if you had assumed a buyout, you would have to displace effort. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: We didn't assume a buyout. Everything is just displaced effort. If we were assuming a buyout we might be able to try to figure out some way to reduce effort based on those boats leaving the fishery. We might be able to make some assumptions about that. A PARTICIPANT: But my point is you couldn't make that assumption because you still have to land the quota. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: You would still land the quota but not necessarily in that area. A PARTICIPANT: No, but my point is there would be increased effort outside the area that is displacement. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: It would still have displacement, yes. I'm just saying it would be a different displacement. MS. LENT: What Karyl is saying, and this is an important point, that with a buyout you would have a number of vessels, probably those vessels that would be most affected by that time/area closure would disappear, but the vessels that remained in the fleet would be making all the sets necessary to reach a swordfish quota, we give them a reasonable opportunity, et cetera. Would it be the exact same number of sets? Would it be more sets? Would it be less sets? That's an important question we need to discuss. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Go ahead, Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Yeah, a couple of things. In response to Rebecca, at least they would be in bigger swordfish areas. I hope that the information from Jean Kramer that, you know, we need gets copied in time. If not, I have a copy but just one copy. I think it's a little bit unfair to characterize, you know, this information as the Blue Water proposal because -- MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I just labeled it that because that's what areas I used. MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay. But as an explanation to everyone because, in reality, the Blue Water proposal not only has the benefit of closing the areas which reaches 47.4 percent of the swordfish discards within the U.S. EEZ, but it also has the benefits of eliminating those boats that volunteer for the buyout, which will make that 47.4 percent rise. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right, right. I'm sorry if I made that unclear. I did not mean to point out that this is the Blue Water proposal. These are just the areas that I used based on what your proposal is. These are the same analyses as everything else. They're just labeled differently because they were your areas. MS. LENT: But for purposes of discussion, I think it's useful to say what if we conducted the same analyses on the areas that Blue Water has proposed for their buyout. Obviously, it's not the same result because you folks are talking about -- MR. BEIDEMAN: And I've also mis-spoken because it really is no longer a Blue Water proposal. It's a Senator Breaux's proposal. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Okay. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. LENT: Let me just suggest that we let Karyl continue the presentation of the analyses, then Karyl can sit here at the front table. Then Jack Dunnigan, our moderator, has made it. Thank you, Jack. Jack can moderate the discussion. We don't want Karyl standing on her feet too long. As you can see, there is a new cohort on the way. Thanks, Karyl. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: All right, I'll go on with the billfish for those of you who are anxious, billfish. And during the discussion we can talk more about the other areas for swordfish. For some reason, this one is very curved. This is all based very similar to the swordfish, only we're now in the Gulf of Mexico. Billfish-1 includes Billfish-1 and Billfish-4, so it's the big area from 22 up to the coast and from 92 over to the coast. And, yes, that probably incorporates some of Mexico's EEZ. Billfish-3 is the smallest area going from 24 to the coast and 92 to the coast. Billfish-2 gets bigger. It incorporates 1, 4, and 5. Five goes over a little bit smaller than Billfish-2 so it incorporates 4 and 5, and then you just keep increasing out so you get almost up to Florida. Very large areas. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Bill-6 is the top three, yes. And Bill-3 is that entire block. Now, when we're going over these graphs, remember that we're not including the fact that we might be closing some of these areas on the east coast of Florida. These are just closing these areas, not a combination of these areas and Florida, so we're not including the billfish discards so we might get from those SWO areas. Did that make sense or did I confuse anybody? Go ahead. A PARTICIPANT: Would we be right in assuming that though they are -- if you are looking at both sets of data they would not be additive because of the chance of -- I mean, if you just look at that analysis you've got effort coming over here and back and forth? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. A PARTICIPANT: So if you got 5 percent on one and 6 percent on the other, we wouldn't be saying there is 11 percent if you did them both. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: That's correct. I'll spend the discussion on the one that at this point we tend to like the best, which is Bill-4. And I don't think on this one you really need to close the entire, or mostly the entire year as we did on SWO. But if we closed 7, 8, and 9, maybe January, you have almost a 7 percent, or around about a 7 percent decrease in sailfish and in blue marlin and in white marlin. Remember, this is what these areas are supposed to be helping. For those you have very little impact, almost zero percent, on anything else if you close those areas, or this area, which is why we happen to like this one the best. For those of you want to know, I sorted these months by white marlin discard per unit effort. I just chose a billfish. White marlin happened to be the hardest one to get to fit. A PARTICIPANT: Karyl, I have a question. Would it be a correct way to interpret this then is that you would have the same impact if you closed it just in July as you would the rest of the year, basically? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Basically, yeah, for the sailfish if you close the entire year or just in July. A PARTICIPANT: Well, you've almost got the same thing for every species. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: Right. A PARTICIPANT: Because if for one month you'd have the same impact you would if you closed it the whole year. MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: If there aren't any other questions, we can let Jack moderate and have a discussion over these areas. A PARTICIPANT: Do you have a preferred option in terms of the duration of the billfish closed area? MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: I think what we were looking at is July, August, and September. And we can always put up any of these overheads if you guys want to see them. A PARTICIPANT: I have (inaudible) for example, hot spots (inaudible). MS. BREWSTER-GEISZ: No. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) MS. LENT: We started with the hot spots as identified in previous studies, but if you have some hot spot ideas we're listening. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) look at some (inaudible). MR. DUNNIGAN: Okay, thank you. I apologize for being late. Thank you, US Airways, and it's nice to be here. It's about 2:20. We'd like to maybe take not more than ten minutes to continue on this subject and then we'd like to be able to move to some other presentations this afternoon that we're going to have on this question of time/area closures. We will then be coming back to a more substantive discussion of how you feel about all of this either after those proposals or, if we run out of time this afternoon we'll end up doing that tomorrow morning. But we could take a couple of more comments right now or more clarifications if you have further questions for what Karyl did. The other thing is about the record. Everybody, please make sure you use the mikes and make sure you give us your name before you start so that we can have a nice, clean record when this gets put together. Russell Nelson was first and then Nelson Beideman and then David Wilmot. Russell. MR. NELSON: Me nombre es Russell Nelson. Rebecca. MR. DUNNIGAN: Rebecca. MR. NELSON: This is not for Karyl. This is for you. Karyl just gave us what you said we should -- a preferred alternative in terms of billfish reduction. So implicit in picking a preferred alternative, I guess you all have at a policy level established some goal that you're trying to get. The Billfish Advisory Panel asked that we look at reductions in bi-catch that would get us at least a 25 percent reduction in mortality, bi-catch induced mortality. What goal have you all selected as the policy goal to base your selection of a preferred alternative on? MR. DUNNIGAN: Rebecca. MS. LENT: There is no specific number. What we are trying to do is balance a reduction in discards of billfish and juvenile swordfish with the impacts on the directed fishery, balance it relative to other issues in managing these fisheries. I would remind you also, Russ, to add the two numbers. When we close the swordfish area we save some billfish as well. You can add the two to see what the effect is. But no, Russ, we don't have a number. If this panel wants to discuss it some more in the joint panel and the pros and the cons, in some cases we could go higher but we might increase dead discards of large coastal sharks. We need to hear from you about the trade-offs. MR. NELSON: I didn't mean to get you all testy, Rebecca. I was just wondering, when you decided that you selected proposals, I mean, what is the trade- off? What is the goal? What is the balance? Is there some quantitative goal that you set or is it just all - - you know, is it -- I mean, what's the basis to say we like this one? That's all. MS. LENT: Again, I can't give you a hard number. And I'm not testy. I just have a sore throat, Russ. It's why I have this raspy voice. But it's looking at preliminary analyses, looking at putting these graphs all in front of us and saying if we had to choose between just these six or just these four, which one looks most promising in terms of the trade-off and the side effects, and which ones might not be as preferable. You might find that we have more options we need to look at or you might find that we need to change the assumptions that we used to come up with these results. The whole picture could change if we say, you know, no, it's going to be boats just going north or just going south. So I can't give you any specific formula, Russ. I wish I could. And if you have a specific formula for balancing all these different things, I'd like to hear about it. Thanks. MR. DUNNIGAN: Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water Fishermen's Association. What I'm passing out, Jack, might make things a tiny bit clearer. What we did was we took the information from Goodyear and we broke it into one-degree squares of those 12, you know, squares in the Gulf, and we took the years '92 to '97 and averaged it into annual average by species in those one-degree squares. And that's being passed around. At some point if people have questions I can explain the, you know, headings, et cetera. MR. DUNNIGAN: David Wilmot. MR. WILMOT: Russ Nelson asked the very questions that I was most concerned about. I will follow up with one small addition. Rebecca, I understand your answer and you don't have a quantitative answer that I would certainly like to see; however, can I take from what you said that the variables that you're balancing have equal weight, or could you in a qualitative way at least rank what is most important to HMS, to you, in conserving these fish and reaching the objectives of the FMP? MR. DUNNIGAN: Rebecca. MS. LENT: I think the overarching objective, as we noted earlier in the meeting, is reducing bi- catch of juvenile swordfish and billfish. We can't just blindly go forth and take the maximum area and the maximum amount. We have to consider the side effects, not just the effects on the fishermen but the effects on large coastal shark discards and the effects on turtles and the effects on a lot of other things. So I don't have an equal weight but I would say that our number one goal as we went through these numbers was swordfish dead discards and billfish discards. MR. DUNNIGAN: David, go ahead. MR. WILMOT: Okay, thank you for that. And again, I don't mean to imply what might have been what you had in mind here, but if I just glance down and look at blue marlin and I put the two together, we've actually lost a few more blue marlin than we started with with these two closed areas. So I hope you can understand the difficulty of trying to understand. You tell me the number one priority is to reduce the discards of more than one species, I admit, yet when I look at a key species I see more blue marlin will be discarded. I think you can imagine that would cause some pause for me in trying to understand where exactly we're going. MR. DUNNIGAN: Steve Loga. MR. LOGA: A question for Rebecca. Rebecca, have we looked at other alternatives besides the closed area in the Gulf? For instance, I was looking at the observer log book data today and it shows somewhat that possibly we can reduce the catch of billfish by four or five times just by simply switching from live bait back to dead bait before we look at these, because these areas obviously affect me greatly on that. Have we looked at those other ideas also? MR. DUNNIGAN: Rebecca. MS. LENT: That's a very good point, Steve, and I hope we could get some input from the advisory panel. We obviously need the science that proves to us that yes, indeed, with live bait versus dead bait, with circle hooks versus j-hooks, we can have different mortality rates. So this meeting obviously is focused on time/area closure. Anything we can do with gear types that would mitigate the need for time/area closures we'd love to hear about, we'd love to do it. It's a good point. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water. Rebecca, what Steve is referring to is today we still have an ongoing contract with, you know, John as far as the review of a grant contract. One of the things that, you know, is part of that is trying to see if there is anything that is, you know, a red flag on live versus dead, you know, bait in the Gulf of Mexico area. An observed subset that he showed us today to review was like a 47-set subset where they had marked tended, and it looks as if you both have live bait and you tend the line that, as Steve said, there is a three to five times on billfish interactions and it's only for a gain of 2 to 3 yellowfin tuna directed species per trip. So I would encourage HMS please get up with Dr. Hoey (phonetic). You know, when that information is more developed it would sure be a good thing for this group to see. MS. LENT: Thanks, Nelson. We'll check. We did invite Dr. Hoey but he wasn't able to come today. MR. DUNNIGAN: Ellen Peel. MS. PEEL: I just wanted to clarify. Nelson, you were saying that with the live bait that the increase in the marlin was higher? MR. BEIDEMAN: With live bait and tending the line, the increase -- I can't remember the exact but it went from like .6 on white marlin to like 3, four or five times higher, .6 per set to 3 per set. MS. PEEL: Right. An increase in the interaction and hookup with billfish with live bait? MR. BEIDEMAN: Yes. MS. PEEL: Okay, that's what we're saying also. MR. BEIDEMAN: Yes. MR. DUNNIGAN: Okay, John Wingard and then Pete Jensen. MR. WINGARD: Has there been a socioeconomic analysis done in conjunction with this because, as you said, there is a number of trade-offs going on here and suggestions made, changing bait, changing hook types. It seems that without some idea of the impact these are also having not only on the fish but the fishermen, we may be getting some very marginal gains in the biology with major losses, say, on the socioeconomic side. So I think that's a critical component that could be added in to help more fully evaluate the total trade-offs we are talking about. MS. LENT: Just to respond to that, that's a very good point, John. In fact, we've got a partial look at some of the gross output economic effects because we know what happens to their catch of their target species. If it's going down, then obviously their gross revenues are going down. If they're having to fish farther out, obviously their fishing costs are going up. If we're affecting communities in these large areas that could be closed for a long amount of time, then obviously we're having social effects. That's a very important point that we need to hear about. MR. DUNNIGAN: Pete Jensen. MR. JENSEN: I'm still curious about one thing on swordfish and maybe I missed it. If we have an annual quota in your analysis, why does the catch of swordfish go down? Don't we presume that we're still going to catch the quota no matter what you do, or are you simply suggesting that you're going to transfer the catch from those people that move out to somebody that's somewhere else? Shouldn't that line be flat? MS. LENT: Yeah, that's a good point. What we could do is add sets until we reach the quota, then we get back to status quo. But, in fact, when we're displacing people out we're putting them in areas where they might be catching less of the target catch. They're fishing where they find it most profitable, and that makes sense. So by displacing the effort, we're making the decision for a fishermen I'm going to go here and make ten sets here where, in fact, on that trip maybe would have made another two sets because he didn't quite have enough swordfish for his trip. So that's a good point, Pete. MR. DUNNIGAN: Okay, thank you. Any last questions just for clarification, facts on Karyl's presentation? (No response.) MR. DUNNIGAN: All right, let's move ahead. We have a couple of more presentations that we're going to be doing this afternoon for you and for the next one or set of them I'm going to ask Nelson Beideman to introduce that. Go ahead, Nelson. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water Fishermen's Association. I really don't want to get too much into introducing the proposal. John Flynn, legislative staff from Senator Breaux's office and Glen Delaney, our U.S. ICCAT commercial commissioner will be doing that. I would like to make a couple of more general remarks about the reasons that the industry has come forward, you know, with initiatives and proposals of this nature. Would that be proper now or after, Rebecca? MS. LENT: (Inaudible.) MR. BEIDEMAN: Well, if I could. And, Rebecca, you might be interested in this. We have reflected on this many, many, times but if was a very focused reflection this past week in Spain. We were staying at a hotel where the toreadors from the bullfights were staying, and each evening the locals would line up chairs and watch the bullfights just like, you know, we do here for football and baseball. The difference of cultures and the thought of going to a bullfight with a sign saying, "Save Baby Tunas," it just doesn't work over there. And the realization that we are never going to get Europeans to discard any fish as an incentive to protect small swordfish or tunas or what have you. So we're really -- one of the big incentives behind the industry looking harder at what is already accomplished on reducing small swordfish catches is how do we find a way of moving the international community to further protect small fish? Because it's not going to be through minimal sizes. Thank you. And who first? John? You can't even read Jean's stuff, you know. MS. LENT: This is the printout we got on e-mail. We tried to enlargen it. MR. BEIDEMAN: Okay. I have regular size if you want. MS. LENT: We'll send somebody over to copy it. MR. CLAVERIE: Nelson, you got it wrong. You'd say, "Save the Baby Bulls so they can grow up to fight." MR. DUNNIGAN: You know, that was Mr. Claverie. Just to make sure the record will reflect that. MR. BEIDEMAN: It's kind of funny when you think about it though, Mau. It's an unbelievable difference of cultures. MR. FLYNN: Before you go ahead, like any good Coast Guard guy, I'm the Coast Guard person in Senator Breaux's office but I also staff all fisheries issues and maritime issues. I've been there for about a year. I have charts that it doesn't look like I'll need because there is an overhead set to go. But I'm not here today as John Flynn. I'm here as Senator Breaux to discuss something that took place in our office. And Nelson kind of laid the groundwork just a little bit by mentioning ICCAT. This past November in ICCAT went over just kind of sidebar discussions on ways of addressing the swordfish issue, a way of addressing the bi-catch with billfish and other species. And that kind of followed over to when we got home just reviewing the FMP draft process. And any other congressional folks that are here, I mean, our office was virtually flooded with valid concerns of the bi-catch issue and problem. And at that time we said what can we do? What can we do about this? And we remembered back to discussions we had at ICCAT, and from there basically I talked to Senator Breaux about it. And as everybody knows, he's been around for a long time. He's a Commerce Committee and Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries and he's known as kind of the deal maker, to so speak, as far as bringing parties together. So that's what we did. That's basically what we're trying to do. And then in our office actually was on -- you know, my last name and I'm an Irishman so I picked St. Patrick's Day of all times to call the meeting. Some people say it was a bad time to do it, but on basically March 17th we called together Rawley Smitten (phonetic) not as Rawley Smitten but basically director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Glen Delaney representing Blue Water, Senator Breaux was in attendance. Bob Hayes from the Billfish Foundation and Peter Hill from Legislative Affairs. And the proposal that we discussed is one that you have already seen and I won't spend a lot of time on it, but basically starting from North Carolina to the Florida straits then another area over Desoto Canyon and the Gulf. And honestly I'll stay close to the mike. What I'm talking about is swordfish. I'll get into other species here in just a second, but this was a swordfish proposal. There was some confusion, just to kind of air it right now, confusion between swordfish and yellowfin tuna, but what I'm talking about now is swordfish. The swordfish and billfish issue. These areas -- and I'm not a scientist. I have a science background. I'm not a scientist. These areas, as everybody especially in this audience or this panel knows, there are grounds and hot spots for juvenile swordfish and also spots for billfish. So as far as coming together to address a way of taking care of the issue, taking care of the problem, those in attendance looked at the proposal, and while we were there Senator Breaux said, "Is this something that works for everybody?" And then while we were in the room, once again, you know, the parties were represented. We all agreed to work together on it. In turn, Senator Breaux said, and this is a quote from him. He goes, "If this is something that's doable, something that everybody is agreeing to in this room and agreeing to work on in the future," he goes, "I'll champion the cause." Those were his words: "I'll champion the cause." So with that, and some of the differences between this proposal and some of the other things that have been discussed -- and I might add that this is very close to SWO-3. I think it's SWO-3. See, I read your charts. Very close to SWO-3. The only -- not the only difference. Some minor differences in geographic boundaries, but in other differences that this proposal includes a buyback. It includes a buyback. And if I get off base I know Glen Delaney will get me back on, but basically this buyback would impact approximately 47 vessels, 47 or 48 vessels. I think that's accurate. Now, the buyback is estimated to cost approximately $15 million; 7 1/2 would come from the industry and 7 1/2 would come from the United States during appropriations, basically Title XI loan guarantee. Before anybody asks, we do have a draft bill. There is a draft bill. One of the key six sections that's missing from the bill is data. We need data to put into it. Three months ago data was requested. The data we received was helpful but it was incomplete. In turn, I have a copy of a letter that Senator Breaux sent to Penny Dalton. It's here if anybody wants to see it, but basically the letter that went back to Penny reminded Penny of the commitment, was the word, the commitment that had been made by Penny's predecessor, Rawley Smitten, to work on this proposal and then also requested the data. The data is very important to this bill because without the data for the bill we can not go through the entire compensation formula for what would be a fair and equitable buyback to those longliners or those fishermen impacted, drastically impacted, by being forced out of the fishery through this time/area closure. Some of the concern that is in our office right now is that assurances or commitments were made to Senator Breaux and I have to say, I mean, he was quite surprised to learn that the AP process was underway and that we were looking at a proposed rule or a ruling process, and that's another reason that the letter went to Penny Dalton basically kind of reaffirming the fact that commitments had been made to work on this proposal that includes a buyback. So I have to go on the record in saying that, so I mean -- let me just kind of regroup here. Some of the other points that I wanted to make is this is not just at the Penny Dalton or the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service level. Dr. Baker and Terry Garcia were in Senator Breaux's office about two weeks ago. It was mentioned to them by me in Senator Breaux's office and again by Senator Breaux, commitments were raised by both individuals at that time that this was something very much worth pursuing, especially with the buyback option. I don't have a copy of the article but earlier this week, I forget what publication it was but Dr. -- not Dr. Baker but Terry Garcia was quoted as saying that time/area closures and buybacks were the way to go with the Fishery Service. I don't have the article but I've seen it two or three times. What else can I say? I'm not trying to slam anybody. I'm just trying to bring everything up that has been committed so you know that everybody is trying to work together on this but, at the same time, commitments were made, promises have been made, and it seems like we're going down parallel tracks. So Senator Breaux asked me to come here today basically to repeat and reaffirm what was discussed and what was committed to, and then at the same time to say that with a ruling process or the proposed rule, what is not included in there. For example, I mean, SWO-3 looks exactly like the area or very close to it, but the one element missing is the buyback. So the buyback is not included and that's something that we'll address legislatively. I think that's pretty fair to say that. So I've been talking about swordfish and the bi-catch of billfish. Another area that Senator Breaux is also working on -- in fact, he had breakfast in New Orleans with Gary Schweist (phonetic) and the Billfish Foundation. And one of the concerns that was made was this area in the Gulf. It needs to be a more open area. The area in the Gulf that I'm talking about is swordfish. I know there are some other areas that individuals say that there are swordfish and billfish bi-catch in there, but I'm talking about swordfish. The other areas that we continue to work on -- and, in fact, I know that Bob Hayes and Ellen Peel met with Steve Loga from Tuna Fresh to discuss the yellowfin tuna issue. So I say that because I'm not -- I guess I'm a little sensitive right now because this is the area that we agreed to in principle and that partes that were there agreed to; at the same time, we're not ruling out looking at other areas, but the area that I'm looking at is swordfish. Hopefully in here everybody understands that because every time I talk to my boss and people in the office I have to make sure that they understand they are two different issues but that's, you know, one issue. The one we're working on right now is swordfish and the bi-catch of billfish is important but we're not ruling out continuing to work with other parties as long as it's mutually agreeable without, you know, kind of bashing or slashing either side to address that. I kind of went on and on about that. You know, I'm looking directly at Bob. Is that pretty much what we've -- MR. HAYES: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Use the microphone. MR. HAYES: Oh, yeah. I'm Bob Hayes. You know, I think it's a fair assessment that, you know, on my view of the swordfish industry here there's a couple things. This is the first day I've ever seen this NMFS data so that gives me some pause for reflection. But notwithstanding that, you know, on the swordfish industry to essentially come forward and say we're going to close a substantial portion of the EEZ because we've got a small swordfish problem and we know that there will be some economic dislocation of that and I believe what they've decided is that they're going to buy themselves out with the assistance of some federal funds. You know, I think that's a positive thing and I don't think that that's something we ought to beat up the swordfish industry for. I think I said at the time and I've said for some time, we've got a problem, a bi-catch problem in the Gulf which is not a swordfish problem. It is a yellowfin tuna problem. And we've been talking to the yellowfin tuna folks about that problem and we're trying to see if we can pull something together. And I think that's a fair assessment of where we are. MR. FLYNN: I think so, too. I mean, if anybody has any questions about the mechanics of the bill I'd be happy to address those. One of the other points that I did not make is that with the buyback 50 percent would come from Title XI loan guarantees and there would be -- correct me if I'm wrong -- but a 5 cent per pound dressed weight assessed at the dealer level. We had a trade attorney in my office review that for GATT problems or implications. He was one of the crafters of GATT. He didn't see problems with it. But just to make sure that we're good and on par with everything, we requested USTR to visit Senator Breaux's office next week and they're going to do that. So I know there were some interim memos within NMFS that said that there might be a problem but, take my word for it, next week we'll meet on that. Glen, what did I miss? MR. DELANEY: Well, the (inaudible). MS. LENT: (Inaudible.) And we've received that letter and we're in the process of evaluating it and preparing a response. Let me just say that what I expected John to talk about here today was not that letter. I expected you to focus more on the actual legislation, the mechanics, you know, the fact that importers would be taxed, and how would you pay -- which vessels you'd select and what's the basis and how much you're going to pay each boat and the price and that kind of thing. So we'll take that as a comment from the floor that there's concern about -- you know, the same concerns that are raised by Breaux. But let's focus on the time/area closure aspects of this proposal. And I think one of the appealing things about the buyout which we all embrace, we would love to have a buyout, is that it helps minimize the economic effects of a buyout. And if we go with something that's, you know, similar to Blue Water or something along that seaboard, obviously we're impacting a lot of communities. And that's what's appealing and we would love to embrace a buyback and we hope that this works out. Thanks. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Sure. Okay, I have about 20 or 25 copies of it in my brief case as well. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: Sure. A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) A PARTICIPANT: No, I think it would be helpful because if I was on the panel I'd be asking, well, where are all the specifics of the proposal that's being made? The major difference is buyout. MR. DUNNIGAN: Why don't you just walk through the summary? MR. BEIDEMAN: Rebecca, at some point there are, you know, comments that I would like to make relative to, you know, the possible two tracks as far as the ramifications of it in November. MS. LENT: We have at least one more AP member who wants to make a presentation and so we'll try and make sure we have enough time for that before we break at 3:45. We've got another hour. MR. HAYES: Can I make one comment, if I could? Bob Hayes. MR. DUNNIGAN: State your name first. MR. HAYES: Bob Hayes. I'm sorry. I think an outline of this proposal and a discussion of it I think is useful, and I would like to point out -- and I think Nelson would agree with this -- you know, the work that the National Marine Fisheries Service has done in order to push this proposal to the point that it's pushed it is not inconsistent, I do not believe, with a legislative approach which clearly is going to require some -- if you're going to have a buyout you're going to have to have some kind of legislation. I don't view them as inconsistent. And I think the fact that you can involve larger communities with more data and more analysis will be useful with respect to identifications of the positive impacts of your proposal and identification of maybe some other areas that could possibly be fixed as well. So, I mean, I see this is a disclosure thing, as an analysis thing, and as something that is a pretty positive effort on behalf of the Fisheries Service. MR. DUNNIGAN: Nelson Beideman. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water. I would agree with what Bob is saying as far as, you know, the analysis, et cetera, but I would like to speak to at the proper time is we've got two possible different scenarios that are setting up here. One possible scenario is that we go into the international forum with an industry initiative, government cooperation, sport fish, recreational fishery, commercial, all working together. We present this strong concept into the international forum and try to move forward across all species with small fish protection. The other scenario is we have a massive closed area without compensation that's in court. We go to our foreign compadres in the international arena and ask them for money to help us with the legal fees. MS. LENT: This is something that we discussed while we were in Spain with Miriam and Nelson. And Nelson said -- I mean, not Nelson -- Miriam said, "Nelson, we're your best friends on this." And the reason is the following: If indeed we go forth with a proposed rule and we analyze different options for time/area closures, one of the things we have to look at under a reg flex of course is mitigating measures. And one great mitigating measure for a time/area closure is a buyout, and the analyses that we do are going to clearly show that we've greatly minimized the economic effects and we do better under National Standard Eight and under everything in the red flag if we have a buyout. It looks great relative to the effects that we would have trying to reduce bi- catch without a buyout. So we are your best friends in this in the sense that even though we're on a parallel track, all of this would be considered. Here is one way that you can mitigate economic effects, so let's keep working it together. I think this is all for the common good. MR. BEIDEMAN: I can appreciate that, Rebecca, and boy, I hope everything you're saying is exactly the perfect world scenario that it works out to be. But I believe that later on during the public comment period you will hear from longline industry participants that have agreed upon the buyout scenario that if there is closures without compensation there will be, you know, opposition. MR. DUNNIGAN: We want to let the presentation continue. David and Russ, do you want to ask your question first or do you want to be first in line after they finish? MR. WILMOT: Well, no, I would like to ask it now because I was just wondering if we might actually get back to the agenda. I didn't realize that we were coming here today to debate buyouts. If so, we certainly have an awful lot of presenters who should be here to discuss the pros and cons of buyouts. I thought we were here to talk a little bit about time/area closures and the conservation associated with them. Very different things. I am more than happy to initiate a buyout debate here. I am perfectly capable of doing it, but I'd like an awful lot of other experts to be here as well to talk about the pros, the cons, and a lot of other issues. This was not on the agenda. I am not prepared to talk about it. I don't know if everyone else knew about it and I'm the only one who didn't, but I would like to get back to talking about time/area closures and the conservation measures, not this lovefest with economic relief discussion. MR. FLYNN: So let me talk about the time/area closure. The time/area closure includes a buyout. I'm sorry. This time/area closure -- two areas. Once again, I mentioned the difference between SWO-3 and the time/area closures identified on the over head. The time/area closure in the first area is 80,000 square miles and it's closed the entire year. The second area closed the first six months of the year is 5,400 square miles. Those are the areas based upon NMFS data and not anybody else's data. And as far as conservation benefits, you'll see on the handout that's going around -- I won't go through all the numbers but, basically, when you think about small swordfish, 8,444 small swordfish, basically a 45 percent reduction. As far as concerns, and valid concerns, from the billfish folks and billfish panel, 295 blue marlin, 148 white, 345 sail, and 25 spearfish, and anywhere from 34.2 percent reductions down to 8 percent reductions. So, I mean -- yes. A PARTICIPANT: A little bit then about some of the assumptions that were made here. This is great. This is the discussion I really would like to discuss. What was the assumption used on the movement of effort in the closed -- outside of the closed area? MR. FLYNN: Glen will help me on the science here. MR. DUNNIGAN: Glen Delaney. MR. DELANEY: Getting back to the -- that's why a buyback is fundamental to this and, you know, National Standard Nine to minimize bi-catch is an important national standard but it's one of many and the one right before it also requires equal attention when we're doing something to conserve our resources, which is to consider the adverse economic impacts on people. The Magnuson Act is fish -- I know it's hard to say -- and people. All together. And people. So that's the point. It's fundamental to this proposal. And to answer your question, there is no displacement of effort if you -- I mean, the effort is displaced out of the fishery. Through a buyback the vessels are removed. That effort ceases to exist so there is no assumption that effort is going to be displaced within that community of 47 vessels elsewhere. Will harvest continue for a longer period of time? Will the catch quota be reached for swordfish? Probably by vessels fishing elsewhere on larger fish. That's the point is to catch larger fish and stop fishing where there are smaller fish. MR. WILMOT: So just to clarify -- David Wilmot. The assumption was made that if the one third part of the quota that was caught in the closed area is indeed still caught outside the closed area that there would be zero small swordfish killed? That's who one would accomplish a 45 percent reduction? Is that correct? Zero additional small swordfish would be caught? MR. DELANEY: I can't assume, and neither can you or anyone in this room, and that's why I'm surprised by the NMFS proposal as to what displaced effort or -- displaced effort is not maybe the correct term because it implies that these vessels are going to move somewhere. But the catches are going to increase somewhere else. MR. WILMOT: Right, sure. MR. DELANEY: I have an absolutely no idea. No one in this room does, so it's a little difficult to make that assumption. All we can say is that within this zone this many fish would no longer be caught. MR. WILMOT: But that's not what it says. MR. DELANEY: That's what we can say. MR. WILMOT: You could say that, but that's not what it says. It says that that's the percent reduction in the EEZ. That's a very different statement. By not catching 8,444 swordfish, that would constitute a 45 percent reduction in the small swordfish catch within the EEZ, without being able to assume what it is that your point is. MR. DELANEY: I know exactly what you're saying, David, but no one, including yourself, could ever make an assumption like that, could they? MR. WILMOT: Well, actually, there are a quite a few data that would allow you to make a number of assumptions. One could simply look at the discard rate in the other areas outside the closed area, and one can accurately make a number of assumptions from that. MR. DELANEY: Maybe more swordfish will be caught off the Grand Banks. MR. WILMOT: Making an assumption above zero in the rest of the EEZ where the fishing will occur, oh, yeah, that could be justified. MR. DELANEY: Well, that's your opinion. MR. DUNNIGAN: Do you have more that you want to present or do you want to just get into the discussion? MR. DELANEY: I think he just answered a question. MR. DUNNIGAN: Okay, good. We have Russ Dunn, Mau Claverie, Russ Nelson. MR. DUNN: I think David covered a lot of what I had. The other questions went more toward, I guess, the -- and my understanding or qualification was 5 percent income, more than a 5 percent change in income is significant and, therefore, they would be eligible for a buyout. Is that still correct, if your income is affected by more than 5 percent, or is that -- the eligibility -- MR. DELANEY: I don't have a copy of the draft in front of me but I'll be glad to get it if you look. But it defines eligibility and what an eligible vessel would be, based on the performance. Nelson, do you have in front of you the eligibility definition? The question was what constitutes eligibility in terms of buyback and I don't have that piece of paper in front of me. MR. BEIDEMAN: Nelson Beideman, Blue Water. The first eligibility point was that 50 percent of a vessel's sets in any of the last six years up to '97 would have had to have been in these closed -- proposed closed areas. Another eligibility point is to make sure that these are substantial vessels. We needed some cutoff. We said at least 25 sets in that qualifying year from that vessel. Okay. And also that they would have to be under the limited access program. That was assumed. Does that answer it? MR. DUNN: So there isn't a financial eligibility criteria? MR. BEIDEMAN: Well, we started with we wanted 75 percent of their income to be through pelagic longlining and what we discovered is that we would have to take a whole nother step of, you know, to get that information through their tax returns and what not, and at least at that point we were unwilling to prolong the process for that information. We felt we could get at it, especially with Jean's advice. We wanted the substantial boats and between the 50 percent of sets and the at least 25 sets in a year that we were indeed getting that. Another thing I would like to reflect on is that to the extent that these boats volunteer and to the extent that, you know, they may when we eliminate their effort we're not only eliminating their effort from within the zone; we're also eliminating their effort year round so there could be additional benefits in that respect. MR. DUNN: So then my understanding is then that there is no link, financial link, of an eligibility criteria. MR. BEIDEMAN: No. MR. DELANEY: A further answer to that. One of the reasons why we still are very much interested in getting the data out the National Marine Fishery Service regarding the particular catch histories of these specific 47 vessels is to further analyze what were the catch histories and therefore what -- (End of Tape 1, Side B.) MR. DELANEY: -- have that information. So the type of analysis that you're talking about can't be done until we have the actual catch histories of those specific 47 vessels. Once we have that, it may, you know, new ideas or new approaches may develop when we see what the distribution of catch histories were over those fisheries and a more close linkage between what is it that these people are being asked to give up, basically, relative to how much compensation would be appropriate. That linkage will become a lot more clear once we have that data. Is that helpful? MR. DUNN: Yeah, (inaudible). MR. DUNNIGAN: Turn on your mike. MR. DUNN: Title XI loan guarantees. Can someone tell me where the funding for that comes from? Is that government money or is that money that fishermen have put away? My question goes to is this proposal double- dipping into the federal coffers. If it's industry is paying for half but their funding is coming from Title XI and that's really a government funded program, aren't the taxpayers paying twice? But I don't know the answer to that. MR. DELANEY: Well, you almost got it. Actually, it's the federal ship financing fund is more correct, and Bob Hayes is nodding over there because he probably wrote it or something. And you can explain it better than I can, but basically it's a federal guarantee of a private sector loan to the industry, okay, which then would be distributed to those who are bought out, and then the remaining industry, whatever that principle amount plus -- would be amortized over, I think, a 30-year period with interest, whatever the standard government rate of interest is for this type of thing, and would be paid back by the industry in increments, basically just paying a debt service, through assessments on swordfish. And one thing -- I might as well go ahead and elaborate a little bit since it brought me to this point -- is, okay, what is it assessed on? And we'd like to assess it on swordfish of Atlantic origin, for obviously reasons, not on swordfish of Pacific origin. We are trying to advance the conservation of Atlantic swordfish. This is all something that comes -- basically, its origins are in ICCAT so we felt it appropriate to just restrict it to assessments on Atlantic origin swordfish. And then further, that it would be equitably assessed on swordfish of Atlantic origin caught by U.S. fishermen and caught and entered into the United States by foreign fishermen, under the theory that any swordfish that we conserve and any small swordfish that we protect in our ow