 Good morning, and welcome to day two. I trust everybody had a pleasant evening last night, and I've enjoyed what pieces of the informal conversations that I've been able to pick up on. As I mentioned yesterday, we're going to shift today into less of an academic study, if you will, of fisheries law and the other management schemes and laws that intersect with them, and really dive into some of the, frankly, challenging issues that fisheries management and all ocean managers are up against these days. So we're very fortunate today to have a diversity of viewpoints and a diversity of backgrounds, which as I mentioned yesterday, I think is reflective of the challenges of these issues. They're just much more interdisciplinary. They're much more complicated as if developing an FMP under Magnificent isn't complicated enough. But we're going to talk about catch shares and those types of allocation schemes this morning, and then go into sort of the kitchen sink panel at the end with energy issues and marine spatial planning under that larger rubric of challenges of the future, and how an existing scheme and an existing law is going to fit into this brave new world that we're entering. So before we do that, we're very lucky to have Eric Schwab here, and I'm going to let Dean Logan introduce him. Thank you, Susan. And I wish I had been here for the dinner last night. I had an event up in Boston I had to go to, but I heard lots of interesting conversations were rebounding around the hall. As I said yesterday, this is really a wonderful opportunity for Roger Williams to bring together experts from a broad range of disciplines and from different perspectives to talk about the challenges historically and now facing us involving fisheries management. And as Susan said, we've put together a really remarkable collection of people. And the next speaker is no exception. Eric Schwab is the Assistant Administrator for Fisheries at the National Marine Fisheries Service at NOAA. And he has really quite a remarkable biography. You know, you used to see people who are like this that have long academic pedigrees or they've got some political connection or whatever. Eric actually started at the ground level working as a law enforcement officer in natural resources in Maryland and has over a 25-year career done a large range of activities in a broad range of professional settings, including local, state, and national. He has a very important job, as the title suggests, and we are delighted to have Eric Schwab with us today to speak to us as a keynote for today's part of the program. Eric? So, good morning, everyone. First, I particularly want to thank Dean Logan, Susan, the university and the institute for putting on this program and inviting me to participate. For those of you who were here yesterday, and I'm just curious how many were. So almost everybody, I know I saw a few new faces in the room today that weren't here yesterday. Yesterday was a great foundation with respect to all of the current understandings, the evolution of Magnuson, the evolution of Magnuson in the context of a number of the other natural resource statutes and natural resource settings that we operate within. And today becomes, I think, another really interesting opportunity for us to discuss not so much the foundation, how we got here, but where we go from here, and particularly some of the cutting edge challenges and issues and opportunities that we face in implementing Magnuson within this brave new world. So I actually had the good fortune of being here yesterday, which probably affords you maybe some good fortune in that I'm going to have significantly modified my presentation, so it's not to repeat everything that was said yesterday in my keynote, which means that I'll also beg your indulgence if I jump around a little bit or my presentation seems somewhat disconnected on occasion. It's because I'm trying to spare you not so much a lack of any preparation on my part. But the other thing that I wanted to note in doing that, what I'm going to try to do is move less from descriptive approaches to more reflective approaches. So while you'll see in a PowerPoint slide some descriptive language, I will try to use that in a brief period of time here as a launching off point for some personal observations about how these things are or are not playing out in our current implementation of Magnuson. I do want to note at the outset that I think much of what we heard yesterday and much of the challenge that we face is underlain by a theme of tension and in many respects, natural tensions. It's the tension between perfect science and best available science. It's the tension between rebuilding goals and the promise of long-term rebuilding and current economic realities that many fishermen and local communities face all around the country. It's actually, and we're going to see this, I think, play out in some of the allocation discussions, particularly as it relates to cat share systems, a little bit of a tension between and where we strike a balance between efficiency and equity in relation to historic uses. We also see growing tensions between the prosecution of individual fisheries and the needs to recognize that those fisheries operate in are influenced by and influence broader ecosystems and broader socioeconomic systems. All of these tensions really come together in, I think, the here and now to present us some really important challenges, but also some great opportunities to build on the past success of Magnuson in a way that will really help us in social, economic, and environmental ways going forward meet even greater promise that's associated with the coastal and ocean resources that we all share. I don't think, by the way, that those tensions, the other comment that I wanted to make at the outset is that those tensions are necessarily unique to the ocean world or to implementation of Magnuson. But I would suggest that they're complicated, in fact, by a couple of things, one of which we talked about yesterday, and that is this. We all face these kind of choices in our daily lives and in our professional lives in all kinds of ways, but the challenges in the ocean are complicated by this common access issue, this potential tragedy of the commons that we heard reflected on yesterday. And I think it's challenged by another thing, and Dean Logan mentioned my resume, and so I have some expertise earlier in my career in counting trees. And one of the things that, one of the adages of the fishery scientists is that, you know, fish are as easy to count as trees except they're underwater and they swim around. So we do have this, what that suggests is this underlying problem associated with recognizing our, the shared reality that we have to deal with. So it's too easy oftentimes to divert from debates around honest policy choices into debates over what the current reality is, what the science is, what the economic impacts are. And I'll talk a little bit about that going forward. So what I really want to focus on here today in this slide has been a little bit, this is a bit dated by some of the adjustments that I've made to this presentation, are really, as I already alluded to, the opportunity for the gains associated with Magnus and to date and the continued promise associated with execution of Magnus and Act going forward. I really do want to focus on a few of the significant changes associated with the 2006 reauthorization. I want to talk about some of our particular implementation priorities within NOAA Fisheries. We heard a lot yesterday about the various responsibilities that are bestowed upon the agency, the fishery management councils and the fishermen and the fishing communities associated with this new Magnus and we can't satisfy all of those demands at once. In fact, we heard in some of the Q&A alluded to one of the demands that we're explicitly not meeting up, meeting our requirements on and there are certainly others. And I do want to close with a few comments about the opportunity associated with the new national ocean policy and particularly coastal and marine spatial planning focus of that national ocean policy. And most importantly, what I'm hoping to do, although I look around the room and I see there are no clocks here, what I'm hoping to do is restrict my commentary to about 30 minutes and then leave plenty of opportunity for Q&A because frankly I know that's the most interesting part of the session for you and it usually is for me as well. So we'll try to do that and so Susan, if you could help me in that regard. Okay. So I don't wear, you know, probably like a lot of people, I don't wear a watch anymore. I look at my cell phone so if I look at my cell phone it's not because I'm uninterested in what I have to say. So I do want to talk a little bit about the opportunity associated with Magnus and reauthorization. You know, I think we think a lot about the application of Magnus and in the here and now in the context of impacts to fishermen and fishing communities. We hear certainly a lot of that. Why can't we just leave things the way that they are? Well, of course, you know, the first part of that is that leaving things the way that they are is not necessarily a static or dependable circumstance. Many fisheries face challenges under their current management framework. But more importantly is that many fisheries around the country, not only from an ecosystem perspective, but even from a direct economic perspective are underperforming. And we know that we have incredible rebuilding opportunities that are out there based on not only long-term histories but even recent histories. And we know that increasing, that rebuilding all fish stocks will provide for us significant economic opportunity in the here and now, in these fishing communities. And this slide is just a quick synopsis of some of the current calculation associated with that potential opportunity. I would also note, by the way, that I think there were a series of handouts, one pagers, that were passed around the room, that sort of, some of them were passed around the room, there's some of them here, that capture some of this data in summary fashion. And you're welcome to use that in addition to whatever summary materials are going to be available, ultimately, on line. So we heard a lot yesterday about the evolution of Magnuson since its inception in 1976. I'm not going to dwell on that history again. Other than to note that the evolution I think was not just one of, you know, some agency or some congresses dastardly attempt to just make things more complicated over time. It really did reflect not only an evolution of the changing circumstances that the fisheries have found themselves in in relation to early implementation, but also a recognition of the increasing challenges that we face in managing these fisheries effectively within the context of what are very complicated ecosystems. And so as science improves, our need to manage more effectively within the context of that increased understanding, obviously, increases. And so while the early days of fisheries were really about securing a domestic fishery, they were also about managing that domestic fishery in a very kind of single species fashion, if you will. And one of the important evolutions over time that we have seen unfold is first an understanding of the interactions among species. This continues to challenge us significantly in mixed stock species or even in management efforts where we seek to achieve the maximum sustainable yield for species that in some cases eat each other. But we have also seen increasing recognition of the interactions not only of species with each other but with their habitats. And we have seen in some places the carrying capacity of habitats decline. Those are things that we have to take in real consideration as we make management decisions. We have also, by the way, seen opportunities for fisheries to interact with and impact on their habitats. So this relationship between fisheries and their habitats is something that has increasingly been incorporated into management planning efforts going forward. And I would submit that, by the way, it's not going to end there. We heard some mention yesterday of climate-related impacts. And so even as we move to an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management, recognizing in the here and now the relationship amongst species and between species and their habitats, we also are beginning to recognize that those habitats in time are not static circumstances and in fact issues like global warming, issues like sea level rise have potential to, in many ways, affect the fishery resources that we manage and therefore require consideration of the potential of those changes as we undertake management planning going into the future. And I'll just place that as sort of a bookmark for you to think about going into the future. Let me just highlight a couple of things at the outset related to the 2006 reauthorization, 2006, with deference to Mike Conditon. Are you still here, Mike? And the legislative process. Actually, I always reference the 2006 reauthorization, too, because I did have the opportunity in a stint with the Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies to work on the 2006 reauthorization. And it was, by the way, having worked on that and provided some language that ultimately was incorporated into one aspect of the bill, something that we thought was actually dead. We all went to sleep, and maybe the last night of that waning Congress in 2006 thinking that all of our work had gone for naught and woke up to find that, in fact, the act had passed and it set us on the course that I think we're on today in, again, in many ways, I think, affording us great opportunity to focus on some things that are important going forward. So it mandates the use of annual catch limits and accountability measures to end overfishing. Specifically, put into place the requirement that we meet deadlines to put those measures into place, and to meet specific deadlines relating to rebuilding stocks. And if you go back to the promise of the 1996 reauthorization, you saw that desire to move in that direction, and I think what you saw reflected in 2006 was, frankly, a dissatisfaction that deadlines had slipped and the promise of the 96 reauthorization associated with ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks had not been met and perhaps on the part of at least some leaders in Congress, some frustration with that fact. It also provides, very specifically for widespread use of what can be term market-based management through limited access privileges manifesting now under the terminology of catch shares. And I'm going to spend a few minutes. I'm going into a little more detail on the catch share issue here momentarily. And it calls for increased international cooperation. You'll see in a slide that I'll show you in a few minutes that there is, there remain continued problems associated with ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks in stocks that we share internationally. And there was a particular focus in this reauthorization in identifying the need for stronger international presence and international negotiating postures as it related to a number of those stocks. And it also strengthens the role of science in management. I'll say more about that here in a moment, particularly as it relates to councils. So, you know, the councils do do a great job. As we heard yesterday, the councils might not be perfect. The entire management system is not perfect, but we heard referenced twice yesterday to the Churchill quote regarding democracy. And I think it somewhat applies here because we do feel like the councils present an incredibly robust opportunity for public input, engagement with not only the fishing community, but lots of other interests that have perspectives related to the marine and coastal environment. And the councils do provide for us a very strong evaluation of options and a very strong application of the public input and public desires into that management process. The councils have been historically challenged, particularly when separating between allocation issues and conservation issues, and I think one of the points that you see reflected in that 2006 reauthorization, which essentially at some level limited the council's ability to move outside of the advice of its scientific and statistical committees to focus really on let's first set the conservation threshold that we have to meet to end over fishing, to rebuild stocks, to manage on a sustainable basis that we all seek to manage on. And then within that framework, let's make the rest of our management and allocation decisions without going back and compromising on some of those conservation principles. So one of the things that the 2006 act did was very clearly draw that line between when you're making conservation decisions and taking conservation action and when within the context of a sustainability framework you can make appropriate compromises related to allocation and other management actions. So I'm not going to focus on the national standard at all. I'll just again say that one of the things that the 2006 reauthorization did was establish this requirement for creation of annual catch limits and accountability measures by 2010 for fisheries undergoing over fishing in 2011 for all of our major stocks. So I don't know if you can read the fine print there, but I have two maps. One is stocks subject to over fishing and these are, you know, out of our major stocks and I think you find, even if you can't read the fine print there, a rather interesting difference between West Coast and East and Gulf Coast and I will allow you to draw your own conclusions about that but I would just offer a couple of comments. One is obviously many of these fisheries on the East Coast and the Gulf are complex, both in much more complex in the number and type of participants but also in the number of species that are involved. But in some cases also when you get out of the West Coast there is particularly in Alaska a longer history of dealing with some of these important conservation goals that are shared between the fishermen and the agency and we could spend hours teasing apart what that means but this is at least as it relates to our responsibility with the councils to address over fishing a current snapshot of the world, at least the US. So for rebuilding over fish stocks, so it's really important and I know for a good part of the audience it's unnecessary for me to say this but let me do it anyway for at least parts of the audience to distinguish between over fished and over fishing. So over fished represents some abundance level that you think is appropriate in relation to the historical abundance levels of that particular stock and over fishing really relates specifically to the rate of removal of that stock and so if you can have a stock that is over fished in that its abundance is very low that may or may not be subject to any fishing at all. Alternatively you can have a stock whose abundance is high but which is being exploited at a rate that threatens to undermine that abundance over time so you can have a relatively healthy stock that is in the short term subject to over fishing before vulnerable to decline. Alternatively you can have an over fished stock, one at low abundance whereby you've significantly curtailed fishing and it might even be on a rebuilding trajectory just has not gotten there yet but we do have specific requirements with respect to rebuilding over fish stocks that are articulated on this slide. And so here's a picture of the over fished stocks and I'm not going to dwell on this other than to note that the 40 from the previous slide and the 47 from this slide don't necessarily perfectly overlap and so there are some that fall into one or both categories depending upon the circumstances that I just described. So we also have this scientific challenge which is our understanding of the status of stocks. We measure progress in rebuilding based on a fish stock sustainability index. It's very simple. It reflects the measure of increasing understanding of the primary stocks and their status as it relates to over fished and over fishing and so that you do see 21 stocks have been rebuilt since 2000. You do see significant not only increases in the rebuilding process but also reflected here is an increased understanding of the status of many stocks and when you go around the country there are a lot of stocks for which we frankly lack sufficient data and by the way New England is probably the place where we suffer that problem the least. You go down into the South Atlantic, the Gulf Coast one of the big problems is that we have major stocks that we have historically not had really good understanding of. So let me shift gears into catch shares. So I'm going a little over I guess Susan but I'm getting close. Let me just I'll just try to keep it moving along. So we're going to talk about allocation issues you know speaking generally a catch share that's a term used to describe a fishery management program where shares of quotas are assigned more explicitly to individuals, to communities, to associations of some sort and the recipient of the catch share is directly accountable for on an annual basis fishing in a manner that acts within the constraints of that individual share. Oftentimes accompanying that assignment of a catch share on the part of the regulatory agency is more flexibility to fish outside of traditional management boundaries providing that the fisherman or the catch share owning entity remains within that overall quota. So there's a trade-off here which is we'll give you a little more flexibility from a management end you take a little more responsibility for meeting your share. These shares also generally are assigned by way of a privilege over a period of time. So if you own a if if you control a percentage of a share of a stock in year one and that stock increases in size going into year two three four or five your actual quota then would rise as that total allowable catch would rise. So that so in addition to having this here and now flexibility and this here and now opportunity to time bringing fish to the market on occasion when it is most valuable to you. You also have invested now a greater opportunity to see the value of your share grow over time as conservation measures take effect and you also thereby very directly eliminate in many respects this traditional challenge associated with the Tragedy of Commons where even if I have a particular conservation ethic that I want to employ in my fishing behavior I don't necessarily operate with a sense of confidence that everybody else in the fishery is acting in the same way. Therefore my conservation ethic my conservation motivation is in fact undermined in some fashion by my uncertainty with respect to what other members of the fishery are doing in any given in any given fishing season. So I want to just talk I do want to note that yesterday as I was sitting here we also released our national catch share policy. Our national catch share policy does not mandate the application of catch share systems in fisheries nor does it set any numeric quotas that the agency aspires to meet. It does say that we encourage councils to evaluate the opportunity associated with catch share systems when they make important management decisions and it does say that we will work with them both on a technical perspective and from the perspective of providing resources to help them implement catch share programs should they choose to so implement them. I'm going to show you this graph which can you guys see those numbers. Okay I can't unless I put my glasses on but this this is specific to the Northeast ground fish catch as it relates to sector implementation in 2010. And it tells a rather interesting story because it compares on the left for us for a series of stocks in the ground fish fishery on the left a set of columns that relate to sector based performance and on the right the common pool. So as you heard a little bit yesterday fishermen could elect into sectors that was generally based at least to some degree their ability to do so on their catch history but it was a free opportunity to associate and aggregate according to their catch histories and business interests and everybody that didn't elect to go into sectors remained in a common pool. So you could you could at least posit the argument that some of the opportunity to employ the creativity and ingenuity of fishermen under the sector program and under the latitude afforded participants in the sectors should show up in these catch patterns and that the common pool catch patterns might be more reflective of historical challenges associated with management of this multi species fishery. So what you see here in those stocks is some stocks in the ground fish fishery are considered to be limiting stocks that is when we catch the annual quota of the limiting stock it has the effect of shutting down the fishery even for stocks that are healthier and for which we have not secured the total allowable catch for the year. So there's a chronic underperformance associated with this ground fish fishery in relation to the total allowable catch that is driven by this limiting stock problem. And the thing I really want to focus on here is the fact that some of the highlighted stocks represent some of the limiting stocks that are looked upon across the region and while limiting stocks change from place to place in New England these are fairly representative and so what you see is that for example Gulf of Maine cod the sector operations have caught 38% of the total allowable catch through this time period compared to 88% of the same species for the common pool and you see as you go down the line a number of species for which the common pool has caught a significantly higher percentage thereby exposing them to either fishery shutdown or in the case of the common pool under the current management plan much more restrictive fishing regulations and while the sectors are at least in aggregate employing some measure of ingenuity, creativity to work around the limiting stocks and provide at least the opportunity to secure a higher percentage of the healthier stocks. Now let me place an important caveat here. This is aggregate data. This does not represent the experience of every individual fisherman or the likely success of every individual sector and so we understand that this aggregate data only tells a part of the story. We understand that there are incredible and very important economic challenges associated with early implementation of the sector program that continue to require analysis, that continue to require action on the part of the council, on the part of the agency and on the part of a number of the other management partners to make sure that we affect a smooth and appropriate transition as we move toward, as we move into this sector program but there is as evidenced by this graph something there to take advantage of something there to build on to on an annual basis going forward get closer to realizing the full potential of this fishery even as we rebuild some of these weaker stocks. So I'm not going to focus on this just because of time. I want to talk about science just very quickly. We talked about, I talked at the outset about the challenges associated with effectively describing what's going on out there. It continues to be a major point of contention in many fisheries. In some cases we know that we always operate based upon best available science. We know that in many places we would always like to have better, more timely, more accurate and more precise science but we operate within the world that we operate in. At the same time it is really important that we work very closely with particularly the fishing community to at least do whatever we can to create closer alignment between our assessment of the current reality and the fisherman's assessment of the current reality. And oftentimes you'll hear argument that we're way off base and sometimes occasionally that's true and sometimes that's not true. What fishermen do to in effect measure stocks is go to the places where there are the most fish, where they historically know they're of the most fish and catch them. Surveys don't operate that way and there's a natural distinction there that we need to recognize going forward but we do also recognize the need to continue to invest and I thought I had a slide that I'm not ready for yet but continue to invest in better science and continue to invest in cooperative science that focused on engaging fishermen more directly in the survey process. There's another part of cooperative research by the way which has been very effective over the years and that is prosecuted by fishermen for the purposes of testing more selective gear, testing gear that is more habitat friendly and that is another whole realm of cooperative science that we have funded in the past and continue to place great emphasis on going forward. All right, I'm really close. So I just wanted to mention Marine Recreational Information Program. One of the other big challenges, shortcomings associated with historical fisheries management was our ability to effectively characterize the catch and effort within recreational fisheries. There are interestingly not a whole lot of recreational constituents represented in this room but in some parts of the country it's a dominant factor in our management challenge in the South Atlantic, in the Gulf, many other places that have underway significant efforts to focus on improving our ability to measure recreational catch and effort. So unlike commercial data where we get real actual landings data, recreational effort and catch is collected through survey-based methodology that provides estimates that often are challenged by participants. So I mentioned cooperative research already. The last thing I just wanted to say a word or two about, and you'll have the pleasure, by the way, of seeing me again on the second panel today and I'll be able to talk a little bit more about ocean policy and coastal and marine spatial planning on that panel. But I did want to note as kind of a conclusion here that as we heard yesterday there are a lot of new challenges out there. They're geographic, they're functional in the different kinds of uses in coastal and ocean areas that either have to coexist with or have the potential to in some fashion affect fisheries. And ocean policy and coastal and marine spatial planning, we believe, represents a very significant opportunity, a significant place where many of those diverse interests can come together and much more effectively plan, share information and make long-term management decisions with respect to coastal and ocean areas and resources. And so I'll say more about this later, but it does present, we think, great promise to address, particularly a number of the things that came up in conversation yesterday with respect to conflicts that exist out there on the ocean. So I'm going to stop there. I do very much appreciate the opportunity to share a few of these thoughts with you. And so I did save at least 15 minutes for Q&A. Thank you. Dennis. It's good to be the name Defendant for actions. We have been in the Northeast, I think, contributed tremendously to the wealth of fisheries case law that helped your agency develop and refine its plans. But just last week, a very significant lawsuit was filed on the West Coast by the Greater Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen. I get three or four small fisheries groups filed suit against you and the agency saying that the catch-share program that has been proposed there has a violence national standard number eight, ignores the needs of small fishermen in favor of consolidation of larger factory trawlers. I know you can't comment directly on laws that have just been filed, but can you talk about that tension between national standard number eight and some of these consolidation programs that are going around the country? Yeah, so not commenting specifically on that case, but I alluded to this in my earlier commentary, and that is that there's a certain independent of catch-share systems, independent of ITQ systems. We have a number of fisheries that are overcapitalized. We have a number of fisheries that are targeting stocks that have been in decline or that are, because of rebuilding requirements, suffering substantial constraints in comparison to past quotas. We also have fisheries that are facing significant by-catch issues, whether it relates to other fish stocks that are in rebuilding plans or protected resources like marine mammals and sea turtles. And so there is a requirement, again, independent of catch-share systems for the councils working with the fishermen to find that right spot. And that right spot, as it relates to the allocation of what's available, probably in many cases won't necessarily reflect historical fishing opportunity that was associated with perhaps less attention to by-catch issues or higher levels of abundance in stocks. Which is one of the reasons that we say that, one of the reasons that councils are an important part of the process is also when you talk about catch-share systems, one of the reasons that we say very explicitly that catch-share systems have got to be designed with local needs, sort of a local vision as to what that future fishery might look like in place. And it needs to take account for geographic diversity, for diversity in gear types, big boats, small boats, et cetera. And that's a conversation that really has to happen in those places to be sort of reflective of local community visions for the future of their fisheries. And there are trade-offs between sort of maximum efficiency and maximum capture and some of these kind of social goals. And finding that trade-off is from place to place, finding that right place is a very different thing from place to place. And frankly, it's a very different thing from fisherman to fisherman. That's part of what's the struggle that's underway. Again, independent of catch-share systems all over the country as we look to future fisheries that's happening in the Pacific Northwest with the Troll IQ, it's happening in New England with sectors. And it's a dialogue that we just have to continue to have so that we find a way forward that, again, not only looks for the right economic mix but also protects the social goals that we seek to protect locally. I will say this about the Troll IQ out there, and that is that they do have a specific component of the plan which includes a set-aside, a quota set-aside to address some of the small community's remote community concerns that are out there. And that part of that plan is still very much under development. I think as we saw sectors get implemented here in New England, there was also at the same time an awareness that the initial plan was not to be able to end all and there will be adjustments and programs going forward to address some of those concerns. Yeah, Peter. Eric Peter Shelley from CLF. I couldn't help noticing from your maps of the country overfishing stocks that the only group that's competing with the New England Council for the most overfishing stocks that you managed, the higher migratory stocks. And I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit. These are some of the most iconic fish in the ocean and the top of the food chain. And can you tease that apart a little bit about why are you having to try to make calls? Are there scientific differences between countries? Are there political differences between the countries that are engaged in these higher migratory fisheries? Is it management within NIMS that needs to be strengthened? What are the components of reducing your presence on that map? So I guess I should paraphrase the question for the purposes of taping and that is what it means that there are significant highly migratory species challenges still evident in our management framework. So I think the answer, Peter, is all of the above. Obviously there are continued debates over science. There is a continued need for improved science in many of these stocks, but there are also tremendous challenges in the international world in taking domestic understandings and domestic positions into international arenas and affecting some kind of a positive outcome. I think it's probably, you may take issue with this, but fair to say that in general, as it relates not only to the management of these stocks but to the management of these fisheries within the context of some of the other things that we hold dear like sea turtles and marine mammals, that the U.S. is pretty progressive in its thinking and application of fishery management regulations to that effect much more so in some cases than some of the other countries that we encounter. So that's a constant challenge. There are big quota fights, as you well know, that in many cases undermine any kind of a conservation based threshold that we might establish. The point that I made about Magnuson now sort of drawing that hard line between conservation and addressing allocation fights is in many of those international venues not as clear a line or much more easily crossed on a regular basis. I will also mention that one of the other things that we have alluded to this is focus on improved engagement in the international arena and one of the things that the Magnuson 2006 reauthorization established was a position within NOAA expressly for the purposes of doing a better job in the international arena. And we're very fortunate not that long ago to have brought on Russell Smith as our new deputy under secretary for international fisheries issues. Russell's primary job is number one comes to us from the U.S. trade representative. So we think he's got the right, you know, he's got the right resume to take on this task is to do a better job of advancing U.S. perspective U.S. positions in these various international arenas, not only individual but in a more coordinated fashion so that when we're dealing with tuna issues in the western Pacific we might also be thinking about how we're dealing with tuna issues in the Atlantic and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of work to be done but we at least have a renewed emphasis on it. I think we're getting a little bit of traction in a few places and hopefully I will continue. Is he had a strategy or advocacy in the states to get the registry implemented? We have to struggle to make it faster than expected. Okay, so Dan is asking specifically about the national angler registry. One of the things that I sort of glossed over is that part of the Marine Recreational Information Program improvement that was prescribed in the Magnuson Act was in the 2006 reauthorization was a national, creation of a national angler registry which would provide for us a better database from which to launch efforts to survey recreational fishermen. And so one of the things that the statute set up was an opportunity for states to essentially put into place a comparable acceptable program that would generate that data in lieu of a national angler registry. At this point we've got two states that have not put in place accepted state level registry processes. One is Hawaii, the other is New Jersey. So you allude Dan to some issues in Maine, but there is a program in place. Yeah, okay. So the states that either had some sort of a recreational license or didn't have one would have expanded that recreational license both in scope, number of participants, as well as in the type of information that was requested to essentially enable this effective survey process. And so we work very closely with states all around the country, not only in helping to support factually what the differences were between the national registry and what the state registry opportunities might offer going forward. And I think that had a lot to do with a number of the states that did effectively move forward. The states that haven't gone forward that I mentioned will continue to participate through a national internet-based registration process that we administer. And that really will become, that's become sort of only just one of the foundational pieces to doing a better job of better assessing recreational catch and effort. So we'll have this more discrete survey base, but we have to couple that with improved dockside surveys as well as a number of other elements that relate to for higher sector and the like to really generate a better overall picture of and more precise picture of recreational catch and effort going forward. So we'll see actually just going into 2011 the first implementation of angler registry-based surveys that will go at least initially side by side with the traditional survey so that we'll be able to we'll be able to assess the differences. So I'm not sure, Dan, if that answers your question but that's kind of the state of the world on that issue. Yes. Jay, going for the major compared to other speakers, I wanted to ask two questions. One, does anyone ever talk to Ohioans anymore? They used to talk a lot. And two, replacing old gear, better gear to reduce by catch and destruction of habitat. Is there more that you at NOAA or Wheaton can do to foster that through in combination with catch shares or providing sentencing research? Is that part of the plan to preserve? Okay, so the question is sort of in the context of overcapitalization are we still talking about buyouts and number one, and secondly, what are the opportunities associated, the associated opportunities to support newer gear, gear research that is more selective, more habitat friendly, the like? Well, let me say this. First of all, I think that one of the real promising aspects of catch shares is that they is that once you achieve some rationalization initially it eliminates sort of the motivation which originates from this tragedy of the commons to essentially pursue a fisheries arms race, right? And so once you rationalize, once you move into a catch share program, now a fisherman is only going to deploy as much gear the gear that he or she needs to secure the quota that has been assigned to them and they're not going to feel like they're in constant competition. Again, it's sort of an arms race mentality with other fishermen who are fishing just to maximize capture of a shared quota. You know, buyouts can be a part of the transition process, right? So as I alluded to in answering Dennis's question the challenge is in that transition. Not only is the challenge associated with sort of visioning where you want to be but when you decide where you want to be and you set in course the actions to move in that direction how do you deal with the people that are left out of that process? Buyouts can be an important part of that process. Our general posture with respect to buyouts is that we look very heavily to the councils to that local visioning, that local design process to inform the need for some kind of a buyout where there is a buyout where there is a buyout option that's being explored we're certainly happy and in many cases have provided whatever technical support we can to help affect an appropriate an appropriate implementation appropriate design and implementation. Obviously these things are historically much hampered by money or lack thereof I don't think that's going to change appreciably going forward so it's a real issue that we'll continue to face in some of these transitional phases of some of these fisheries. As it relates to gear, absolutely I mentioned our strong interest in continuing to support cooperative research that is specifically focused on design and testing and utilization of gear that is more selective as it relates to all kinds of bycatch protected resources, other fish, etc. As well as gear that is more habitat friendly and I think both of those things are going to be more important going forward even than they have been in the past. Up in the back here? Hi, I have hundreds of millions of dollars over the years exploring, spotting, habitat access and then some people will say that the fisheries for many of those species whether it's sand or river areas get clobbered out in the marine environment for the most reason and I guess I'm just curious does an NGO that's a little bit on the restoration side if there's any renewed interest in trying to figure out ways and not be working at potentially cost purposes for the species? Yeah, thanks Kevin, right? So Kevin asked about particularly as it relates to diadromous species, species that migrate insure upriver systems and then spend parts of their life offshore whether we're trying to do a better job to sort of sync up the offshore management to match some of the commitment of insure resources to improve access to spawning rivers and rebuild populations and the like and the answer is absolutely I mean we see that in a number of different stocks it's a constant issue out in California as we deal with the salmon life cycle and the need to in some cases close ocean fisheries to allow populations to rebuild I think it's also these are by the way sort of two of my favorite things to talk about one being habitat particularly as it relates to insure and upland habitat which are so important to so many of these diadromous species and then again this kind of more comprehensive linkage of the need to not only to understand the life cycles the movements and characterize the choke points if you will in that process but then to manage accordingly it's a constant issue for us Kevin I alluded to west coast salmon issues we have big salmon bycatch issues that we're trying to manage with some of the Alaska fisheries we have east coast bycatch issues you mentioned river herring shad and the like that have long been a focal point of management concern as we try to sync up the right protections and it's a huge challenge from a scientific perspective because it's a process that lends itself to sort of offshore pointing insure and insure pointing offshore and it's not me it's that other guy and so it presents what I think is an incredible first and foremost sort of scientific challenge to be able to effectively characterize the current reality to thereby minimize that kind of don't mess with us because until you fix that and vice versa so it's a real issue it's something we pay a lot of attention to and it's also something we work very closely with the states on because of the insure you know component to management of a lot of these fisheries so that's probably not maybe as precise an answer as you were looking for but I'll see I'm sure that this goes with the problem okay I look forward to it