 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the second day of our spring meeting for the standing committee on offshore wind energy and fisheries. My name is Caroline Bell, I am the program officer from the National Academy is leading this standing committee, along with our co chair, who will be joining this link shortly. I misspoke I said co chair with our chair. You can. Oh, you want me to. Sure. Sorry for the technical difficulties trying to get on myself. My name is Jim St. Kirigro, and I will officially introduce myself as the committee does in a couple slides but welcome to the third meeting of the standing committee on offshore wind and energy and fisheries. As we get started, but I'd just like to go through some expectations of conduct and us that here during our national academies meetings that we leave the space open and invite everyone to have an open and meeting where there's no form of discrimination. I think we're good. Okay. You can click, see the link at the bottom of the page to go to the National Academy's policy and preventing discrimination, harassment and bullying. The national academies of science just a little bit of background we are a nonprofit independent organization we're not part of the federal government. We're not an advocacy organization. So, some of you, if you weren't on yesterday I'll go through a little bit of details about what exactly a standing committee is this is one of our activities at the national academies where we are continuing activity with a, in this case, narrow focus looking at offshore wind energy and fisheries sponsored by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or bomb. The committee is organized to serve for an independent period of time to anticipate anticipating sponsors need for continuing information at or other services members of the standing committee are chosen by the staff at the national academies. We received nominations through a public nomination process that included input from public members other members of the national academies partner organizations and our sponsors. BIOS for all of our committee members can be found on the project website which I will show in a later slide, the link for the project website, and we also, and shortly will let the committee introduce themselves. The committee members were chosen looking at their expertise for a broad range of topics around offshore wind energy, including commercial and recreational fishing, fisheries management marine policy offshore wind industry ocean and marine engineering, social sciences, state local government and tribal interests, as well as others around. Fisheries and offshore winds. In addition to these areas of expertise we also looked for members that represent could represent knowledge from each of the large US marine ecosystems. Standing committee membership is at 12 currently. As this is a new standing committee we will grow the committee up to 15 members as members will rotate off we are staggering the process of filling the full full committee membership. And additional areas of expertise will be added as determined through meetings or public input of where we might be missing some for the committee. And given such a small number of personnel to represent a large area looking at offshore wind energy and fisheries all around the United States. The members of the committee were chosen who have kind of broad broad representations of their areas of expertise and background and experience so we might not have every single individual fishery represented, but people that have good understanding of different regions and the fisheries within them. And now I will turn it back over to our chair and we'll allow the committee to give brief introductions. Thank you and I'll remind committee members that if you can turn on your camera and Mike, when you do your introduction, and also remind you that they stay on time, please keep it short within a minute or so would be wonderful. So my name is Jim Sankirico. I am a professor at the University of California Davis and the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. I am trained as a natural resource economist and I will do a lot of my research at the interface of economics ecology and policy, paramount of that research is evaluating fishery management policies around the world. I also was involved in a lot of early work on marine spatial planning. Dan. Hi everyone, Daniel Doolittle, I'm principal environmental scientist at Fugro. I'm also responsible for managing Fugro's environmental portfolio in the Americas region. I have a background in fisheries management, both for salmon and ocean co hog and scallops prior to joining industry. And while in industry we have been focused primarily on geophysical mapping of seafloor. I'm Jennifer Anderson. I'm the chief scientific officer at Gulf of Maine Research Institute. My background is in effects of anthropogenic activities on ecosystem and fisheries outcomes. And I've worked in fisheries in all of the large marine ecosystems in the United States. Steve. Oh, my name is Steve Jonah. I'm with the Maka tribe in Washington state and my background is in fishery conservation management and I'll leave it at that because I'll be talking to you for a half hour. Yeah, hi everyone, Eric King. I am the executive director of the Hawaii Lawline Association. Pretty long history in fisheries management in the US Pacific Islands and then in the sort of commercial fishing industry now the last five years. Thanks. Hi, I'm Captain Dan Kipnis. I was a commercial fisherman recreational angler on party fishing boats. I've been involved in marine fisheries regulations. Since I'm in my mid 30s. I'm 73 now so it's been a long time. But I'm an environmentalist and a climate change advocate, but I'm also very aware of the people, places and things we will be affecting with our wind farms. So, I look forward to this appointment and seeing how we can make everything work. I'm Sarah Maxwell. I'm a professor at University of Washington on the bottle campus. Research areas include fisheries and also impacts from offshore wind. And I look forward to participating in the committee. Hi everybody, my name is Steven Cypher's I'm an associate professor at the University of South Alabama. I'm appointed in the school of marine and environmental sciences and also in the Department of sociology. My background is working at the interface of fisheries ecology and environmental sociology. And I'm involved in fisheries management primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm on the Gulf of Mexico fishery management councils standing scientific and statistical committee, the SSC, and also the ecosystem technical committee. Thanks. Hi everybody. My name is Ron Smallwoods. I'm a marine engineer naval architect by training. I have 50 years of experience conducting surveys, fishing gear design exploratory fishing, working both for governments, the environmental non government organizations, and the fishing industry. I have about 40 peer reviewed scientific publications on fisheries. Hi, my name is David Wallace. I represent the surf clam and ocean called fishery, which is being impacted by wind turbines which are being placed in our fishing grounds. I have served on numerous habitat committees and fisheries management committees as well as federal policy institutions. And I hope that I can be of some service. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dick you I'm a professor of mechanical and ocean engineering and MIT. I've been faculty there in the school of engineering for way more than 40 years coming on 50 years. I'm a member of the National Academy of Engineering. My expertise and interests are in civil environmental engineering coastal and offshore engineering pertaining to understanding the ocean environment waves, wave wave interactions wave current interactions, as well as engineering in the ocean interaction of platforms platform designs, ocean platforms. I've also done research on fish hydrodynamics, fish schooling, fish sensing. And I'm also worked on modeling and understanding. For example, fish aquaculture and fish farms, engineering and fish farm hydrodynamics. Thank you. Great. I briefly gave my introduction but I'm Caroline Bell I'm an associate program officer with the ocean studies board here at the National Academy of Sciences. My background is in physical oceanography and as a Coast Guard officer for 15 years before coming to the National Academy is next I'll turn it over to Susan. Hi everyone I'm Susan Roberts I'm the director of the ocean studies board, and I've been doing that for about 20 years now. My background is in marine biology I have a PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and I oversee these activities of the standing committee and other standing committees and consensus studies of the National Academy's Ocean Studies Board. Also as part of our staff we have Safa Wayne, she is our program assistant. If she can wave her hand into the camera. She's behind behind the scenes helping keep everything running smoothly and doing a great job with all the logistics for our meetings. The committee on the slide is the committee statement of task. I'll leave this up for a minute. I'm not going to go through and read everything but broadly, the committee. It was formed to look at key topics of interest to bomb around offshore wind and fisheries, provide expert assessment of developments in fields of science and technology. And also looking at gaps and priorities in the research, then provide stakeholder understanding around offshore wind and fisheries to keep informed with this study. We have a few links that you can see on the slide. The top one is to the directly to the committee's website where events will be added for future meetings and also for this meeting and past meetings you can find recordings of discussions of the meetings, excuse me. For more information about the Ocean Studies Board, the next link down is the Ocean Studies Board webpage that is also where you can find a block at the bottom that says connect with us where you can enter your email address to subscribe to updates and that will give you automatic emails when we have new committee meetings for as a standing committee and information about how to register. For the meeting today, you can see the agenda. We will start with a presentation by our committee matter members Steve joner on the treaty tribes relationship to fisheries management process. Then we'll shift to hear from bone on their environmental programs. And then finally, for the four o'clock. And then the committee will address a few future topics that we've been brainstorming for later meetings of the standing committee but we'll also open it up to hear either through q amp a or raised hand feature for the from the public about specific topic areas of interest that you as stakeholders in this offshore wind energy and fisheries would like the committee to explore. We asked that during this time period that you address questions and comments to the committee members and these will be things that will take into consideration as we plan future meetings. I can't guarantee that we're going to cover every single topic that's addressed as we have limited opportunities to meet as a committee, but we will work to incorporate inputs that we gather here today into future meeting plans. And then finally, I asked for those in the room and audience members when you're not speaking. Make sure you can stay muted. Use the raised hand feature or the question and answer answer and zoom for comments and questions. And then for our committee members in the room, and when we call on the public to speak during the four o'clock session, ask if you could turn your camera on to create a sense of community. And with that, we will turn it over. We'll pull up the slides for our first presentation. And are you going to advance? I'm going to turn my mic on. Okay. So I'm going to not have my camera on so I can follow along here. So, all right, well, I'm Steve Jonah. I'm with the Macaw Indian tribe in Washington state. Like Captain Dan, I've been doing this a long time. I started with the tribe in 1977. So, I'm going to talk today about the treaty tribes. And this, this presentation was prepared for the Marine Resource Education Program that's sponsored by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. And it was, it's part of a management workshop given for fishermen to understand the management process. So it is focused on that. And it's a little bit as my friend Dan Waldeck would say a little too much inside baseball, but I'll do my best to keep you awake this afternoon. So starting out, something you probably all know, but I'll remind you that the US Constitution in article six, I have my pocket constitution here. It says that this constitution and the laws developed thereof and treaties made by the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. And so that's what we're talking about here with the treaties that these tribes in the Northwest signed in the 1854 and 1855. There are 20 tribes in Northwest Washington that have treaties, five separate treaties or five different treaties with the United States. There are four tribes on the Columbia River that have treaties that were signed at the same time. And then there are our two tribes in California that do not have treaties but have reservation based fishing rights. So those 26 tribes in total are active within the fishery management council process and harvest fish of variety of species that are managed by the Pacific Council. In addition, there are tribes in Southern Oregon that do not have treaties, but they are federally recognized tribes. And they are currently negotiating agreements with the state of Oregon regarding management of fish and wildlife, and they do a couple of them do maintain their own hatcheries. So to put this in perspective for today, every one of these tribes. So that'd be about 30, at least, are very concerned about impacts from offshore wind development. So I'm going to give you an introduction to the, to the treaty, treaty tribes, the process, everything that the tribes went through following the signing of their treaties up into today. So next slide. There are. Oh, that went too far. There we go. Columbia River tribes. So, as you can see, there are four tribes. Umatilla, Nespers, Warm Springs, and Yakima. The Nespers are in Idaho, Warm Springs, and Umatilla in Oregon, and the Yakimas in Washington. They signed treaties in 1855. And they fished for many thousands of years in the Columbia River. That picture you see there is of Solilo Falls, which was about 80 miles up river from Portland. And that was as what I know is or was the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America. And that was a place where tribes would gather from all over the Northwest to harvest fish and trade. My dad would take us up there as a young boy. So I got to see that and that really left impression on me. Unfortunately, that was covered when the Dalles Dam was built in 1957. So it's it's underwater now. Nevertheless, the tribes that continue to fish. They, like all the other tribes in the Northwest, ran into conflicts, typically with with the state or the non-Indian settlers. And one of the first and earliest conflicts was with some landowners who prohibited Yakima fishermen from accessing their fishing sites. That was in 1905. And the Supreme Court ruled that that was in Winans, if you want to look that up. The Supreme Court ruled that the treaty right allowed them access to their usual and custom fishing grounds and that they could not be denied access to those fishing grounds. They continued on. There were other conflicts and then in, I think it was 1968 number of the tribes sued the state of Oregon in a federal court case, known as USV Oregon. And in 1969, Judge Belloni made his decision that the tribes were entitled to fish, that they were entitled to a fair and equitable share of salmon at their usual custom fishing stations and that they could not be denied access. And the tribes had also ruled throughout this time period that any regulation of tribal fishing must be or conservation assessing only meaning for perpetuation of the resource. And that was necessary for the courts to do because the states were constantly trying to enforce regulations on the tribe that were not necessary for conservation. And today there are 14 dams on the main stem Columbia River, starting with a Bonneville dam in 1938 and shortly after that the Grand Coulee Dam. In total, with all the dams on the Columbia River watershed, including the main stem and its tributaries. They produce 44% of the hydro power in the United States so it's very important, but it is not bound without a great cost. And this is, this is something I want us to really be aware of and for all of us to know that this was, you know, it was a great economic development for the United States that came at a time when the US was going through a depression it was a public works project It aided the US in the war effort later in the Cold War as the other dams were built, but it was not without great cost the tribes and even today. That is a problem. So, the United States when it was constructing Grand Coulee Dam and I was just made aware of this, sent a letter to Canada, saying that they were building the two dams Bonneville and Grand Coulee. And that Bonneville would have fish passage but Grand Coulee wouldn't. And the US wanted to know were there any commercial fisheries in Canada. And Canada wrote back, we don't have any commercial fisheries no problem here, go ahead and dam the river. And so this was done with total disregard at the tribes which today would, that could not happen but that's the way things were back then. So okay next slide. So, the next group up are the Klamath tribes. That's the Hoopa Valley and Uron tribe. They have reservation based fishing rights. And that was the reservations were established as you can see in the 1800s. And in 1993, the United States determined that they were entitled to 50% of the harvestable fish in those rivers. So they too are part of the Pacific Council process. Next one. The tribes listed here in Northwest Washington, the 20 tribes which include the Macaw tribe that I'm with. Signed treaties in 1854 and 1855. And these these tribes are collectively known as the bolt case area tribes because it was a judge George bolt who in 1974 made his ruling that the tribes are entitled to 50% of the fish. Of those tribes there are four on the coast that fish in the ocean. All the tribes fish for salmon. There are 13 tribes, including the four on the coast and those of Puget Sound who also fish for halibut. And of course they all fish for shellfish and other species. But as far as federal management goes the four coastal tribes are the ones that are directly involved and regulated by the Pacific Council. Next one. So in 1854 and 55 these treaties were negotiated between the United States and the 10 the tribes that are five treaty areas. The representative for the United States was Governor Isaac Stevens. Who is a territorial governor to the governor of Washington territory. And there's interest interesting history about him. He was from New England, as were many of the people that the tribes dealt with so they called the white men Boston's because so many of them were from New England. We always have a Boston in the room when I what I need. But the the the tribes trees all they all have a common language that's the right of taking fish that usually custom grounds of stations is further secured to set Indians in common with all citizens of the territory, or in the case. The maca is all citizens the United States. Next one. So I'm going to focus now in detail on the maca tribe because that's who I've been with and they have the most extensive marine fisheries of any of the tribes. So in theirs they also have a clause in there that they reserve the right to take whales and seals at their usual custom grounds and stations. At the time the treaty was signed whaling was a very important part of the maca culture subsistence and economy. And they harvested whales, going out of cedar canoes with eight man crew. They would go out as many as 100 miles out to seed harvest whales and seals. And they sold their seal oil up and down the coast. They sold it to the to the settlers to lamp oil and to lubricate their their steamships and so on. And so it was very important to them. They were also very active in fishing halibut and they would trade halibut up and down the coast. And when the gold rush began, they would send halibut all the way down to San Francisco. Next one. So when the maca negotiated this treaty. And to kind of put it in historical perspective. The Treaty of Oregon was signed in 1846 between the United States and Great Britain, which established the boundary between the two countries at 49 degrees, and then down through the straight that divides. The island is a Vancouver Island from the San Juan Islands, and then out the straight of one if you can into the ocean. So if you look at that treaty, you'll see that the real focus was on the land. They wanted to establish ownership of the land, and the water was not that important. The Columbia River from where it entered process of 49 degree 49th parallel down to the mouth. And the straits going through the San Juan Islands and the straight amount of you cut would be open and navigable to all the tribes, so that nobody claimed the ocean of course at that time. The claim to a territorial territorial seat was three miles which was the length of a cannon shot. You had two different parties negotiating this treaty with very different understandings of ownership. The maca was worthy owners of those fishing grounds and recognized in such bite by the other tribes, and the United States didn't have any concern about that so those differences of understanding has that that's still with us today. But you can see there that they wanted to be able to have the halibut to take halibut where they wanted or they become he become a poor man he wasn't worried about whether he'd have food to eat but what rather he could continue with his income. And it's a coward wanted to see that was his country. And I understand that he even took Isaac Stevens out in the canoe to show him his country. The land was that was a necessity of life you had to sleep on the land to place the tire canoe but the sea was their country and that was that was very clear from from the history and from their, their, their culture even today. Isaac Stevens assured them that their fisheries could continue and and he would even send them kettles to try their oil to render their oil and fishing apparatus and the maca's were quick to adapt these new technologies because they wanted to catch fish. So, new technology was great. Next one. So, as when the Columbia River there were conflicts between the state and the tribes, and this went on throughout Puget Sound and out on the coast. The Puyallup tribe in South Puget Sound near the current city of Tacoma. They were having conflicts with the state over fish over the steelhead fishery. The state tried to ban the use of Gilnets and so Puyallup one had to do with that. Puyallup two had to do a state power to enforce regulations. And those were kind of the predecessor to the bolt ruling. In 1970, the United States and several of the tribes filed a complaint against the state of Washington because of the conflict and the state's infringement and prohibiting the the tribes and fishing in their custom and usual manner. And this went before Judge Bolt. And he was a judge out of the Tacoma office of the US Western District of Washington. Next one. Judge Bolt made his landmark ruling. First thing he said was that the treaties were not a grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of rights from them. Any reservation of those rights not granted. That was pretty radical. That was something very difficult for the state to understand and to to understand that they weren't grant they weren't giving given these rights to the United States, but rather the tribes. To the United States credit recognize the tribes were the original owners of these resources. And the United States accepted that grant from the tribes while the tribes reserved the remainder for themselves. So Judge Bolt, looking at the language use from New England back in in 1855, he determined that in common meant equal sharing and ruled that the tribes are entitled to 50% of the harvestable fish passing through the respective the the state and later federal regulations. This conservation assessed the principle applied to both federal and state regulation. That was quite a battle getting that through we we still actually deal with that. And then another major decision was that Judge Bolt made the tribes and the states co co managers as a resource. That was very radical at the time. So that was in 1974 and then 21 years later 1995 United States acknowledged the tribes as co managers of fisheries in the federal waters. Another one of Judge Bolt's key rulings that the tribes in order to be self regulating have to have competent leadership. Well organized tribal government. Fisheries enforcement. Well qualified experts in fishery science and management. That brought me on the scene. There are a couple of us left in those early days. And they had to have a officially approved membership role so you can determine who is eligible to fish and then photo identification and this was something very important to judge Bolt. Because he did not want anybody involved with the trial in the tribal fisheries who weren't eligible to fish or qualified. So judge Bolt was very big on having an orderly fishery. He also established because the court or the state and the tribes were constantly running back to court with every little dispute. He established the Fisheries Advisory Board. That could hear these disputes and make a recommendation. So if the state wanted to do something the tribes disagreed or vice versa you would ask the fisheries advisory board chairman to convene an FAB meeting. You present your side state would present their side. And then the chairman would make a recommendation. It wasn't binding but it was clearly understood that you didn't want to have to go to judge Bolt and say I don't agree with what the chairman said so. At one point I believe it was in 1982 or 83. There were 100 and almost 150 Fisheries Advisory Board meetings in one year. So every little detail of every little fishery had to be ironed out. The other thing that the court had to do is determine the usual accustomed fishing areas for each tribe. Next one. He determined the inside waters in his original UNA for the inside waters in the northern southern boundaries for the coastal tribes in 1974. But it wasn't until the Magnuson Act was established that the coastal tribes needed to establish a western boundary in order to fish in the USCZ. So Macaw at its western boundary determined at 125-44 which is 40 miles offshore and that was based on their traditional fishing up in the Canadian waters which unfortunately are now in Canada. Macaw's lost a big part of their traditional fishing as a result. That was done in 1976 when the EZ was established. Next one. There's the current Macaw UNA, the blue shaded areas. The ocean that goes out 40 miles and it goes down roughly 20 miles from Cape Flattery which is in the kind of brown there. And then it goes into the Strait of Wanda Fuga almost to Port Angeles. The other tribes on the coast they go down as far as Grace Harbor. The tribe just below goes out to 40 miles and when the Quinoa tribe below that goes out to 30 miles. Next one. Following his ruling there were a lot of people who could not accept it. And so there was a lot of violation of his orders. At times he had to enforce his own rulings. At one point it got so bad that a Coast Guard was shot by somebody in one of these disputes. So it was kind of the Wild West. The Fisher's Advisory Board was active through the early 80s. We rarely use it anymore because pretty much everything's worked out. And then his ruling was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit and upheld by the United States in 1979 with only slight modifications. Next one. So Judge Bolt established a process for doing sub-proceedings knowing that his initial ruling on salmon and steelhead would lead to the need to adjudicate other fisheries for other species. So the McCaw's case, one of the sub-proceedings was the size limit for the McCaw troll fishery. We also have an active salmon troll fishery and the tribe had a different size limit than the state. And the State and the Department of Commerce tried to enforce that size limit on the tribe. And so we went to the court and the court determined it was not necessary for conservation. And so there was another one. Some of these McCaw Bay net seizures, the states had a surf line agreement where there'd be no gill netting outside in the ocean. But the tribe had a traditional set net fishery targeting on a Chinook salmon that went along the shoreline. And the state decided they would seize those nets. So again, we went to court and the court determined it was not necessary for conservation and it was illegal. We had a sub-proceeding for halibut that went on for many, many years. That was followed by a sub-proceeding for shellfish and then a McCaw's case, a sub-proceeding for whiting. Next one. The halibut ruling, which when I started with the tribe, the chairman told me my top priority is to get our halibut fishery back. So it meant many, many years going to the halibut commission until finally the tribe filed a request for determination. That was in 1985. So a lot of these that sets some negotiations in place, that went on until the early nineties and then we went back to the court. And Judge Rothstein ruled in the case of halibut that the tribes were entitled a 50% of the harvestable surplus. The way we determined how much that would be. We looked at the long-term catch in area 2A, which is halibut commission, which is Washington, Oregon, and California. And during that period of time, 70% of the total catch in 2A was in the tribal area. So very simple. Half of 70 is 35. People often have trouble. If you get 50%, how come it's 35? It's half of what's in the car area. And that was very difficult for the federal government and the halibut commission to accept. But again, the conservation necessity principle ruled the day and so that's what we have to this day is that amount, that percentage. And there are 13 tribes that fish halibut in Washington. Next one. Shellfish. That one was fairly simple because the state said shellfish are not fish. And the treaty talks about the tribes can harvest fish and shellfish. That's our usual custom grounds and stations provided. However, the tribes cannot harvest shellfish at places that are staked, meaning those are already cultivated by non-tribal members. And so obviously they were fish. So Judge Rafiti, he said, well, shellfish are fish, so we'll move ahead with this. The state said that deep water species did not count for the tribal share because the tribes either could not harvest them at treaty times because of lack of technology or there were no markets or no interest. And he said, look, because the treaties were a grant of right from the tribes, they reserve those rights. And so anything in their area is theirs. So it was very simple. And yet it was one more thing that was, it was a simple decision but took a long time to achieve that. And then because of his ruling, that is not limited as to the species of fish that allowed us to move forward development of other fisheries. That is in the next slide. So the next one we worked on was Sablefish or Black Cod. We did the same exercise that we did with Halibut and determined that about 20% of the coast-wide Sablefish on the West Coast were caught in the tribal area. And so we negotiated this 10% share. That was not something a court ruled on, but we were able to negotiate that with the state of Washington and the federal agency. And the next fishery for Macaws was the Whiting Fishery. This is more of an industrial fishery because it takes larger boats and because whiting must be processed shortly after they're harvested. We needed to develop a fishery with a mothership. And so we started that in 1996. And it was not an easy thing, but it was much simpler to develop these allocations and eventually settled on the current allocation, which is 17.5% of the coast-wide share. The United States and Canada negotiated an agreement on sharing whiting. That was concluded in, I think, 2003. And the parties that decided in that agreement. Decided on sharing the fish. And the other thing was that they would establish a joint management committee or a commission. They were managing the trans-boundary stock. And so I've served on that commission since it started in 2011, I think it was our first year. Next one. That's the current fleet. I asked one of my co-workers to take a picture on a sunny day. So you can see the Macaws have about 70 vessels that fish, long line, troll for salmon. And then the trawlers, whiting trawlers, were all in Seattle having a shipyard work done so they weren't there. But there are four vessels, three active that are 100, 120 foot vessels that fish. Pacific whiting and also are qualified to fish colic in Alaska. Next one. I'll just rush for these since we're almost out of time and this is just the process we go through. Through the Pacific Fish and Management Council each year on setting the allocations and dealing with rockfish conservation areas, fish habitat and the short story there is the tribes are not bound by the other regulations provided that we are able to achieve the same goal. And we've been very successful in doing that. Next one. You don't have to read the whole thing, but the first one there next to last line where it says 50%, the US in 95 determined that the tribes are entitled to 50% of the ground fish. And the last one is that they were recognized as co-managers. And so that made life a lot better, a lot simpler for all of us. Next one. I'm often asked, can the tribes do anything they want? And well, we could manage the fishery within the guidelines established. So in the case of halibut, the tribes are limited to hook and line only, can't catch it by troll gear as is the case with others. And we fall under the authority of the federal regulation and the limits established by the International Pacific Halibut Commission. And as a result of that, we're very active in the IPHC process. Next one. McCaw tribe's been regulating its fisheries and its fishermen since 1937. The Fisheries Manager Program again in 75 and the tribe manages a total of 25 different fisheries. I'll just skip through this one. So I'll wrap up with this one over case. So I started talking about the Columbia River and the impact that that had on blockage of fish migration and loss of habitat. And the billions of dollars that have been required to keep the fish runs alive in the Columbia River. Prior to contact by non-Indians, there were 16 to 18 million fish returning to the Columbia River annually. Now that's averaging 1 to 2 million on a good year. And the tribes prior that time were catching in the Columbia River 20 to 40 million pounds of salmon. So the dams have had just an unbelievable impact on the salmon runs and the habitat. Another problem that's occurring now is there are sturgeon below Bonneville Dam. Sturgeon can't get up the fish ladder. So there are small populations above the dam, but those in the main stem below are now being eaten by the sea lions that come up to feed on the salmon. And so sea lions are actually killing and eating those large, 10, 12-foot sturgeons. So that's a new problem. So the Colbert case, Phase 2, that says Phase 2, not Phase 1, F. I think it's just the lines up there. Judge Bolt said Phase 1 will do the fishing rights. Phase 2 will deal with the habitat and hatcheries. So the state said the tribes are not entitled to hatchery fish. And the court ruled that because hatcheries were, for the most part, to mitigate lost fishing habitat, that tribes are entitled to those fish. And they're entitled to have the right to have the fishery habitat protected from degradation. So in 2001, there were the tribes filed a request for determination on Colbert's block 3 passage of salmon. I don't understand how this was done, but there were hundreds and hundreds of Colbert's that were improperly placed so that a blocked migration of adult salmon going upstream, made it difficult for smolts going out and impossible for young salmon to move freely up and down the watershed. And there were at least 1200 miles of stream that were blocked by these culverts were improperly placed. And so, again, it took a number of years to get to a trial. And in 2013, the court issued a junction against the state and ordered the state to correct the 800 worst culverts and must be done by 2030. So that 2030 rings a bell then. So that was upheld by the ninth circuit, and then by the Supreme Court in 2018. And the state is having trouble getting those done. It's current cost is three and a half to $4 billion. So the message here is that the treaty right is guaranteed by the Constitution is supreme law of the land. And that we want BOM as we do with all the agencies that have a trust responsibility to the tribes to work in good faith and to be very open to the tribes recommendations and concerns here. If you look at the book ends of my talk about the dams and then the culverts that it's, it's been a very lengthy battle. And I mentioned yesterday to the bone folks that, you know, I chose some of the tribe and I'm here to help it. You know, the tribes can be a very good partner because of the traditional ecological knowledge. And that's one thing I learned from my career is I had a head start on on my, my colleagues at the state and other places because I had, I had the, the folks within the tribe really tell me this this is the way things were. You knew better on how to get to where you wanted to go because you knew where you were coming from. So I want to offer that. And hopefully this can be a better result than the dams or the culverts were. So, thanks. Thank you, Steve. There's a couple of minutes for questions is sure that sounds good. Yeah, sir. Thank you so much for that Steve, I guess I would posit to you then what are the primary recommendations coming from the tribe, or tribes, regarding offshore wind. So, our primary concern is with the impacts of the ecosystem. And when the dams were built, there were people selling the alarm that you have to do this right or it's going to be a problem. Unfortunately, those, those calls weren't, weren't heated. But the starting point for the tribes is that harvesting that wind is going to create changes to the ecosystem starting with upwelling and then everything that goes from there. So we're looking at the cumulative impact that the offshore wind would have on on primary productivity, the production growth movement of larval fish. For example, sable fish, black cod, early in their life, they spend their first summer right on the surface of the water feeding, and they're very vulnerable to what's going on around them. There's one such nursery area right off the Strait of Wanda Puglia. I'm familiar with that. But, you know, since there are 10 times more fish out or five times more fish outside the tribal area, there, there has to be those nursery areas elsewhere. So, you know, we want to look at those. And then when areas are closed to not to fisheries, that's going to, to displace the current fisheries that will have an impact on other areas, including the tribes. So they're not exclusive other non tribal fishermen could fish in the tribal areas. But right now we have kind of a happy equilibrium where people fish, and if too many areas are closed and we're going to be forced to have more, more company in our fishing areas. We're concerned about some species that come from California, and my grade is a mature, if they're impacted by the wind areas in California. And there was one other I just said, but those are our primary concerns. And we think that we really need to look into that and determine, you know, what will be the impacts and then including marine mammals. And then some species such as Whiting, the US has an obligation to Canada through the treaty. And since the Whiting come from California, if the Whiting production is impacted, then, you know, that that impacts our agreement with Canada. And I'll add that every tribe I mentioned, every tribe is concerned about this because they all catch one species in common is salmon. And so salmon would be very highly impacted by changes in starting with upwelling. Yeah, Steve a similar question to Sarah's. Are you aware of models that you would say showcase good co management and good, good cooperation with regulatory authorities. I'm thinking of some in Canada. I'm thinking of some in Alaska, but do you have any models that you would recommend that the committee think about studying. Well, I think the Pacific Fishery Management Council is probably the best model and the tribes. I'll tell you when we started out, they weren't really welcome at the table. And now there's a tribal representative sitting on the council. There, there are tribal representatives on just about every management team or advisory panel I serve on a couple of them myself. And we're, you know, we're truly co managers of partners and, and then the Pacific Whiting Agreement is another one where it, it's successful because I believe the National Fishery Service, you know, acknowledge the tribes as co managers and they really understood what the consultation was. And that to me is probably the weak link in federal trust agencies dealing with the tribes and not really understanding what true consultation is. And we like to say, you know, don't come to us when you get to step two or three, come to us at step zero. We're not doing something. And then that's, that's the appropriate time to step in. Does that answer your question. Okay, I don't see anybody else raising their hands. So thank you very much Steve. That was great. I really appreciate that. I know the committee does. So we are scheduled to go on a 15 minute break and so we'll start up again 15 minutes after the hour, 315. Thank you everybody. We'll come back from the break. Our next session is to hear from bone on their environmental programs and will be Jill Lewandowski and Ronnie. Are we presenting Ronnie Clark. I'm sorry. You Rodney. Yep. And Jill. Okay, Jill's going to share her screen perfect. So we'll let you to introduce yourselves and begin. Fantastic. Okay. Thank you. Can you hear me okay. Yes, we have you loud and clear. Thank you. Very good. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, I'm Rodney clock and will be tag team of presentation here with Jill Lewandowski. And we're going to talk a little bit about our environmental program kind of focusing more on science and assessment and how the science feeds into the assessment and informed decisions. Next, I am not sure if you can hear me but I cannot hear the room. Trisha, can you hear me now. No, no, I can hear well. This is dick. Yeah. Yep. All right, thank you. I'll touch base with Joe. Okay, shall I continue. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, okay. All right, well, Bill Brown talked about this at the last meeting a little bit, but I just wanted to remind folks about our mission here in bone as to manage development of outer continental shelf energy and mineral resources in an environmentally and economically responsible way this includes oil and gas marine minerals renewable energy such as wind. And also carbon sequestrations also a new authority that we're, we're looking towards. As you can see here from the map it's a pretty vast area that we have to cover the Atlantic to go from Mexico Pacific, all throughout Alaska Hawaii. And then we recently have received authority for the several territories which also are interested in renewable energy is specifically wind so you know big area, and a lot of activities to cover. Next, but really the takeaway here what we want to emphasize is the application of the science for impact assessment. Our environmental studies program, which I'm in charge of. And it does the science to inform decisions so that feeds in to our environmental assessment process, our environmental impact statements, compliance documents. We, you know, are fortunate to have an environmental science program that we can ask science questions and get the information we need to inform our environmental assessments but you know we don't do this and in a vacuum. Each year we go through a process where we seek public input. We work closely with other, other federal partners to determine our data needs, and we make everything available through our environmental studies program information system or, or as this. And we'll get we're going to talk a little bit more about this kind of the feedback loop in a moment Jill's going to talk about it a bit more but let me go ahead and move on to the next one. It's coming. Hang on. It's coming. So our environmental program just in general ensures that environmental protection for my science and also law is the foremost concern and indispensable consideration and bones decision making for energy and mineral development on the outer continental shelf. So it's, you know, it's really foundational and fundamental to everything that that we do as an agency to consider the environmental effects, you know, of the activities that I mentioned earlier that we oversee and how those can be formed by science to protect the environment. Next. So our environmental studies program. Which turns 50 years old this year. It's been around for for quite a while, really produces a lot of the science that we use to inform our decisions. So it's a centralized program. But and it we do that and everything kind of runs through our centralized program to inform decisions throughout all the regions. You heard from a lot of the regional folks yesterday, and and the programs I mentioned the various activities we were authorized to section 20 of the other continental shelf Landsat. We've in the last 50 years as I estimate we've spent about 1.25 billion on research since 73. We have around 30 million a year annually. So it's an ongoing program a lot of the studies that we start, you know, may take three to five years to complete. So at any given time we'll have well over 150 studies going on. So so each year we would go through this process. So we go through a process of planning review and procurement. So we don't do all the science, ourself internally. We have a couple hundred scientists and bone that come up with the study ideas, and we work with other federal agencies to interagency agreements universities to cooperative agreements, or competitive contracts to the federal acquisition regulations. And I'm going to mention, with regard to cooperative agreements that we recently discovered that we do have authority to do cooperative agreements with tribes. So we can use that mechanism to coordinate and co-produce knowledge with tribes. Next. So our science for informed decisions. We talked about the consideration of views. You know how what information do we need to use to inform decisions. You know that doesn't mean that we don't have a broader quest for fundamental understanding of the ecosystem and the environment. But we're not a basic research program like our friends at National Science Foundation, we partner with them a lot. We work with them. And it really is about, you know, the application. So next, I think I have a quote here. Yes. So I love this quote by Louis Pasteur from 1863. There's not pure science and applied science, but only science and the application of science. So that's kind of what we, you know, live by. And the work that we've done over the years, we've discovered hundreds of new, new species that are in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. So that is, you know, like, that is discovery. That's a quest for fundamental understanding. But again, all of our science is used to inform decisions in one way or the other. Next. So the pillars of the environmental studies program. I like to call it use inspired. Because all of our and I really kind of try to get that a message across to all of our science scientists that they're asking a science question, you know, again, how are we going to use it that inspiration, how that science can be applied is really quintessential here. But at the same time, we need to uphold the highest levels of credibility and integrity in that science. So how do our job without partnering and leveraging showing you I showed you the map earlier over, you know, 3 billion acres and a $30 million annual budget. It's just simply not enough. So we work really closely with other federal agencies, academics. We can again work with tribes and communities to try to partner and leverage to the fullest extent possible. We need certain work that we need to partner with NASA, because of using certain satellites that we do that often. That's an option. If we need aircraft we may work with fish and wildlife, or Noah, ships, Noah, or Navy. So again, partnering and leveraging is just really an important part of what we do and we always make all of our information available to our websites. We are really doing sure that that the information gets out there and to promote outreach and education of the science that we do next. So our business model. I think there was some questions about this at the first meeting. We're not, we're not like USGS for example, you know we don't have thousands of science. We do have a couple hundred scientists so we maintain this core expertise of scientific disciplines. In many cases we may only be one or two deep, but we do maintain this core expertise on biological oceanography chemical oceanography physical oceanography anthropology archaeology sociology. So our project has developed and overseen manage the research projects. We encourage them to to engage and do go out and do field work. We know with the researchers, but they really are the managers of the projects, and they engage, we engage the scientific community, like I said, the academics government private sector to conduct the research through those mechanisms I talked about earlier. So by design is small nimble, and we go through this process to contract out the science each year. Next, so through our 50 years of science and research partnering and leveraging we've, we have a lot of partners. And to reach out to go through the things like the National Oceanographic Partnership Program where we can leverage funds and work with others. Like I said earlier if we need and feel that it's best to do, you know, tagging of whales and animal telemetry with satellites. NASA has been a great partner on that. We work with NASA on air quality work. With NOAA we work with them very often through the National Marine Fisheries Group and in costs and ocean exploration as well. So all these are partners that we work with often on an annual basis and we have continued these relationships are a really long period of time. Next. So the engagement strategies. We work with tribal partners to force the 106 consultations, but I also mentioned our co production of knowledge earlier. You know a lot of the work in the past has been through just, you know, consultations with tribes so I'm really pleased we can take that to a step further and actually provide funding to cooperative agreements to work together. So we could work with tribes now almost like we would with them, or I guess almost exactly like we would with an academic institution where funding is provided to co produce knowledge. We're also really interested and support environmental justice communities to work with low income and minority areas to ensure there's not disproportionate impacts on those communities. And as we continue to move forward more more I think public and private sector partnerships are going to be key. So working with offshore wind developers is going to be really important, even more so as we move forward. Next. So what do we need to know. Several things. One we need to have information on the environmental impacts from the activities authorized by bone. We need information information on the status trends and resilience of potentially impacted natural and cultural resources and the social economic qualities. So within the environmental studies program. And it's clear we need to understand the human marine and coastal environments. So human is clearly in there. So this is why we have a lot of sociologists, economists anthropologists. So those cultural resources and socioeconomic qualities are really a cornerstone of what we do and several of our studies, you know fall into those disciplines. Next monitoring and this is also a real important point in the outer continental shelf lands that defines the environmental studies program. So we need information on monitoring environmental impacts of the authors of the things that we the activities we oversee over the lifetime of these projects. This can be very challenging. Again with a limited research budget. I think there was a discussion yesterday and discussions at the first meeting about cumulative impacts to something that we're as really important to us. And that's the best way to be able to to understand changes in ecosystem changes in climate changes and, you know, from the activities we oversee and how that's affecting the environment is the long term monitoring. cumulative impacts. I got ahead of myself a bit but yeah this information to address requirements and NEPA and the OCS Lands Act cumulative environmental impacts again our, our key to understanding this. But really, you know, without being able to monitor long term. It's hard to understand these changes in the ecosystem, or the social fabric over time. And we need information required to demonstrate that bone decisions comply with all the environmental laws. So there's several environmental laws I think Jill's going to talk more about this, but everything from a clean air act to marine man protection act. National Historic Preservation Act, all this, these aspects of compliance, the environmental studies program can help feed information into this compliance. strategic framework. In June 2020 we put out a strategic framework document. We need to. We plan on updating it this year. You're going to go to the next one Joe. And, you know, this document really was the first time that the environmental studies program at least put forth something that really said we want to be first in class the best research program in the context of our, our mission and constraints. Again, we're not the National Science Foundation we don't really do basic research we don't have the funding that they do but we want to be the best we can be for what we do. So that focuses on what I just went through what we need to know. And what are the strategic science questions we need to ask to inform decisions. But, you know, there has to be integrity and credibility in the science as I mentioned earlier but there has to be credibility and integrity in the process. So the criteria for study development planning and approval is also really, really key. So it has to be a strong process for how we develop our study ideas, which we call profiles, we call them profiles but essentially just the ideas and what we approve and how we do that. Next, so let me talk a little bit more about the criteria for study development and approval. Next. So, we have to focus on the need for the information for decision making as, as I've said, so that's really kind of a key cornerstone what we need to know. What information do we need to inform decisions, but we also think about kind of this broader context of how the work we are doing or want to do contribute to the existing body of knowledge. So again we're not working in a vacuum. All of our scientists are not only using the studies produced to the environmental studies program but anything and everything that's out there. This is including academic work, other federal agencies, a traditional economic logical knowledge, all these fall into this category. The research concept design and methodology has to be at those levels of rigor and integrity with a small science program as we have 30 million a year. We look towards is it cost effective and does it make sense. And a lot of this centers around to our, our scientists incorporating innovative technologies and techniques to do the work. Things like environmental DNA. Are we using some of the, the latest kind of technologies or robots to do this work this the long term can save money so we're always looking at cost cost effectiveness and how we do this, leveraging funds and partnering. Those two things are always looked at when we're thinking about what science we need and how our scientists are proposing their ideas and will the study idea, and ultimately the findings in that effort be able to be used for any kind of multiple regional or strategic utility in other words, if we're doing certain type of work in the Atlantic, is it applicable to the Pacific. The modeling effort be used across the out of continental shelf so these things are what we look at getting trying to get the most bang for a buck really. Next. So, each year, after we send out a note to all of our internal scientists, I do a request for stakeholder input, usually around the November December timeframe it just kind of depends on, you know, you know when we get there but we get up to several thousand stakeholders. We have a stakeholder list to get study ideas in other words you know what information does bone need to know to inform our decisions. After we get all that information in internally, this is disseminated across all of our offices to all of our scientists to do this study profile development again the study idea development. Now, we are in the middle of doing our study profile internal review actually I think it just wrapped up a week or two ago, this where all of our internal scientists review each other's work. Not so much to tell them if it's. It's not a dissertation defense in other words but to help them make it the best it possibly can be so a collegial process to add value. So, this is a case of study development plan around the June timeframe. This this is a plan with all of our study ideas in it. We put that up on our website. We then go through our National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine review our committee on offshore science and assessment, where we have a meeting with with that committee. Where they provide comments and input on our study ideas again so we can work with them and improve them. I then go back to all of our offices and say okay, you know, we usually get about 7570 75 study ideas a year, we can find maybe 2025 of those. So I ask each office and region to rank them. You know what are their priorities what do you need to know now. That's a decision right in front of you. So we can get those priority studies started first. Around October I take the this prioritized list to our director who approves the National Studies list. So she would approve what is going to be funded and in the next fiscal year. We didn't release that studies list and put it on our website for everybody to see. Again, our procurement process and this again would be going through this process where we decide if we're going to do a competitive contract a cooperative agreement with universities or multiple universities where we're going to do cooperative agreement with tribe. We'll work with other federal agencies to actually conduct the science. Next. Oh yeah I just want to give you an idea on the renewable energy spending that we've done. So we've done about 280 studies. Remember the energy policy act passed in 2005. It's been nearly 20 years since we've had authority. I wasn't in the program at that particular time, but after we kind of got kicked off after a couple of years. But you know we've done a lot of studies over that time period, about 280 studies over 162 million, you can see the different types of studies that we've done with fish and fisheries for example 56 studies at about $34 million. So there's quite a bit of information that has been collected over the years. And next. That's my turn. I just want to check in so I probably have about 10 minutes worth of slides and do you need me to, is that okay or do you need me to go through them quick more quickly. That's fine, we can go a little bit longer if committee members have questions since the next session after this is also kind of more open dialogue. Great. So, yeah, so I'm Jill Lewidowski, and I oversee our environmental assessment work at bone from a national perspective and I also direct our center for marine acoustics. And I'll talk about both of these buckets as we go through my slides. One thing I would say too is just like the environmental studies program. We have environmental assessment work that happens across the bureau. So we have what happens in the office environmental programs where Roddy and I sit but we also within each in our regions. And in our different program office program offices we also have folks who are out there doing assessment work as well as studies work as well. So, I guess that to set the stage I kind of wanted to just point out that it's a complex environment that we work in right not just from a pure environment perspective but also from the legal aspects. And one important piece of how we do our assessment work is looking at the various laws and what do they say what do they require us to look at. Many of the laws have like a certain standard that needs to be met. For example in the dangerous species act. We need to consult with fish and wildlife service and National Marine Fisheries Service. And there's, you know, a bar there of not, you know, jeopardizing the continued existence of a species or, you know, critically or adversely modifying critical habitat. But if you go to like the marine mammal protection act the bar there is not to have more than a negligible impact, you know, on a particular population or stock of marine mammals. And then you have like the National Marine Sanctuary Act where we have to provide consideration for impacts that may be happening that come into sanctuary waters even if the activity is happening outside of that Clean Air Act migratory birds. And I'd also point out that even the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act does have an element in there about not causing undue harm. You saw from our mission, our mission does have a requirement in there that we not just safely but we also, you know, move forward with leasing and energy and minerals production in an environmentally responsible way. And of course related to this particular topic under the magazine Stevens Fisher Conservation and Management Act, you're all probably familiar with the essential fish habitat consultations and those are also things that are in our sort of regulatory mix. So on the right here is, it's not surprising this is basically the path that we go about if you could take environmental assessment and you can divide it up into steps. This is what we would be looking at where you first have in the top red, where you propose an activity. The next thing you do is alright and the environment where this activity is happening, what's going on there from a human, a physical and a biological standpoint. And if you look inside the circle there, you know, there's some examples of some of those resources that description of the environment that we would look at it could be fisheries, it could be environmental justice, it could be air quality. So in this specific, you know, there's, there's besides the ones icons were shown there there's 13 other impact or resource areas that we would look for to describe and in particular area. As you move through the orange then we're going to after we were like okay we understand what's out here we're now going to use the best available information from our environmental studies program as well as other information out there. We're going to to then engage stakeholders often it stakeholders at yellow pieces throughout this this circle here but often there's a number of these acts like the National Environmental Policy Act that you have them maybe a public comment period. We will determine how can we mitigate our mitigation hierarchy is first to avoid where we can avoid we want to minimize. And so, again, we're looking toward avoidance but we recognize that's not going to be possible in all situations and and then we look towards how can we avoid is what I want to say and then how can we minimize. And then we filter all that information up to decision makers who are often our bureau director could even be the Secretary of Interior. And then what we want to do is after all that's done and things are happening in the water we want to also do that piece that Ronnie spoke about which is the monitoring. So not just monitoring for impacts but monitoring to get a sense of is the mitigations were imposing are they effective, and then that information feeds into future projects. So, if I speak a little bit towards what the essentially head office environmental programs the headquarters aspects of the environmental assessment program. The first one be transparent environmental risk that that is something that we do across the way what we try to do here in my group is think about what are some better ways we can do that. So that actually links with the second square there which is about reimagining and streamlining environmental reviews. Before there was in the last administration or directive to reduce the size of new documents. We had already started doing that because it was real clear. So how can we use visuals how can we condense our text. How can we use other ways to convey risk so that it's real clear and easy for someone to to find the information that they're they're looking for because usually, as a stakeholder, you're going to be interested in certain aspects and all of them. We look at innovative and effective best practices. Back in the day, it was usually a narrative. Now you'll see a lot of modeling you'll see, you know, relativistic risk assessment frameworks. You were looking at ecosystem based types of assessments. So we're trying to build in that rigor and build in ways to not just narratively talk about impacts and what that might be but also be able to quantify them. And of course, compliance with laws, advancing proactive solutions and programmatic approaches so we do have some things where we are trying to look for solutions that would apply across all of our programs and how we can can assessing convey risk. We may like we are doing for offshore wind in the Atlantic, we are working on a programmatic NEPA document for the New York by leases, so that we can take an earlier look at collectively those leases together. And then of course we do a lot of collaboration work in in trying to build partners so that we can achieve protections that we perhaps can't quite get to or see or figure out on our own. So bone created its center for marine acoustics back in 2020 but I'd say it's really over a decade in the making acoustics is one issue that is relevant in every one of our program areas so oil and gas renewables, marine minerals and of course it will be in carbon sequestration as well is involved, it's in every aspect of development so whether it's in site assessment to construction through operation and decommissioning so we realized, you know we've been spending a couple of decades on this issue and we're not quite getting the traction that we need to be. We're not able to sort of evaluate and be transparent on the risk and understand it in a way that we need to. So we created a center of expertise to do that. We came up with a vision that's not necessarily very technically oriented but we, we basically felt like we want to be a trusted voice so whether it's modeling we put out or we put out technical papers. We have policy improvements, education and outreach through messaging or how we work with our partners. If we're trusted that means that we are doing an effective job we're being transparent our products and our services are dependable so we have been making a lot of progress just in a few short years and having able to build up a staff of about seven full time people now to help us in this area. We also have developed an acoustic science strategy trying to look not just from year to year what we need but try to project a little bit into the future on from an acoustic perspective on what would across the Bureau, what would our needs be where are their common needs with different programs and how might we be able to stage some of this information so as we submit profiles into the environmental studies process like everyone else does. We know that we are doing things that that are timely and we're prioritizing as we go along. And then another center that we're working on developing right now so it's in a proposal stage but it's around innovation ocean monitoring. And basically, Ronnie sort of described we have probably what's considered to be a small program research program in the context of larger programs like Noah or the National Science Foundation. But we do a lot of really great work but what we need to be doing is finding innovative ways to answer questions like particularly how do we better predict impacts. And, but we need to do that by finding effective ways to actually monitor through technology, as well as cost effective because we do have a limited budget and if we can find ways to be more cost effective and, you know, also have technology that improves the information that we're gathering. That's going to go a long way and helping us better assess risk. So this is a center that is currently in its proposal stage. And then we do have a relationship with the National Academies and that goes, not just from an assessment perspective, but also from a science perspective. We do have in the middle there the standing advisory committee we do have one and offshore science and assessment which we call COSA. And that was established in 2015, and we will often go there and they will ask us on certain topics we're working on or we will ask them to give us feedback on a topic that we've been working on are we doing it right are we pursuing the right things so we have the right science questions. Are we transmitting that are translating that risk into things that are meaningful and understandable. So that is one that's very active and of course there's the committee that we're speaking to today offshore wind and fisheries that is newer. But we do work with the National Academy of Science on general peer review work and census studies workshops. For example, we have one that we have just funded that is going to look at the hydrodynamic impacts of the presence of turbines and structures, and, you know, trying to get a little bit more information because there are models out there. And the models show different things and a model show that, you know, likely there is some localized, you know, very impacts but what does that mean to the ecosystem what does that mean to the pre fields. Those are the sorts of questions that we want to get Academy level input into helping us. How do we move forward into really understanding that issue. So with the academies we did have them do what we call first in class so when you hear us say first in class. We're not just throwing that phrase around. We actually had the committee do an evaluation. We have a program for say, but of a program like ours what are attributes of a first in class program. And they came back to us with a list of about 18. And basically those are attributes things we can measure against that would indicate that we are working at a first in class level. For example, one of them was about implementing, you know, innovation strategies so this center for innovative ocean monitoring is one example of how we're kind of leaning into that innovation, not the only example but one of them. And then we currently have an internal process going on to look at all those attributes. We do have to apply some kind of ranking to them as to which ones we want to lean into first. And then measuring against what we're doing and identifying improvements to our program from there. And then separately from the committee we do also have evaluating connection study that we have been working on for several years now. And that goes back to that green feedback loop we started with so it's great if we say we have this feedback loop. And basically questions that come out of our assessment documents that haven't been answered we feedback into our environmental studies program. They let the you know contract out the research that help get us some answers and then we feed that back into future assessments but we need to know, is that system working. So we did have a third party come in and evaluate that system and come up with some recommendations. And we are also looking at those recommendations now and how we can incorporate them as improvements into our programs. And that is it all that we have to present but we're we're happy to obviously answer questions in. So I'll turn it back to you. Sure. I'll open it up. Thank you very much for the presentations. I knew this group is slow on the first question so I'll ask the first. It's all warmed up. This is really sort of for Rodney. Can you elaborate a little bit about how you guys define use inspired because I could imagine use inspired is conditional on the mission of bone and the interior. And then on your authority versus use inspired as much broader definition of knowledge we need that goes beyond just bones interests and authority in the environment. So could you talk a little bit about how you guys define that operationally. In your context when you're thinking about the science. Yeah, sure. Yeah, and what kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier trying to really make the point of trying to hit the target with regard to the information that we need to to inform any kind of decisions that that are out there. It goes back to the compliance aspects, the various laws that we need to follow. I was talking about, you know, and inspired by by use. And when I, you know, we all, I guess, when we get all of our study ideas as you might imagine. There's all kinds of things that we have to consider. And it really I was trying to get inspire people to to hone in. And the questions always ask is, you know, what's this information after will to. So that consideration of use needs to be built in to any type of scientists design, and they're their imagination of what kind of of information if it's an archaeology study if it's a marine mantel study. You know how that information will be applied. And that's the decision, whether that's a proposed wind farm that may come up, you know, in a particular area, or for broader mitigation purposes. So, again, it's, it's relatively straightforward in the sense, I think it sounds more elegant than that than applied research, but it is again just the just the context of how are we going to use this idea you come up with. And try to make them focus, focus in on that application. That help. Thank you. Yeah. All right. I have a question for you. You said that it takes three to five years to ramp up and get your study going. And then maybe you mean to ramp up get it going and finish it. Finish it. Yeah, yeah, I would say most studies taking three to five years to complete. You may need to field seasons and collect data over several years. Yeah. All right, we're about to start. We're laying cable on some places. It'll be done in three to five years. So we really won't know on these first ones. Many of the questions that we will have will arise after the project is done. And I don't understand. You could guess at what you want to study or what you want to see, but you really won't know until you get it done and we'll have some of them finished before you even finished your studies. So how would you address this in a more efficient manner, if you had the opportunity to do it. Well, let me first say that, you know, we have an annual process that we start, you know, new efforts each year. So we've been doing this for 50 years. So there's a lot of information out there. Again, the Energy Policy Act passed about 20 years ago. So a lot of baseline information on birds and fish. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of studies have already been conducted. And we've already, you know, we've identified gaps and we're building on those information needs. You know, what else do we need to know just to inform these decisions as time goes. Again, we are fortunate to have an annual budget where we can start studies every year and just keep going. So it's not something that's a, that's a one off. You know, we've done a lot of work, for example, with cabling and other other work on benthic, benthic habitats, fisheries, just ecosystem studies so these, these things have, you know, are continuing and ongoing I would say. And I would just add to that. What comes out of our studies is really integral to our assessment work but we're also looking at what exists out there in the world. So, you know, we take a lot from some of the, you know, experiences in Europe and other places as far as who have projects in the water. It's not always directly translatable but where it seems like it can serve as a proxy we do pull that information in as well. And of course there's universities as other federal agencies or states is a lot of other folks out there we're not the only game in town. Well, true if I may follow up on that and I agree with you. You talked about long term monitoring as well and 30 million dollars here sounds like a lot of science money. But you know, you guys are looking at ocean mining you're looking at leases for drilling for hydrocarbon production for all kinds of stuff. So it's not just this this wind so if you take that 30 million dollars and you talk about long term monitoring, but you split it up amongst all the other things that you're tasked to do. It really doesn't leave a lot of money. We better hope that we come up with either way of looking at that long term monitoring or we're going to have 14 or 15 of these things built without knowing what the long term effect is going to be. I think. Oh, sorry. I mentioned you know the importance of partnership of partnerships and I think one way to really kind of, I mean that's a big challenge and you're absolutely right but we need to work with wind developers out there we need to, you know, to work with others to leverage the partner and work together to do that that monitoring and I think it can really only be done, you know with these public and private sector partnerships I mean we just simply don't have enough to monitor every species in every area in the ocean. So it's really going to take a kind of all hands on deck approach I think. I appreciate the honesty of your answer okay and you got right after what I was what I was shooting for I appreciate that. So, Rodney and Jill, are you okay to stay around for a little bit longer. Answer session, we go through the four o'clock. I just want to make sure because we've got a couple of hands up, and I like the conversation so if you're okay to stay around I appreciate it but I also know you might have schedule so. Sure I can stay around sorry I talked so long. No, no, no, no. My fault again Jill I talked too long again. I did warn. It's fine. In terms of questions I've got Ron and then we'll go online with Erica and Trisha and then we'll come back to Steve. Thank you for the presentations I get my question is a marine acoustics question from our first meeting and from the press. I think the answers are very concerned about the potential impact of seismic profiling on marine mammals, and fishing industries also concerned about the various species. So, I went looking for when and where seismic profiling has been taken place. In other words, I would expect such an important issue we'd see some charts indicating the time and place of sub bottom profiling and some information about the acoustic levels. Does that exist is that available as somebody looking at this. How are you addressing this important issue to the stakeholders. I agree it is an important issue for the stakeholders so yeah we are looking at all of that. We had coincidentally been really leaning into these high resolution sources so I do want to make sure folks understand that none of this is air guns. I know there's been some confusion out there about the use of air guns related to offshore wind surveys and that is not being used for offshore wind surveys what the sound sources are high res sources that are less power and less intensity. So that doesn't mean, could there be impact so we had several years ago started looking into it because our feeling from an acoustics perspective and knowing what we know about animal hearing and propagation of sound in the water is we were not concerned about these sources but we said we need to check that assumption. So we let a few studies that did actual first lab, then field verification and then modeling. And we actually had just put out a paper back in 2022 that found most of these sources to be de minimis. Perhaps maybe not, maybe a little bit, you know where it could have some impact. And we were mainly looking at Marie mammals in the context of this. And so we have been working with Noah to sort of identify. Okay, for the ones that do you agree with our assessment because our assessment wasn't just us it was other other scientists independent and within the government. And if so let's just, you know focus, our goal with that was to be like let's let's see if we can close the book a little bit on whether these sources are impactful. And if there are areas where we need to apply continue to apply mitigation because they've been applied all along, then that's great but if there are some things that we can sort of move out the table so we can devote our time and resource to things that we felt might have been crucial, let's take care of that now so we had done all of this work, and then this started coming out and I would point out that, you know the unusual mortality events that are happening. They've been happening since about 2015 16 depending on which of the two you're talking about, as well as strandings that have that have gone on. So we know a remanimal commission and many, many independent academic experts. No one is finding causation between these surveys, and what is happening. I think what we're seeing happening with Wales through these unusual mortality events is likely to some degree human cause but not caused by the surveys I think what we're seeing in about 40% of the animals that they have me crop seed is evidence of and you know when these surveys are happening, because you don't want to just look at it from an acoustic perspective you also want to think about vessel strike potential, but they're they are traveling except when they're traveling on site they do have protected species observers that are looking actively for marine animals and turtles as they're transiting, but then when they're operating they're going at very slow paces below 10 knots. The animals are getting struck by ships, and there is some level of entanglement that's happening and there's climate change and there's shifting prey. We are trying to take a look at the men Hayden and what that we think that's coming closer to shore probably bringing more humpbacks closer to shore, and they're probably coming into areas where there's human activity as well. Yes, we are looking at all of that we know what activities have been happening with, you know, offshore winds through the permits that have been issued by bomb. In some cases and of course the authorizations under the marine animal protection act and endangered species act by by Noah. But again, all after looking at all of that and relooking at everything we've done, we still feel there is no cause. It is not the surveys that are causing these trainings. But I guess my question was again, cannot we get the data where the transects occurring, and what are the acoustic levels because I've read all the reports and documents, the sound levels are higher. We can use that are in the, the bone documents that went to the fishery service levels in 180 to 240 decibel range have been shown to cause behavioral changes in marine mammals and marine mammal that stressed might be more likely to be hit by a ship. So the public has a lot of questions about this. We have some issues with scallops dying and in areas that have been surveyed. So we need to know where the surveys are taking place, and what the sound levels are and I'm just asking if that information is the information on where the surveys are taking place that still being I think compiled and determining how that's going to be sort of put out there. I would caution you to be careful not just to look at a at a DB level, because what we do know from decades of research across from various parties globally. It's not just a decibel level right if there's a lot of aspects that go in its frequency content you can have a high decibel level. If the frequency isn't within the hearing range, then, you know, it's, it doesn't necessarily matter and some of these high res sources are not in the frequency range of, of marine mammals so there's also, you know, how the sound is being directed. They're often very narrow beam widths of sound. Now of course it propagates out a little bit because because water is a good, a good source for transmission but they're really focused downward. And so it the effect of having that high of a decibel level isn't going to be expanding out to hundreds of meters or kilometers. So yeah, we can provide because within each of the surveys, they, where we approve it, they talk about the, the, the sound levels and they cannot exceed those. We also have a sound source list coming out that talks about every single type of sound source that could be used in what the, what the decibel levels are at the, at the source right and those are at the source not what they might be at 10 meters 20 meters 100 meters of source. So we can follow up and get you more information, I guess is the bottom line. Thank you. Okay, that's. Thanks, Jill. I do want to be cognizant that part of this next session was bringing in the opportunity for the public to ask questions so I just say that before we have four at least questions that I know the committee. And so, Eric want you to go next. Yeah, thanks. Eric came from Hawaii Lone Land Association. Thanks for the presentation. A lot of interesting process and research going on. My kind of specific question is what is the state of understanding with impacts to offshore wind impacts to larval drift or dispersion. And the potential impact on her today upwelling, which is really alarming. So I just want to get a sense. What's the state of the science there and understanding of those impacts. I'm really interested in understanding how boom has or plans to interact with the regional councils and the science and statistical committees. And lastly, I don't think you guys have to answer but at some point would like to find some information on what steps along the process is NEPA NEPA applied and who conducts those analyses is a boom in the very early stages and then it's the actual developers later. So sorry for kind of three parts there but mostly interested in your guys perspective on the state of the science on impacts of to larval as well as kind of currents and up on it. Thanks. Jill, you want to take it or you want me to start and then I'll follow up with a probably the good start and I'll follow up. We're looking at we're starting a new study on the upwelling issue so that will be something that we're focused focused on there had been some academic papers put put out but we want to try to get a better handle on exactly that. That's what you mentioned. And we're also seeking advice from the National Academy on this issue as well to toward towards this. We do have a somebody that's one of our scientists as is really picking a really hard hard look at this and I wish that individual was on he can answer this, the question regarding upwelling much better than I. Yeah, I agree. I say, it's an important issue. And we are taking a hard look at it I guess that's what I could say at this point. Do you want to add anything. Well, what I would also add is, besides the upwelling study I mentioned early on that we have the National Academy is reviewing hydrodynamics issue which is related right so might not be upwelling. But you know, how is that sort of going to affect the community, the pray field and the, and the more local slash regional ecosystem, it will it and then how could we understand that better. I think we could probably in the larval issue get somebody else who's going to be able to tell you better than writing or I can to provide a response to that question and we can provide that. You know, in writing to the committee, and then on the NEPA stuff. Yes, so the way it goes is there. So the, the, the, the companies hire a third party contractor to develop the NEPA documents, but they, but that contractor is under bones direction. So they're essentially funding us, they're funding someone else to do the work for us. And so we will work at them we have for example done a lot of things like we do prepared content where this is what we believe are the effects of something therefore you must use it, but all of those documents come to us for review. We review them, they go out to our cooperating agencies for review. Then they go out to the public for review. And that happens again as we go from a draft NEPA document to a final NEPA document. So, I think that answers your NEPA question. So, although guess it is funded by the operators, the control of the document of the content is at the discretion of bone. Thanks. Do we get all your questions. Maybe later at some point we can have a discussion about how you guys interact interface with the regional councils. Okay. Yeah, but yeah, we can also provide that the information later. Okay. This is Brian Hooker I'm in the room. Okay. Thanks for Rodney out a little bit on this. So, yes, on the hydrodynamic modeling larval transport, the two studies that we have funded and completed on the Atlantic. Again, these are fixed bottom foundations we've done scallop transport modeling scallop larval transport modeling. We used whiting Silverhake to for ground fish species, and have done summer flounder as well. We have two more that have just kicked off that are going to be modeling some of the same species again but more of a focus on the mid Atlantic rather than Southern New England, where the first ones occurred. I think on the West Coast, we have started some, you know, when there's been some modeling of wind wake loss fields and I don't know if Tom Capacic is on but we can definitely supply you with that study. There's a different environment there right because you don't have as much you don't have the, the foundation extending all the way through the water column so it's more of a wind driven, rather than the hydrodynamics of water, moving around a pile that is on the sea floor. So again, you know the West Coast is a little bit further behind where you know you may not know yet. You know, what size turbines you're talking about the spacing of the turbines, all of which are important to having a good model run where we have a lot more of that information on the East Coast where we have construction operation plans before as we have an agreed upon layout in Southern New England that allows us to model that fairly accurately. So I just want to add that on and we can certainly supply the committee with with those studies. And then I think Brian, it could help us as well to get the larval impacts and the engagement with the fishery management councils information to you as well. Thanks Brian Trisha. So, I guess my question is really one around funding and capacity and also coordination with other ongoing regional efforts so on the on the first part of the question related to kind of funding and capacity it sounds like there's some really interesting opportunities and proposals, you know, especially around this innovative ocean monitoring center and some of the identified attributes that COSA is coming up with. I know that the most recent I think lease sale in the New York bite generated about $4.4 billion compared to oil and most recent Gulf of Mexico oil and gas the sale which was like 200 million. So I guess my question is, how can we deploy the lease sale revenues and the absence of a law change to support some of the longer term monitoring and research and science efforts that we need to support a sustainable growth of the offshore wind in the space and or, you know, looking at the non cash aspects of the lease sales in terms of generating or incentivizing innovation to support or funding to support these research efforts or research toward the attributes that that were identified. And then on the coordination piece, you know, we have the regional wildlife science collaborative that is working to develop an integrated science plan and there are some other efforts that are that are looking to do that so how I guess I'm, I'm wanting to understand a little bit more about how the work that you're doing there aligns with their feeds into these other regional efforts and vice versa so that we are being as effective and cost effective as possible in that approach. So I would just maybe I can start and then you can fill in but I would just say, you know, our funding comes from appropriations. So it does not come directly from lease revenues. So it's, yeah, it's appropriations is is how we get that and I think we've become very good but we can always get really, really, really good at doing a lot of cross sharing and partnerships that's generally how we try to take the piece that we do get and and really maximize its value. So we have, you know, staff and all that are sitting on a lot of these regional collaborative the ring, the RWSC and other sorts of things that we're engaged in what's happening there we're contributing it contributing to the content and then we're also, you know, pulling out of that and looking at our programs and where we can find value. I know from an environmental perspective when it comes to like mitigation for example, looking at, you know, the potential for leasing bidding credits and operating credits to fund some things like money and technology related to pile driving so we are trying to do our best to sort of try to be efficient and expand our dollars but Rodney would you like to add to that. I have a great question about the you know, a percentage of kind of the lease revenues coming coming in but like Joe said we get our money through appropriations, but, but still that doesn't stop me from thinking about that because I have thought a lot of times but it's kind of not on the, on the table, but so it really is, is what it is with regard to the money we get, you know, from from Congress really so. As far as the, the regional wildlife science collaborator met with them a few weeks ago and have some ongoing conversations. We do have folks that are on their science committee to kind of drive their, the science that's needed in those particular areas and regions, which is really, really, I think, you know, an important aspect of it they, they said they actually, you know, had used our study planning process with our study profiles to help them, you know, look towards what information may be needed so I think groups like that are really important to help inform, you know, gaps and information needs as we move forward. I'm sure you're familiar with NROC, Northeast Regional Ocean Council and these various councils that are out there which also have connections. You know, and we have connections I said on that committee years ago but we have other folks that are involved in that as well so these kind of touch points I think are very, are very important. I mean, interestingly, you mentioned regional wildlife science collaborative, they are kind of special in the sense that they can, you know, take in funds, you know, from up from entities and then push them back out to you know to do scientific research so there's very few entities that exist like that, you know, around our country. And they, this is why, you know, we have been having some conversations with them and are looking towards potentially future work, but again, it needs to focus on our East inspired model which I think, I think we're aligning that fairly well right now. Thank you, Steve. So, Eric asked my questions, but you were last one which is collaborating with the SSC. So, these these questions of hydrodynamics, upwelling larval transport, you know, they're, they're constantly on our mind out on the West Coast. So, my question. Yes or no. Will one of you come to Vancouver, Washington, June 21 through 27 to meet with those of us who will be at the Pacific Council meeting. And that those will include our marine planning committee, SSC ground fish team, tribes, you know, everybody who's got very deep interest in this. I think that would be very, very helpful for all of us. Okay, we can we can look into our scheduling and see. Yeah. All right, Sarah, did you want to have a question. Yeah, I was curious, Brian, if you could tell us what some of the results are of the studies you said they're completed you kind of talked about it but I was just curious if you could summarize them if you know them well enough to do so. I think generally speaking, you know, you can detect, you know, differences in the transport before and after, but the significance and I think we've gotten to some of the, this question of, you know, well, is it, what's the significance level of that. And then they did not appear to be, you know, significant level changes like the bat totally changing the trajectory of where larval settlement is it's within, you know, what we do is you compare the model before and after right. And so you get, you know, it varies with species but you know, the difference between the base and the model runs are, you know, within the range of natural variability. So not dramatic but you can through the model see a see a difference. And that's what we've seen on the Atlantic so far. Great. Okay, so we are then going to officially transition to our next session. But we actually been already doing the next sessions, but actually doing this will also open up the possibility of some of the non committee members to be able to raise their hand and contribute. The goal of this next session was really to sort of, you know, start this brainstorming process with bone about future topics for the committee to work on or address and whether be in our sessions or designs or future workshops or something that was the goal of what this part of this session is. So we started off trying to summarize some of the earlier conversations at risk that committee members could jump in to correct me if I go astray a little bit but because I think actually Rodney there's a lot of what you covered that touched on what we were sort of interested in learning and maybe that's a potential way we could sort of, you know, align our next sort of steps and, you know, we've expressed this to you already but at our first meeting and through the two closed sessions we had there's a lot of conversation about cumulative impacts, and determining them and how they're considered and it's a, you know, that in itself is a pretty complicated has different layers and so I think we can use that to sort of tie in a couple things so one could be on how our cumulative impacts considered in the leasing process determining the next wind energy areas. So after you determine one is a wind energy area. Do you consider cumulative impacts and how do you consume consider that in determining the next wind energy area so I think it's on the sighting question of the areas themselves how do you build that it ties directly into the long term monitoring question, you know what's the kinds of data you're collecting now to inform assessments of cumulative impacts and I should be clear. Cumulative impacts kind of has a very negative connotation but it could also be cumulative impacts on a positive side right it doesn't always have to be negative so what's the kind of long term monitoring efforts and maybe Rodney how does that feed into your innovative ocean monitoring processes and is there something we could work with you on how you define that and think about that. But obviously, to be able to measure cumulative impacts we have to have the long term monitoring in place. And how much of that falls within bone or Noah or NSF or how do we think about that whole process. And that ties into what we've been talking about is compensation funds right compensation is all about the expected damages, and that is not just independent one time expected damage that's the expected future damages associated with a particular activity, which itself is a function of cumulative impacts not just one site itself so how do we thinking about when we're designing these compensation funds this idea of cumulative impacts and how is that into that process. And then, finally, this question that keeps coming up is authority. How do we think about cumulative impacts within the authority that bone has, and how do you guys think about that when, obviously this goes way beyond you. And so, we could for example use that to touch on a lot of the issues that we have raised I think I'm seeing some nods no one's throwing anything at me right now. But you know that could be a way to structure our next sets of conversations and it could be that we have an afternoon session on one piece of that, but a way to sort of integrate it. And so, before opening it up to the public I'm just going to let the committee members respond or add to what I said or will say whatever you want to say with regards to that. Good job. Good. It seems like touched our issues okay so that's something for you guys maybe consider we can have additional conversations on that. All right now I'm going to hand it over to the experts on how to handle this next part of it. All right, thank you. Public participants are attendees as it calls you. You have the ability to raise your hand and I will go through it and call on people please address your comments to the committee we are seeking to hear from you as stakeholders as the general public to see what's going on and what you think the standing committee should tackle in future meetings so first I will go to Timothy simple. Should we have them introduce themselves. When you start speaking and say your name briefly what sector industry you're from an area of the country and kind of what your interest in the topic is and then present your question or comment and you have the floor. Hello this is Tim simple, can you hear me. Yes, we've got you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Tim simple I am in an environmental scientist working for consult seed named this year. And I'm, I work our company and I work in a group that focuses heavily on offshore wind development and advising developers on the process ranging from permitting permitting to environmental impacts. I'm a fisheries specialist. Before this role I work for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is a salmon fishery manager in the Columbia river. Before that I was at National Marine Fisheries Service in Ohio. As a stock assessment scientist and also on the Pacific Fishery Management Council's highly migratory species management committee. So I've been engaged in fishery management for quite a while and bringing all this to the table on offshore wind. The question I typed into into the field here pertains to consideration of the impacts of displacing displacing us seafood production. Out of our production capacity and overseas markets as a result of displacing them from offshore wind development. Our fisheries are amongst the most well managed and closely monitored fisheries in the world. We have a as good of a handle as anybody on the impacts of our fisheries and monitoring sustainability through our scientific based approach. And many other countries don't follow standards similar similar to that. So the effect of displacing our fisheries could potentially be the effect of moving production overseas to places that have higher impacts. Likewise, seafood is one of the lower carbon footprint animal protein sources relative to factory farm beef and pork and chicken things like that. So if we drive consumers, you know away from seafood into those higher impacts, then we're actually having a, you know, a not desirable impact on carbon footprint. So I'm just wondering how all of this is considered in the process of prioritizing the process. That's kind of where we have competing objectives here. And I guess, primarily I want to kind of raise these points to make sure that they are being considered and talked about. The last element of that is, you know, there was a mention of the compensation agreements through bidding credits and community benefit agreements. The assumption of that seems to be that there will be a negative impact that somehow being accounted for or compensated for. But if we were to take a more collaborative approach, try to find ways to get the two industries offshore wind and fisheries to actually work collaboratively. Thinking about how to get a win win situation as opposed to one industry compensating another for undesirable impacts. So thank you for listening. Thank you, Tim. This is Jim St. Kierke. I just, I just also want to set expectations. We're not expecting bone or committee members to answer some of the questions you're posing. We think that, I mean, we appreciate you asking them, but they will go into our record. And then we will be considering that as we develop additional topics for future meetings. Right. I just want to make sure that everyone has the same expectation on what we're, we're trying to get from this process. So thank you very much for raising those issues. Do we have someone else. Next, I will jump to Mike, and I'm not going to try to butcher your last name. I just gave you permission to speak from the Pacific Seafood. It's called Michael. Michael is just fine. I'm not technically working for Pacific Seafood anymore, but I am representing an environmental fishery group, I guess you could call it to on West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group. I've been in the industry 53 years. I started working on Mayfak with learning about offshore wind energy. And what it looked like or intended for fisheries. I, the last gentleman really nailed it, I thought. Up until the CBA stuff I, I have no desire to put out or see any type of compensation program put together until they understand the total dynamics and value of the fishery and how many jobs there are in that. And I may be off base here a little bit, but I read it. One, no report it was $178 billion. And I think 1.3 million jobs and one of the reports. So, it's also a food security issue. The last gentleman just pointed it out well. The great job and manufacturing thing we put overseas or food source that we pursue overseas or buy overseas. We're giving work to people that use a lot more carbon than we do to produce what we get. And then they ship it overseas on big ships, which also does the same. I just see why food being so important as a basic need for life is being just toss, not even talked about. And it really disturbs a lot of us. I'm also on the rota board. I'm on the marine planning committee for the council. And I'm also on the advisory panel and the coastal blanche species advisory panel. So I've been doing that, that work with the Pacific Council at sub panel levels for last 20 some years. But as the gentleman who was on the council said, who started out thinking we shouldn't get involved in offshore wind. And the threat to the fisheries is he's ever seen since he got on the council and he got on when it was first formed. So he's a guy that is very well respected and has done a lot of different fisheries. So what I'm hearing from bone is the same latitudes we've heard for the last five years. And yeah, we want to do good, we want to help out. But the truth of the matter is, if you displace fisheries, you're going to lose them. And there's a certain tipping point where processors can no longer have enough fish to keep doing business. And it's all balanced the whole supply chain. And nobody's looking at any of this is impacts at this point. Yeah, it's supposed to happen after we get to the point where we're going to, you know, start construction, or ready to start construction. At this time, there's going to be quite a few people have dropped out of the industry and probably have nothing to show for it. The mitigation is ridiculous and what they're planning on doing for compensation. If you put the whole $178 billion into it, maybe can find a way to buy out the fishery but guess what, that's every year. I've been doing it for the long haul most of not not just to get out and retire. So, what I'm hearing today, I just hope the members of the Standing Committee will heed some of the information that's been put out here today and not just listen to bone, because it's, it's, I mean, it's not that I just like the people from bone. I made a few good friends there, but the message and just the whole attitude about not needing to do this research and the other stuff on environment is just absurd. You need to do it up front and before you start the projects, not after, not after you're ready to start building the stuff. How many of them are going to be reversed? Probably not. And I'll be quiet after that. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Next, we will go to Leah H. And you should. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Great. Oh, am I muted? Can you hear me? Hear you. Okay, great. I just got a pop up that said the host muted me. I apologize that things are moving around. No worries. No worries at all. Thanks Caroline and, and thanks to the folks who thanks to the committee members and the folks who helped set up these meetings over the last two days they've been very informative. My name is Lee Habager. I'm the executive director of seafood harvesters of America. We are a national commercial fishing association representing fishermen from every corner of the country Alaska to Hawaii to Florida to Maine. I am interested in this committee working to bring some increased transparency to Boehm's process and handling public comment and feedback. In the last three years, the commercial fishing industry has submitted formal comments and informal comments in a variety of ways, and we have seen very few of these comments and recommendations incorporated into various projects and or processes at Boehm. The lack of response by Boehm to our comments and concerns has been extremely frustrating, especially when as you all continue to hear from the fishing industry and others. That offshore industrialization threatens our national food security decades old fishing businesses and our coastal communities so I think from a national commercial fishing perspective we would really like to see some transparency in Boehm's processes and I think this committee stands in a great place to be able to look at those processes and help educate the, at least the commercial fishing industry help us be more productive partners here because it's been, it feels very one sided. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Lee. Steve, do you want to, so it seems like we have a lol in the public comment, do you want to come back and ask the question or at least get your comments registered. Sure. So I passed on my question earlier to make sure we had public input time. But it was, it was in response to the presentation that Jill gave. There was a circular process diagram that showed stakeholder engagement kind of stuck in the middle. And there's kind of more of a comment that I think echoes the, the, the last speaker and some of the other things the committee has already heard is that that's too late in the process is kind of my take on what a lot of people are are trying to convey. And I appreciated that, you know, Jill, when you get the presentation, you actually clarified that that's not representative of how you actually engage stakeholders throughout. So I was curious if you could just talk a little bit more about the stakeholder engagement elements of the other parts of the figure. And then maybe a suggestion is that, you know, maybe that figure needs some revision to clarify. Because I think it's pretty important. So that that was it and I had a short follow up question after that. You know, you're absolutely right. I, it just struck me too when I was actually presenting it I was like, we need to fix that because that's not really represent doesn't really represent. It might represent where it sits in a formal NEPA process, but it doesn't represent, you know, regional entities that have been set up in stakeholder interactions to develop the wind energy areas, as well as things like that that on the project level. Some of the tribal engagement, the environmental justice engagement that we've been working on particularly for example within New York by leases so stakeholder engagement is a key part that happens from before when energy areas developed all the way through through the process. There's a lot of stakeholders right there's a lot of stakeholders with different input different opinions and so it's it's a challenging thing but it yeah I just want to reinforce that it does happen. And really often it may not feel exactly right to everybody, and we always look for input on ways that we can improve that and if that's something we can, you know incorporate we definitely will do that but we are trying our best to to get out there and provide forms for people to to provide input, where we can hear other things where we can share information and, and where we can listen. So a second follow up question was, I personally wasn't aware how much social science expertise it sounds like you will have with it within house, do you have numbers on that if there's a couple hundred scientists overall, how many are sociologists or just economists versus, you know, natural scientists. I don't know if we have an exact number I know the hundreds we're talking about include engineers so it includes not just the environmental program but it includes other aspects of bone. If I looked at our little microcosm in the office environmental programs where we have, you know, fifth low 50s, and that's just for OEP right there's there's folks out in the regions as well. So I would say some of those 50 are just for business processes right to keep us up and running and moving so if we get down from there were probably down to 35 or so of them that are actual sort of or technical experts in the human or physical or biology field. And I would say, probably, maybe not a third but closer third, have some sort of econ sociology background and we are looking to sort of build that. We do have folks who are interdisciplinary as well. So, who have done work and or education that tries to pull together, you know, a social aspect with maybe a biological aspect so we don't necessarily always have people that are just in one subject one area. And I know I have like 12 active people in my assessment group. And, you know, you know, three to four of them are working just environmental justice issues or sociology issues. And I think, you know, Ron your group is probably comparable to that. Yeah, I would say my group is comparable with the addition of one, and because that's me because I'm a sociologist. Yeah, environmental sociologists but yeah so I don't know I said I think it's about right we also, you know how Joe you can you can mention this in the sense that we have an economics division that focuses on the economic aspects, but then we kind of have so social economic economists and look at more regional and regionally, you know, economic impact assessment aspects and social impacts impact assessments. Then of course there's folks that will focus more on your anthropology social culture and then there's the cultural archaeologist that will focus on the marine archaeology itself but also the cultural aspects of that so. Yeah. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I want to as we're getting closer to five o'clock. I just wanted to offer up and see if there's anyone else that's attending the meeting virtually that would like to share any comments or questions with the committee. Give it a minute or so for people to raise their hands, seeing no hands but I do also want to thank everybody that has made questions or comments into the Q&A feature. I've been trying to answer some of those and once from yesterday that I will take, make sure the committee members see questions and comments from the public. And we will talk about them as a committee and future closed sessions as we go through and look at planning for our next open sessions. Any final comments from committee members. So I'll just make one final comment. Thank you to all the committee members for taking this time out of your busy schedules to come. It was been very informative and thank bone for sponsoring us in the academies and all the academy staff. And I want all the committee members to know that you are being given back 13 minutes of time that we will I'm sure utilize at another point. I'm sure. Yes. Thank you very much. 13 minutes now right. Exactly right. Thank you all that adjourned our spring meeting of the standing on offshore wind energy and fisheries. Really appreciate want to echo Jim's comments really appreciate all the speakers from bomb the public for listening and participating. And for the committee members for traveling it was great to have everyone that could travel here in person. And looking forward to continued work of this committee.