 Welcome back to day two of the committee on options for science and assessment. We are thrilled to be back with you all to be discussing some additional study profiles today. And thank you Rodney for the cake yesterday evening congratulations again on 50 years. Before we get underway I'm going to just repeat a few housekeeping items and looking around the room I think most people that are in the room with us today we're here yesterday. But I'll just remind folks that as our quick safety minute if there is an emergency for any reason, you'll go out to the rotunda there are very large doors immediately to your left and those are the emergency exit. We will congregate on C Street in front of the building. In normal business if you need to enter or exit our building there are two entrances and exits. One is on the north end of our building at C Street, the other south on Constitution which is probably where you all came in. The restrooms are a little hard to describe in this building but if you go out to that rotunda make a right towards the main room and then a left down the hallway they should be on your left. A few housekeeping items for those not in the room, please do remain muted if not called upon to speak we'll do our best in the room to help mitigate or monitor that but we appreciate your assistance in keeping our meeting as interruption free as possible. For those in the room, you know please do consider logging into the zoom, and please remember to use your microphone because the microphones are connected to the audio in zoom. And then appreciate the very robust chat that we had going on yesterday we are going to try to capture some of those chat comments and find the most appropriate way to share them with our film colleagues. I do not monitor the chat for the purposes of integrating feedback they're into the discussion. But again as I said we will try to capture that feedback. And I think that's all. Have I missed any important housekeeping items. I'll turn it then to our co chairs and then we'll do a quick round of introductions. Okay, I'll keep this very brief welcome everybody to day two of the course of meeting to discuss a select number of study profiles. Hello MSTP. Thanks everybody for joining us. We have some excellent discussions yesterday we discussed six profiles and we're going to discuss for more today. We appreciate the program introduction introductions from folks and the profiles and the outside experts and of course co some member insights. We're going to be here from the minerals management program and also from the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. As was the case yesterday we encourage presenters to limit their slides discussions to around about seven minutes so that we can have lots of time for discussion. Welcome everybody to today's sessions. I think speaking on behalf of some of the oldsters from the team have been here for a while at yesterday's review sessions. To me it was one of the best we've had in terms of the quality of the feedback and the dialogue that went on and I really appreciate everybody's participation, the but also the constructive nature of the comments that were shared. I want to thank all of our BOM participants. I see we have a few extras joining us today including I think I see Bill there. Hi Bill. Good to have you here. You missed the birthday cake yesterday too bad that maybe maybe they'll save a piece for you and it's and I also want to really thank our guests who called in they added tremendously to the quality of the discussions yesterday and I look forward to that continuing today so yeah, let's get after it. Excellent so with that I think I'll turn it over to Bill Brown to offer some remarks as well. Yeah, and I hope you can hear me okay let me let me know if there's an issue. Scott I'm, yeah I'm, I'm sorry I missed the cake. And I would love to be there but I'm on Long Island right now we've been meeting with the Shinnecock tribal nation. I'm actually currently at the offices of the uncle Chuck recognized stay recognized Indian tribe on Long Island to and the chief is has been nice enough to set me up in the backyard of the office. There's a smaller group of us that is up here is is an item that where we secured $600,000 from the bill funding that bipartisan infrastructure law for what we've initially described as submerged tribal heritage and visualization project for that and, and so we're we're talking to the Shinnecock about that. So I'm going to I'm going to just quickly move through some highlights of bone. And, but I see there are a lot of bone staff that are present. So if you know after I finish, if there are questions please join in to make because some of the staff know know more about the nuances than I do. But to begin, there are several rule makings that I think are of interest to the, the committee. There was a final rulemaking on January 31 of this year that we call the bone Bessie split rule renewable energy split rule and fundamentally that was when. When the two agencies were created. The offshore wind enforcement authority was was actually placed temporarily with bone for inspection and enforcement. Bessie has generally has had those functions and the split rule. Normally from a regulatory point of view, assign the inspection and enforcement test her offshore wind to Bessie. So that's that rule. I we did we have proposed also in January on the 30th, the renewable energy modernization rule and I won't go into it and more than that but it's quite detailed and it's, it's largely to process more efficient and take into account the experience that we've had with offshore wind. There's another proposed rule that was issued on archaeology for oil and gas. And to really summarize that we had had an issue requiring surveys before exploration before anyone drilled, and this new rule gives would give explicit authority to do that. I'll note it's just for oil and gas there's a separate archaeological regulatory requirements for offshore for offshore wind. And then as I'm sure Scott will note if I don't where we are also continuing to develop a carbon sequestration rule, which was mandated by Congress and it's not out yet. But I do promise the staff are working diligently on it and they are in the process of trying to create. The beginnings of a program, you know, to embed that regulatory system in so it's, you know, it's more than just a regulation. We are, we're in the process of updating our tribal consultation policy we've just just started the first of concrete steps which is internally to do some red lines for the current policy that would update it. It's some of the tribes have asked us to do that and then we we intend after we get agreement within bone to send that out to send it to the 574 tribal nations that are recognized by the federal government and invite consultation on on that. There's a lot going on with wind energy, and I'll just note a few things that that we are expecting to designate wind energy areas offshore Oregon and the Central Atlantic. These things are all we expect by the end of the year. We expect to hold a wind lease sale for the Gulf of Mexico. We have recently approved our third project off the Atlantic for offshore wind, the ocean wind project that was approved last week. And, and under its plan could build up to 98 turbines and 1.1 gigawatts of power capacity. It's the third approved project that the first two were vineyard win one and South work wins. And we are expecting decisions on construction operation plans coming up probably in this year for revolution wind empire wind see vow New England wind and sunrise when on oil and gas. And we expect to issue the proposed final program which essentially is the final program subject to a review by the brief review period by Congress. We expect to issue that final program for the next five years sometime this year. We expect a whole lease sale to 61 for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico on program staff and budget. A key thing is we've, we've have appointed Jessica Bravo was as bones, Deputy Chief Environmental Officer so please congratulate Jessica. I think she's largely been playing that role yeah. She's doing an amazing job. And, and also Erica Statterman who some of you have, I think gotten to know is it's now the deputy manager of the of the of the CMA are centered from marine acoustics and, and, and that's going to be in the great help for for Jill so that Jill can focus on not just the CMA but other things more easily. So moving forward with an effort. Thank you again with to hire a senior innovation officer. You know, in this initiative that I know you know we have to promote innovation. And we hope to establish a center that we don't have that fully approved yet but we're, we can move forward with a person that would be the leader of it. We expect the issue with Noah a North Atlantic right whale and offshore wind strategy this fall plan. And to note we've received $7 million and inflation reduction act funding for environmental studies and monitoring work that relate to the strategy. We also received 6.5 million and IRA funding to establish a regional passive acoustic monitoring Pam network. And, and to also to use that to identify the larger scale movements and distribution of Atlantic marine mammals. And, and we also have issued a million dollar $1 million contract for underwater acoustic impact modeling. Planning with Noah on an interagency agreement with them and supported baseline environmental and social cultural analysis for the US territories. And I believe you know that bones OCS jurisdiction was extended to the territories by the IRA. And it also provided the IRA did give a lot of money which is helpful. And $7.5 million for research and wind energy development related to the territories and our initial focus is Puerto Rico, which is by far has by far the largest population of the US territories, and then one other final item to note. We've received $5 million in addition to all of this through the IRA for what we're calling foundational environmental studies to inform decisions on energy and minerals so that is my list and with that I'll stop and invite questions. Thank you so much bill. I will just note briefly that I realized I forgot to do introduction so apologies for that. So let's go ahead and take questions and then we can do some around the room introductions before we get started so I'll look for hands both in the room and online for any questions for bill. I'm the I'm the chief environmental officer bone that's what I would I do. Thank you bill appreciate greatly appreciate that overview that was very helpful. I'm sure we'll have some follow up questions on on some of the items there I know I do but I want to touch on a different topic that you didn't touch on that I do think is of high interest to those of us and you may recall a year so ago two years ago you instigated a study that a couple of us in this room were involved in called first in class study. One of the findings of that study was that characteristic of premier applied science organizations was incorporating DEI perspectives into the work processes and programs of that that organization. I know that's something that figures into the, the SDP document, but we really haven't heard too much about it in the course of our profiles that we've been looking at. I wonder if you can comment a little bit on on the status of what's happened in terms of DEI at bone and since since the first in class study came out I think all of us on the committee boo be quite interested in hearing about that. Yeah, I can comment a little bit and I and I would invite Jessica anyone else who wants to add after I finished add things but the first thing actually is is not bone per se but the National Academy of Science Engineering medicine which recently decided. As a perhaps you know to launch a study on what I'll it's like Jedi DEI a it has another element in its acronym for on belonging, but it's something that was the and it's a study is on those those characteristics, how to advance them within the ocean sciences. The initiative of the Ocean Science Board, and they brought that up. It was brought up by the board a couple of years ago and we had a panel and there were a number of federal employees there and I was there and we committed $100,000 to support it we provided that now. And the Naval Research Lab has provided support I understand there is likely to be other federal support so what they have what the Academy is doing now that we expect to help on and be part of is a two year study with about a million dollars in funding to address these issues so that's kind of I think that's an exciting thing that's going. Generally, we. We have a number of elements of what is a Jedi or DEI work plan that bone has has developed. And I do include in that Scott, our tribal work, it's it's related to that. We have, we have we're in the process of conducting quarterly environmental justice forums that are related to New York by particularly. We're doing sort of outreach to improve our recruitment of individuals and disadvantaged communities and certainly including black and tribal groups. And first in classes very much on my mind and and Brian Jordan and Jessica have taken a leadership role and, you know, making sure that we live up to our commitment to honor the implementation of the 18 attributes that were laid out there. But let me ask Jessica to join in because she's better than I am at remembering the details of everything we've done. Thanks Bill I think that was a good overview and I would also highlight the remarks that Ronnie gave yesterday when we're talking about the studies program as well and how to more fully incorporate tribes into the various stages of development of the community. We're contemplating a series of webinars and workshops. And we're really thinking about how to involve tribes more in our studies program, in terms of participating in data collection study design data analysis, etc. And so that's one effort that we're doing I would say for first in class. We are also about to receive the final report for our evaluating connections feedback loop study. And that we are excited to share with you guys once it's final. It's going to provide a lot of insights as to kind of where we stand with the most 18 attributes of the first in class environmental program. And we'll be looking for contractor to help us think through some of the early actions for process improvements and performance metrics, including on DEIA. And then the last thing that I would note is that the Bureau is very, very close to bringing on board our diversity and inclusion officer, which is the first step in setting up our diversity inclusion and civil rights office, which will build out over the next few years that will really help us bring people in to our own staff and concentrate on that outreach as well. And help us think through how to improve processes including our studies processes. Yeah, and we're actually we're also hiring an environmental justice coordinator. Who will do justice 40 if you followed that concept work for both bone men best see so we're in the process there. Actually, I see now I had added a paragraph on on on Jedi issues for my opening remarks and I, I've been traveling I printed out the one that the least up less updated version so I'm glad you mentioned. I wanted to raise it initially. Thank you Jeremy your hand is up. Yeah, thank you, Bill and Jessica just first is as a follow up. I think it would be great if when with the study profiles if you're going out to to universities you look to HBC use and and as well look for even when you have a non HBC you as a lead look for them to to partner with an HHBC you and or and or a tribal nation so that's one of the ways rather than just seeking input into the profiles but actually engaging those communities and in the research so anyway it sounds like you're doing a lot of great things. And you've got a lot on your plate one thing you didn't talk about all was your workforce and how, you know, how are you going to grow out your your workforce to meet the challenges that that you have, I mean just even with offshore wind. Obviously you've got a lot on your plate but if we start bringing in things as well like critical minerals and carbon capture. That's what's the plan there. I mean that's. It's a good question. You know, without without trying to remember all the details we've we in the in the past for this fiscal year. We've, we've, we've added a substantial number of people and and have additional funds for offshore wind for example. And that those added staff and the money is is to some degree spread across bone, the largest growth is in our office of renewable energy programs. And that there's funding elsewhere and on on critical minerals there I believe and actually I see Jeff right now I think and so he should probably comment on that and carbon capture and storage the we were given no new money, which is kind of unfortunate so we'll be in a stronger place to ask for more resources after we get further down the road with policy. Let me invite Jeff though to talk about the marine mineral side of it since I actually see him. I bill thanks. You look comfortable out there. It's nice. I was very honored the chief actually came you know set up this table and chair himself for me so he's thinking of you guys. Addressing Jeremy's question. Yeah, critical mineral workforce. We have two individuals right now working on critical minerals. I think a broader concern is actually having nationwide expertise to deal with critical minerals offshore that's a pretty shallow pool of expertise to draw from. But yeah that's a concern and and just speaking in general for the for the marine minerals program we're growing and we, we do need some additional staffing so we're aware of that thanks. And Jeremy we are, we are in the process of hiring a tribal coordination officer that will report to our tribal liaison officer so at least we'll have sort of two people in headquarters. I believe at this point. The regions, all have or extend tend to hire to have a full time tribal person in each region. So we do have added resources there. It's really the offshore wind renewable part of the program that has has benefited by a very substantial increase in funding this this year. Thank you bill. I don't see any additional questions in the room or online at the moment, but very happy to channel any that come in towards probably Jessica bill directly and get some responses for folks. I do want to take just a very quick moment I'm going to ask folks in the room to be real quick about it but I'd like to do introductions I feel extremely remiss having not done that as part of our opening. So I'm going to start with our co chairs, and then we'll go around the room. Very quickly and then any committee members that are online. Good morning everybody I'm Rob Matha. I'm a professor of underwater archaeology unified history at the University of Rhode Island and I co chair COSA. Good morning. I'm Scott Cameron I'm a geologist. I was at Shell for 32 years working in exploration production and development consulting in the last 10, and I am the co chair of course. Hi everyone. Okay, Jonathan Tucker. National Academy staff and a geologist by training. Jessica Bravo I'm bones chief and deputy chief environmental officer. Thank you. I'm Catherine I can I'm with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and I'm a marine biologist, and I'm a COSA member. My name is Emily young I'm a canals marine policy fellow, my background is in deep sea ecology and this year I'm thinking about climate change and climate literacy a poem. Hi good morning I'm Kevin Stokesbury and I'm a COSA member. I'm also the Dean of the school for marine science and technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. And I work on that marine invertebrates and fish and in fisheries fisheries oceanography. Thank you. Hi I'm Jack Barth professor of oceanography at Oregon State University and a physical oceanographer and COSA member. Hi everybody Rodney clutch chief of bones division of environmental sciences and the environmental studies program. Hi, Jill Lewandowski so I oversee our environmental assessment work at bone from a national perspective and I also direct our Center for marine acoustics. Good morning I'm Eric Taylor I'm the studies chief with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management out of the Alaska region. I am Dave Perrex the avian biologist from the Pacific region and currently the acting studies chief for the Pacific. Good morning I'm Laura Turner with the bone ocean energy management in the marine middle program. Hi Ron Cox I'm a professor of Geosciences at Williams College, a COSA member and I'm a coastal geomorphologist and seven told us. Hi Jeff right now I'm the chief of the marine minerals division, and also where the environmental studies chief had for the marine minerals program. And I'm Laurie summa also a geologist retired from Exxon mobile, mainly an exploration research and now adjunct at rice and UT Austin and a COSA member. Good morning Jeremy firestone I'm a professor at the University of Delaware and the school marine science and policy I'm a COSA member. I'm a recovering government lawyer and a social scientists. Top that. Hi, good morning everyone Kerry Pomeroy research social scientists based at the Institute of marine sciences at UC Santa Cruz my background is implied sociology and anthropology and marine policy. Thank you. Oh and I'm a COSA member. Yoko Fruca volume OEP and I'm also my background is in marine geology and geological oceanography. I'm an AC cares program officer with the ocean studies for international academies and study director for the committee. Real quickly, Eric will go to you and then we'll go to the folks around the room and we'll touch on any committee members on the lines. What are the system. Well, I have one. I'm King long. I'm working out for this to get a job. The size is back on this. Hi, I'm Erica seven deputy director of the summer for marine acoustics. My name is Bob Lewis for detect. We help our clients and developers manage their air spaces with radar for aircraft detection lighting systems and for management systems for curtailment and migrations. Thank you. And I believe the only committee member that we have joining us remotely is Susan. Susan, are you on the line. Yes, hi, I'm Susan parks I am a professor of biology at Syracuse University focused on marine mammal acoustic communication and the effects of noise. Thanks. Thank you Susan. All right. So apologies for that slight detour but I'm glad that we had an opportunity to provide introductions. Next to Jeff Reidenhower who's going to be providing the introduction to the marine minerals profiles. Thanks Stacy. So I have a few slides to provide the introduction. As I mentioned I'm the chief of the marine minerals division at home and the division is part of the overall marine minerals program and the bureau and the division sits within the office of strategic resources in the headquarters office which is located in sterling Virginia. So what I'm going to do is just provide a brief introduction to the program for those of you who aren't familiar with it, and then talk about our informational needs from an environmental studies perspective, and then introduce the two profiles that we're going to be presenting today. So the program is a relatively small group within the bureau. As Rodney mentioned yesterday I think the bureau has roughly 600 employees. Well the program has 21 currently fully dedicated staff working on marine minerals so that's a that's a small program but growing program should I say. We have environmental stewards of mineral resources on the OCS. So we have a big responsibility and actually with the passing of the IRA, giving us leasing authority in the territories that that footprint has grown to. I want to thank Rodney and his environmental studies team over the last numerous years for providing us invaluable support for environmental studies for the program because it really has helped us out with our decision making process kudos to Rodney and his team. The program provides sediment for beach nourishment and coastal resilience projects such as coastal wetland restoration barrier island creation that type of thing. And we do this through primarily through negotiated non competitive agreements for sand for other federal agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers NASA Department of Defense, as well as state agencies and local government agencies. We also authorized issue authorizations for geophysical and geological surveys for for primarily sand, and we use the information that's collected from our environmental studies to inform our decisions with regards to that those actions. We also use it for our consultation work through the Endangered Species Act and National Historic Preservation Act. So it's really important information that we utilize in our decision making process. As part of our work we've been developing over the last several years what we call a national offshore sand inventory. Now this is separate from the environmental studies process we use program funding to do this but the reason I mentioned this is it's really important for the program in terms of identifying sediment resources for projects but also in terms of deconflicting potential future infrastructure that's placed in the near shore environment, especially export cables from offshore wind farms that may cut through in significant sediment resources. So we've been working closely with O rep on addressing these issues so the national offshore sand inventory is really critical to that. Another growing part of our portfolio so to speak is offshore critical minerals and we've mentioned that a few times already, but we do have, as I mentioned to staff fully dedicated to critical minerals, and we do have some program funding that we dedicate to conducting offshore critical mineral work. And we partner with primarily USGS and NOAA to do work offshore and this is expensive work as far offshore it's deep water, so we leverage resources from those partner agencies to do that, but as part of that work to basically identify where critical mineral bearing resources may be located we we twine that with environmental studies, money to do some foundational environmental work, identifying ecological communities that may be associated with these unique deposits so to speak. Next slide. So this, this slide summarizes our informational needs as a program. We need to increase our understanding of the benthic impacts from dredging activities. We need to understand the practical implications of long practice mitigation for dredging. We are utilizing the information to develop tools to support multi use conflict evaluations. And as I mentioned with critical minerals, we're utilizing environmental studies money to collect base baseline environmental data that we can use to evaluate potential impacts from future critical mineral both exploration and development. Next slide. So we are going to be presenting to study profiles today. Deena Hansen who's a marine scientist in the division and the marine minerals program is going to be presenting on a study called extrapolating benthic recovery estimates beyond single project constraints. And this will provide support to address several questions of importance to our analysis with regard to dredging projects, and then also test the applicability of the model to diverse, diverse range of settings and benthic communities. Now this project profile concepts kind of been on our list for a couple years so we're hoping to get some comments from the COSA to maybe more fully bake the idea so that may may eventually reach the National Studies list. Next slide. And then Laura Turner is going to be our first presenter she's going to present a profile called coastal marine and ecological classification standard application, and this would be used to apply to both offshore mineral and energy development. And she'll describe the reasons we need to do this in terms of having a consistent common standard. The study will develop documents identifying relevant relevant habitat units and workflows, and then it'll be used to improve the quality of data for our pre development and post development analysis. That's it. I'll take any questions if anybody has any. Thanks, Jeff. I have a question. I see this. I'll just remind folks in the room to please turn your body off. If you're on. I don't think it's the mic. It's actually somebody's computer probably. Okay. No, I was muted. So, so a quick question for you is my soul will turn your Sorry, senior moment here. Jeff, thanks for that overview. A quick question for you in the original submittal we got from bone there was another proposal that was I believe ranked number one in your STP on developing a critical minerals environmental assessment framework which seemed like a fairly critical. I has to use that word. Contribution to your portfolio of research at this time given the importance of critical minerals in the territories and in the activities you're looking at it. Is that still being considered or is that it just needs more work to before. It is still being considered the reason we, we kind of swapped it out for Dean as project was, it's really a literature review and we didn't feel that was really that at this point. I don't know we didn't really feel we get a whole lot of constructive feedback on just a literature review. It's not like it had this was the first phase of a multi phase project. It was the initial phase so we didn't really feel at this point time it was constructive to, you know, so it's not dropping off your radar. No, no, it's definitely still on the radar. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks Jeff in your presentation you mentioned the development of tools to support multi use conflicts. And with the expansion of renewables into the Gulf of Mexico those may increase and I wondered whether the tools that you're developing might be more broadly available and applicable to to multi use conflicts with him. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We envision, you know, these tools to inform, for example, carbon sequestration and capture infrastructure that may be placed, you know, on the OCS that type of thing and also working with other potential infrastructure that may be placed. Yeah, there's a there's a long history of oil and gas infrastructure cutting through sediment resources in the Gulf of Mexico. So there's a lot of lessons learned there that we could apply to this. You know, these tools and this this procedure moving forward for other other infrastructure. Thank you. I note that less also has his hand raised. I'm going to give him an opportunity to ask a very quick question we are running about two minutes behind this so I want to get us wrapped up and get folks are able to present their profiles so go ahead. Less real quick. I got it, got it, got it. Hi everybody. I'm by the way I'm a professor in the marine program at Boston University and work a lot with bone. I just want to mention regarding Dean is project that recent work associated with monitoring of cable laying troughs suggests that the recovery time for bend the eastern continental shelf is way longer than people have supposed, even in dynamic environments such as sand. So the priority for the project over the long term should be higher. Because I think we really have to consider dredge bottoms as essentially altered for at least 50 years. Thanks. Thank you less. So, with that, I want to get us underway and invite Laura Turner to provide her presentation on her profile. Coastal marine and ecological classification standard application offshore energy and minerals development Laura I'll turn it over to you. Good morning again I'm Laura Turner. That is a definitely a title isn't it. And obviously I'm hoping to apply that application regarding offshore energy and minerals. I'm all sure we're aware of miscommunication in our daily lives and may it may be through language or differing methods we use. Yesterday I asked my husband to put my computer in the trunk. And then he looked any kind you know I looked at him kind of funny but he's British right so he would have understood if I asked him to put it in the boot. You know, so we all have but as Americans we would have never put a computer in our boots right. So anyways, I wanted to kind of bring something relevance of what we wish to do. This post study concentrates on trying to find a common consistent methods in language or site characterization used by planners developers engineers and scientists. And it's, you know, I don't underestimate that challenge that brings we've had a lot of internal interest. The author is Brandon Jensen from renewable energy. Mark Mueller from environmental sciences Paul nor from critical minerals and Kirby Dobbs also through minerals we've all had pretty heavy discussions on this topic. The courage inside there is a framework. And it is a recognized federal standard, and our Noah colleagues Mark think binder Kate rose they are all very active in maintaining this standard. You know, we at bone recognize the challenges of using the application in real world scenarios and feel there's a need for more guidance material that can bridge that language and the methods for better communication. That can again be between planners developers and engineers and scientists were all on different languages there. And we're all very human and probably the main conduit for simple or complex and consistencies and data interpretation, which often lead to inadequate and occasionally confusing different types of content for different types of concentrations. And we recognize the need to operate at leasing and project scales to address different types of objectives site characterization for habitat, phishing site characterization from seabed property morphology soil type seismology you name it. And this just introduces issues with differing mapping scales. And I do have a slide to bring this topic back up towards the answer questions, those graphics on the right represent c max in practice. And please note that the c max profile is aligned to the national ocean mapping and exploration characterization. And specifically the implementation plan objective established oceanic and characterization standards and protocols. Next slide please. For our information need we need those results of the site characterization reporting consistently to evaluate the impact of proposed activities on physical biological and socio economic resources, which could be affected by the activities of winter development or mineral extraction, and just the pictures below depicting those activities. Next slide please. The key objective is to develop consistent seafloor characterization guidance that incorporates c max units that are relevant to energy and mineral site characterization that will allow that industry to interpret and provide survey just consistently across an area and then the graphic on the right represents the four key components, the study will boundary boundary conditions will be the substrate and the geiform components. Next slide please. So with respect to methods we envision conducting that workshop, identify and bound issues with the data interpretation, gather those recommendations, and then do a desktop review of existing guidelines because they are out there. And then identify an area that includes offshore energy and minerals, and then using existing data from products for a site just to minimize the complexity of the study. Utilize c max is that framework, describe the environment using consistent tools and repeatable methods to improve our discussions and then ultimately provide visual aids when working with c max. And that primary audience being developers and the scientists interpreters. Next slide please. Our research confession questions comprised of what are the primary descriptors needed to actually characterize an area with an energy and mineral site to inform NEPA. What are the minimum protocols and what are the scientific engineering setting that crosswalk within the c max components there needed to ensure consistent information. And then which scale, should these features set them at body to map to sufficiently meet the needs of essential fish habitat and other consultations for both minerals and energy. And then are all the different scales appropriate for different types. Next slide. So I have a couple questions that I'm hoping y'all help me out what I do appreciate your feedback that we got in advance that was extremely helpful. I posted out the grips one of your questions was who we thought needed to be included so I included some names ring fisheries, most certainly industry fisheries management council, no Mac working groups is there anyone that I'm missing on that list. My second question is, you know, am I missing a research question in my my son something on my points there. And the next slide please. I think when right where should we start, plenty of Costa resilience activities and certainly energy is a lot of activities and the next slide please. And then should we narrow this get studied to just one type of scale, as you can see those planning areas are huge, a lot of water space, renewable energy leasing are pretty huge, and then those postage stands a little speckles on that screen that's the broom stand and gravel lease areas. And so just trying to hone into that component. So I will stop with that. Thank you very much. Thank you Laura, I'll be looking again for the raised hands, both in person and on the line. And I see that Ronas got her hand raised, please go ahead rona. Sorry, really interesting presentation. Thank you for all of that. I, there's a lot of different groups working on this at the moment. And one of the things that concerned me when I read the original profile was that there was just a single reference in there was like to a 2007 study. But there's an awful lot of current recent and very current work on this. And so, one of my concerns is that there, you might be working on this at the same time as other people are working on things that are very similar and I'm thinking in particular here of the, the National Centers for Coastal and Ocean Science, which have very recent work and are thinking about habitat classification in very similar terms. And so, I like the fact that you are thinking about engaging actively with partners and I think that they're key one, but one of my concerns is that this ends up being duplicative in some way. And I'm wondering how you would approach decreasing the misinformation, and as opposed to adding to that too many names for too many things. It's a very valid point. We actually had all those references on the profile intended actually. I think the key is not to add, but to better, you know, and I don't know what the total answer is, but I think including those including them part of that discussion is important to get this character's right at least have something on the board that something that can be used effectively with other people that might not understand, and trying to use it for some other purpose if that makes sense. Yeah. There's there also groups in Europe doing similar work and others of group of the Alfred Begner Institute, in particular that I'm thinking about that I'd be happy so I can send you some some ideas that would be brilliant. Thank you. We do have some of our invited guests on the line and because we're running a little bit behind schedule, I'm going to skip the, let them skip the line a bit so I'm going to call on one of our former COSA members who I'm thrilled to see joining us. Denise read very good to have you on the line and I invite you to speak next. Denise I saw you lower your hand, but I don't hear you. I'm sorry. I was cutting the grass outside you should be able to hear that too now. Laura, I wonder, and I'm, I'm struggling to understand the problem a little bit more fully. I think when I first read this. I, I understood that you wanted to come up with something complimentary to come X. And now I think what I'm hearing is that you want to have a more detailed guide that interprets the existing classification in a way that could be more readily defined, readily relatable to your interest. So maybe you could confirm whether that's the, the, the, the, you know, the goal. The other, the other comment is that you talk about habitat a lot. And then you talk about EFH consultations, but from my read you were specifically looking at just your form and substrate rather than biotic characteristics of this and so I'm. I wonder if you can help me understand how having a better idea of substrate would help you with your EFH without needing to think more about biotic, then that would also be helpful. Could you kind of give me a little bit more context I guess is what I'm asking so I can provide some more informed comments. I will definitely try. Certainly we're not trying to envision to develop, you know, another CMEX or nothing like that certainly complimentary and certainly looking at it from guidelines from a perspective to help people. I'm one of those people where I put a put something in a contract and it says oh comply with CMEX and go off and do it but you end up with five different versions when it comes back to if you ask that same person to do it so I think just trying to have those, those guidelines there to help us get through that. There's more on the seabed side because we find that with the CMEX in itself, it goes down to the substrate and I'll try my best I'm not a geologist so I will try my best to give you an example. If you have your G&G type folks that look say here's a ridge and they draw a shape around that area, and then you're talking to the habitat folks and no Josh shape around that same area but not exactly the same things and different parameters and so trying to put us on a setting that we can speak to each other. So in these interpretations these these components are just a little bit clearer and the people that are actually performing that get you to a closer state that something's more consistent across those those those boundaries there. And I don't know if I've completely answered your question but certainly looking for supplementary guidelines. You know those kind of components. So essentially, essentially you're saying that that you're asking people to use the classification, and then not able to do it consistently which is essentially what the classification was set up for originally right in order to do this and so there are probably lots of this that you want to focus on and I wonder if it is more geiform than substrate. I mean, I kind of mentioned that we need guidance on what sand, if we're using Wentworth, you know, or we're using the ternary diagram from I mean we're not going to second guess geology from 60 years ago that anybody doing this should actually be able to do. So is it really the geiform that's that's more of an issue than the substrate. I think from you know the stuff that I read on the habitat certainly the substrate definitely has a lot more great recommendation the guidelines that we can use from the no marine fisheries also from our own guidelines with bone that the push. Less, much less on the geiform. So yeah okay so perhaps perhaps the thanks for this and Stacy I'll shut up in a minute but I'm, I guess I think the one thing that would strengthen this profile would be. And perhaps this is obvious to others. Use substrate and geiform information for in your evaluations because I'm sensing that you that you know you need this information to be better and more consistent. But it's kind of value added to the program as a whole and how you would, how this would inform NEPA or EFH which are the two things that you mentioned in the profile that that's the link I think that I'm missing. Given that that link between whether it's sandy and whether anything lives there, there are so many uncertainties in that link that I'm kind of wondering why the why knowing whether it's muddy sand or sandy mud kind of really makes that much difference when it's really that association of the habitat with the substrates that is probably more uncertain. Um, so they say I might have some other comments if this one. Thank you yeah I'll certainly be happy to come back to you Denise I want to give Ryan Beamer an opportunity to as one of our invited guests I'm going to turn to him. Last Kevin and Laurie. Hi. Thank you for let me participate. My name is Ryan be around my geotechnical engineer from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I guess one of the things was just looking through everything into the previous. Sorry, I'm actually calling in from Australia so I'll turn my video on but I just woke up so my hair may be a bit crazy. Yeah, no sorry I'm visiting the University of Melbourne so I'm on the other side of the world. But I guess one of the thoughts looking through is it does look like this is highly geological, but a lot of applications will be on the geotechnical side, especially on the nourishment and offshore energy. And the, and I guess the comment kind of oh, like how do you classify a substrate. I'm sure many of the geologists when I heard I'm a geotech or probably say this person doesn't know how we how to classify anything because we do it completely different. And that could be another group that might be good and participating in something like this, especially when it comes to the industry side. You know, because, you know, geotechs we do not use the term mud, but does doesn't exist in our vocabulary we also tall offshore sediment soils, which I know we're chasing a lot of geologists, but will be, you know, on that when it comes to application comes to industry we will be heavily involved. So that could help with some of the, I guess the difficulties and with the communication is getting that side and our standards, you know, act as part of this. Thank you. I'll turn to less Kevin and then Laurie. Hi Laura there was a great presentation but I just want to underscore what Denise was talking about. In terms of potential harm to biotic communities biodiversity or fisheries production. Geo form is really the thing that matters and the critical thing about it is that it's dynamic. The examples are the changes in silt layering on hard bottom between summer and winter. And the other is the maturity of the bent the community, which is probably the most important parameter and one we know almost nothing about from a mapping standpoint. The literature can help in understanding where there are knowledge gaps, but I'm still wondering how the study could be modified to address the knowledge gaps. It's very, very valid points. I don't disagree and I think it's just an inch closer that we can you know one one area you cover you cover down and you characterize it and you just keep moving forward I don't know if I can completely close that that I don't disagree at all with what you just said. And I wrote down all three points that you just made as well so thanks. Thank you, Kevin and Laurie. Hi, thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. The. So so kind of echoing what what what Denise and Ryan said and also less. A presentation or this is, you're trying to almost create a glossary of common terms or a way of people talking about these together I might my background is benthic ecology is well along with with less and and I'm familiar with the, the work the fisheries service in particular then the new the Fisheries Management Council have done and they've done some pretty extensive work on which will relate to the next presentation to on dredging and and substrat type information as it affects fisheries and the central fish habitat. So there's quite a huge volume of work that has been done that I would know that if that's the way you're wanting this to go, you should really link in with that, that group, I think. Hopefully not leaning towards developing new glossaries use all that existing in the in the thing I think it's the where you start working in those those gray areas where we're looking at. And really the methods and how they interpreted crossover and again there is a substantial much more on the substrate side over the geo form for sure and just leverage that. The science documents could just genuinely point to some critical ones that would just lay it out, but there doesn't seem to be a ton on the geo form for sure. And the geo geo form. Because each of these wind farm companies are doing their own geological surveys right and the science and sonar and everything are you thinking of incorporating that data into this. And that is exactly one of the niches that would be beneficial we point to it a lot in our habitat and our fishery inside but I think also incorporating some of those components with the geo gene type guidelines would be beneficial. And make that point about the engineering components and how people are describing things they are very different but trying to figure out how to make that together and have a baseline understanding. And so, if I may one more in a baseline. Because these these proposals are all going to be adding scouring that you know not only the turbines with scouring and then the, the dredging of sediment for cables and either covering with that so that's a thinking of it as an actual category that will be used to really compare the variations in, in subtract. I wouldn't rule it out. Yeah. Certainly we've seen the scouring from our own dredging projects with Santa Bravo shirt. Yeah, so perhaps in your proposal you might want to emphasize that a bit because once, once these are in it's it's a permanent change and so this is the last chance to document that before. Thank you. Lori, we'll turn to you next. So thanks Laura. And this has been an interesting discussion and I think what I was thinking about echoes a lot of what the comments have already been but what, what, what constitutes success for you so how do you know when you've done enough but you haven't, you know, really overworked the issues. What I would honestly say is the person that's catching all the data, nothing's ever the same when it comes at us. So I feel like if I could just minimize that a little bit would be successful, you know, and then, and obviously we're all in this room where we're all cut data that doesn't look and smell the same right. And so I think we can just approve that just a little bit to make all of our lives a little easier. Thank you. So, wonderful discussion to start our consideration of profiles today I just want to reiterate for folks on the line and those in the room but particularly are invited guests that are joining us virtually that if you don't have an opportunity to share all of your thoughts if you have any additional feedback or input please don't hesitate to send that to me I can make sure it gets channeled to the correct people so really appreciate your time and joining us. And a special shout out to both Denise and Ryan Denise joining us as a former member and Ryan joining us from halfway across the world so really appreciate the the inputs. We will move now to our next profile presentation by Dina Hansen, looking at extrapolating been thick recovery estimates beyond single project constraints. I'm going to turn it over to you if you're ready. Okay, great thanks Stacy. My name is Dina Hansen I'm a marine scientist with the marine minerals program. I really appreciate the, the attention that each member has given yesterday into today. It's very special for us to be able to tap into all these different perspectives in one sitting. Okay, so we'll go to the next slide jump right in here. I'll just give some background I'm going to follow the same format as everyone else. So one of the things that is probably not new to anyone in the room is that dredging removes benthic invertebrates. This is one of the most direct impacts of dredging that we see. And then the invertebrates. I recognize there's usually a pattern to this. This has been monitored for specific dredge projects in a variety of different areas. Sometimes it is different time periods different spatial scales. There is, but there is a lot of data out there. Not every area is monitored again or over the same amount of time. So there is quite a bit of variability in the monitoring methods. So just reading through some of the other literature I did find a paper by Dr. Hiddink who did a model of recovery following fishing fish trawls. So he was able to come up with a model that he did a collected data from all over the world and was able to do use these different studies to look at generalized estimates of recovery. So you can see that this calculation here, which they used the relative abundance relative to a carrying capacity. And then that's dependent on trawl frequency and both depletion and recovery rates. So if in his paper, F, D and R were calculated using data inputs and then we were able to get an estimate of that ratio that represents kind of that recovery. So looking at this formula, I thought, you know, we have all this dread, all this authentic monitoring data, could we basically go through the same process, the same method and come up with a formula that is unique to dredge, you know, dredge activity and recovery. And so kind of focusing in on the bottom information need is to, you know, again, take that formula that was adapted to fish, fish trawls and use it for dredge impacts. This would improve our benthic impact assessments. This is particularly important as we are seeing larger projects and more along the coast. So there's a spatial and regional context that hasn't been fully explored as well as a temporal context where sometimes we'll see dredging happen successively in a way that we haven't previously seen. And in that way, sort of those cumulative impacts are becoming more important. The field monitoring so that even though we have a huge amount of data, it does not necessarily occur for every project. And so a lot of times we're left kind of inferring recovery rates based on either past monitoring or from monitoring done for a different project. And we often have very generalized estimates. So, you know, within X months, we'll see an increase in maybe abundance of biomass. And then within X years we might see a full recovery of community composition. This doesn't always take into account the full operational parameters, meaning how long is dredging occurring, what season is it occurring in, what's the dredge cut depth, which is how deep they dredge from the seabed. Or other, you know, environmental factors of, you know, current seasonality, things like that. And so, as I mentioned, the regional and cumulative effects beyond single projects are also less understood. And we'll go to the next slide please. And so the idea for this project is to take that formula that focus on fish trawling and adapt it to dredge projects. So our study would basically develop the those input parameters. And then we would receive sort of an estimate of recovery, which is that the over K factor. And this formula could then be used for those, you know, for all those projects where there is not ethnic monitoring executed. If we have successive dredge events and we need to do something in between each dredge event to better understand what the impact is. And if there is our changes in available undisturbed habitat, which are often kind of used to recolonize a dredge area. So I think this could be something that we would use in a couple of different scenarios. Next slide please. And so the methods would, first of all, collate as much data as we as we can so review. Not just the raw data but also other studies that have been done. Throughout the United States, we could, you know, also look abroad internationally and integrate those results, if possible, calculate those input parameters in order to create that recovery rate. And then also you would integrate environmental variables as covariates in order to see which environmental factors are significant and contribute to recovery rate. And then the kind of end product would be an interface and nothing that needs to be hosted online but something like a spreadsheet. But that has a very clear manual where any poem analysts could go in, you'd be walked through, you know, how to, how to find your input parameters so that you could create a kind of recovery rate measurement and this could be used, you know, we're, this is, you know, geared toward the rain minerals program but I can see certainly application in other areas, including kind of cable laying activities for wind energy or pipeline placement. You know, I think that's, there's the potential for it to be extrapolated to other program areas. So these are our kind of research questions that drove the study idea, how does the recovery of biomass vary with dredge frequency. And that dredge frequency can kind of be interpreted a couple different ways but in this case we're kind of thinking more of those successive dredge events. What are the estimates range in dimensions of benthic recovery at different dredge depths and frequencies, and then how do successive events, cumulatively, cumulatively affect benthic recovery. Last slide. Oh, that's the last slide. So we can, I think maybe go back to the research questions if that helps. I think I did want to specifically call out as we go into our discussion. Jeff right now I mentioned that this study has been on kind of on our list for several years this is the third round that it's been submitted, and it hasn't made the cut and reached that higher priority of getting to the, you know, final NSL and funding. And so what I would I would love to hear feedback from is what, you know, what can, is this a priority, you know, I'd love, I'm kind of like in the weeds here so I'd kind of love to hear, how do we make this a priority what needs to be, what does something need to be added how do we make this more applicable or compelling, such that it is more kind of competitive among our kind of studies pool of great ideas. To me there is a lot of science available that we aren't using to like it's best. We're not accessing it in the best way. So for me that this would help get us to that best available science use. So I would I would love any feedback specifically on kind of the more like the concept and how to make this more. Yeah, more competitive and I kind of get past that hurdle of getting funding for this year. I see Katrina has her hand raised. Go to you first. Yeah, thanks Dina. I really appreciated your presentation here and also the question at the end. I think you provided a little bit more information than was in the written profile and that was really good. I think there are for me at least a number of questions. First off, I think this could be a very useful idea to add to other forms of information that need to be collected for this so when I read the profile I was a little concerned that this was be like, okay so then we have this model and then we only need to one click for the in the in the app. And then we have all the information we need and I think I would caution in terms of projecting that idea. I think this could be very useful additional information but I don't think it really replaces everything else that still also needs to be done. You mentioned in your presentation that there are a whole bunch of data sources available for this and that was actually one of my questions that what was listed wasn't entirely clear of how much you know data is actually there to both inform the model and test the model. And so I think being a bit more convincing about that you indeed have a very large database to put this into effect is would be really useful. It might also be useful to explain more how you would calculate some of the input parameters, particularly are because one of the things that the model does it only looks at biomass it does not look at diversity it does not look at identity of the of the invertebrates and while that is for the model maybe what you need to do are of course would also be influenced by who is actually a play there you know I mean reproductive rates or immigration through mobile species versus cessile species all these kind of things you lose that if you if you don't look at the identity of things. So some of these either biodiversity metrics or trade metrics would be probably good to have that information to put into the model. And then one last thing is. So, what is, when you calculate your biomass to capacity ratio, what would you feel is acceptable as a, this is recovered versus it is not recovered right it's, it goes from zero to one. So, is it, is it one or is it point nine and and why. So I think there would be more detail that would be needed to sort of solidify what this, what this model can give you in addition. For the one. So for your point about the community composition, rather than purely biomass or abundance. The, the paper that focused on fish trawling said that I think it is possible to build in that community diversity, if the data allows. So that's something that we would have to dig into our data set and see if there's enough there to to build that in but I think it is possible. And yeah, and perhaps that might, we might have two different our values depending on whether it's purely biomass for if it's community composition we likely would have different our values. And then as far as deciding what is our acceptable recovery ratio. I don't have an answer for that I know in the fish trawl paper they used point nine five. So like they basically point nine five of the carrying capacity so kind of a 95%. But I think there is an argument for considering different values and realizing what does that mean for if we're proving the next stretch project if we're only at 50% versus 90%. And those are conversations that we have to have because we we don't right now because we don't have these quantitative estimates to to build off of. But thank you for that excellent feedback. Thank you. I'll turn to less next and then to Kevin. I have a sticky mute button. Well, I'm actually a big fan of this. But for, you know, building on the comments we already heard the parameters that may really matter and that are frequently overlooked aside from biodiversity, aside from biomass are not just biodiversity, but functional organic carbon and the biogenic structure. So not just what all the guys are and what they're doing, not just how much of them there is collectively, but also how much organic carbon is being deposited by the community because that's a that's a store that builds up. And then how much biogenic structure there is because that's critical to fishery production, among other things. And there are such data in a few studies, maybe enough to nourish a model. I just wanted to generally support the effort but those things are critical biomass may actually be relatively insensitive. Thanks. Right. And in the fishing model, again, I keep going back to because that's what, you know, it's sort of the inspiration but in the fishing model. They did find that sort of the percentage of gravel as well as primary productivity were two very important factors in it for that particular model so keeping these in mind would be, you know, keeping these in mind for like factors to feed into a potential dredge model, but the structure and the carbon. Yeah, I just want to underscore that because these things are so frequently overlooked, except by benthic geeks like Kevin or me. The result is that we are massively transforming the continental shelf without being aware of it. Thank you, Kevin. Yes. Could you use your mic. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks. Following up on what I what less less said is a benthic geek. Yeah, it I mean, it's a really interesting proposal that you put forward I think to make it a little more competitive I do think you should tie in with even more so than the last presentation with the marine. We're doing the fisheries management councils efforts and their habitat omnibus they have worked years to develop a, what they call a sassy model which is a swept area impact model and it includes habitat mapping fisheries gear vulnerability. And it's also a spatially discreet model so it's it's fairly useful that way and I think it's being developed for for the Alaskan coast as well as as as off our off the eastern seaboard here. The, you know, carrying capacity is a really hard one to get a handle on especially and with our coast most of the area is is disturbed you're not really going to find any habitat that is is unfished or run, you know, doesn't hand and that model will help help point that with so it's going to be hard to define carrying capacity. And that might be one of the problems that you're you're you're struggling with in the reviews as well it's it's a conceptually sounds like you could do it but it's in practice it's very hard to do and it's also very hard to find the other component I wanted to mention is that these these many of these substrates are dynamic and to not have a a component of of current and and benthic boundary layer and shifts it is going to limit your ability, I think to. And so making that thinking about that and trying to incorporate that in some way will make it more competitive. Great, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, thanks for a very informative presentation it really did add to the, the, the text and much obliged for that. I, you also shared your, your struggle to. Yes, I think this is the third time around for this, this proposal, and your challenge getting getting it competitive for funding. Have you reached out to other potential partners. I'm just thinking folks like the Army Corps of Engineers or some of the states that help both of who would be partners and managing some of these projects to see if they might also have interest with you in making this come about. Yeah, so the Army Corps was certainly would be our, one of our data repositories so they have, they actually fund more than the monitoring than Boam does so I think they would be a data partner but I have not asked about funding, you know, actually about this so that's a very good potential kind of leverage there. And I think for states there's the potential just harder to tap into those resources, especially because each state has their own monitoring plan at least with the Army Corps at least at the regional level, they do tend to follow similar monitoring protocols. From state to state they, they don't always have the same methods, which is still, you know, I think that's still useful because you having variability in your benthic monitoring actually would help, I think help strengthen the model because you're actually probably filling some of those different spatial and temporal uncertainties. So yeah, I think Army Corps could be a good, you know, potential funding partner. I'm a little leery about states but I think it could be possible maybe if we had a state that did a lot of monitoring that they would be interested in a model like this. I'm not seeing any additional hands raised at the moment. So Dina, thank you very much for your presentation. We'll be breaking for lunch reconvening at 130 to hear from the New Orleans office. So thank you each very much. Again, for those in the room committee members we will have lunch provided outside. I'm sorry we cannot feed you. But we will look forward to seeing folks back at 130 so we can get started on time. Thank you. Can I check. Can I check if people can hear me. This is Ari. We can hear you it's a little bit loud in the room at the moment. So, but, but we can hear that you're there. Okay, thank you. We've got most folks back in the room. So we will go ahead and get the meeting underway again and I appreciate those that are back being here timely. So the next thing that we will hear as the introduction to the New Orleans office profiles and we have Ari Keller on the line to introduce those. So Ari, I will turn it over to you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Sorry, I cannot make it in person. It's been a while since I've seen many of you, but hopefully next time. I am Ari Keller. I'm regional supervisor of the office of environment for New Orleans. I'm also acting as the environmental studies and outreach coordinator section manager. Just to put a plug in that position announcement is closing today if anyone's interested. I will go ahead and get started. The last 50 years of ESP has allowed our agency to be the lead on diverse research in the Gulf of Mexico for both the marine and human environments. It's also allowed us now to revisit what we've done and plan for our future activities. As I mentioned last year, offshore wind was on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. We are now working towards a leasing event this year. We are now working closely with many offices in bone on the carbon sequestration rule with the idea that leasing and activities potentially would start in the Gulf of Mexico. All of this while all the gas and marine mineral related activities continue. Last year, our national studies lists had studies that started looking at impact packs of offshore wind better defining our cultural resources and updating and sharing the data we have on the benefit communities in the Gulf of Mexico. This studies development plan process has produced several studies for the Gulf of Mexico management to consider during our national studies list process. There are studies that are continuing supplementing and focusing previous research. There are also ones to better understand impact producing factors caused by offshore wind and carbon sequestration for the Gulf, as well as recognizing the need to better understand the impacts of four potential programs in the Gulf of Mexico. That's offshore wind, marine minerals, oil and gas and carbon sequestration and what these impacts could do to our communities. Today you will hear about the profile, Gulf Coast community and cultural impact baseline surveys. I'll let Dustin and Scott get into the details. But the intent of this study is to collect baseline data sets in multiple Gulf of Mexico communities prior to the ramp up of these new activities in the region. So that future comparisons between baseline and current conditions can be made. So with that, and if there are no questions for me, I will pass it along to Dustin and Scott, because I know this is a very interesting and interested for COSA profile. Thank you so much, Ari. I'm going to take a quick look to see if there's any questions either online or in the room for Ari before we jump to the profile. Excellent. I don't see any. So with that, we'll hear from Scott and Dustin about the Gulf Coast community cultural impact baseline survey. Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining. So I'll start us off today. I want to thank COSA for looking over this and providing feedback. Next slide please. Just a little bit of background for where we're coming from onshore impacts. You know what happens with these wind and coming technologies is going to be informed by our legacy programs, namely oil and gas. The turn of the 20th century is really when oil and gas starts in the region. It moves into the marshlands in the late 20s and early 30s and the first offshore well was in 1947 south of Morgan city. And today we're at over 2000 active leases 12 million acres. And what we call the oil and gas industry is somewhat of a misnomer when we're thinking about onshore impacts. It's really many upstream, midstream downstream industries, boat fabrication, pipeline fabrication, coding ports, service industries, and these are all responding to their own markets and relationships and historical trends. So when we're thinking about the onshore impacts, you know, it's really this ecosystem of different industries. And now with wind and other technologies moving in, we suspect that they're going to build off of these existing industries but in new ways, and similar to oil and gas, it's not going to be necessarily a renewable industry, but it will be businesses in many different industries building off of oil and gas, laying the groundwork for new businesses. And so when we're thinking about these upcoming technologies, they're going to it's going to be important not only to understand baseline and existing cumulative stressors for these technologies. But in turn, these new technologies are going to change the way in which we do analysis from a social science perspective to legacy programs like oil and gas. As they will produce cumulative impacts on these legacy programs. Next slide. Thank you, Dustin. You know, I was really struck by some of Bill Brown's comments and Rodney's comments the other day to the committee and I recognized how much of a focus. This study really is for bone and it makes me appreciate that, you know, I was here for the birth of bone. And how it kind of emerged and shed its skin, kind of from what it was when it was minerals management service. And how it really built itself very intentionally to become a premier ocean science agency. You know, constant change would probably be the theme that I would pick for it as an agency. But first, when the marine minerals program really expanded and grew, which you may have noticed from some of the other presentations. We now have viable offshore wind in the Atlantic. And now we're emerging with carbon sequestration and green hydrogen as sort of new initiatives. Now I personally find carbon sequestration kind of fascinating. And it's part of bone's mission as the nation takes it, you know, a very broad and multilateral approach to addressing factors contributing to climate change that that we're all facing. So carbon sequestration and its transport is inherently similar to oil and gas but kind of in reverse. However, the risks and effects have not really been characterized and in many cases are likely different than what we saw for oil and gas. So we need new, you know, or recent or quality data to really develop scenario information that would help us in assessing potential impacts. You know, we also need to understand that in many cases, these new facilities or rehab facilities might co-mingle in locations where environmental justice communities also exist. So, you know, thinking in this way, oil and gas is produced on the OCS that often co-mingles with oil and gas produced from other domestic sources like state waters, public private lands, etc. And it does this before reaching a plethora of mid and downstream facilities by a bunch of different means. It's vast and it's a complex web of interrelated industries and associated infrastructure make it very difficult to attribute indirect and cumulative impacts to a source and activity that's nearly impossible to identify the direct effects of a specific activity to the communities that we're concerned of. Now with CCS or carbon sequestration, upstream and downstream are essentially reversed. And so we may in this instance even know perhaps what facilities they're actually coming from. So this could include air emissions, hazard potentials, past accidents from other facilities that they're coming from and maybe even the demographic characteristics around those facilities. So, you know, it brings a whole new list of questions to us, which is very exciting. I think, will new infrastructure reuse old facilities or sites if, if the facilities are required, how will the planning be conducted and what states and agencies might be involved in all that. All of these answers could potentially affect our own analyses and affect determinations and this requires a completely different focus in terms of data needs than what we've had in the traditional oil and gas program. Next slide please. Similar light, you know, and also in my own ignorance I had come out of this assuming green hydrogen was simply about providing energy. The more I've been exposed to the industrial uses of hydrogen, the more my understanding of the potential benefits and challenges has really expanded. And green hydrogen is not just a novel technology but also has downstream effects in the coastal industrial uses, mostly focused around Louisiana and Texas it would, we think. So Corpus Christi for example, in Texas, I just learned is a finalist location for the upcoming DOE regional clean hydrogen hubs program. Well, green hydrogen is a completely different. In terms of potential hazards environmental risks what even the onshore facilities would look like where the product goes. What the energy sources for hydrogen production will end up being how it will be transported. These are all things that you know we really don't fully understand or know yet but green hydrogen production we do know would require substantial sources of freshwater and given Corpus Christi for example again, you know it's in the midst of a multi year drought. So production of green hydrogen may consequently require significant infrastructure investment in things like desalination plants. That too, I assume, preferably be powered by offshore wind. And I know there is some limited early experimentation of running desalination completely offshore, but that specific technology has not really been proven viable as of yet. Next slide. Dustin you're muted I'm sorry. Thank you. This slide is the current timeline for wind projects alongside a sort of an example of what a study development process might look like all the way through. We're going to show the sort of timelines that we're looking at for traditional studies developments, assuming that it's a study that only takes two years of field work. Some take more some take less, you're looking for about seven years from when you begin developing that study profile to win the final reports published. We're about to have our first auction for wind. Ish, and you can see the sort of timeline, you know once that auction happens we have at most six years before the cop the construction and operations plan is complete. So if we want baseline data before then. The time is essentially now and might already be passed, but from experience on working with projects in the Atlantic. You might not even know some of those onshore components until near the very end of the cop stage and that includes things like potential ports. Transmission corridors and things like that. So if you want to be able to respond to those quickly. It's, it can be difficult under our current timeline. Next slide please. So, you know, Scott will get a little bit more into the way that this is structured which is really a contracting structure. But these contracts could take the form of surveys or ethnographic field research. Looking at things such as fishery subsistence practices. Of which I'm actually just published one of the first large studies in the lower 48 this year. And then the reality and environmental justice issues, you shed issues, archaeological and other cultural resources, existing cumulative burdens, which has been especially stressed in the new executive order for environmental justice 14096. And in the study areas these might look like infrastructure. Economic challenges impact of hurricane land loss and coastal areas, etc. And not only can these on the ground studies help with our NEPA analysis, but they can also lay the groundwork for, you know, relationship building with communities to better bolster our outreach efforts. At this stage, I think where we're at, we don't know what we don't know. And in part, that'll have to be answered by doing fieldwork. So, you know, these studies are kind of positioned at understanding who's there, who should we be talking to, where they concerned about, and then start thinking through possibly mitigation strategies and things like that. Next slide please. Just to show sort of some geographical footprints, unlike oil and gas for renewables and other upcoming technologies on these projects have discrete footprints on shore. And so we're able to better target geographically where these onshore impacts will be currently with the wind energy areas we're looking at the Texas Louisiana border and the Galveston area. The Gulf of Mexico social studies, social science studies program really got going in the late 90s. And for these geographic areas, some of those studies that came out of that initial push are the only studies that Bohm has for these geographies, accepting a more recent one in Port Arthur from 2014. So, you know, these are information gaps for us, especially in that Lake Charles that Calcasieu Cameron Parish area. We know that Hurricane Laura had tremendous impacts of which people are still recovering from. And so we really, we need more information about these geographies. Dr. Chilena Ren is one of our premier air quality experts in the Gulf of Mexico region. And his stress the importance of modeling through her various past studies and efforts, one of which awesomely provided us with our own mobile air quality monitoring station. Now, I'm not pretending to even be remotely capable to speak on the science of air quality, but I can appreciate how necessary it is when performing direct or cumulative impact analysis among others for NEPA Clean Air Act and so on. Now, coastal communities adjacent to these call areas, or adjacent to port and support facilities include the Houston, Galveston, Missouri area, for example, which is also in a non attainment status for the eight hour ozone national ambient air quality standards. So, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires compliance with these standards pursuant to the Clean Air Act, to the extent that these activities under Oslo significantly affect the quality of air in any state. A lot of social analyses necessarily tear from analyses in other disciplines, just like air quality, meaning that analyses such as environmental justice are inherently multidisciplinary with information on air quality, water quality, the effects of biological resources, effects to fisheries, and these all directly affect the human dimension and influence the behaviors and preferences of human populations. And without critical baseline information on what the air quality is now, I honestly don't know how we be able to meaningfully measure the changes in effects or positive or negative from offshore wind or carbon sequestration. Next slide please. This profile is proposing something that's maybe not as usual for our studies program. It's actually proposing a multi award or even a single award, indefinite delivery indefinite quantity sort of contract, either as a cooperative agreement akin to the Coastal Marine Institute or as an agreement as a contract vehicle with an overall award cap of $5 million. Now, this doesn't mean that studies will have to show up with $5 million at the start of this. What it means is it's an overall cap on which you can then issue task orders under with it. So subsequent task orders could be presented like many profiles or go through a different approval process. And our hope is that we'd be able to rapidly issue these in the call areas as the scenarios and locations of new activities are emerging. You know, this is going to help us greatly with our NEPA responsibilities Clean Air Act National Historic Preservation Act and so on. You know, just to kind of highlight this, you know, over the past five years, we have funded 436 studies, which I think is a staggering number when you look at it from that perspective so kudos to bone. The average cost was roughly $310,000. We historically have used what I would consider a scalpel like approach and I think that the concerns from the internal review process of this profile was that the overall task proposed was so broad to allow for the dynamic nature of new technologies emerging in the Gulf, a broad geographic area, but a study of this scale could be viewed as a much higher risk to the agency overall and lacking specificity, you know, in direction or execution at this early stage. Bone is highly risk averse in its procurements typically and tends to use the firm fixed price contract vehicle as its vehicle of choice just simply because it puts most of the risk on the contractor themselves. Dustin, I'm going to just ask you if you don't mind to start to wrap it up so that we can stay as much on time as possible for the remainder of the afternoon. Yes, that transitions to the last slide, which is actually the list of questions for Koso. So I would love to hear your feedback and Dustin and I will be standing by to get your insight and help in this. Thank you. We'll open for questions. Rona. Hi thanks for your presentation and I agree with you on the importance of this approach. I also agree with the concerns raised that you mentioned during the internal review in terms of the scope and the specificity. I think that there are probably ways to to focus the scope and to make it more specific even given the very broad nature of the mandate, and I would encourage you to drill down into that and one of the things that I noticed is in your slide that shows the social vulnerability piece and you were saying that the most recent data that you have, or either from the 90s or from the mid teens, I would direct you to the 2020 census data, which have extremely detailed social vulnerability information. That's very relevant to this area and one of the big improvements in the 2020 census was that they had the they invited stage recognized but not federally recognized tribal groups to provide maps and demographic information that helped include that additional component. So there's a lot of richness there that could really help you refine some of your goals. And I think that's important in terms of your procurement aims because really the quality that you put in in terms of how you direct those is a measure of the quality you'll get out. So, so I think this is wonderful but I do think it needs a lot of work. Thank you Rona. We'll go to Kevin Jeremy and then Rod. Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation it's a, it's a, it's a massive scope, and given that I would suggest that you guys take a close look at the report, the first in class report, I know that we, I was on that committee and we constructed that for for bone in itself but it can be it can also be used for for focusing in on particular studies like this which are more than just a single study but but are, you know, a collection of studies and analysis, because I think that the attributes within that would would help you focus your your proposal quite a bit and put it in line with with with bones over overall intent so that would be my suggestion to take a take a close look at that document I know for myself I found it extremely useful and and I think it might help quite a bit. Thank you. Thanks Kevin. I'm going to go to Jeremy next, and then we have one of our guests on the line so I'm going to go to Jeremy Vanessa and then rod inside. Good afternoon and thank you for the presentation. A couple of comments. One, I think it's too late for a baseline. So you, I think you should come up with some other term for what you're doing. As you said, oil and gas has been in since 47. The whole area has been developed. I mean, at large, large industrial scale. Charles, you talked about it. It's an EJ community, given all the ONG development, the oil refineries. It's not baseline. It's sub baseline and and so I think you really need to think about whether you're you're too late. It also seems perhaps to diffuse. You've got, I think too many communities. I was, you know, I would also suggest that you go and really getting deep down with the literature, maybe you have but there was no literature cited in the in the profile. So I couldn't tell what literature you're you're relying on to develop this to develop this study. And lastly, I would say, you should look and see what comes out of the DOE social science call. There's a focus on community impacts. We don't yet know what's going to come out of it, but it's certainly possible that some researchers may be focusing on on the golf. And so some of that work that you're interested maybe potentially funded. So I would say coordinate with with with DOE. Thank you. I appreciate those comments. Thank you very much. My overarching kind of response is maybe that, you know, a lot of times environmental documents have a lot of negative effects that are listed right affects the biological resources affects to bent the habitats affects to archaeological resources and so on. What's great about our economists and social scientists is that sometimes we're the only bit of good news. Right. We're going to add jobs are going to add employment we're going to improve retraining in the region we're going to have, you know, improvements in air quality by doing carbon capture and switching to renewable sources but how can we report those back and those findings if we can't measure where we're at now. I think measuring it where you are now it's just I think the term baseline is just is not applicable to the region. Thank you. We'll go to Vanessa, and then rods Scott and I'm sorry to Pancha Panjama. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that Vanessa go ahead. I'm sorry Vanessa you're muted. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, 2023. All right, I'm Vanessa parks I'm a sociologist thank you so much for having me Dustin Scott it's great to meet you great to hear about this project. I want to jump off a little bit from what Jeremy was just talking about and my as a sociologist my big picture comments here are about incorporating community voices so not just air quality data but engaging with these communities. I would start by saying social vulnerability indices are great way for identifying areas of potential concern, but statistically they wash out important heterogeneity in that area. If there are particular communities that you're interested in. I would recommend identifying them and targeting them specifically. So, maybe that is a targeted approach maybe you take a more qualitative approach. There are impacts that aren't just air quality but also worry about their health, trust and information sources or biometric health information. And a question that I'll leave y'all with because I was waiting to hear a little bit about this but how can the findings from your proposed work be used for future planning and how do you anticipate this work being used in the future. Thank you Dustin or Scott would you like to respond to that at all. I think I'll take a crack at it. You know, we've also struggled with using American Community Survey data. We found that in rural areas in the Gulf, the data quality is extremely low. Even at the census designated place level oftentimes the margin of error is just as high as their total population for instance, and some of these communities were concerned about. There are many social vulnerability indices and other, you know, combined measurements. They're hard to rely on. So, that's absolutely something we're worried about but we also have a good history of funding ethnographic qualitative studies throughout the region. We have a good history of that especially some of our post deep water horizon studies were instrumental in the subsequent litigation and how it'll be used in the future. You know, one of the problems we have with oil and gas is that BOEM has unique information needs to be able to do their NEPA analysis that's not oftentimes aligned with maybe what academics are collecting. And so, you know, going back to this idea of oil and gas has been here for over 100 years. It's deeply entwined throughout the region and it's diffused throughout the region. And so I think we've always struggled some with doing kind of traditional social impact assessments. So we see wind and other upcoming technologies because they have these sort of discrete project footprints. It's almost like an opportunity to start that. And so we're hoping that these would be done before the majority of activities related to wind start taking place. And then we can come back in 10 years and 20 years and see, you know, what happened what changed. We just finished a diachronic study of the deep water horizon revisiting several communities that were visited just after the spill. And that was interesting to see how people's ideas of the spill changed over 510 years. So probably something similar to what had been done there. Vanessa, if you don't have additional thoughts, I'll turn next to Rod. Thanks Dustin and Scott. Lily, I'm given the new responsibilities and the development of renewables in the Gulf, but it needs to get more detailed and accurate data. I can see how this would inform and enhance the cumulative impacts and the social factors sections of your NEPA and your environmental justice work. I also agree that this has to be started as soon as possible and ahead of time that seems to be some of the lessons learned of the previous technologies and processes in the Gulf. So, I think the need is clearly demonstrated. I think the questions are about the scale the scope the methods and the processes here. It seems that this is so big that it needs definition, but it also needs flexibility. So, I think that what Berm needs is ways in which the data obtained early can inform and help structure the subsequent parts of this. And if that can be done through this indefinite delivery indefinite quality model and all well and good, if not, then I think it needs to be broken down into more manageable parts through a sequence of profiles and studies. And so I think it's probably up to you and the leadership in the program to figure out the best way to do that, such that the information is useful to you and that you can define it. And yet also have the flexibility to shape the process that going forward and I don't know how that is best done but I do see the need and the urgent need but also the need to be able to have this as an iterative process that going forward. Yeah, I don't think the agency wants to just hand us a blank check and say, yeah, we trust you go do whatever you want, whatever you think you need. So really getting the comments from COSA on this to help us sort of shape the direction, the trajectory of what we're doing is super helpful. So, thank you. We'll take two more quick comments and questions. And I also just want to point out that there's been I think a very active chat going on so this is again an example where we'll try to capture that and get it to you. Scott, I'll turn to you next and then deep in John as well. Yeah, thank you for this proposal. We had a good discussion yesterday Rodney kind of teed it up about some of the new frontiers that bone is moving into and we talked about the fact that more and more. We're talking about potential spatial conflicts out here where bone wants to have more than one program active in the same geography. It's going to be a continued challenge. It's an it's an evolutionary process from the old days where we just had oil and gas and and sand projects to a new world where we're going to have multiple programs that need to address the country's critical needs. And so I think this is, is, you know, step in the right direction. I would encourage you to think about maybe also narrowing the scope initially a little bit, maybe in an areas where we can already see where those conflicts are already going to come into play. One that comes to mind would be in southeast Texas where you have wind leases leasing on on the radar screen later this year. We know that the state has leased acreage adjacent to those those offshore areas for carbon sequestration to Talos and Chevron has expressed interest in joining in that project. We also know that Exxon took huge leases in the OCS, which sure looked to me like they're targeting carbon sequestration, I could be wrong but they would also be in the same place as the wind leases so, you know, and and you're going to have your ongoing marine minerals activity which is still going to be into interest out there and there's still some residual oil and gas. So this is a place where, where sorting sorting out the cumulative impacts of all those different areas is going to be important. Now, I'm going to back up from that though and issue another another challenge to bone on this. I worry a little bit we might be putting the cart before the horse here. One of the challenges we have with the specific activities is what is the what is the most important use for that acreage. Where is the biggest contribution going to be for the good of the country as a whole not just the communities, but the country as a whole. Are we better served by having wind in offshore southeast Texas or we better serve by having carbon sequestration and what has been identified by some academic workers as the highest potential area for CCS storage in the OCS. I think that we're, you know, and National Academy report from 2019 suggested if we want to have any chance to get to carbon carbon zero, a later this century we probably need to be putting away about 150, a gigatons of co2 by 2050. And the Texas areas is a quite a bit of interest so somehow I think you need to weave into this a process by which you assess, you know, what is what is the highest value impact to the nation's and the global impacts of the acreage in question so that's a small, a small challenge for you Rodney but something, something to keep on your radar screen as well. So thinking about that too, you know, there is a possibility, at least theoretical at this stage that bone could endeavor to do co located leasing. So, I suspect that's going to be a real challenge to co locate high density wind farms and what looks to be, if you're going to go for saline reservoirs in the offshore coastal Texas. It's going to be all new development it's not going to be realising the existing oil and gas fields but it'll be new new wells new pipelines, new injection infrastructure, and it may be very difficult to stick that in in the midst of a wind farm. I'm, I could be wrong, but probably something the National Academy is going to help them look at. The resource evaluation team has been very active in trying to understand what this looks like from the industry standpoint and how that that'll be executed and all their early indications are that these will likely be new construction new facilities new pipeline specifically built for the purpose. Thanks. We'll take one final comment on this profile. We're not quite 10 minutes behind schedule but I want to keep us as on time as possible. Deepanjana will take one last comment from you. Hello. This is a, I mean, I also think that this project is quite scope is very broad and making a sub parts will be helpful. As you guys the baseline is concerned yes it is it should be called the baseline for the study that is more appropriate. And number three is I have noticed that in this project it has been proposed to monitor the different chemical systems of NO2 all the I for the positive time I will call NOx, NOx species, and we all know that nitrogen is a major component also for growth of the phytoplankton and zooplankton. So are you going to if you can monitor that how the extent of NOx is taking place between here and also the marine water part and that can also help you in understanding the how the carbon sequestration is taking in the sea since you are trying to cover both the carbon texture storage which is now again picking up and also carbon sequestration. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you Dustin and Scott for your presentation. We'll turn next to focusing on the Alaska region office profiles. And I apologize I don't have in front of me who is presenting for that give me just one moment. Thank you Eric and Eric's here with us. Hi Eric. So I'll turn it over then to Eric, and then we'll, and you're doing the profile as well. Excellent. That's great that's what we want. I'll turn it over to you. Can you turn your microphone on. Thank you. Let me see. I'm all of you aware the Alaska Outer Continental Shelves comprised of 15 planning areas. There are two planning areas that have active leases the Beaufort Sea has six active leases and the Cook Inlet planning area has 15 active leases to give an idea of the scale of the Outer Continental Shelves in Alaska. It's comprised of over 1 billion acres that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must manage, as well as 6000 miles of coastline which is more coastline than the rest of the United States combined. I was asked to quickly go through kind of our science priorities how we consider decisions when it comes to science and these are not in priority order. In all categories, I want to cover one marine mammals, they're good indicators of marine health, but in Alaska they're extremely important in terms of cultural traditional nutritional needs for Alaska Native peoples. Migratory birds Alaska has international and national importance to migratory birds not only these King Eiders, excuse me, but also shorebirds and seabirds that I'll talk about here in the next presentation. Alaska also has the only spring summer subsistence hunt for migratory birds that occurs from April till August that allows rural residents to harvest birds during the nesting season as well as harvest eggs. Fish 60% of the fish products that the United States produces comes from Alaska. Fish and fishing is extremely important as you can imagine to recreational fishers, but also to subsistence users. There's also oceanography changes in land fast ice pack ice hydrology currents water quality. These are things that bone is considered very important that we must trap because it affects industry as well as residents climate change. I doubt you will find a resident in Alaska that doesn't say climate change is occurring. It is affected industry it is affected subsistence that affected residents. I just thought the Arctic was changing at a rate of two times the global average it is now has been decided is is changing at four times the global average in the last 40 years. This is an issue economics. Alaska is blessed with 231 recognize native Alaska tribes, as well as 12 corporations we work with Alaska Native peoples very closely it's a high priority in our region, and that is for the department overall. The impacts, like many regions this one keeps us up at night, trying to decide how a proposed activity that is regulated by bone how it affects the resources that are currently being affected by current or future foreseeable impacts. Finally pollutants and contaminants the 1989 Exxon Valdez is still on the minds of all residents of Alaska. If you go to rural villages the number one concern is the health of their food resource. A couple of emerging issues one. The administration of March this year put a moratorium on new oil and gas development and the Beaufort and Chuck cheese see the current six leases that are there still can move forward. The second emerging issue is renewable energy Alaska's behind the curve, but we're tracking the other regions very closely. This is a figure produced by the national renewable energy lab that shows for wind title and wave there's a potential of 3800 gigawatts offshore wind shown in green and the circles as the highest potential. However, we have no active renewable energy leases in Alaska at the present time. Finally I'll draw your attention to that orange dot right next to cooking with just the right cooking that has one of the largest title power resources in the world. Six to 18 gigawatts to give me an idea one gigawatt equals one billion watts, one billion watts has sufficient power to power 350,000 to 800,000 homes for a year. That is all of Anchorage and all the Madnuska Valley. The seven profiles that we submitted for consideration of FY 24 FY 25 funding. The first four deal with cook inlet because that's a geographic area that is a priority. The lower cook inlet seabird colony council talk about here in a minute. We also are interested in cook inlet circulation model and calculations a detection plan for marine non native species and see ice climatology. FY 25. We're trying to improve our models to better estimate oil and weathering ice. We want to continue funding the University of Alaska coastal marine Institute and the research scientists there. And finally frequency distribution and severity of migratory bird strikes with vessels and near shore offshore Alaska waters is also a consideration. So I'll talk about this profile next and I was asked why we selected this. This is because the cook inlet has undeveloped outer continental shelf leases there's 15 there. And as I just showed it has tremendous wind and particularly tidal energy potential. Also the project design is still in discussion there are tradeoffs and value of information, cost and logistics. Thank you for letting us review comments here last month. I will not go through those we have done a response to comments thank you. They were very thoughtful and helped I think with the development of this project in the future. And with that Stacy I'm happy to answer questions now or we can hold off to the study profile whatever the committee prefers I know we're behind schedule a bit. I think we'll take a moment just in case there's anybody that has any immediate questions on sort of the Alaska region priorities or profiles generally. I don't see any. So with that Eric I'll pass it back. Thank you. The profile we're asking the committee to consider updating lower cook inlet seabird colonies instead of background seabirds are long lived anywhere from 20 to 50 years or conspicuous or above water, and they feed near the top of the marine food web. It supports North America's greatest concentration of seabirds 40 to 50 million individuals come to Alaska every seven summer. That's 75% of North America's seabirds come to Alaska. Lower cook inlet supports 325 seabird colonies greater than a half a million birds. And estimates, however, for seabird distribution abundance and species composition, or 40 years old there from 1982 and between 1950 and 2010 and the last 60 years the global seabird population is declined by nearly 70%. In terms of our information needs. When one writes an affected environment and a national environmental policy act document you need to know the very basic information on distribution species composition and abundance in this case seabirds and cook inlet. And also needs and no threats to seabirds, whether it's marine heat waves disease vessel traffic fisheries by catch pollution contaminants or invasive species and what else. Draw your attention to marine heat waves and this figure that's produced by the Fish and Wildlife Service the top shows a timeline from 1970 to 2020 so the 50 year time period the circle in yellow comes from 1970 to 2010 so 40 years during that 40 year time period there were five seabird die off events so five seabird events over 40 years totaling about a million species. However, in the last decade. We double the number of seabird die off events nine in the last 10 years we've had an equal number of seabird estimated deaths, 1 million. So in the last decade we've equaled the last 40 years. We need to know the distribution species composition abundance and why do we need to know threats. Because the agencies required to assess and mitigate potential effects of our regulated activities be it infrastructure citing vessel corridors and oil spill risk as well as preparedness. To estimate seabird distribution species composition and abundance and 325 existing colonies as well as potential new colonies that cropped up in the last 40 years. Define priority areas on abundance species richness conservation status or possibly other criteria. We evaluate existing and new survey methods and technology since 40 years we have new technologies that we can use that likely better estimate populations and distribution and finally, we want to develop a protocol that can be used in the future that's rigorous as confidence repeatability is logistically feasible and of course can meet cost of agencies. As I said we want to develop a protocol that has specific methods the methods that will be employed in this study will be both using both boat and aerial platforms aerial being fixed wing rotor helicopter and unmanned platforms, using both visual and photographic techniques. And because some of these species are cleverly concealed themselves and burrows or crevices we will use marine ban radar to detect where they're at. So the research questions are very similar to the object is what's the current distribution species composition and abundance of seabirds lower cooking it. Most importantly what changes have occurred we know that the global population overall is declined by 70%. We're looking at marine heat waves and 2015 through 2016. We're very interested to see what has possibly changed and relative to the methods that are being proposed we want to estimate distribution abundance and species composition relative to bias detection feasibility and costs all the methods that I talked about have their pluses and minuses. And finally the requested input from the committee. One can prioritize seabird colonies any numbers of ways there's a few criteria that could be considered species distribution abundance. species richness species diversity conservation status by that is a species population stable expected to be declining or is it healthy and increasing productivity and the importance finally to subsistence users subsistence users depend on seabirds both for harvesting the bird itself as well as for eggs addressing statistical difficulty this project has all the factors that gives biometricians heartburn. We're trying to estimate distribution and abundance in a remote logically challenged area not only that we have 21 species. We have species across the broad area that nest in three sorts of habitats, some on the open some on the surface, some in crevices, and some on cliffs. Next, as I mentioned is a significant interest in this study in terms of seabirds are already incurring significant stressors. And is, and we are interested to hearing the committee's thoughts on how to tease that apart relative to regulated activities by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and finally, what's the optimal frequency of lower cooking with seabird surveys were pretty much assured 40 years is too long. The issue is, then how often because one has trade off to whether you do other types of surveys or not. And with that I'll be happy to take questions. Thank you Eric. I'm looking online and in the room for hands and there's already a number up. So I'll start with Dan Costa and then Kevin, Katrina, Rona and deep and drama. Very interesting presentation that I think those 40 years studies are done by accept, which was a really important program that sort of set the stage for a lot of other environmental studies also trained a lot of us as a postdoc under that year, your bird studies, as you've already said are challenging and I think you've really address the issues well and answers to those are going to be hard but it's it's important to recognize that seabirds are a long live species and so the frequency. It's, it's very, it's not uncommon, especially for Alaska for seabirds to have a series of bad years, and then one good year. And so many of these seabirds, especially the kitty wakes live 40 years. And so they only have to have a couple of good seasons in order to maintain the population so that's a real challenge and I'm not going to pretend to give to have an answer to that. I would say that your first cut would be distribution and abundance because that's fundamental. And then of course you need to get productivity to be able to assess the population trajectory. And the last thing I'd say is, given, given the problem of attribution of an effect. As you pointed out, there's are the populations in the, in the area already declining. And in terms of who's funding it, it does. If the develop if the companies funded. It's going to, there is always the issue whether it's true or not of perception. So it, it would be best that some independent entity at least supports the work, or at least puts a firewall between the researchers and, and if it's funded by the developers. But again, I think it's critical because you've already shown a decline. But you know, there's going to be further declines and or even a bad impact here, and people are going to immediately look at the public whether it's true or not immediately going to look at the new activity and say that's the fault. But anyway, it was very interesting over here appreciate it. Thank you. Any all good comments and I would agree distribution and abundance for. I think we also have to throw in species composition as well just because some species I think are more greatly affected by the heat waves and others in terms of, but you're, you raise good points and things that I'm sure we're going to be discussing in the future so thank you. Kevin. Yes, that was a great presentation Eric, and so I had a couple of questions. I'm really supportive of this, this proposal is project. One of the ways to classify it as well you listed a number but are there any UNESCO designated bird UNESCO being the, like the national designation or international designation for where you have more than I think it's 10% of the entire species in an area at the time. I know that's that's something that I, like up in the Bay of Funding that's designated for birds is a, is a, is a NESCO site now. I think you might want to go look at that too, that has kind of international consequences. The other thing I wanted to mention is the, there's, there's been regime shifts right in the, in the, the marine structure and the food web structure in Alaska, going from a fish, fish base to, I think to to crustacean and also, there's some A.J. Paul's work in the work on the Exxonville, these oil spill where they looked at the decline of the herring populations and how they're the increase in walleye pollock which is a energetically weaker fish and so so bird colonies were starving even though they were eating as much as they I think maybe incorporating some of that I'm surprised that you know it's been so long since those areas and cooking that it looked at it's very bird colonies, but anyway it's a great product I think it's very, very worthwhile. Yeah, thank you, Kevin we. I'm not aware of any species are on any list I know tufted puffin has shown significant declines in the Pacific and Alaska. Relative to collaborate with other agencies USGS Alaska Science Center john piet and others are working on two islands to talk about and they've been looking at for several last several years looking at changes in food, and what has resulted from the 16 heat wave, and then ultimately changes in the fish communities and then that affects of course the seabird communities and was interesting as it appears to be quite longer. The extent of the impacts are going to be longer than what we would what I would have expected. Yeah, good points. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I to echo the strong support for this for this project I think it's very important. A couple of questions and then a couple of comments towards your input that you're seeking. One question is, I'm assuming that it refers to the entire lower cook inlet management region, including Shellacoff straight. I think that would be really important just because of travel vessel traffic in that entire region, and then going back to the coordination with USGS. I'm assuming that's mostly the work of at sea distribution and relationship to food as you said. So I think that would be a really good compliment, knowing the seabird breeding locations with at sea distribution and USGS of course in part is also involved in other long term monitoring projects, such as soft watch Alaska. So I think there would be some really valuable connections to be made, which then would bring a little bit more resolution to what, you know, what are the individual impacts because those longer monitoring projects are needed to identify what what comes with heat waves or whatever, while the seabird colony monitor establishment will not tell you that right that in itself, but seabird colonies themselves don't change that much the abundance of birds that are there change. So I think, in terms of the question how to prioritize, I would probably prioritize those a little bit larger seabird colonies that have a mix of different species in terms of their nesting strategies, so that you have the ones that are you know, nesters versus crevice nesters versus boroughs, and not something that's like just super scattered. And then I, I do think that in terms of logistical challenges, if there is one region in Alaska that these challenges can be reasonably overcome it's lower cooking. I mean it's very accessible. And, but it's also hyping high impact region because of that vessel traffic and everything so I think that is a very important region to do these surveys. And I am not a bird expert there might be others but I think if you, you know, yes 40 years are too long, but maybe eight to 10 years or something like this as a timeframe for resurveys would be something to target. Thank you. Yes, I'm in complete agreement I, there's some, you know, USGS is still on both Gaul and Chiswick Island and cooking that they're still doing prey and food habits and food quality, in terms of the length of sandlass and nutritional quality. So, and you're right tying food resources with colonies and their success and their species distribution and they go be a key. Yep. Thank you. I agree with everybody else I think this is fantastic project and I really appreciated and enjoyed your presentation of it. Harking back to your list of projects in your first presentation, I was really pleased to see a focus on invasive species and and have it and I would, I would love to see that move forward. But I think also there are potential wonderful synergies between monitoring and looking early section of invasive species or non-native species in general. And this work with bird colonies because of course, you know, on some level it speaks to the overall composition of the food web and and so I think that both these projects could benefit from each other. Thank you. Yep. Good idea. And the last hand that I see raised is deep and Jana. So I'll turn to the next. Oh, and then Rob Syrian as well has raised their hand so we'll take those two, two additional comments and questions. Hello everybody and again, and this is I also agree that this is a very nice project. One comment I have already posted in the chat than the other point which I'd like to mention that in this study, you have already you are trying to find out the reasons for how this bird population is changing. So my submission would be that shouldn't you also consider that how this how this number of how this bird species can be conserved maybe even in a challenging situation by altering the food or the altering the habitats. Thank you. Good point. Yes, I mean I food obviously is tied to breeding success and productivity and whether birds actually nest or not and so the difficulty is there's only so much time and and the abilities for a research project to take on I as Katrina mentioned I think food is very important in terms of distribution probably of key importance for breeding birds but at this point we're, we're not going to consider sampling food resources at these colonies I think it's given the size of the study area which is about 360 kilometers long and 30 to 90 kilometers and 325 colonies I think it's going to be a challenge to pull that off I think in the future, however, looking at food resources with what colonies are successful or which colonies have changed I think is very viable. And Rob. Great thanks for the opportunity to comment on this study. A couple points. I'd like to make that somewhat echo what's already been said but then a couple of additional considerations. Just to kind of reemphasize the heat wave. In recent years from 2015 16 and again in 19 caused major mortality events for even adult birds and mammals in this region and especially with recent publications now showing that both sea lions humpback whales, along with birds there was major mortality events for adult breeding populations. So a couple of things to keep in mind in terms of this survey timing. One is that any counts that were done before 2015 or no longer valid in this region and and also thinking about frequency there's this statistical consideration of how frequent you should do an example but when you have these episodic events. That's the other point at which you consider reserving to when there's a step change and it's it's definitely evidence is accumulating that this region the Gulf of Alaska kind of cook in lit toward Prince William around, especially was heavily hit more so by the heat wave in terms of impacts, and including birds from all over other regions in Alaska so there's fish my services looking at some results that indicate they're seeing declines and other bird colonies with Merz especially that they think were over wintering at the time in this region that are affecting other colonies the very scene elsewhere. And then in terms of which look colonies might be most important. Certainly those in cook inlet, and also at the entrance the Baron islands would be key, but then also those items that are, or those colonies that are kind of downstream which would be toward Kodiak shell across straight. But like I just mentioned with other colonies to a lot of birds over winter or feed in this area from colonies both upstream and downstream of the of the region. And then also, as far as yeah just to echo what Catherine said to with the partnerships because some of these species, you know the service nesters are relatively easy but a lot of burrow nesters between the radar studies and others it's very hard to get a good estimate on how many are there and I think it's really important to partner with the at sea surveys and bones already funding a super important study and lower cooking that that is doing vessel based surveys, which does a good job of capturing all species. And USGS is leading that. And yeah I guess I'll leave it at that but yeah thanks very much for this opportunity. Thank you for joining us Rob. And thank you Eric yeah please respond if you have. Thank you Rob. All thought for comments. And, yeah, as you mentioned, or site that the project is going to be challenging in terms of the two month time period that seabirds nest and the numbers of species and the numbers of different types of habitats as well as the proposed methods that we will probably use. So collaboration is absolutely key to success there's several agencies and national park services there US Fish and Wildlife Service with Alaska maritime refuge USGS and US for service all those are potential partners in the future to work through this to try to make it happen so anyway thank you. Fantastic. Well that wraps up our consideration of the profiles for the 2024 2025 STP. We really appreciate or I really appreciate at the very least, all of the invited guests that joined us all the bone staff that joined online and here in person. And of course and especially our volunteer committee members for their time. I wanted to leave a little bit of time here towards the end of our open session for some concluding thoughts and remarks from our co chairs as well as from the bone staff so anybody would like to leave some parting thoughts. I open the floor for that now and maybe I'll start with our co chairs. Well I'll have a crack at it. Thank you everybody it's been an excellent meeting it's been I've been involved with bone for a long number of years this has been one of the best and most productive sessions related to the STP that I've been involved with and so thank you. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you to the leadership in bone and the National Academies for putting this together. Thank you for to the profile developers I know that you're very busy. I know you put a lot of effort into it, and also for the other folks in bone and the other SMEs for their contributions I know they're actively involved throughout this profile development and will continue to be so going outside experts have clearly added a lot to our discussions this is the most that we've had in any of these meetings that I've been involved with. And so I'm sure that we will want to continue doing that into the future. And of course to the COSA members for your time and effort and wise wisdom. So I think one of the things that we've discussed is that I'm closer is that we're keen to understand what happens next what happens to these profiles going forward. And so maybe we can have some discussions about the way that our contributions have shaped the profiles going forward. And the only other thing I'd like to say is happy birthday to the studies to the ESP. Maybe maybe another 50 years and we'll be around to see it but I echo everything that Rod said I think you hit it right on the mark there rod thank you everybody for your contributions it's been an exceptional two days. I've been through, I think it's the eighth one of these annual reviews I've sat through, and I think this was a highlight in those eight years so I think everybody did a great job. I particularly want to commend the bone staff for their hard work and pulling their profiles together, and also their receptiveness to the feedback. I really want to thank our outside guests we had a, I think we all all of us worked hard to try to identify and recruit some outside guests who would be able to contribute to the discussion and you all have done a great job so many thanks to all of you. We really appreciate it. Thank you to the COSA COSA members and our National Academy staff for for organizing this along with their, their colleagues at at Baum so well done all I would also like to reiterate that there is an opportunity to thank all of you. If you have any more comments that you want to share. Please send them to Stacy Stacy's raised her hand here and she will make sure that those written comments get transmitted to the appropriate folks at Baum. I think those those are very, very, very helpful for folks so thank you everyone for an excellent two days and. Yeah, onto the next 50. I certainly agree it has been fantastic I think we just keep getting better each time. No, we just keep getting a little better each time. We've been doing this for a while and I think that it was a fantastic meeting the comments were extremely thoughtful and really appreciate the committee taking the time to. I really put a lot of thought into the profiles and the feedback I mean it's extremely helpful. I mean our folks you know spend time, among all the other duties they have really trying to put these ideas together. You know, and you know it's it's difficult so I think a program of our stature, a use inspired science program like we have needs a committee like this for for input it makes us better it makes us stronger and I think it's really, really helpful having the outside experts. I think that does really add a lot to things because you know each year things may evolve as you all know, and so it's really important to have these outside experts. So, you know, with the committee you're not going to pivot the committee members with us with the committee just the way it is, and stands for several years, and then bring in these experts I think are extremely helpful. I do want to thank all of the bone scientists and staff for all the great work and putting all the time into these ideas and into the committee. Stacy, Jessica, thank you so much. And I think somebody that's forgotten sometimes is Dr. John Lily behind, because he's the guy that gets all these profiles together and somehow puts it into a study development plan that that really makes this role. So, thank you. Oh, and oh, we're going to go to tonic and have a toast for the 50th anniversary tonic is a couple of little bar a couple of blocks away. So, not exactly sure where it is but I know it's close. Thank you. Thanks. And before I do adjourn I want to echo the thanks to john in fact I was thinking about that as we were speaking. We're following the studies development plan together, but also ensuring that the profiles, the slides, everything got transmitted to us in an extremely timely and organized way and so major props to john and thanks for that as well. We are adjourning a few minutes early. So, you know, Rodney and friends can go scope out some spots maybe to hang out. I do encourage committee members if they're available after we adjourn our closed session to feel free to join for this very informal unofficial gathering. And we'll look forward to to seeing folks again in the fall and I just will preview for our phone folks that some of our discussion in closed session will involve thinking forward to our fall and spring meetings. So we look forward to collaborating with you all on getting those organized. Thanks again.