 So I want to welcome everyone to our second open meeting of the standing committee on offshore wind, energy and fisheries. I am Jim St. Kierke, I'll introduce myself when we go through the whole committee, but I will hand it over now to Caroline who's going to give us some introductory remarks. Welcome everybody. And thank you Jim. My name is Caroline Bell. I am the study director for the standing committee. I'm with the National Academies of Science and the Ocean Studies Board. As we start the meeting I just wanted to go through a few expectations for conduct. The academies were committed to fostering a professional respectful and inclusive environment, where all can participate fully in a harassment free and discrimination free atmosphere. We look to each and every one of you to help us maintain a professional and cordial environment details on the academy's policy on preventing discrimination harassment and bullying are available on the website that you can see here on the slide. In addition to background, the National Academies is a non governmental nonprofit organization that's the nation's premier source of expert evidence based and objective advice on science, engineering and health matters. The National Academies provides independent and objective advice to inform policy in a few different ways. The group that we have formed here for the meeting today and tomorrow is a standing committee of the National Academies. As I mentioned it's one of many types of activities the National Academy convenes others are studies workshops. The content consensus study is a continuing activity designed to provide provide advice to a sponsor in our case the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for bone on a specific or core topic and our charge for the standing committee is looking at offshore wind energy and fisheries committee members will provide individual advice based on their personal backgrounds experience and expertise, rather than come to a group defined consensus and on recommendations in a written report as our consensus studies do if you're familiar with National Academies activities two members were selected by the National Academy staff based on nominations received by the public other National Academies members board members sponsors and other partners. During the call for nominations process the National Academies sought out nominations with a personnel with specific areas of expertise, and this was based on the statement of task and the work plan that was designed for this committee. I have myself and others included connected interviews and selected potential committee members to fill in needed expertise for the committee in addition to looking for committee members with expertise in areas such as commercial and recreational fishing, fisheries and resource social sciences offshore wind energy industry state and local and tribal interests marine ocean engineering and marine policy committee members were also chosen based on their knowledge of all of the US large marine ecosystems. So we have representation from committee members throughout the United States. We serve on a rotational basis. And as this committee is newly formed additional committee members will be add to bring us up to a full complement of 15 over the next first few years. Looking at both what additional expertise can be added based on top meeting topics and also to make sure that we have representation from a diverse background. And all regions of the country. Another important part of the selection process is to draw upon members that have a broad background and an experience because we are a committee of at this point 12 eventually will be 15 that is looking at offshore wind energy and fisheries throughout the entire United States at large area. So members were were partly chosen for not necessarily representing one specific fishery or one specific region but having understanding of a more broad background and range of experience and expertise. So now I will turn it back over to our chair, who then we will introduce the committee and give everyone in the committee some time to introduce themselves. Sure. And just like I didn't do please remember to turn on your mic when you introduce yourself, and let's try to take a minute or so for each of us. So I will start and hopefully I'll do that. I'll stick with it a minute. My name is Jim Sankirico. I am a professor at the University of California at Davis. I'm an interface of ecology economics and policy I'm a natural resource economist by trade. I've done a fair amount of work, evaluating fishery management policies around the world. And I feel, and I should also mention, I am a member of the Ocean Studies Board here at the Academy and also a member. I remember the full title the US Committee of the UN Ocean Decade for sustainable sustainable development. Thank you very much. All right, so what we'll do is we'll just go down alphabetically down the list. Hello, everyone. My name is Daniel too little my I am the environmental services manager for the Americas region for an offshore geodata company called Fugro. I work on 100% of all the offshore wind farm developments in some capacity here in the United States, and about 50 to 60% of offshore wind farms globally. So, in my role here I will be bringing quite a bit of an industry experience to the committee. What we typically do is we be mapped the seafloor for essential fish habitat, and also bent the communities so in our data goes into construction and operation plans that are submitted and reviewed by bone. Also, as far as a background, I have training in marine fisheries science, I used to manage the commercial salmon fishery in Alaska, and also have worked with the national. The Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the National Fisheries Service, looking at closed area challenges and questions and science for the offshore scallop industry. Next. Good afternoon. I'm Janet Duffy Anderson. I'm the chief scientific officer at Gulf of Maine Research Institute. I have expertise in anthropogenic effects on fisheries and ecosystems ecosystem functioning. My background is in all sorts of anthropogenic effects, over water structures climate shore zone modification fishing and sort of cascading effects on ecosystem functioning and fisheries outcomes. I've done work in all of, almost all of the United States large marine ecosystems. New England, middle Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, California current system, and I spent 20 years working in the large marine ecosystems in Alaska, and my previous position as program manager of the ecosystems department at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center no And Trisha, can you follow Janice lead and turn your camera on so that people online can see perfect. Okay, I have it on. Hi everybody. My name is Trisha Yadley. I am the offshore wind policy manager for the Nature Conservancy. I am an attorney by background, I have practiced environmental administrative law and federal appellate. Environmental law for more than 25 years. I live in Rhode Island, where I've lived all my life. I formally just my way of background. I worked with the Rhode Island Attorney General's office. My role there was involved, you know, related to a lot of complex environmental litigation at the federal level rulemaking challenges to rulemaking. I worked with conservation law foundation and that role. I worked with the state of Rhode Island's coastal resource management agency as they developed the first ocean special area management plan that was later used to inform where we would site offshore wind off the coast of Rhode Island. I was very involved in the siting of the Block Island wind project and the development of the enforceable policies that are listed in the state's coastal resources management plan. I spent some time in private practice where I represented the state's Rhode Island commercial fishing industry, in particular the Fisherman's advisory board in complex negotiations with vineyard wind for compensation pursuant to that ocean special area management plan. And then before coming to the Nature Conservancy I went back to serve as the chief of the energy and environment unit at the Rhode Island Attorney General's office. The Nature Conservancy is a global nonprofit environmental organization. We work in all 50 states and in 77 countries around the world. And the focus of the organization is developing decision support tools and tools that enable science to be integrated into decision making so that we get decisions that are informed by the best available science. And I think it's Steven. Thank you. My name is Steve Jonah. I'm from Port Angeles, Washington. I'm a fishery biologist working with the Mackay Indian tribe in Northwest Washington. I've been with the tribe for well over 40 years. The tribe is very active in fishing in the ocean. We are one of 24 treaty tribes in the Northwest 20 and Northwest Washington and four on the Columbia River. And we work through the Pacific Pacific Fishery Management Council to develop fishing regulations and allocations to the tribes for all fish that are managed in the easy by the Pacific Council and Department of Commerce. Throughout my career, I've been very active in developing and managing the tribe's fisheries. I also work with the other tribes in Washington, Oregon and California. I've been very active in the Pacific Fishery Management Council process throughout my career. Currently I'm on the ground fish advisory panel and the Council's marine planning committee. I'm also active in managing civic widening on a commission with the Canadians. So I've been quite involved with dealing with bomb since they showed up on the West Coast. And we're very concerned about the cumulative impacts that offshore wind development will have on the resources that these tribes depend on. Not only the Macaws and the other tribes that fish in the ocean but tribes, including all the way up the Columbia River that are dependent on salmon that are produced in the ocean. So you'll hear me talking about the impacts of harvesting this wind energy and and the impacts that are unknown at this point on the various resources. So that's that's gonna be my frame of primary focus. But I also believe I'm speaking for a number of the fisheries on the West Coast because of my involvement through the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Eric, are you up online? Yep. Hi everyone, Eric Kingba. I'm the executive director of the Hawaii Long Line Association. We're a major fishery the United States, we have about 150 vessels operating out of Hawaii. Certainly Hawaii's largest commercial fishery. Largest producer of swordfish and tuna fresh in the United States domestically. I got about 20 years experience in fisheries management, the last four or five years here on the sort of private sector commercial fishing side. Before that, involved in the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council. I believe I have a pretty good handle on the NOAA Fishery Service and the Council management process, as well as the requirements for consistency with other applicable law, like the Remanable Protection Act, ESA, NEPA, etc. I have to admit I have less experience with BOEM, so hopefully learn quickly about their process and be able to advise. Really, from the fishery impacts out of things, commercial fishing, as well as here in the Pacific, you know, we have a lot of our Pacific Islands, we have a lot of kind of quasi-commercial weekend warrior subsistence fishermen that are really important to the sort of fabric of the community. And so, yeah, happy to be on the committee. Thanks. I'm Captain Dan Kipnis. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida, formerly of Miami Beach, Florida. I had party fishing boats, drift boats, a fleet, a reward fishing fleet. My expertise, besides I'm 73 years old, I started working on boats when I was 10 years old. So I've been around a long time. I commercial fished, I had a fish market, recreational fish, and I was a former Marine, State of Florida Marine Fisheries Commissioner. So I'm familiar with how fisheries rules are made. I sat on a committee for the South Atlanta Council. I've been involved in fisheries management for many, many years. As a layperson, but I guess if you do it long enough, it's like going to graduate school, you get a degree of hard knocks. And so I'm here to let my expertise to this very difficult, but very, very important question of renewable energy at sea and how we can help our users, the resource and the earth all at the same time come out of this win-win. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sarah Maxwell. I'm an associate professor at University of Washington on the Bothell campus, which is about 20 minutes from Seattle. My expertise is largely in animal movement, as well as fisheries. My background is using a lot of telemetry devices to understand where animals go and then particularly looking at sustainable human practices in order to sort of address those things. That's kind of the way that I've approached a lot of questions, including around fisheries, particularly with things like dynamic ocean management and to a lesser degree mobile marine protected areas. More recently, I've been working a bit in the wind space, particularly looking at environmental impacts kind of across the board from wind, particularly floating offshore wind turbines and we recently published paper. And I was looking at last year kind of trying to look at some of the more overall overarching environmental impacts to a large number of species, as well as fish. Thank you. Hi everybody, my name is Steven Seifers. I'm an associate professor at the University of South Alabama in the School of Marine and Environmental Sciences, and also in sociology. My lab's research is across those two domains. We largely work on environmental sociology and ecology issues. We're particularly focused on human dimensions of fisheries. And a lot of the projects that we work on focus on things like social impacts or outcomes of environmental change or management actions on individual fishermen and fishing communities. I'm active in fisheries management largely in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm on the Gulf Council's standing scientific and statistical committee, the SSC and also the ecosystem technical committee, the ETC. And this is my third National Academies Committee. I'm also currently serving on the committee on equity in the distribution of fisheries benefits. And I previously served on one on catch limits in recreational fisheries and the Gulf. Hello everyone. My name is Ronald Smallowitz. I'm a technical advisor to the sea scallop industry here on the East Coast. My degree is in marine engineering, enable architecture. I serve for 20 years as a NOAA commissioned officer I have 10 years at sea on survey and fisheries research vessels off the East Coast off Alaska and throughout the Pacific to South Pacific, right up to South America. Since I retired, I've been doing fishery and gear research and surveys in the Northeast. Thank you. So my name is David Wallace. I represent the surf clam and ocean cog fishery and the Northeast Atlantic, the Northwest Atlantic. I've been doing that since they before there was the Magnuson Stevens Act, and the government had the opportunity to start managing the fisheries, initially, not as sustainably as necessary but ultimately to sustain all fisheries to the best ability of the federal government. I have been involved in all kinds of different portions of the industry from being a member of the surf clam, ocean cog management committee, advisory committee for, you know, 40 years. And on when the Magnuson Act was re authorized, they put in the social assist, the Habitat Amendment and so I then was on the Midland Councils and the New England Councils Habitat Committee, which we have then gotten to the point where everything is dependent on the impact or the association between fisheries and the central fish habitat, which has greatly expanded and I would say complicated the situation. But with the new challenges when turbines placing in about 5000 square miles 2000 wind turbines, taking up like 2000 miles of that has going to have enormous negative impacts on fisheries in particular shell fisheries, which cannot move. The impacts are going to be very, very severe. If something is not understood and done, and the cumulative impacts of all of this, both on the air that the sea and the tides and all of those other things with these fixed turbine foundations that are sometimes in the future will be up to 50 feet in diameter. They're just enormous structures that are 1000 feet tall, and are going to have just unbelievable negative impacts on the environment and on fisheries. So I'm here to help find solutions so that we can minimize the negative impacts. Dick, are you still online. Yes. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Dick, you. I'm Philip Jay Solans chair professor of engineering at MIT. I'm also professor of mechanical and ocean engineering in the school of engineering at MIT. I've been a professor at MIT for over 40 years. MIT has a joint education and research program with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. I have been a joint program professor for over 30 years. Possibly 10 years or just a little bit over 10 years. I was also the associate dean, the number two person in the school of engineering at MIT. I'm a member of the National Academy of Engineering. All my academic degrees are from MIT, bachelor's, master's PhD and doctor of science degrees. My degrees are in civil environmental engineering, coastal and ocean wave hydrodynamics. I'm an expert on the ocean engineering coastal engineering offshore engineering. I studied the environment of the offshore or coastal environment wave current interactions wave wave interactions. I also have done a lot of research on ocean engineering of offshore structures. Wave structure interactions and the impact of the environment on the structures and the environment of impact of the structures on the environment, of course. I have active research on fundamental aspects of ocean wave energy resources. I have also looked at synergistic developments of wave and wind offshore resources. I have also studied a lot of the hydrodynamics of fish, fish schooling, fish sensing. I have currently active projects on understanding the hydrodynamics of aquaculture, fish farming and environmental impact of the same. I'm delighted to serve on this committee and bring my expertise to be available to the committee. We'll go through staff briefly. I introduced myself very briefly before. As I mentioned, I'm Caroline Bell, associate program officer with ocean studies board. Prior to coming to the National Academies, I was a Coast Guard officer for 15 years. I've been at the National Academies about nine months now. I'm really happy to join the ocean studies board and help lead this standing committee as it kicks off and tackles this very important task. Hello everyone. I'm Susan Roberts. I'm the director of the ocean studies board and I have background in a PhD in marine biology. I actually did my PhD on fish, but I've been with the ocean studies board now for almost 25 years. So I now consider myself an SMG, which is a subject matter generalist. But I'm really pleased to have this group with us today. And then I'll ask Safa to wave her hand in front of the camera over here. Safa is our program assistant working on this project who's behind all of the logistics. So thank you very much, Safa, for running everything so smoothly for us. We'll also have another OSB staff member Stacy, let you jump on. Stacy Keras. I'm a senior program officer with the ocean studies board as well. I'm the study director or the project director for our other standing committee with bone, the committee on offshore science and assessment so sitting into just to listen today and to understand how our two committees can work collaboratively and cooperatively without stepping on each other's toes. So thank you very much for having me. Thank you, Stacy. And thank you for explaining what Kosa actually mean. I can never remember the acronym. On the slides now you'll see this is the statement of task for the standing committee. It kind of lays out three broad areas of activity for the standing committee to engage in. It is a bit broader than some of our other activities that are narrowly focused but given that we are standing committee and we are looking at a huge strategic area, the standing committee kind of reflects that this and gives us the flexibility in the committee to pursue a variety of topics in future meetings for those that are joining us from the public how to say stay informed about this standing committee's meetings there's a few different ways here that you can see on the slide. Link on the slide is take will take you directly to the standing committees information page where there will be updates about events. It lists all of our committee members and their bios. It also links list the statement of task for the standing committee. And then if you follow the link, the general OSB link, the lower one on the slide that will allow you to sign up to subscribe to OSB updates. The email list with is where announcements about future meetings will be sent. And then also the you can see on circled in red on the right side of the screen is a link from the main OSB page to the standing committee page. And briefly, I'll run through the meeting of jet agenda for today and tomorrow. We've coming to the close of the welcome and introduction to the standing committee, then we'll shift to hear more specifically about some of the goals that bomb has for this standing committee, and then move into some of the questions from bombs for regional for regions and time for questions following their presentations and then a larger Q&A period for discussions with regional reps. Tomorrow, we'll start off with a presentation by Mr. Steve Jonah on the treaty tribes and their relationship to fisheries management process. This is an overview of bones environmental programs with time for question and answer. And then there's an open period here from four to 445pm Eastern tomorrow. Looking at future meeting topics, the committee will present a few topics that we have been discussing in closed session for future meetings, but this is also a chance for the public to know if there are topics that are of interest to you all as stakeholders as public public members. So the this portion we will take some time to either through the Q&A feature chat or hand raising to hear from members of the public that are on the zoom meeting about topic future meeting topics. We asked that your address your comments to the committee members because this is time for the committee to gather information about how we should proceed moving forward, what are some important issues that the public feels this committee can address. And then finally, before we go into the first presentation, just ask that participants and panelists meet yourself when you're not speaking. Raise the hand feature use the chat or there's also a Q&A feature that members of the panelists members of the committee can see questions and answer questions as the meeting goes on. So please, for the members of the audience if you have direct questions you can put them in the Q&A feature of the zoom as well. So first for committee members and panelists in the room. We asked the keep your camera on to the greatest extent possible to have a support a sense of community this is a hybrid meeting and we do have people in room and virtually so we want to try to make it as inclusive as possible for everyone. So that we will pull up the slides for our first present presentation from Brian Hooker from Bohm on the review of bones goals for standing committee and some time for the committee to ask clarifying questions. Great. Thank you, Caroline, and thank you to committee for being here in person and online for those that are here, or those that are virtual. Last week, we had our sponsor briefing or not last week I guess I was two weeks ago. We had our sponsor briefing and you know you heard from director Klein and Bill Brown, as well as Karen Baker who's the chief of the office of renewable energy programs who's seated right here at my right. And just again to really try to get across the committee the importance we think at Bohm of the committee and the input that we hope to give and after hearing you know all that expertise going around the room I feel confident that we'll be able to to get that feedback. So this. So Karen did present the slide two weeks ago to you but I thought it was good to just touch upon it really quickly one more time in the context of the goals for for this committee and if you could just do two more clicks I think there's two circles that will pop up. So we have, you know, built into our process formal steps, you know, to engage the public and fisheries constituents, as we move through the process. For example, just I think today, the call for information and nominations for the Gulf of Maine was published in the federal register and that's kind of on this left hand side and the planning and analysis of, you know, very specific points where we engage the public and ask for, ask for comments, and then, and the Atlantic which we'll hear from later today we're doing a lot on the far right of this rainbow graphic on the construction and operations side, where we're doing environmental reviews for construction and operations plans for specific projects that are being proposed. I raise it here because, you know, I think in addition to these, you know, real formal touch points along the planning timeline. You know, boom also has endeavored to engage with fisheries. You know whether or not we're doing a, we have a studies development plan and sometimes we have workshops and meetings through that studies development plan we've actually done some other priorities at fisheries prioritization and meetings with the national academies in the past. And so that's a way to engage the public as well and this occurs in all of bones regions. And then in addition to that, we engage regularly with the fisheries management councils and commissions. Another point there is that that's a great forum, people are already gathered people who are interested in bones process to be able to engage and give updates and receive feedback directly. However, we've always, you know, recognize that the councils and commissions their primary goal is fisheries management not offshore energy management. We've struggled with, you know, is there other avenues to which we can engage, you know, you know fisheries constituents and as we recognize some not all of them may be represented in those fishery management councils or commissions. But that leads me to the other engagement slide piece in their next slide. So for, you know, from the beginning, we have these inner governmental renewable energy task forces. These are requested by governors. They consist of representatives from further recognized tribes federal agencies states and local governments and service forums to coordinate planning feedback and educate on bones process permitting statutory requirements, etc. And the last bullet point here is that while they're, they're open to the public task force membership is limited to government representatives. And so that has been something that has been raised throughout our process is like well wouldn't it be great if there was, you know, a more formal mechanism to engage with fisheries constituents. And going back way in our, in a BOEM MMS, you know, history, there actually was a federal advisory committee called the regional technical working group for for fisheries and some here may maybe even recall that or were were part of those. But for a variety of reasons the federal government has moved away from a lot of the federal advisory committees that I think have been established throughout time. So, you know, what we were been trying to do since then is like well what is the best avenue to engage. And even, you know, when developing the statement of tasks for this committee, you know, we struggled, you know, should this be a national committee, should this be a regional committee, you know, should it be just fishermen or should it be, you know, a variety of expertise. You know that can really help inform BOEM and obviously where it's clear where we landed on that. But in the statement of task I think we did, you know, try to make it, you know, pretty broad that that we want to hear from the direction of the committee on things and not really be prescriptive about, you know, these are the exact things we want to And Karen Baker and Liz I think both made that really clear in the sponsors meeting two weeks ago. Let's see anything else on this. Anyway, so I think, you know, we do, we are really optimistic that, you know, we're always, you know, interested in finding constructive solutions that will allow fishing and offshore wind to successfully coexist. We believe that it should be done in a public way and obviously I think we've had good public participation in these just the one and a half meetings we've had with this one. And an open and transparent process with measurable progress and solutions and we are hopeful and that the standing committee will be able to provide that valuable input to to BOEM. So, next slide please. So the, you know, while we left that statement of task, you know, pretty, pretty wide open, one of the things that, you know, I know we've talked about his staff is, you know, what exactly did we do in some of those things and so I think we're asked to, you know, try to identify some of these buckets a little bit more or categories excuse me more discreetly. So I think, you know, what I've put on here is one of the things that you know you'll hear I think later on in the regions where we are in different regions all at different stages in that rainbow graphic. And I think all regions still no matter where we are in the process always, you know, seem to struggle to find effective communication fisheries groups are such a diverse group of constituents. And we're always open for identification of effective communication strategies. So that's that was always identified as one way the committee itself, I think, is one of those ways to improve that communication. Another one that was I think the more explicit in the statement of task is around research. The identification development of a coordinated no research plan. I did put a graphic on this slide that we boom does currently have a studies development plan that we update every year and that we solicit input on every year. But you know that that's kind of done at a broad, broad level, you know, we try to make the councils aware when we're doing council briefings, but there may not be that opportunity to directly engage saying, Hey, you know, the studies development plan solicitation, you know, is starting today and will be open for the next, you know, two months so it's an opportunity again for us to be able to really engage more real time, you know, with with representatives of various aspects of fish and fisheries. Okay, the last one on on here is, you know, providing feedback on issues that that bone provides guidance on so one that I think is is recent and on a lot of people's minds is bones, you know, fisheries mitigation guidance. That's just, you know, one one example that that we're currently working on. The practice is for developers outreach. So again at the top of their bones outreach, but we've also have been really striving in recent sales are lease auctions and the in the lease conditions to provide, you know, a feedback loop so that you know that there's a direct communication between less ease and fisheries constituents, early in the process that's something that we've always been told that too late by the time a plan gets submitted to Bohm and bones, you know, bone starts its public engagement process the plan is already submitted. So that's another area where we've tried to improve upon. But again it could be an area where we we get some additional feedback from from this group. And actually, this one has been something that, you know, was raised early on it may, may or may not still be an issue but what the role of fisheries liaisons and representatives are, who are they, you know, you know, what is their, what should their role be and how do they are their best practices around, you know, those relationships, and how that communication again occurs between the less see and and fishing communities. And this is just, you know, just an idea of different examples where, you know, we see the committee providing, you know, feedback to bone. But again, if the committee may come up with more or even, you know, refined ideas based on on these categories here. Yeah, that that's really it for the slides I have on that topic so happy to turn it over to questions that maybe I'll ask Karen if she has anything she wants to add. I'll push. I was actually pushing this something. No, I just wanted to reiterate what Brian said I think we're very much interested in being less prescriptive and more hearing from the assembled expertise here, I just want to say thank you again, we are as I was listening to talk around the room I'm just very humbled by all the expertise and experience you all bring to the table and knowledge and we're looking to learn from that and where we can help and answer questions and shape that's great but I think where we are as Brian said. More interested in hearing about topics that you feel Bowam should know about and be exploring than we are being prescriptive in the Serena. Yeah, so we can open this up now questions from the committee. So Steve. Okay. Get my camera on here. Put it on. There we go. So, um, this morning, or earlier today, we had a conversation about bombs limited enforcement after the leases, and that it's turned over to Bessie the Bureau of. Check my nose. Yeah, it's a new one on me so. As somebody involved with federal fisheries management, as far as ocean fisheries regulation ago it's it's one stop shopping with the National Marine Fisheries Service, likewise with visual life service for inland fisheries and birds and so on. So this is something new, dealing with an agency that is going to do their thing and then move on. So, I'm quite frankly lost how how we deal with that in a in a way that's really satisfactory. So, not just the tribes but everybody who relies on the ocean so where where do they fit in. And how do we bring that into our discussion here because I think that's going to be very, very critical to dealing with the concerns that many of us have here. We take a, you know, you know, certainly we can, if the committee so desires we could have Bessie Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement come for a session to talk about the relationship. We have it's a very close relationship as you know that we used to be one agency under the marine mineral service. The relationship continues to be very strong. And we work with them, we're in the same building. Well, those of us are still in person in the same building and, you know, have, you know, work with them on a regular basis and the interpretation of our enforceable conditions that we put in the construction and operations plans. So ultimately that's where you know they will come into play is, you know, reviewing understanding what those conditions of their construction operations plans are. And, you know, again if there's any question there they know who to contact if they have any issue or understanding what the conditions are what they were meant to do. You know we're always always there to be able to to respond to those inquiries but you know again I think the idea why it was split apart is they wanted to clearly separate the kind of the management leasing aspect from the enforcement to for it to be again independent of the management, you know, leasing process. So it's, it's still, you know, still occurring at the regulation splitting the regulation that split the regulations was only just published, but a couple months ago now right, but I don't know if Karen wants to add any more about the split. I would just say that we're working very closely in partnership as Brian said and we we work very hard to ensure that we're as seamless as we possibly can, especially across that that those those operations and I'm moving into course into the enforcement that Bessie takes over. One multi bureaus, but one department, and as said we are really are we literally, I'm a hallway away from my partner and renewable energy and Bessie and so I think that we are working really hard to try to keep that as seamless as we possibly can. And again would welcome input on how we can do that as best we can. And so I'd like to say that that's a topic I would very much like to discuss here. Thanks yeah Janet Duffy Anderson. I'm curious if you could just describe a little bit of bomb's mission and sort of tasking with respect to offshore wind and maybe just a little bit of clarification in a deeper dive of whether or not that differs with respect to the different projects that you're you're operating in. That's a great question. So, so bones mission is to oversee the economically and environmentally responsible development of energy across the continental shelf and our main authority comes from oxla, the outer continental shelf lands act. And make sure that when you say the acronym so often want to make sure I state that correctly. And largely our history really comes from into marine minerals and oil and gas. The Energy Policy Act 2005 introduced renewable energy and then and thus offshore wind. And, well, it doesn't necessarily, I would say differ. I would say that our focus, of course, has been in in recent years as Brian indicated in in the Atlantic. That was where really the most ideal wind was determined to be and where we've had the most development thus far. In my office, I am the office of the chair of the chief of the Office of Renewable Energy Program. So I oversee the national program but I'm sort of dual had it in that my team that's that's located with with us here in in the DC area is is focused on the operations and we are really taking everything that we have in terms of our lessons learned and applying it and sharing it with the regions. So I've got a bit of an oversight and policy aspect, as well as we're very much operational in that we are staying on the permitting that's happening at least in a permitting that's happening in the Atlantic right now. And so that I think that I hope that helps a little bit. I mean, we were as we're sort of moving into the Pacific and other areas and my team is serving in most respects as an advisor and sort of a policy advisor and lessons learned and best practices for those that are starting to look at that and there are other regions. Hi, this Ron Smallwood. That last slide you had Brian, you talked about a research plan a comprehensive research plan. Actually, what is that and especially what each developer has their own research monitoring strategy, and usually they're not compatible with the next development downstream what is how is that well interrelated the coordinated research plan when we don't even have coordinated monitoring. Right. No, but I think actually your last point we don't even have coordinated monitoring this I start with the words on this one and I think there was like I went back and forth over, you know, how to phrase this, you know, I think what we've seen already is a lot of work around how to make the responsible offshore science alliance. And, you know, just more coordination across the board whether it's, again, the work that bombs doing work that National Marine Fisheries Service is doing, or work that the developers are doing as part of their monitoring. I think it's just, again, when I when I put that up there. I think the, the idea is what I see some an entity like the responsible offshore science Alliance, or the response. The regional wildlife science consortium. Those types of roles of like helping to coordinate. I didn't you're right, I probably should have put coordinated in there. You know, all the, the objectives and research that we're trying to achieve, rather than, you know, potentially piecemeal everybody off, you know, doing everything on their own and not having that coordinated so that's, it was in that vein of, you know, what we what we collectively, not just but collectively across federal government states and developers have been sought to trying to achieve through something like Rosa. Your bullet, my question is, are you going to present that to us for comment. This is just something that you guys if you, if you wanted to provide input on how that could be done more effectively, or, or identify things that, you know, again if you want to be specific that bombship fund or that, you know, that, you know, National Science or, or some other entity could could work on that's that's what it's meant to be there is this like, not thinking beyond just bombship fund this study, but what, what should we be coordinating across the different entities that are out there doing research. Thank you thank you Brian for the presentation, can, would you be willing to go back to the process figure that you showed. I was looking at this online and I came across a different version that actually shows some stakeholder engagement emphasis across the process, and you mentioned that there'd been an emphasis on moving stakeholder engagement earlier on. I was just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more about where the current stakeholder engaged parts are, and specifically if, if they're mostly communication outward from Boehm, or if they're also input from stakeholders into the process and how that kind of, you know, looks throughout. Sure I think if you've seen something different online it what we've done is sometimes taken like the planning and analysis piece and blown that up. And if you take the planning and analysis piece and blow that up, you will see I think a lot more, you know, from from doing a request for information to now we've recently announced for for several projects that we're doing a draft call for information nominations and then a final call for information and nominations, and each one of those having a public engagement process that's not only Boehm putting it out there but also receiving input and, and what I was, you know, some of that input we've done. You know, again dependent upon, you know the constituents that we've identified that might be interested in that particular project. We have done, you know fisheries specific outreach around that. We also have the state federal task forces that that I mentioned and then sometimes, and it's still even in addition to that. There's, you know, all along other engagement opportunities like, oh there's a council meeting coming up and we just announced this draft call area. This would be a good time to go, you know, give an update to the council and, you know, receive feedback that way. And those are a little bit more, they're formal I mean they're documented those are recorded by the councils. But they're, they're not necessarily a bone, they're not bone led right there. We're coming at the invitation of the councils. That's that's what I think so that circle on the planning analysis says yes if you blew that up you would you would see a lot more pieces in there. And then, you know, fast forwarding, you know again through construction and operations. And that as well has, you know, opportunities, not only from the initial scoping meetings that we have for a particular project to the public hearings on the actual EIS itself and then oftentimes we during those public hearings we try to do targeted outreach. I know we're still seems like post COVID still trying to now, you know, do a little bit of mix of hybrid in in person, you know, prior to the COVID pandemic, you know, it really was we did be on the road for like a week or two, and hit all the Now it's a combination of in person and virtual. So that that's captured broadly in that that that second circle but there are, you know, several points that each of those circles represents. Yeah I think I'm going to take chair prerogative here and ask the last question. So, you know this is our second meeting, and I still feel like we're sort of on a first date trying to feel out each other's understand where we all stand, and how we both can be most useful to each other. So when you guys let's us make the assumption that the contract is renewed out. So there's a, you know, three or four more years five years is. When you look back, how would you judge that this was a success from bones point of view. That's a great question. I, you know, I think, I think the, you know, from my perspective, the proof will be in, you know, successful projects, right, I mean that's eventually what we're trying to get through is get to as a process. By which at the end, there is a successful project. I don't, I'm not not even thinking that there won't be any, any concerns throughout the, you know, life of the project or that this, this committee will will solve everything. I think it will really help to ensure that we can, you know, look back and say, hey, we did everything in our power to try to engage and get feedback on these issues as they arose in, you know, throughout throughout this, you know, planning process. That's, that's coming from me. I don't know. Karen has any other things to add. It's a fantastic question and it's, and it's definitely I think Brian hit upon it, I think, you know, boom is, I think often as we work through this process we're seen as a proponent for the wind industry is and we do we are charged with with advancing the goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030 but we are interested with getting it right in terms of the the permitting in terms of what are the environmental impacts the impacts to fisheries. In fact, we have to consider all stakeholders all interests and and so the extent to which we make informed and durable. So actually a term our director uses a lot as durable decisions. And how how you can help us to shape that and make sure that we are doing that in a way that again incorporates all the interests that are represented here would be that would be tremendous for us I think. And you should feel free to ask us that question also from our own perspective. And we're starting to figure all that out so we are a couple minutes late we're slated to take a 15 minute break. And do we have all the speakers in the room, or some online there. Most are online Brian is speaking and then the other three are online. Okay. So are we okay to extend it to 320 or do you want to stay at 315 just to stay on time. I think let's stay on three three stay at 315. Since we just, we just started I think 10 minutes is good break for everyone. Great. Thank you very much so we'll come back be ready to start at 315. With that, I would like to turn it back over to Brian for the the Atlantic offshore wind program presentation. Thanks Caroline from I think, you know, part of the objective of this, these slides is just to kind of set the context and for all the different regions about where we are because I mentioned the rainbow slide the rainbow graphic. You know there's a big wide continuum of where we are in different places. So I'm going to try to do in the Atlantic there's a lot going on in the Atlantic. I'm happy to try to answer any questions I kind of had the advantage of being speaking in both time slots that I probably won't go into the fisheries engagement quite as much as you might hear in the other regions, but because I already touched upon where those touch points were to some extent. But anyway next slide. So offshore wind where we're in the Atlantic I did. There was a, I think I've been with Boehm over over 10 years now. And I sometimes joke when people say like all the offshore wind and say I've been here 10 years and we've done two turbines. So, you know, if I take the average of how many turbines we've we've been doing it's not very many. So we do have two turbines offshore Virginia that have been spinning. And so for for a couple years now that we've been able to do a lot of studies on as well through our, what's term the the rodeo project and dominion energy which operates those has also been doing some studies out there. But in addition to the nation's first offshore wind project is in state waters off of Block Island. So it's right right within that three mile limit off of Block Island. So that's kind of a kind of a smaller role in the permitting of the, the offshore export cable that did go through the OCS waters outer continental shelf waters. But that's it that's all we have currently constructed. We actually do have two more under construction. That is the vineyard wind one project and the South Forth South Forth wind farm project. Those projects are in Southern New England and are really just getting kicked off this spring and summer. Right now there's no foundation installation occurring yet it's been just cable installation work that's begun there, both inshore and offshore. And then we move into the big side of things where where we're with keeping us very, very busy right now is the seven projects I think I counted this right Karen can correct me if I'm wrong. Seven projects under cop assessment. And so what I mean by under cop assessment is that we've begun like the NEPA and consultation prod process for seven projects. And that's in Southern New England, that's the Revolution Wind, sunrise New England when South and South Coast projects, and in the mid Atlantic, that's the ocean wind one sea valve commercial project and Empire wind project. And I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm if I'm miscounting but I think we have and then we have several more that are very close to. Operation operations plan received, and we're very close to beginning to initiate that NEPA and consultation phase. So the next slide is just, you know, kind of highlighting where those are starting in that Southern New England area you can see that there's several projects. So this is in that Southern New England area this is the far far left panel, and you'll see the kind of getting credit for the national grid C to shore export cable that's the national grid label there that's the the export cable to Block Island. So that's was under our jurisdiction. And this far left one is the, the Gulf of Maine call area. I have a slide with a link later on in the presentation that you can do we just announced I think just published on the federal register today the, the final call area for the Gulf of Maine. The final is all the mid Atlantic projects. As you can see there are several lease areas that are just beginning the kind of on again on the farther left hand side of the rainbow graphic process and the New York bite area, and then somewhere that are on the right hand side of that rainbow graphic. And off of New Jersey and in Virginia. We, we don't forget about our South Atlantic projects, the Duke Energy and Total Energy's projects right around the North Carolina. South Carolina border there. The, it was part of the Carolina long bay auction that those two leases came from. And so that's the extent of all the leases there I guess the other, we do have a clarification again far left of rainbow graphic process going on in the central Atlantic. And I'll touch on that in on the next slide. So next slide. So, where are we in the planning and leasing again, this is pre lease activity. I mentioned the central Atlantic. So we have several draft winter Jerry's remember again I mentioned that we have some, we can start with as small as a request for information. We've recently been doing these draft winter G areas and then, and then we again surely we'll get to a final winter Jerry that then identifies the lease, the leases that will bring to auction. So the draft winter Jerry's were published back in November. And we're utilizing now and moving forward. A marine sighting tool through the Noah's National Centers for Social and Ocean Services and costs. And so that there's a link there for where we are on the central Atlantic leasing process. And, as I mentioned, Carolina long Bay was our last auction that we that we had. Next slide please. So New York bite again that was another one that was a fairly recent auction. And those are now entering in that site assessment site characterization process. We're also beginning a programmatic EIS for for those areas in the New York bite lease sale. Okay, next slide. So in the Gulf of Maine, we have two different processes going on there is a research leash research lease application from the state of Maine. And that's under consideration right now. And then we also have the larger Gulf of Maine commercial lease area identification. And again, that that started back in, you know, with a request for interest in 2022. And we just today, we announced it early, I think yesterday announced it but then the federal register notice published today. If you're interested in seeing the, the Gulf of Maine area and then I think we have a task force meeting and the Gulf of Maine that's getting scheduled for early May as well. So that's that's where we are and the state of things. So in the Atlantic, I did include another slide on just where you can find some environmental studies and white papers. There again, these are just links for you to be able to, you know, find where our bone funded studies are and white papers that can support our NEPA assessments can be found on our on our website. We have a lot there to take in and are we taking just questions at the very end of all the presentations is that if there's any like quick clarifying questions that any of the committee has we can take them now otherwise we will wait till questions at the end of all of the presentations. I don't know how many of this but how many of these have to go to fruition to meet the goal, like when you thinking about all of these out there. And then we bring in all the other regions, like, there's only three of these have to go all the way fruition to meet the goal, how does that all worked out. So you can send you all with that shows all of the, the what we have in the permitting pipeline on in the Atlantic, and, and, and the actual projected gigawatts produced by each and I can tell you that we have about 10 in the process right now and it runs at seven I, it's, it depends on how you define it but but right now we can tell you with the ones that we are moving through that we are the ones that are that are under construction and the ones that we are currently evaluated for NEPA we think we get to about don't my math, I don't want to do math in public here but but but basically we get to about 19 gig watch 20 and then we have about six, eight more where we get to very very close to 30 and we do get there before our projections before 20 before 2030. I will say that, again, as I said, we are I mean we are responsible for NEPA permitting we can't presume any outcomes and we also know that our experience shows that as these start to move from plan to reality, things change. And in, in terms of this, we learn more the developers change strategies there's some, you know, there may be different number of turbines and they projected things like that. And so we, that these, this is our best estimate based on, you know, with all those caveat caveats. So, again, we're still even though we believe we get there with with what we have in that pipeline with with that uncertainty, you know looking at all those other lease areas and such but I do have. We do have a slide that I can share with the committee that that that speaks to that specifically. Next we will move to the Pacific region hearing from Ingrid Bejren. Ingrid Bejren, let me share my slides. Right. Hello, everyone I'm Ingrid Bejren marine biologist with bones Pacific region. And today I'll be giving a broad overview of the bone Pacific regions, general fisheries engagement activities. So if I could get started. I wanted to thank my colleagues also for their contributions to this presentation. And in my presentation I'll be covering our current work in Oregon and California, and then I'll be talking about some more broad questions such as how do we engage fisheries how do we, who do we engage with what concerns have we heard and how are we addressing those concerns. The slide shows bones jurisdiction along the west coast. We also cover the state of Hawaii, but I'll be focusing on California and Oregon today. So in California, we currently have five provisional winners of the California lease areas. And as part of those leases we have several engagement activities that are all listed here but I wanted to highlight that we have fisheries communications plans in place and so is required in the lease. The S C must provide the fisheries communication plan to the less or in commercial fishing communities for review and comment, and then host a meeting with a lesser and interested fishing communities to discuss those plans. So that's one piece of fisheries engagement that I wanted to highlight. And that will be applied for all the leases but right now, California so far the salon on the west coast. Next, I wanted to highlight that bone published a call for information and nominations in 2022 to assess commercial interest in and obtain public input on potential wind energy leasing activities and federal waters off of Oregon. This slide is meant to show overall that there are multiple opportunities for public input throughout the bone offshore wind authorization process and so this slide shows that specifically for Oregon, but again it's meant to highlight that there are opportunities for all of our processes. And we're earlier in the process for Oregon than in California. But I wanted to highlight that is as Brian mentioned for Oregon we've been working with and costs so with Noah on on identifying future wind energy areas and so to do this we've been incorporating the best available science and modeling. And also working with Noah or not the National Marine Fisheries Service and organs department of Fish and Wildlife to apply the best data and use the best data for these modeling exercises. And we have a commitment to provide draft to be as for public comment prior to completion of area identification in Oregon. And now, thinking more broadly about how in the Pacific region, how does bone engage with our fisheries constituents. And so this slide shows a number of ways that we do that. And so we have tribal consultations, data gathering and stakeholder engagement plans in collaboration with our state for partners prior to the calls and reports on the results of the engagement, publicly a date available data and articles posting updates on our own website notices a key points in the leasing process, task force meetings other public meetings, focus groups and then finally coordination with the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and also with their ad hoc marine planning committee. So, these are just some of the many ways that we engage with our fisheries constituents. We. So this is that the how and then here's the who so who are some of the groups that we've been consulting with and so these are some examples we've we've had meetings with commercial fish fishermen. We've had meetings with the Pacific Fisheries Management Council with recreational fisheries and others. And so I just wanted to give you an idea of, of these different groups we've spoken with. And there are several reports that highlight what we've learned from these engagement opportunities in both California and Oregon, and those will be, they are available and the one for Oregon will be. There's an addendum for California that will be available soon and so I can provide links to those if anyone's interested. And then finally, you know what is it that we've actually heard and so these bullets here are examples that we've, we've highlighted in some of our reports. I want to emphasize that these aren't. This isn't an extensive listener exhausted list, but it was, these are some of the common themes that we've heard so in both California and Oregon, there's broad interest in understanding the economic impacts and opportunities that will be impacted by potentially impacted by development of offshore winds. Interest in understanding the potential socioeconomic impacts to fishing activities and long term impacts on livelihoods and communities of fishermen concern about potential impacts in the long term concern about bones, communication and engagement and suggestions and how we can improve our thoughts about data or potentially missing data or an accurate data and how we can fill those gaps. I'm concerned about accountability and finally thoughts about how we can make sure that groups follow through or people follow through with the community benefit agreements. So how is bone addressing these concerns. Well, as I mentioned before, we are working with our state partners and other partners to compile the best, the best available data to put into our end cost models. And we have been working with the State Department of Wildlife and also know as well as the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission on that. And finally, nationally bone was working on developing fisheries fisheries mitigation plan. We're requiring fisheries communication plans and the leases. And then finally, both in the Pacific region and, and nationally we're funding studies on economic looking at economic import impacts. And so I've listed two of those studies here but there are a number of others and again I'm always happy to provide more information on those. So, if you have any questions now or later. I'm always happy to answer them and thank you for your time. Any quick questions from the committee for ingrid right now. Yes, Dan. How far along are your fisheries mitigation plans. One question. Second question. Would it be possible just to send us everything you got so far on how far your studies have gone so we have an idea of where you stand. Sure. Yeah, so for your first question I think that's, that's more than a national level the fisheries mitigation plan so I might kick it to one of the other people I had quarters to answer that one for you but and then I'm happy to provide links I'll compile something and send it to Caroline with the links and have her shared out to the committee. So thank you. Great, thank you. Steve. I'll just do it out the camera. So, yes. Steve Jonah with the micah tribe. The civic council has sent you a number of recommendations most recently recommendation recommendations for improving the spatial suitability suitability modeling. Have you received that and are you going to respond to that to the council. I've received those. Thank you. Yes, we've received several letters and we have been in touch with, you know, with some of the staff at the council and so on. So in time we will will respond but we have received them we haven't touched with with the staff so thank you. And then also do you have any idea when you'll announce the WEAs for the call areas in Oregon. I don't have specific dates for that. We are working on it and trying to meet all of our obligations leading up to that so I can't give you a specific date right now. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you, Ingrid. Now we'll move on to Marianna steam to represent the Gulf of Mexico region, regional office. Thank you. Can everyone hear me. Yes, we can hear you in the room. Excellent. Good afternoon. My name is Marianna steam and I am a marine biologist and the essential fish habitat and fisheries lead within the Gulf of Mexico regional offices office of environment. So, but the focus of my presentation today is going to be on our offshore wind related fisheries related outreach and engagement efforts because we are very early in the process. And please. So considering that offshore, the offshore wind program here in the Gulf of Mexico only kicked off approximately two years ago in early 2021. I thought it would be helpful to begin this presentation with a brief overview of the history of our fisheries outreach and engagement efforts in support of our region's offshore wind program. This will provide some context as to where we are now and how we got here. I'll then follow with what fisheries outreach related efforts we are currently engaged in and what we have planned for the future. Next slide please. Before the initial request for information was published in the federal register in June of 2021 to gauge if competitive interest for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico existed. BOEMS Gulf of Mexico office began its fisheries outreach efforts by reaching out to and presenting to regional fisheries management entities such as the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council, the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission, and various state sponsored fisheries task forces to present on the potential for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico. After the request for information was published in the public comment period open the Gulf of Mexico office created a fisheries outreach strategy. We began developing an outreach database with fisheries contacts and reaching out to individual fisheries stakeholders, including Fisherman associations via email. We felt it was important to write individual emails to various points of contact explaining that the Gulf of Mexico office was in the early stages of offshore wind development. That we were reaching out to fisheries stakeholders that could potentially have space use conflicts, and that our goal was to communicate early and often so concerns could be identified and possible solutions discussed. We were also asked if there was interest in having a bone present on the emerging Gulf of Mexico offshore wind program at future fisheries association meetings, but because of COVID not a lot of organizations were holding in person meetings at the time. So in addition to presenting at in person meetings we organize small virtual meetings with points of contact representing the various fishing sectors who are interested in participating in the offshore wind development process. So during this time booms Gulf of Mexico office was in discussion with Noah's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Sciences which I'll refer to as and cost moving forward. Regarding the potential for a collaborative spatial modeling partnership to site when energy areas and lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico. You know as and cost had used this model lean previously to site aquaculture areas of opportunity in the Gulf of Mexico. So there was already some buying from the fishing industry on that process. So we did eventually move forward with a collaboration. Next slide please. But January of 2022 boom and Noah's and cost began having weekly meetings to develop the spatial suitability model. Also in January of 2022, our office decided to host a virtual offshore fisheries summit in which for fishing sector specific outreach meetings were held. So in each meeting for presentations were given and then included the following topics offshore when leasing process the NEPA process, the spatial suitability modeling collaboration and kind of an overview of how the model worked, and frequently asked questions that fishermen often have about offshore wind questions and answers in that presentation range from technical questions about wind farms such as the typical spacing between turbines to providing answers to common questions related to environmental impacts. So when they asked questions from this presentation were also used to create fisheries frequently asked question handouts that are available on bones, Gulf of Mexico activities webpage at the link shown on this slide. Each of the four sessions ended with a public comment period where concerns could be voiced and questions asked. Overall the fisheries summit was a great opportunity for the fishing industry to learn more about our regions offshore wind program and to ask questions and voice concerns. The fishing team, often with staff from Noah's and costs held several small meetings with points of contact from different fishing sectors that had potential space use conflicts with offshore wind to discuss the fishing effort data used in in the spatial suitability model, and their thoughts on what data should be used, including how those data were being incorporated and considered in the model. Next slide please. For example, meetings with representatives from the commercial shrimp industry involved discussion surrounding what years of data to use considering changes and how that effort data has been collected over time. Their thoughts on the effort data in terms of teasing out if a vessel was actually trolling versus in transit, their thoughts on what levels of fishing effort would be considered high moderately high moderate and so on. In another example we wanted to know if the setback distances we had for the hard bottom habitat data that we had in the model were appropriate for safe fishing operations so we set up a meeting with points of contact from the commercial reef fish industry. And during that meeting we asked how they fished over hard bottoms you know do they drift fish do they anchor. And then we asked them what they thought an appropriate setback distance for that specific habitat layer should be to allow for safe fishing operations. So, you know, these meetings really allowed for a lot of transparency in the process, and they were important for creating by and for this citing process and they allowed fishery stakeholders to be actively involved in the process and have their voices heard. As an example of the success of such a meeting all paraphrase an email that our office received from a point of contact representing the commercial shrimp industry shortly after the wind energy areas were modeled. And I want to say, thank you to the entire New Orleans bone team for what was a very rewarding experience for us with a very positive win win result. I hope your approach of collaboration with Noah's and costs in our industry will serve as a model for the offshore wind nationwide. Next slide please. Moving on to this year bones Gulf of Mexico office has continued and will continue to present on the status of offshore wind developments at regional fishery management entity meetings. February 24 bone published a proposed sale notice for its first offshore wind lease sale and the Gulf of Mexico to occur later this year. In the PSN for the upcoming lease sale bone announced it will use a multiple factor bidding system. The system will allow bidders the opportunity to utilize non monetary factors in the form of bidding credits. Boom is proposing to grant bidding credits to bidders that commit to at least one of two options. And one of the options is a commitment to establishing and contributing to a fisheries compensatory mitigation fund, or contribute to an existing fund to mitigate potential negative impacts to commercial and recreational fisheries caused by offshore wind development. This bidding credit would allow a bidder to receive a 10% of its cash bid in exchange for such a commitment. And on March 7 of this year, we were invited to attend and give presentations at a Fisherman Association sponsored offshore wind fisheries summit held in Galveston, Texas. Because to the potential lease areas that will be included in our upcoming lease sale are located off the coast of Galveston, the commercial and recreational fishing communities in Texas decided that they wanted to host a summit in which they invited speakers from phone Department of Energy and private industry. Boom staff that attended gave presentations on the status of our offshore wind program, and we gave an updated presentation on fisheries related frequently asked questions. Presentations all attendees participated in small roundtable discussions to discuss fishery stakeholder concerns, potential solutions and research and monitoring needs. The information gleaned from the roundtable discussions will be used by the sponsoring fishermen's organizations to inform their public comment letters in response to the proposed sale notice. In addition, boom staff that attended are using that information received from those discussions to draft recommendations to management regarding mechanisms for continued and meaningful participation of fisheries stakeholders throughout the region's offshore wind development process, as well as providing a list of the primary concerns and research and monitoring priorities identified by participants. Our next steps are to continue engaging with fisheries stakeholders through outreach presentations and workshops, the development of updated fisheries frequently asked questions handouts, continue to work with Noah's and cost to de-conflict export cable routes, planning for the submission of environmental study proposals to Bomes environmental studies program based on recommendations we've received from fisheries stakeholders, responding to public comments and response to the public sale notice and lastly holding the Gulf of Mexico's very first offshore wind lease sale. And with that I'll take any questions if we have time. Thank you. Are there any immediate quick questions from the committee. A question, could you just elaborate a little bit on the bidding credits and how exactly that works and what kind of incentives that does when it comes time to building out. Honestly, that is a that's a little bit out of my wheelhouse it's all draft right now is draft and the public sale notice so and I work in I'm a central fish habitat biologist and so that would be better suited for someone who's in our emerging programs who handles offshore wind program. So unfortunately I don't have a good answer for that question. But I can get you an answer for that question. I might be able to jump in. Again, I'm not the economist either but so at the, at the auction, you can get a credit up to I think Marianna said 10 in the Gulf of Mexico I think it was set at like 10%. It's 10% it can be it can be increased if it if you also choose the other option which is to support I think local. Then it's like up to 20 or something. But anyway, it's up to 25%. I think is. Thank you. That's for the non cash bids. Yeah, and the renewable energy modernization will and I think the comment period was extended to May 1. Yeah, so they so the modernization will actually upped it to 25 but but the answer question is 10% at the auction, you know can be used in non monetary and that's the establishment of this mitigation fund, which would be done at some, you know, future point after the lease would be the lease would be issued. And again, we've, I'm involved with this only peripherally and that how it intersects with the fisheries mitigation guidance, and you know some of the work we've been doing there, and how that's kind of evolved over time where you know we have on the the Pacific coast. I think this might have been mentioned there's a community benefits agreement that was part of that auction. And for the golf lease sale it went one step further to actually be a mitigation fund that could be established as a non non monetary market. So, we could probably have a whole session on that if that's if you want to talk about fishery you have a day or an after session on you know fisheries mitigation specifically, we can probably get into that more detail but there's a lot of different efforts on that occurring. And when you say mitigation fund, at least in South Florida that doesn't mean money goes to fishermen or anything it means that you work on the environment or the habitat. Is that the same here. No, it could the way that again in the wholesale notice for the Gulf of Mexico. I think the prioritization is that it goes for direct compensation first. And if you know that's for economic loss so inability to but if if that if the amount in the fund. If there's so many leftover basically after direct compensation then it could be used for other types of things like you know habitat improvement or something like that. I think your direct compensation answered my question. That's where my concerns are. One follow on from the chat of the Q&A online was, will this also go to benefit recreational fisheries and anglers or is it just designed for commercial fishing industry. Speaking specifically to the proposal notice in the Gulf of Mexico, Marianna correct my wrong but I think it was for higher recreational fisheries and commercial fisheries so those two, not not private recreational thank you. Any other quick questions or will shift go on to our last region. Okay. Eric Taylor will present from the Alaska regional office. Thank you. Let's see. All right. Everyone see my screen okay. We are seeing it not in presenter mode. Now it's good. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Eric Taylor I'm a supervisory environmental protection specialist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management with the Alaska region. It's my pleasure to speak with the National Academy of Sciences this afternoon. And I give a quick introduction to Alaska in terms of the outer continental shelf planning areas that we have we have 15 planning areas around the state of Alaska to have active leases in them. So you can see my cursor or not but at the top is the Beaufort Sea planning area and there are two active projects there, the British Petroleum and now Hillcore North Star project was went on production in 2001, and the other project that's on hold is the Hillcore Liberty project it's been a long time running its first development and production plan was in 1998 there's actually been three development and production plans most recently, one being submitted in 2018 but now is on hold due to a circuit court decision that occurred in 2020. And then there are six active lease areas in the Beaufort Sea planning area, then move down to the other planning area out of the 15 that has active leases. It's in the Cook Inlet in South Central Alaska. There are 15 active leases there 14 were awarded in 2017 and the most recent in 2022. The three regions that you heard from the Atlantic Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. We do not have offshore wind facilities in the Alaska region at this time and there are no current plans at the present time. One important aspect I want to make is that we are conducting a feasibility study that's currently underway, not only to look at wind but also to look at wave and tidal energy potential in Alaska. That study is starting to be wrapped up and we're, we will expect to get the results from from that study in the next year. FOMA is also heavily or actively engaged in the state of Alaska's title energy working group so title energy is probably the the greatest potential for renewable energy in Alaska. This figure is from the National Renewable Energy Lab of Colorado, and it will give an illustration of the renewable energy potential not only for offshore wind but for also wave and tidal. In total there's 3800 gigawatts and if you're like me had to look up a gigawatt and actually is one billion watts each one. And you see that wind depicted there in green by far has the greatest potential in Alaska no surprise, particularly on the Aleutian Islands off of St. Matthew Island. One of the three offshore wind wave and title title probably has the greatest potential cook inlet has a significant tide there near Anchorage. And right now that is likely the most probable renewable energy source that we will have in Alaska. Like other regions cost feasibility engineering challenges are always have to be considered in Alaska the biggest challenge is proximity to major metropolitan areas those being Anchorage and Fairbanks are the two most so those the distances are probably one of the primary limiting factors that is probably causing the slow start in renewable energy in Alaska. Let's move on to stipulations you've had some great talks from the other three regions in terms of how they are operating to protect fisheries. In Alaska, we have been putting in stipulations through 2016 in our these sales and protect fisheries operators. First have to conduct biological surveys to determine species abundance and distribution. Secondly, we require operators to coordinate with affected fishing communities. It's extremely important in Alaska, and it's actually pivotal for operators to work with subsistence villages, native Alaskan peoples and tribes, as well as port authorities. Finally operators are to prevent or minimize conflicts with fishing communities and gear. A couple of examples of outreach and studies and mitigation. So we conducted outreach of feasibility of renewable energy in the Alaska outer Connelly show rural Alaskans were concerned about the scale cost benefits and the potential effects of renewable energy on commercial and subsistence fisheries. Boma is taking a very proactive approach working with Alaska native peoples and rural Alaskans is extremely important. And Boma is taking a proactive approach to ensure meaningful engagement as renewable energy is considered in the future. An example of a study is that we mapped the cook in the drift gill net areas. We did that by interviewing and surveying the commercial fishing industry. And also using remote sensing so we surveyed the commercial fishing industry and their organizations on what were the important fishing areas. And that led to mitigation measures to guide both the site selection and the timing for exploration activities in the cook in the area. An example of mitigation to protect the drift gill net fishery. We required on lease seismic survey operators, one their prohibited north of anchor point and cook inlet from mid June to mid August which is the primarily gill net fishery for salmon in that area. Also the survey the seismic survey operators were required to notify the United Cook inlet drift associations of any structures. So to avoid conflicts with the with the fishery. So some recommendations for the standing committee to consider relative to effective and outreach. First include social scientists to conduct the outreach and facilitate discussion among the diverse stakeholders social scientists have specific skills. And in terms of surveying questioning and indeed getting diverse opinions and sometimes people hold back from opinions, providing their perspectives but one recommendation is to include those specialists. Secondly, engage community based organizations within the proposed area, whether it's local fishing groups commercial fishing groups. Municipality governments. It's very important we have found to include these organizations outreach and meaningful engagement outreach is often used. I can't emphasize enough that it has to be meaningful. And in order to be meaningful. It has to be both early and often. And meetings like this while they seem to be the norm of the day. I don't think there's any substitute for sitting down over a pot of coffee in a room, and, and getting that dialogue started. So we have to provide a forum for stakeholders to discuss alternatives. Again, in our work, going to the villages and sitting down like as illustrated here on the left hand picture. There's just no substitute for that. I think people get more comfortable. You can exchange how the weather is. And I think you, you build that trust, which is absolutely essential. And to move forward with. There was a question I think about what is success. And I think for success to occur one has to feel that their perspectives and opinions are listened to and considered, and that there's trust among all alternatives and stakeholders. Thank you. Be happy to address questions or wait for the question session at the end. Hey, no. All right. Okay. Thanks, Eric. I'm Steve Jonah with the Macaw tribe in Washington. You're going back to slides. You can bring those back on the looking at. Okay, I got something blocking me. Is that the various species and so on? Is that, is that it? Yes. Okay. Is that specific to Alaska? Or is that some nationwide policy of bold? Steve, that's a good question. My guess is that it is bone nationally. I know we have taken it here in the region, but typically in the, in the process in the National Environmental Policy Act process, you know, understanding species distributions abundance trans migrations. That's pivotal to understanding the potential effects of a proposed development. So that sort of data collection is nationwide. Does that answer your question or Well, I guess it looked like it was more comprehensive than what we've seen. I know you have your suitability model. But I just because when I've asked the question about the suitability modeling, things like larval distribution, ground fish distribution of ground fish larvae. There wasn't an answer for it. I mean, that's just one example. So, I guess I would like to follow up on that as if it's, it seems like it's a little more comprehensive in Alaska from what I've seen on the Pacific coast. This is a good point. I, you know, questions and concerns like natural resources and fish. In this case, have to be brought up early so the studies are started early to ensure you just don't you're coming at the ninth inning to out fishing fisheries in Alaska. So, I guess I would advise all of you around the table is extremely important from a commercial standpoint, but also from a subsistence standpoint people's life styles, traditional cultural and nutritional dependency on fisheries is critical. So, boom in Alaska has has made a significant substantive effort to engage rural Alaska as well as a commercial fishing industry in terms of potential projects. So I just want to say that we'll move smoothly right into the official time for committee question and answer. So this is an introduction or trying to get the committee to chime in. And also one note for participants we are going to start a poll on the zoom just to get a sense of where what everyone's background what industry sector you're coming from and what region of the country so that something will be launching shortly. If you could participate we would greatly appreciate just to get a better sense of the online participants for this meeting. I just have one quick question. So, there's a lot of tremendous amount of effort being done in all the different regions right now. And there's a lot of data being generated that could go and be used beyond just the wind farm Is there any effort coordinated effort to create data products that could be used in the future from all these efforts that these, you know, that there's something lasting on the data side and the science and the combination of the data sets that you're putting together to do all this. Thanks. It's a, it's a great question. There's a lot of efforts. Well first, first of all a lot of the data that's collected is included in the construction operations plan and that's why the data is collected is to support that construction operations plan, but then in addition to that there's also some pre construction surveys that are done after the cops submitted, but before construction starts and then post construction, you know surveys that are done afterwards as well. You know, there's reporting requirements associated with those, but I think there's a lot of discussion about, well not just, you know, the paper report product, but how do we, you know, get that information, you know, you know, more timely than waiting for a report, and then in addition to that, you know, what standard, you know, standard should be that information should be reported so it could be aggregated across projects. And that's a very active discussion that's, that's going on right now. You know with Bohem and just even across developers and in some of these on the Atlantic, some of these entities like the regional wildlife science consortium and the responsible offshore science alliance. And you know, those are, those are some entities that have kind of stepped up to try to coordinate that that effort so that yeah you can get to a point at some point in the future where it's fairly easy to aggregate some standard data that's collected across the different projects but that's a work in progress. So, Brian, Brian, would you just elaborate on that answer a little bit more about some of the proprietary nature of the data that has to be submitted to bone, and why I think a lot of the public may not be aware of the reasons why confidential. Yeah, so I mean, on the geophysical data side we do get terabytes of data submitted as part of the construction operations plan, but a lot of that it's extremely expensive to collect. And, you know, they're, you know, potentially someone else could come in and use that for some other for some other projects so a lot of that data is considered, you know, confidential business data. That is, that is retained by boom and not, you know, published on our on our website. We do have both in the renewable energy program and in the oil and gas program. There are retention policies on when that data becomes available. And matter of fact, there's some great examples in the Gulf of Mexico on the oil and gas side where they've really published some really interesting maps of the sea floor, aggregating all this data over over years, but that's a very mature program that we're not at that point yet in the renewable energy side but so we do have some some standards in our regulations about when all that data can be can be released, at least on the geophysical Now, a lot of the biological data, there doesn't seem to be as much, you know, concern about releasing the biological data and that's where I think a lot of the, the work is being done currently but I think, again, there's just the concern like the, you know, of getting all those pieces together getting the project built and then focus on, you know, how to push out that that data to everyone. Active, active area of collaboration. Thanks. Thank you. So, I think Jim had asked the question about whether or not we're building enough, you know, on time. A little while back, and there have been, you know, there have been a number of studies, including the mass decarbonization study, Brattle group that are saying that like in New England alone we need 50 gigawatts of offshore wind and 50 gigawatts of solar to meet the net zero by 2050 goal. We just saw a presentation from some companies in the Netherlands talking about how those countries around the North Sea have set a goal for 130 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2027, which is larger than the US goal. And I guess the reason that I bring that statement to the front is that when we think about kind of trying to build out offshore wind at the pace and scale that we need to. We're not going fast enough, we're not deploying it fast enough to meet the new IPCC goals. We are not going to have in hand, the data, all of the information that we need to understand impact or to understand cumulative impact. As we build, we're going to like, we have to fly the plane while we're building the plane, essentially. So that creates for me, and I think for organizations like like the Nature Conservancy. A lot of questions about how we're, how we're rolling it out, how we're thinking about basin scale, seascape scale impact, which is number one and how we do that as the environment is literally changing because of climate change so we're trying to understand the data, but also how we adaptively manage and I think, and learn, you know, as we go so how we share data, how we learn from that how we incentivize pilot and demonstration work around these levels, either within lease areas or outside of them. And some of the some of the comments that have been made, or information exchanged about. I'm trying to sort through that there are, there are policies, there are policy decisions that bone makes about how it engages, and then there are regulatory and legal constraints. So it's really helpful for this committee to understand where we, where is bone actually constrained by the law versus what is a policy decision, and what are the mechanisms like what are the preferred mechanisms. Looking at rule changes. Are we looking at statutory changes. Are we looking at different types of mechanisms like the auction process or collaboration with states in some way or the regional wildlife science collaborative and funding using, you know, lease sale money to fund these broader kind of scientific efforts, because I don't really have a very good sense of where the intervention points are in the process to provide advice that would be actually implementable. And I think that would be something I'm not saying you answer that right here now, because it's a big question. Okay. And I don't expect anybody to any one person or one agency. I think that's unfair to say has the answer there, but I think that is like what we need to start talking about because people want to contribute but we're not quite sure how to provide advice in a way that can actually be implemented, and get us to some of these endpoints that I think we all want to get to. Thanks very much. So my comment kind of follows on Trisha's, but segue slightly differently. So this is sort of in the in the vein of doing things in parallel when you don't necessarily have all the information. So one of the things from my work in Alaska that I'm familiar with is there, there was a comprehensive economic fund that was just that was established called in response to the dinkum sands. The Arctic oil and gas leasing it was an environmental impact fund that was based on a pretty comprehensive economic assessment of impact of oil and gas in the Arctic. And I'm curious to know if there's, you know, sort of what in parallel work is being done to do an economic impact regionally and comprehensively on the impact of oil and gas on the environment much like the one that was done in the dinkum sands and Eric may be better able to address this. And then, and then, you know, sort of what tools may be available in order to make funds like that available moving forward in the future to help mitigate effects. Janet I'll take a stab at your question. I'm not the best person, but I promise you will get an answer to you. So, BOM has been involved with looking at the economics of oil and gas and its effect on communities. We also are looking at a current state right now in the Kenai Peninsula, in terms of potential development there and impacts with that tourism, which of course is extremely important in the Kenai Peninsula. So what I'll do is I'll reach back to my colleagues here and and provide an answer whether what studies have been done, and then what studies could be currently underway. Okay, thanks Eric I just I just want to make sure that I was clear with my question I'm using the oil and gas restoration find as an example for what could potentially be done with respect to offshore wind I'm not I'm not inquiring about oil and gas directly. So you're you're interested to see whether there are any plans in terms of doing that economic analysis relative to wind is that right. Correct in the way that it was done for example with income sands. All right, all right. Thanks. So well, Bill we see your hand and we'll get to you in a second run when you. My question. I guess to each region but maybe starting with the Northeast is the issue of connecting up to the grid. Who's, who's dealing with that, and how are those problems going to be resolved because we already have companies running cables and and a lot of public response to that. And I have no idea the status of the modifications that have to be made to the grid to accommodate 30 gigawatts. There's no renewable energy lab is working on a report, but I don't know when that's due out. So I was just curious what is the current status in each area. Are there similar grid problems in the other regions that we have in the Northeast. Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a great question. This isn't there, you know, closer you get to shore the more jurisdictions, you're, you're getting into so. Obviously, you know, obviously we, you know, we start getting sure it starts getting talking to interest in our connection, you know, you're getting into like FERC, you know, on record, bombs. Primary role is diminished a little bit because we are OCS where the outer continental shelf. So we serve as, as a coordinator, and an understanding what the constraints are, especially when we're doing our environmental analysis on you know where the possible interconnections might be. But, but I, and we have a transmission group that's really, you know, working across the government to try to, you know, coordinate that. But, but as a, it is a complicated process and you know, individually, talk about the Northeast you got the pickup the ISO stand for but you have the regional grid operator to coordinate with as well so the answer is that it's a complicated situation with a lot of different communities, including down to the local municipalities as to, you know, where those cables go what substations are built where and and so forth to handle it so I know it's not probably a great question. Other say it's complicated. Or a great answer. Others say it's complicated. I mean, I would like to chime in on that and just say that we are in the very early stages of working with Noah's and cost to to site potential export cable corridors and that would involve reaching out to the various states where those connection points would be. And, and, and then I think Department of Energy kind of takes over once you get on lands here I think they kind of help out with that process a little bit. As far as citing goes. And, but again very early in the process but we're trying to kind of get ahead of that issue. Bill, you want to ask your question or comment. Yeah, just give me a second. I actually I had an observation I thought might be helpful from the earlier question which, which was regenerating all this information and how is it going to be coordinated or used and one fundamental thing that I think would be helpful for the committee to know is that we have an initiative it's it's still in its early stages that we call status of the outer continental shelf its acronym is socks. But the, it was really prompted by the realization that we, that we have a certain information base that we, that we, that, you know, that we serve redo, typically, every time there's a new e is some new document you go back, you go into putting the information together and put it into that document and the thought was that the initial thought here was was that it would be good to have a thoughtful comprehensive database with which whose scope fundamentally is all of the dimensions of the environment under oxalate or statute, the marine, the marine the coastal and human environment so it would include economic information and public fisheries information. And we've, we've launched an effort to put that together we actually have an internal website that we're helping with it. And, and, and what, and, and we obviously will do that with with many partners are, you know, our science program with the environmental research we do we we put all of our publications and something called aspects. But I mean, ultimately, we'd want to make sure all of that is available in socks and then all of the important assessment documents and then we have a study underway now on ecosystem based management. You know, a big part of which is to, you know, see if we can have a good model for that could be applied to the information in in socks to sort of facilitate decision making, you know, including impacts on fisheries. So, so I just, I just want folks to know where we haven't, you know, ignored the importance of, of trying to bring all this together and socks socks is really our unifying initiative right now. All right. First, thank you all for these presentations they were really helpful and appreciate your effort putting them together. A couple of the presentations mentioned something about spatial suitability modeling and then the data sets that come into it. And so I was curious about the process of evaluating those data sets I think one even maybe mentioned that they were the best scientific information available. And how, how you come to that determination. And then the overall data sets and the modeling. Is there any external scientific review or independent scientific review that occurs at those various stages. Yeah, I think that was definitely in our presentation and so we are GIS people and worked with, like I said the National Marine Fisheries Service and their scientists to, to, you know, basically decide which data to use and then also with the Pacific States organization to so there's, like, there are whole presentations on how the data was compiled and processed and analyzed and so it's kind of more than I can dive into here but those and then the organs, the state they also there's the state with us so, you know, so there were extensive processes and working with those organizations to discuss and determine which data to use and then it's an ongoing process I mean this is something that's ongoing, you can always be improved. We also did a presentation with the with nymphs to the Pacific, the PFMC the Pacific Fisheries Management Council so there have been lots of efforts to make sure we were using the, you know, the right data in the best way, but it is an ongoing conversation we're always open to input. Yeah, and I'll just chime in that it was a very collaborative process, I mean, depending on the data that was included there's a lot of data I want to say ours had 58 or 54, you know different data sets and, you know, ranging from, you know, military, you know, data layers and use in the ocean space to, you know, fisheries effort data and that's, you know, coordinating and working with nymphs and their experts and Fish and Wildlife Service was very involved in helping to provide data. So it wasn't done in a vacuum. I don't want to add repeat too much what it was already said but so yeah specific to the in costs modeling process. You know that is an iterative process right so you know we look at what are the best available information is incorporate that but then go back out to the public and say you know this is what the results are is there anything else, but I think that we should do some in costs and whether or not the model itself was peer reviewed a part of some kind of know a peer review process, I think the model itself was but not at every iteration we don't read redo it. So I asked for an independent peer review at every model iteration or for every project area. But I really want to, you know, emphasize like the call for information and nominations that call is also asking the public. If you have information on this area, submitted to us so we can consider it in our area identification process and then the in cost results on top of that existing regulatory process that we already have and Karen. Yeah, I was just going to actually this really ties to another question, a question you had earlier Steve to about how we incorporate input in one of the things we're doing especially we started this with the Gulf of Maine I don't say we started it but we really started to build on it is we had very early before we've the call for information has gone out this week, but there were several pre meetings and workshops and public information sessions, and meetings with specific community interests tribal tribal nations and others where we talked about how we incorporate that they're their information. There's there's a bit of what's the data that goes into that and how do we bring in, not just scientific knowledge but how we bring in indigenous knowledge how we bring in the knowledge and experience of fisherman but also then how do we I think the challenges of the models can tell you certain things but then how do you evaluate that and then how do you wait certain things I think it would definitely be worth having and cost in to talk about that. But also I think how we're incorporate trying to incorporate that and that's truly something we're trying to work into takes a lot more time. As somebody mentioned earlier, got to do it face to face a lot of times and bring the groups together but we're finding it has a bringing a lot of value into how we're making our decisions, and we're trying to incorporate it very early on especially in this work in the Gulf of Maine. And just to interject out sort of on top of all that there. There's long been one big guidance on peer review for federal agencies and and boom, and here's to that. And we, and it requires judgments about whether assessments are highly influential influential or are not in those categories. And the one that we've judged on air quality that is to be highly influential we went to the National Academy for a consensus report of peer review report. And we have a fairly detailed I won't, I won't go through it now process for making sure that we have external review and notice of that and so forth and it's it's it's been an issue that's been a great concern for the COSA standing committee and, and, you know, we'd be happy to put together an explanation of that and address that issue with you going forward. Yeah, all of these questions and comments have kind of. I guess I might my question is perhaps somewhat been addressed but not totally and I guess. I'm wondering, in terms of all of the data that's coming together. Is there an overarching like source repository for all this data, like these data like so when you like the marine disaster for example exists and seems like that has some data and they're talking about socks and creating this new thing specifically for the off for the continental shelf. It feels like I, and maybe I'm not maybe I'm missing the forest for the trees a little bit here but it seems like there's not one location for all of this information that then I understand that there are bits and pieces that you know kind of can't be put in there like when you think about the Gulf of Mexico and talking with shrimp trawlers about where they're going you know there's, there's, there's pieces that are always going to be local specific but like, I don't know for example the, you know, where seagrass exists, you know, kelp forest things like that where you know there's all of these different pieces and I know Noah has for example, tons of these various repositories and they exist across all kinds of different entities and so I guess I'm just curious about that in large part because one of the. One of the pieces of feedback I've heard particularly for the West Coast process has been that there's been a need for a lot of analysis and a lot of analysis has been funded to happen but because the process is moving so quickly. There's not been enough time to assemble all of the necessary data layers in order to do the analysis before things are like often running and so basically it's almost like. You know, even even a, you know, a really basic piece of that can be can be missing and so, as I've been thinking about this and you know kind of where our recommendations might come in in that. Part of what I've been thinking about is you know how to improve that process going forward for some of the other regions that are quite a bit further behind. So that's kind of where my question is is stemming from in particular. I can lead off a response and I think you touched upon it when you said it depends it really depends on what data you're talking about what data set you're talking about a bill or Rodney is going to be talking about I think Rodney clock will be talking about the environmental studies program tomorrow. But you know so yeah federally funded stuff it's very clear you know we have processes for front federally funded work. You know to get that out push it out as soon as the results come in we, you know use different data portals including the disaster regional data portals that have been stood up I know on the Atlantic and, and I think the west coast as well. But then it gets complicated when you start getting into, you know, developer, you know studies and where are those ultimately end up and how they're aggregated. You know right now, we have all the construction operations plans and lots of appendices on our website for each individual project. You know, is that, you know, the best, you know repository in the end I know we've been in, you know, touch with the National Centers for environmental information and CI at NOAA on potentially housing some other types of raw data that might be associated with some of these projects but again that's part of that larger conversation so it really does depend on, you know, exactly what data you're talking about as to what the time retention will be on, you know whether it's a paper report or if it's the raw data and how soon that becomes available. Yeah, and just actually let me just add, I really appreciate the question that you're asking and, you know, it's, I'm sure frustrating to the public in many ways how far does it get hold of everything that's relevant. But again, we are, we are working hard to try to address that. The socks and this, I mean it's a good example where if it's successful we'll be able to a much better simpler way to find and we haven't, we haven't invested anything yet in the, you know, the new Bing chat GPT and so forth but, but we're cognizant that there's, you know, that if we can put all this together, life could be much easier for people that want to get answers. And I did know just today that for the first time that using Bing we could, and you can get some specific answers out of our system which is done because of government requirements, difficult, you know, more difficult to get information from. So, it's a great question we are working on it and we could definitely talk more about it going forward. I just want to sort of follow up a little bit. I mean it seems like this question is at the heart of how you do cumulative impact analysis, I mean you're going to need this data from the individual projects in the central place where you then can do the the science to understand the cumulative impacts. So it doesn't, it's hard for me to disentangle those two things. And I haven't heard you guys think talk about it in that context you know to do these kinds that kind of science. You're going to have to be sharing this this data is going to have to be shared and in a format that could be utilized to do that not in, you know, appendices of PDFs. So maybe that's what socks is all about and maybe that's something we could elaborate or have a further discussion at another meeting. But those two things seem very related to me. I think they are related. And I think it's a great issue for discussion with this committee. And it's one we've been having in the cost of committee. I'd be happy to help them, you know, organists are set to do that. Ingrid, did you want to comment on that? I did I just want to jump in and say that I'm in the Pacific region we do have two publicly available portals we've been using the Oregon offshore wind mapping tool, or ORO wind map and then the database in. So those are publicly available and they've been in collaboration with our own state partners. I was going to just add a bit of information and Brian or Bill, you might, you might be interesting to tell the committee and the audience just the transition that's happened just in the last few years of where we've gone from delivering PDFs to online portals to GIS based cloud systems, you know, and the evolution that is happening from industry side of how we face the challenge of getting you terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of data, you know, we regularly send hard drive upon hard drive upon hard drive to to to bone. And we've been looking at ways to streamline that data transfer that everyone can see see it all in the cloud. Yes, I mean there's a lot of again there's a lot of interesting pieces and strings and again stress really it's until you actually start getting into what data we're talking about it's really hard to grasp. You know the the totality and what it is that we're trying to accomplish but on the geophysical data side yes absolutely. You know, yeah, I think even when I started, there was still like a lot of paper submitted, and that's now really evolved to online portals and data viewers so that our federal partners can access the data live with us. So we can look at the data are, you know, together and say, Okay, yeah, this is what we're seeing here, you know, this is how we're interpreting this or we have a concern with this area and this is the layer that, you know, expresses that concern so we do have the tools are constantly you know, even if it's just on the, the, you know, cooperating agency federal side that's currently seeing it, I, you know, again, I think there will, there will be a point where that is pushed into the public domain at a later time. But as far as even as the, you know, I think what your questions were bound. You know, post construction plans. A good example is is block Island wind farm, where you know there was I think five years of studies and there were, you know, you know, reports that were part of that, you know, five years of fisheries monitoring that that went on. But then, you know, then they peer reviewed it then they actually published it at the end of the five years. Yeah, we did have to wait, you know, a while for that to be out but, you know, that's the, that's the process and, you know, even for you know, individual contractors that are doing it they do want to publish on that in the end and if you publish all your data science program has to do with this a lot of, you know, being able to publish on your own data is very important to a lot of these researchers that we partner with whether it's academia or even, you know, private industry. So there's, there's challenges to all of it. We want to get the data out. You know, as as quickly as possible recognizing, you know, there's a lot of different pieces that play on to what level of detail, what format it's published in and how to, you know, ensure that again the public is eventually seeing everything that informs our decisions but we do see it as a as a feedback loop. Every, every report we get I'm looking at it's like is this something we need to bring into the next EIS. And, you know, we do, but I know from the public side you're not necessarily always seeing that as well but it's it's an ongoing conversation. And let me just add to what the good stuff that Brian just said which is, you know, we're, we're a federal agency, we have a duty to be as public as we can be. You know, there are certain, you know, we expect them to provide very information for example but but but ultimately, you know, we desire to make the information public I think it kind of relates to what Karen Baker said early on in this meeting that there's a whole range of, of interests that are care about what we do and we want to make sure we are as open as possible. And I'm not saying socks is the solution to everything but it's we're working with no audit to but it's the basic idea is to use all these advances, you know, including the kind of mind blowing recent with AI on chat and being forced to take advantage of that and and link as well as we can and to all this information and make it open. Okay. I want to make an observation here, if I could. You know, and you've been around a long time like Captain Dan and myself, you think you've seen everything, but I honestly have never seen anything quite like this process. And, you know, as you're making your presentations. I really believe there's a disconnect between what you bone believes they're doing and what what the. The, the, the phishing interests are are are receiving and what what what they believe are happening and, you know, a good indication of that is the number of letters of Pacific Council is has sent to you, which are basically saying this is moving too fast I appreciate Sarah saying that we're talking about a very large scale and permanent to a new form of electrical energy here. And this is a massive development that will have a very severe consequences if it's not done properly. So, I really think, you know what what I saw from Alaska. You know, I can only see I wish I wish I could have seen that happening on the West Coast. And I think the outreach was not what it should have been. And so, I guess the message is, please slow down, and please do this the right way. And I believe that you will find that folks in the phishing industry and the council and the tribes and others will be willing to partner with you on this if it's true and open but again, I've never seen anything like this where just the number of letters of Pacific Council is sent. Say that this this is just not working. It's just moving too fast. And you need to kind of revisit redo. I want to speak to that for just a moment and and and I don't want to dispute it or or or I it's something we hear and and and and and we consider the time. We also hear what we heard from Trisha earlier about the rate of climate change and the need to move faster and I can tell you I've been in public meetings where two people sitting next to each other are bidding me to move faster. And then another one saying slow the pace down and I think if you get to the crux of maybe even some of our issues and maybe this isn't for this committee to look at but I think that's one of our biggest challenges is we, we, you know, why do we have an outshore wind into Shire is we do believe that there is the climate change is real, and that there are there are impacts that we need to be that we need clean energy to address. There, I'm a big, if you know my background. I love that too much but very passionate about sustainability and where you find those nexus and all of those where we can all thrive in terms of environment economic and and and society and so we're looking for those opportunities of course and we're looking at all of those interests. I think that that is though a challenge in terms of balancing also those different perspectives of how quickly we should be moving forward in this arena. And I think that that's, I'm not, I'm not making a or disputing or I'm definitely validating the comment but I think it's something that is the crux of many of the challenges we face with this is is the rate of speed that how do we address this as we move forward and how do we do what we can with certainty that we are that we are addressing all of those concerns. I think so, and it's something that that has struck me as we're talking about data, in particular, is that we're talking about it on the, so on the time horizon that we're talking about it. Is all like the data that we have in the portals the data that we're inputting into N cost is being used for wind energy area identification. It's being used to identify the lease areas and to avoid critical habitat essential to the extent we have data that helps us do that. But that data is always is not always the best. It might be old in some circumstances so they are using whatever is best available. But it's Boam that not that Boam is using what's best available, but it's not always the best data. It's not the most recent data I think the example we saw, or that is familiar to me at the Nature Conservancy is the Central Atlantic planning area where we know that we have deep sea corals but we don't have mapping to know exactly where all those deep sea corals are and in a lot of those instances, we're relying on unlike in other countries in the world, we're asking the developers to do that site characterization to provide us with data that we don't have or can't afford to get. So the question is, and we keep coming back to this but how do you use that data that you're getting after a lease area has been assigned to inform decision making to change decisions. If you have to, as you go forward, and I think that feeds back for me into this broader adaptive management question, and to a lot of the comments that we're having just about NEPA is not like really well suited as an implementing instrument to do this. So, can we be, is there flexibility, can we be creative, what are the limitations on Boam to to consider other mechanisms that allow us to get at some of the questions and concerns that people have about cumulative impact and what happens operationally after we learn, like, that this didn't work or that this is that this not just bad stuff, but that this is really great right like we're enhancing biomass and all this other stuff how do we know how do we build that into the decision making framework or the regulatory framework or don't we I don't I just don't know the answer to that question but I'm smiling as you're you're talking because you're talking my language in a lot of ways and then I think NEPA gives us a certain you know we have a requirement but but we've we've started having a number of conversations even just recently as we're talking to stakeholders about it's it's broader than the NEPA process in terms of bringing in input and bringing in and I think some of the things we're talking about especially in terms of what I was just discussing with go for Maine is that's not that that's getting even ahead of starting you know really early in terms of the net area identification of where we can imply that but I agree with nutrition I think that's a great discussion of where are where can we be more innovative where can we be adapting I think that we are it's hard when we talk about this in the aggregate as Brian said we everything we do we go how do we apply this the next place how do we apply this. What are we going to learn the ones that are that are in construction right now, and to your point, I, my biggest fear is also that there's the benefits, we're talking a lot about the risks, and I and I think that they're, I those are real and we we we don't take them lightly, but I also think that their habitat benefits and other things that we should, but we can't yet incorporate into our end to Wayne and some of these analysis. I think it's a great point about within the process itself how you can learn the future but I actually also think that there's this. Thank you. This data could be used for example, in stock assessments. The better mapping of the habitat actually could be very valuable to mitigate some of the potential, you know uncertainties in the science about how we're setting stock assessment so it's not just within the south of the wind farm. But there's all this data being generated that could help you address some of the other issues right if you could give better data to Noah to help them with their stock assessments that might go a really long way for them to understand what the impact will be. On the stocks itself, not necessarily the fishermen but the stocks itself so I think there's that's what I was also getting at like it's not just in the wind farm cycle. How to use the data you're collecting but how that could help mitigate and help the other issues that you have. There's kind of a whole strategy around that to that we're that we're working on. It's definitely an active area of conversation about how you different information streams from, you know, offshore wind could you know feed into stock assessments I think it's a lot of times it's not gathered for that specific purpose. There's just a lot of conversation of well can it and then if so how, but there's, you know, again it's just an area of active active conversation that we're having with at least I can at least speak on the Atlantic with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. That's the first line I've been speaking with her yesterday and today with some of our many members here and it's all great and good but if you can't finance it. If you can't find the money and we're trying to cut $1.5 trillion out of the budget right now it's being negotiated today. Well we need X amount of dollars to look at the wind farm we put in to see what its value was or what its harm was, but we won't give you any money to do it. If we don't build this into the leasing like on the 10% or the 25% credit you're getting and we don't charge the end users which would be, and I hate to say this but the customer, you know the people who are buying and using that energy to raise the funds that are elected officials will not do and I guarantee you they're not going to do it. They're trying to cut so innovatively we need to look as this committee. I know you guys can't do it because you work for them, but we don't. And we got to come up with a way to finance this because it's not going to come from the government. All right, and the reason I waited was I want to hear what was said here by by you guys okay. So think about that for tomorrow think about that we have to come up a way to finance this because without the money will never know what happened where we went right, or where we went wrong. We will know what went wrong. If there is a positive thing, we may or may not recognize it, or understand it. But if we have a disaster, it is going to be obvious. And that is the whole issue in cumulative impacts. And, and the cumulative impacts are the scariest thing that has anything to do with trying to solve a environmental problem of climate change and reducing co2 by installing thousands of inefficient wind turbines that when the wind stops pretty much everywhere. And so the lights go out, unless you have a backup system. And if you're going to do that, then you might as well run on the primary system and not use the wind turbines as the primary because you all you have to do is go to Australia and read what happened down there. And, and they recognize that they made a terrible mistake. Now this is all land based wind turbines, but its effect was they shut down Sydney Australia all the time when the wind fell out quickly, even though they had enough gas powered powered far plants for generating plants to carry the load, but they couldn't get it online fast enough as a wind dropped out that all of a sudden they kicked all the transformers and shut the whole city down. And we are looking at doing it wrong, and we will be able to see that clearly. Actually, I, I agree with a lot of what you just said, but unfortunately, sort of falls beyond the scope of what we are but it's really important questions to ask about wind, its reliability, how it integrates into the, the electricity grid, etc. I think critically important questions, but we are wind and fisheries. So we're stuck with conditional that we're doing wind. How can we do it in a way that benefits maybe even fisheries or at least has the lowest potential impact on them. So I just want to work. I'm going to call you a second run but we're supposed to wrap up around five just to keep us on schedule. Another question to Brian but do you have the ability to require the monitoring programs to be able to provide information for stock assessment I mean right now. It seems you let each developer set up its own system so one guy goes with a gill net. Another guy goes with a bean troll. Using tools that are currently being used for stock assessment like the Nim rap troll that a drop camera and things like that. So, the, the purpose of the monitoring programs that are part of the offshore wind is to monitor the potential impacts of that particular project. And a lot of the stock assessment type work is done at like a much different scale, then would be done to, you know, monitor that an effect of a particular project. Again, we do have a lot of conversations with the international fisheries service like well if you're going to do a beam trawl. If you could collect this this and this it could, we're not to the point they're saying it will but it maybe it could feed into a stock assessment process. So I think those, those types of conversations have occurred where it's like, well, it's not the goal of offshore wind monitoring to to do stock assessments but the data could be collected in a way that, again, could be beneficial to to NIMS for stock assessments in the future but again that that is still being worked out at me I think you're very intimately familiar with how difficult it is to get industry based data into stock assessments and that's the fishing industry itself so imagine wind development, you know, collected data entering in stock assessments there's there's challenges with that. Oh, I'll stop there. I just like the Orsted site where we have a contract we use the HabCAM and the HabCAM is a tool that's used for a scallop stock assessment, the data from the survey from the Orsted site went into the stock assessment. And it seems to me there's other tools besides the HabCAM the drop camera. I mean that's for benthic organisms, but NIMRaptor is actually, you don't have the ability to, to require the developers to do that. Right, it's up to them. I mean, certainly first and foremost it's a monitor shifts, but in reality if you're only monitoring that one wind farm with a little control area. So we're going to be able to identify, you know, a cause and effect without having the broader picture. So it's just hopefully the other regions will get learned from our mistakes in the Northeast. But the question is, can we rectify this in time. I think we generally try not to be prescriptive. We do offer guidance. And I think, you know, the NIMAP trawler or other standard standards are included in the guidance, but we were generally not prescriptive in that say you shall use this trawl because maybe there's only one vendor for that trawl and they're not able to competitively let it. Anyway, there's, or it might not be available for them to meet their needs. So there's a lot of ways that Bohm does things in that they're, we have a guidance that we have goals to meet and they get to present proposed to us how they are going to achieve that. Let me just say, I think it would be very useful to hear more from the committee though and the basic question you're raising. And, you know, our challenges are our mandate is to have mitigation measures that protect the environment, which is to find a broad land or OXLA. And, you know, we're in the middle of a lot of thinking about whether they're, you know, how could we deploy a system that would help answer bigger questions, you know, that not just limited to lease. And we're still talking about it. We don't really have anything concrete to bring up right now. But I would be very helpful to have feedback. Using up at others. You want to hold you sure. Sure. And then I'll ask if you guys have anything you'd like to sort of end with. So, rather than put you on the spot now you've got a second or two to think about it. So I Well, I'll, I'll paraphrase the expression. I'm from the tribes, and I'm here to help. So, seriously, you know, the tribes are the senior partner in fisheries and ocean management and, you know, watching this process unfold. About the urgency and the time, because things weren't done sufficiently inadequately, you've lost time. So there are a lot of questions that haven't been addressed and I'll just put one out there. We don't know what impacts could climate impacts could occur from offshore wind. You start you change the dynamic of the ocean. What's going to happen. I mean that's, it's kind of scary thought to me, as somebody who spent vast majority of their life on the ocean so Anyway, hopefully we do that here in the committee. That's a simple question. I think I think my it's we're wrapping that having this discussion I think I was, you know, appreciating the difficulty of the charge we gave you in our statement of task. It's not like we, you know, operated almost like a public a regular public meeting like I've, you know, we've had before in the range of thoughts and, you know, opinions, all which are very are completely valid and, and that's I think part of the reason why we convene this committee is like, help us form this into a direction because we are I think pulled into so many different directions over this is the priority. Let's focus on this let's focus on this and we can't do everything all at once. So if if we could get, you know, just some nods around the table around like, oh that might be a good idea that that kind of direction is extremely valuable for for us to, you know, to take forward to consider and how we're doing things so definitely appreciate the challenge of our statement of task and look forward to working with you. I can't say it much better than Brian and are any better than Brian so I won't I won't take up too much time other than to say thank you and say, you know, we're, we're having a great discussion here and, and hitting on things our role isn't really to defend all we're doing other than help explain so we can give you the information but you're hitting upon things we talk about around the table, all the time and so we're, you know, we're, this is why we came to to this this committee and why we really welcome your input as this goes forward and happy to continue to answer questions and provide whatever information we can. So I just on just follow up on that so I really appreciate it earlier how you talked about you didn't want to be prescriptive in terms of sort of trying to dictate where the committee went. But I do feel like it would be very valuable if we do hit some questions on topics that you guys have been thinking about and are you know still haven't had clarity to hear that back because that could be then you know the next meeting topic, for example, so we could be most beneficial to you so getting that feedback like when we do hit topics that you've had internal discussions. If we were involved and there could be some insight we could bring that would be also helpful, and we wouldn't view that as being prescriptive that we view that as being sort of just a partner and, and trying to be most useful for you. All right. Thank you very much. Oh, no, Carol is. Thank you. I wanted to thank all of our presenters today for joining us. It definitely was very informative and as already mentioned a lot of good dialogue going around the table. Also really want to appreciate or really want to thank the participants. I know we didn't get to all of the questions in the chat or the q amp a as a committee we will get a report out of all of the zoom questions and plan to try to address them tomorrow if we can in open session. If not, we will reach back out to participants after the meeting to address any questions that we can't get to so your questions are being seen and heard apologize we couldn't get to more questions from the online participants today. So with that, this closes our meeting unless Jimmy want the final word. Alright, thank you everybody. And we will start the open session will start at 2pm tomorrow. Thank you.