NPFMC 280 Day 1 - October 8, 2026

Good morning, everyone. We'll call this meeting to order. So welcome to the 280th meeting of the Council. As our first order of business, I'd like to ask the NEMS Regional Administrator, John Kruland, to swear in our two new appointed members, Forrest Bowers and Chad C. Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is my honor on behalf of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to administer the oath of office to our new council members. So, gentlemen, I invite you to stand and repeat after me. Maybe turn your mics on.

Raise your right hand.

Aye. And state your name. Aye. Aye. Forrest Bowers.

Aye! Chat si'. As duly appointed member of Regional Fishery Management Council? Ase duely apointid membred regional fisherry management councel? Azu dually appoinited membred regional fisshrey manejment counsel established under Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation& Mangement Act?

Established undah da Magnason Stevens—. Stephens' Fisheyry Konservation an Manajument Akt established unadha Magasin Stevins's Fishyree Conservashun n Manejmant Ak? Hereby promise to conserve— here by promised? —To preserve and manage living marine resources of United States America; thereby promis'do conser've an' manaj'e th'livin' marin'resourc'es othi Unitid Statez O'Merica); herby promising conservan'manj'e liv'in' marinen resorces OTHI Uniteed Stai'tez O'MeRika'; hebe I pramise do conserrvan mangij tho liven mreen re'sources uff Eunited Staits uf Amerika: By carrying out business of council for greatest overall benefit of nation! Carrying about thisness at Council fothe greates overal benefitha da nashon!

But caring abouthisnesse ofthe counsil fothr ouveral greeatest for greatest overall benefit of my nation—. I recognize responsibility to serve knowledgeable experienced trustee—I recognized responsible service knowledgeable experience trusty-I recognizes responsibilities served knowlegeble experiencetrusty-of-the-nation's-marine-fishery-resources—of—the nations marine fish resources—and-a-nations-marinefisheris-resource-been-careful-to-balance-competing-private-or-regional-interests—in-accord-with-all-law-and-order-in-good faith; but will always act for maximum public good—for-greatest-overall-benefit-for-my nation: Being careful balance competing private or regional interests... Being careful to balance competing private or regional interests—. Being careful to balance competing private or regional interest—and always aware and protective of the public interest in those resources—and always aware of the protect—always aware and protective of the public interest in those resource-and-always-aware-protective-of-the-public-interest-in-those-resources—I commit myself to uphold provisions standards requirements; I will do my best for safety at all times. I commit myself to uphold the provisions standards and requirements—.

I commit myself to uphold the provisions standards and requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Management Act and other applicable laws—. Of the Magus- Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and Other Applicable Law—. The Magnussen Stephens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Another Applicable Law—. And shall conduct myselves at all times according to the rules of conduct prescribed by the Secretary of Commerce; And shall I'll—conduct myself at all times according to the Rules of Conduct Prescribed By The Secretary Of Congress? This oath given freely without mental reservation or purpose evasion: this Oath Given Freely Without Mental Reservation Or Purpose Evasion.

This oath is given freely and without mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Congratulations to you both. Thank you. Congratulations and welcome. I would note that previous members have had to read that at the same time, and it hasn't gone super smoothly.

So we can see how, yeah, how this is going to roll out. We don't have rule followers here.

So our next order of business is elections for council chair and vice chair. So I'm going to hand over the gavel to Ms. Evans.

Okay, members of the council, the business before us is to provide elections for chair and vice chair. Are there anyone who has a motion? Svenderhoven. Thank you, Miss Evans. Um, I would like to nominate Miss Drabnicka for chair and Mr.

Pamplin for vice chair. Okay, is there a second? Second. Mr. Muller seconds. Would you like to speak to your motion, Miss Vander Heiden?

Um, sure. I, I think Miss Drabnicka has done an absolutely phenomenal job as chair, and I would love to see her continue in that capacity. I think Miss Baker has done a great job in the last year as vice chair, and I'm sorry that we're losing her in this capacity, but I think Mr. Pamplin will do a great job as well, and I look forward to working with both of them. Right there. And are there any questions or amendments to the motion?

I guess questions first, and then seeing none, um, in that case, the council ready to vote? Are there any objection? Seeing none, the motion passes. Madam Chair, you have your gavel back.

Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Pamplin. Yeah, thanks, Miss Vanderhoeven, for the motion, for the second. Appreciate the opportunity to serve as your vice chair. Excited to partner with you, Madam Chair, in this role and support the council wherever I can, and pledge to, on final action, offer expedient amendments for deeming language.

Thanks. Yeah, we'll see about that. Um, thank you, Mr. Pamplin. I look forward to working with you as well and have just immensely appreciated working with Ms. Baker over the last year and greatly appreciate her support and guidance. Thank you.

I think we're going to take a brief stand down and move chairs. Thanks.

So we are ready to proceed with the October meeting. Uh, we want to take this opportunity to respectfully acknowledge that the council regularly meets and its staff office is located in Anchorage on Dena'ina homelands. The council wants to honor the Dena'ina, the indigenous peoples who have stewarded this land across generations and continue to do so. We are glad to be part of this community and to honor the culture, resilience, and tradition of the Dena'ina people. Thank you.

So our agenda for this meeting is available on the Council's eAgenda site. As always, we intend to go through the agenda in order, but items may be taken up earlier or later than they are listed on the schedule depending on how we progress. Are there any objections or changes to the agenda?

Okay, seeing none, we have an agenda. So we're now ready to move on to the next section of the agenda, our B reports. We have 7 written agency reports under this section, and we will receive oral report— reports on B1, the Executive Director's Report, B2, the NIMS Management Report, B4, the Alaska Fishery Science Center Report, and B6, the U.S. Coast Guard Report. As a reminder to the public, we'll receive all the B reports and then take public testimony. So please sign up on the e-agenda if you wish to testify on any B reports at the conclusion of this agenda item.

So with that, I will hand over the mic to, to Ms. Evans.

Good morning, members of the council. Um, so I'm going to walk through the B1 Executive Director's Report. For the first part of this, I'll walk through the, um, the document that's posted on the, um, e-agenda. Um, so you might want to follow along that way. Um, and then there'll be a short presentation on one portion at the end.

Um, so beginning with, uh, with page 1, we have 2 new council members, um, who were appointed, and as you know, they took the oath of office earlier. Mr. Sy and Mr. Bowers. There's a short bio included in the Executive Director's report and also posted on our website. We do have two other, at least new to us at this meeting, members for the U.S. State Department. Our previous member, Dr. Dimitri Virmazis, has moved on to another assignment, and so Mr. Joseph Freeman will be our new Council representative for that department.

And Mr. Freeman is not able to make this meeting, but we hope to see him at a meeting in person in future. And then just acknowledging that this has already been announced to the council, but Dr. Scott Rumsey is here in person today. He is the alternate for Mr. Barry Thome, the represent— the Executive Director for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. And so he is here for the first time with us at the table. So welcome.

All of the new members.

We do have 4 plan team nominations that the council will be considering during the course of this meeting. Uh, the SSC will provide their review and recommendations on these candidates, um, to you, uh, during their SSC report, um, and the council will have an opportunity to consider, uh, plan team nominations during executive session. Um, to all of the candidates are— have been offered by the agency. To replace either departing members or, or replace vacancies that those agencies have positions for on those different plan teams.

Moving on to the updates on Executive Order 14276, that's the executive order that is restoring American seafood competitiveness. We have been providing you a status update at each meeting on your council work plan. The council's partnered with the agency to implement the goals and objectives of that executive order, and you identified in October of 2025 a work plan with a number of different actions to meet the goals and objectives of that executive order. Progress continues to be made on those. Some of them have been implemented or resolved already, and then some of the actions that you continue to have on this meeting and future meetings are supportive of that work plan and that executive order as well.

So that update, status update, is posted to the e-agenda. In over the summer, on July, we also received a priorities letter, regional priorities letter, from the NIMS Assistant Administrator, uh, with identifying specific, uh, actions both for the Council and for the National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Office, prioritized agency actions for this this region.

There also, over the summer, NIMS has announced national priority actions that go beyond our region. I think Mr. Kerland is going to speak to those in more detail when we get to the B2 report, so I won't spend a lot of time on that information here. I did want to highlight, and in the report is highlighted for you, kind of the summation of those regional action priorities from the regional letter and the ones that are relevant specifically to our council. So in addition to maintaining momentum on the items that we have already identified through the council work plan, there are 4 potential action items that were highlighted as priorities in that letter. One of them— two of them are— would require new tasking from you as the council to review steller sea lion boundaries and to assess current FMPs and consider removing species.

One of them is an action that you already have identified on your work plan to eliminate the 2% IFQ deduction for bled sablefish. And that's not yet scheduled for review, but it is one that you have identified a motion to initiate tasking for that. And then the fourth action for this council would be to collaborate with NMFS on the expanded and continued use of exempted fishing permits.

That, that, uh, an action to facilitate that is also on your work plan, and you supported NMFS, uh, removing the Alaska-specific EFP regulations, Exempted Fishing Permit regulations, that differ from the national regulations that are more specific requirements than the national-level regulations. And so you suggested, or you agreed with NMFS proposal in June to eliminate, to remove those regulations under their 305 authority, so that access should be making its way through the process to remove those regulations. And we can hear more about the process— progress with that when we get to the B2 report. So just circling back, things for you to consider, um, at this meeting, um, whether you want to initiate any tasking on the two items that would be new that you haven't yet addressed would be the, uh, review of Stellar Sea Lion closure boundaries, um, and also the systematic assessment of current FMPs. With respect to that latter item, the idea of removing FMPs, we did have a quite a start at staff work to assess that question and to look at, look through our FMP species.

This aligns with the initiative last year that the agency undertook to look at a risk-value matrix. We had presentations in the June meeting last year in 2025, where the agency had identified this as a priority, and our staff did begin to look through our FMPs and our FMP species. In this council, we've done quite a lot of work already to assess whether species are— whether we are using the ecosystem component in an appropriate way and to the extent that we can to best manage our species and best manage our species efficiently. And also, in the past, we have removed species from the FMP that are not appropriate for federal management. And so I don't think there's a lot of work that we can do further in this region.

However, it might be useful for the Council to finalize those— that staff work in a report so that we can respond back to the agency how we have done that assessment and what our conclusions are. So if that is something that you are interested in, it would not be a large task for our staff to be able to pull that report together in a way that we can, we can kind of officially close the loop on that consideration and request from the agency priority letter.

There's— Ms. Evans, I think we have a question. Oh, sure. Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I just had a quick question on the process.

Are we— is the council expected to respond to each of the priorities, whether new or existing, from that July letter from the agency, or does our work and our work plan Is that the evidence of a response? I guess I'm just wondering how much formality we need to put into a response. Thanks.

Through the Chair, I think that's a good question. I think there's a number of different ways we could respond. We could do as you're suggesting, which is let the work speak for itself. We could write a letter acknowledging that we have not yet responded officially to— other than acknowledging receipt of the letter, but we haven't provided a Council response back— how the Council has been considering, has chosen to consider the priorities that were identified. I think Mr. Kerlin, when he walks through the his impression of the executive order might have some more guidance for us on whether a formal letter is advisable or would be a good idea.

So maybe I'll look to him.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So there is no explicit process the agency has laid out for this. I will certainly be keeping the Assistant Administrator posted on the council's progress on various things, but it may be beneficial at some at some point for the Council to kind of recap its response to all the things in the letter in a response letter, just so the record is very clear. And so the Council is communicating it as the Council chooses to versus relying on me to translate. Okay.

So the next topic on page 4 talks about recreational data collection and another recent executive order that was issued in September on restoring American saltwater angling and recreation.

The— these two initiatives are both agency initiatives that, as we understand it, or we've been informed that they are partnered. So the Recreational Angler Partnership Improvement Directive, RAPID, process is a new recreational data net— data collection network framework that is being set up nationwide. As part of that initiative, we have been— we have understood that NMFS is working to set up a series of regional workshops throughout the country this fall and winter. We're still discussing with the agency and the contractors that have— are helping the agency to pull this— these workshops together, what exactly that would look like in our region. Highlighting in the executive director's report, just wanted to highlight for you that there has been a lot of work done in this region already with developing data collection improvement goals for recreational data through a collaborative state and federal process, which our council staff are involved in, as well as, you see, largely the Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff, as well as National Marine Fisheries Service.

And I did provide a link for you to the regional implementation plan that does identify those goals.

There's also been several recreational fishing— recreational— rec fish workshops. I can't remember the rec fish workshops. Sarah's nodding at me. I can't remember the roundtables. Rec fish roundtables.

That was the word I'm looking for that we have hosted in conjunction with council meetings and a lot of information pulled together from the recreational stakeholders in this region. So the most recent of those was in December 2024. I also linked the report from that meeting, which was presented to the council and collected a lot of information from stakeholders of that— of interest in this region for that type of data. So we have a good starting point in this region to pull together that information. The degree to which that is linked with the executive order came out fairly recently, and we don't have yet from the agency an implementation plan about exactly how that is intended to move forward to implement those goals.

I don't— Mr. Kerlin may have more information on that when he gets to the B2 presentation, but did want to highlight for you that in the executive order, the agency— it does include guidelines, directives to the agency to consider revising the guidelines for National Standard 1 and National Standard 2 to ensure they appropriately account for the unique biological, economic, and social characteristics of the recreational fishery and to facilitate the rapid integration of state-level data into federal management decisions where appropriate. So I don't know yet how that is going to affect our management here, but certainly changes to the national standard guidelines are always something to pay attention to, and we will continue to track that as more information comes out.

Yes, Ms. Kimble. Thank you. Maybe I should just be waiting for the B2 report, so that's an okay response. But on the recreational data component for the EO, I mean, is that intended to replace or change what we currently have in the Alaska Region Implementation Plan? We have this Marine Recreational Information Program.

We have a very formal understanding between Fish and Game, IPHC, and NOAA that is a complement, if not just sharing of recreational commercial data. Are, are we on the precipice of modifying all of that, or are we on the precipice of defending, I guess, the, the situation that we have and trying to extend that level of consistency to other regions?

For my part, I know the conversations that our staff have had with, uh, the workshop development team It's a little unclear exactly what the goals of that initiative are and how it dovetails with the work that has been done in our region already. I think we're still in the early days. I mean, the executive order is only a couple of weeks old, so those are important questions that we haven't yet resolved. I don't know if Mr. Kerland has more information.

Madam Chair, I really do not. Many of the provisions in the new executive order are similar to some of the provisions in the agency's September 2 announcement about agency-led actions under the other executive order on restoring seafood competitiveness, and that includes things like, uh, wreckfish data and, um, and the national standard adjustments that, um, that Ms. Evans mentioned are being contemplated. So I, I guess the best I can offer at this point is stay tuned.

Through the Chair, just one more note on that. We do have a Council Coordination Committee meeting happening in a couple of weeks, and I know this is a topic of interest to many of the councils and is certainly something that we will continue to have conversations with about, specifically these implementation of these seafood executive orders and these priorities at that meeting. So there might be more information coming through that process as well.

So moving on to the next section, actually, I'm going to skip over the next section because that's the framework for council prioritization. I'm going to come back to that at the end and spend a little more time there. Just highlighting a couple of other things that are in the, the report itself. So on page 5, highlighting that our legislative committee did meet in August to review two recently introduced bills and the Bycatch Reduction Bill, Bycatch Reduction Act introduced by Senator Sullivan, and the Fisheries Science Modernization Act introduced by Senators Murkowski and Whitehouse. The council's comments that resulted from those, that review and legislative committee input can be found on the legislative committee's e-agenda, which is linked in the executive director's report and available on our e-agenda site.

An announcement, the Marine Recreate Resources Education Program, MREP, is hosting— it's not its third workshop, that is wrong. I think it's its 5th workshop in Kodiak, so apologies for that. But we— that those dates are correct at the end of April. The rolling deadline for submitting your applications, or the application deadline— the applications are, are reviewed on a rolling basis. However, I believe if you provide your applications by November 1st, you are will be in the first round of consideration for identifying participants for that workshop.

So anyone that you know who is interested in attending MREP, it is all paid for. It's an excellent opportunity to learn more about the fishery management process. Really, everyone, almost everyone that I've— ignore everyone that I have spoken to— has nothing but good things to say about the information and the learning experience and the networking opportunities through attending those workshops. So please get the word out there.

Wanted to also announce there's been some updates on our website in a couple of different sections. Looking— trying to— we continue to try to improve our accessibility and information and resources for, for new people to the process. So on the How We Work section, you can see some links there of how we've reorganized some of the pages. And also noting that we have a link to allocation review dashboards that you have seen reviewed at previous executive director's report as part of previous executive director's reports. But just noting that Akfin, Mike Fye on our staff, has added dashboards for Amendment 61 and Amendment 82, which pertains to the AFA and Aleutian Islands POLIC allocations.

So you can find a lot of information there, uh, on those different programs.

Just in the report, we highlight recent staff and council member activities. Um, I don't need to read through that, but that's available for you. And also highlight, uh, committee and plan team meetings that have occurred since June, many of which will be reported on to you at this meeting. The one exception to that is the Ecosystem Committee, which did meet this week, but their information will be reported back to you at the December council meeting in in conjunction with an agenda item on groundfish management. And then just noting that the Joint Protocol Committee is meeting on October 16th, so that will be the Friday after the council meeting concludes, in Anchorage.

At the request of the Board of Fisheries, the Joint Protocol Committee is meeting to provide for information exchange and education about the impacts of bottom contact from trawl fisheries, the council's current management requirements, and measures under consideration by this council, in order to inform future consideration of proposals that may become before the Board of Fish. And just a reminder that that committee does not generate proposals, it does not take action on proposals that are under consideration by either the board or the council. It's really an opportunity for information exchange, and in this case, for the council to share the information that you have been reviewing at several different meetings in the, in the recent past about bottom contact and current management of Fisheries.

Just one, one further note, it's a little bit different than normal. The meeting will be broadcast online, but participation and public testimony, testimony will be in person only. So just highlighting that because that's, uh, might be more unusual for our council group.

And then final note, uh, we did have an introduction to specifications process last night, um, as part of our efforts to do more engagement and plain language, develop plain language materials around the harvest specifications process, and the Council will meet in executive session on Saturday. With that, I will circle back to the framework for prioritization, and I will attempt to share my screen here. Just a moment.

Yeah.

Okay. So the council in June asked that we come back with you for— with some kind of framework for— to allow the council to have a constructive conversation about prioritization. And so this is the— we provided this framework, which I'm going to walk through here in the B1 report. There's a lot of additional information both in B— in this paper, as well as information that's going to come out through the B2 report that will be relevant to a conversation about prioritization.

Obviously, public testimony will be relevant to that conversation as well, but our intention would be for the Council to have the discussion about what to prioritize under staff tasking. This B, reports section is really talking about the factors that will influence both how you prioritize and the types of inputs that you might consider. So I'm just going to walk through the paper here and the information that we provided to help frame that conversation for you. And we had talked in June, but more generally, I think, over a longer time period about why this conversation is needed. We've had cost increases in the Council that we've been talking about for a number of years.

Staffing capacity changes, particularly at the regional office and the Alaska Fishery Science Center, have affected the Council's development of issues. And particularly, that staffing has affected some of the specialized expertise and sort of redundancy for essential functions. That we have seen in the council process, that we, that we have seen the effects of in the council process. And just understanding that there's an ongoing reassessment of priorities and budgets within the agency, it seems the appropriate time for the council to be able to identify clearly and communicate what are your essential actions so that those are, can be a factor in any reassessment of priorities and budgets that occur within the agency. So this is an opportunity really to align council and NIMS with respect to what are your priorities, what are your clear expectations, both to work well with the agency and also to— for us to manage staff capacity and to share those expectations with the public.

So our objectives here at this meeting would be to review kind of what is the difference between items that are must-do required items that the council, the council is required to do under Magnuson and other, other laws. And then also, what time does that leave to do what we've been calling in this paper discretionary actions, the would like to do actions based on our current situation and capacity. The task then for you would be to think about what to prioritize based on the actions that you have in front of you and actions that you might be interested to take. And also, we have recommended some process changes that might help to ensure that that prioritization has the— has your intended impact. And so I'll walk through all of those.

But I do think it's really important before we go through this discussion to provide this caveat that's listed at the bottom of the screen here. It is very useful to us and for myself, for Planning, and for the agency as well to understand what your priorities are in terms of actions. But I don't want to give any impression that just because something is a priority, we're going to work linearly through those priorities. There's a lot of factors that influence the scheduling and staff assignments to the work that the Council is interested in. Our goal is always to optimize our staff capacity to provide you, to be as effective as possible, to achieve as much as possible.

And so we want to make— we will continue to make progress on all of the Council's tasking. What the prioritization really helps is for us both to communicate clearly about what your priorities are, and then when we have those capacity bottlenecks, certain staff, certain expertise that's needed, we know how to choose amongst actions for the time that is available and which, which actions to prioritize in that context. But we will still continue to see that there might be some either simpler actions or actions that are— that don't require that specialized expertise that will continue to be— to show up on your agenda. And those might, might show up on your agenda before those prioritized actions, because that is the best way we can optimize across the board the work that you're interested in. So I, I want— I spend a little time spelling that out because I think it's really important to understand what the effect of this conversation will be.

It's very important to have, but it won't translate into a linear kind of scheduling of you will see the first action, your number one priority first, and then we will see the second action. That, that linear process is not the best use of our staff efficiency.

So stepping back then to the section that talks about what are the required functions, this slide just highlights what the Council's obligations are and Council functions are under the Magnuson Act and other laws, primarily developing and amending Fishery Management Plans, holding public hearings, that opportunity for public input, setting harvest specifications, annual catch limits, and then other activities that are identified in the Magnuson Act like research priorities, identifying essential fish habitat, rebuilding plans when necessary for overfished or overfishing, preventing overfishing, bycatch reporting measures, and then allocation and program reviews. Those are all core Magnuson Act functions. There's also some important Council functions under other laws like the Halibut Act, proposing halibut measure— halibut management measures, and then responding to management measure changes that are required because of Endangered Species Act or Marine Mammal Protection Act laws. There's a number of other roles that the Council undertakes, and those in our agenda we can see usually in the form of informational reports that often come under the B reports, looking at consultations and on exempted fishing permits and essential fish habitat. Those are both roles.

A consultation role of those is important in the Council process or for the Council to undertake. And then the Council commenting on national policies, for example, you know, National Marine Fisheries Service puts out executive orders. There's a responsibility for the Council to respond back with those types of commenting on national and regional policies. And so that breadth of information, they're described in more detail specifically in the paper, but that is the, those are the areas that are the required actions. So moving to the next slide here, we try in the paper to spell out for you how much of the council's agenda time is taken up with required actions and then how much time is left over.

And that discretionary time is really identifying that there is an obligation under the Magnuson Act for the council to prepare FMP amendments and recommend and consider FMP amendments that require conservation and management. But you have a lot of discretion to decide what exactly, what actions meet that standard, deciding when to develop those actions, what the scope of alternatives are. Those all have a substantial impact on staff capacity and on council agenda time. And so that's what in this paper we're trying to describe as what are the difference between the time that you spend on those required actions and the time you spend on those discretionary actions. There's a table on page something, page 2 of the paper, which I tried to capture here in this graph as well.

But looking at our 4 council meetings a year, and we are in the process of transitioning to that 4-meeting cycle, so this is a little bit, you know, trying to match our previous cycle to the new cycle, but trying to give you a thumbnail sketch of how much time do we spend at each meeting. On harvest specifications being a primary required item that the Council has to undertake, you know, on an annual cycle for the various stocks.

Routine actions, which in this case we've defined as B reports, staff tasking actions, and then monitoring, kind of reviewing the annual deployment plan and the annual report. Those are actions that you take you also undertake every year, and what time is left over. And that time that's left over, which is in the, the lighter right-hand side of the bar graphs that are shown, could include either the Council's interest in looking at new actions, and that could be, you know, things that we're considering like a herring bycatch management action, all of the actions that the Council has has tasked and is moving forward, IFQ cost recovery, different examples. It also includes— there are requirements for the council to look periodically at things like essential fish habitat and do an essential fish habitat review, because that review occurs every 5 years. For the purposes of this presentation, we are including that in as the time allotted in that discretionary time.

So what it comes down to is that each meeting you have somewhere between 30 and 50% of your time available for actions that are discretionary, and about, you know, half to 70% of your time is taken up with items that you are— that are required to be undertaken. And so it helps to think of that context as you're thinking about priorities and where you actually have the levers to control your priorities, thinking about it in the time available on the agenda.

Question, Ms. Evans? Ms. Kimball? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Evans.

I, I think this slide and, and this exercise is, is really interesting, but I guess I was, from the initial need for this presentation, was thinking that it wasn't really our limited agenda time that was the problem. It's the limited staff capacity at the council and the region and the science center in order to create the analyses that we need to be on the agenda for decision-making. So are we supposed to take as seriously that our agenda time is a limiting factor, or is it really we just don't have the people available to do the amount of work that we've tasked?

I think through the chair, Ms. Gimble, it is a combination of both. I would definitely, uh, weight the staff capacity as the more constraining issue at present. But we're going to have a conversation when we get to staff tasking, for example, that you have a number of different items that you currently have scheduled to come before you in February. And under our process, several of those require SSC review. We don't have enough time for the SSC to review all 4 of those actions at the February meeting.

And so because of that, we're going to delay— I'm going to recommend that you delay one of those actions that we, we would have staff capacity to bring to you in February, but the agenda time is going to be the limiting factor. So I think you're absolutely right in terms of the staff capacity, and particularly the staff capacity at present, looking at our list that, that National Marine Fisheries staff have the expertise to be able to contribute to developing Council actions is a real constraint, but it's— agenda time also factors into that equation.

So the majority of information on regional office priorities is captured in the B2 report, which you will get next, but I did want to highlight that point for you here, that in a, in a, at a very high level, the regional office workload priorities, first, their first priority is to support ongoing fishery operations, so in-season management, harvest specifications, you know, responding to the public, litigation, etc. And then the next priority is to, is to support the Council with FMP and regulatory amendment work, which is the, which is a, obviously important role that the Council plays. And when considering that regulatory amendment work, the agency first looks at implementing the actions that the Council has already taken final action on before allotting time to developing, to providing expertise and input to actions that are developing through the Council process. And I think that's really important to remember here because when we, when we go and look through our list and try to see how to develop priorities and what might be the constraints about bringing those priorities forward. Like I said, going back to that caveat of how we can bring those back to you.

There are some actions for which we are really dependent on input from National Marine Fisheries Service, and they have a large portfolio that they are trying to meet all of their obligations, and we are a portion of that portfolio for the work that we do here, and we have to understand how those, those those parts work together and try to set appropriate expectations about how quickly we can move on council issues, understanding that broader, that broader priorities. I think Ms. Harrington will walk through that more when we get to the B2 report. I just want to highlight for you here, it's not an action that we're, that we're taking in the B reports, but when we come back to staff tasking, there is The National Marine Fisheries Service has provided their list of FY '27 priorities, and one of the suggestions is that you have an opportunity here to provide your comments back to the agency on whether those— whether you have feedback on the way in which they have prioritized their work for FY '27.

So with that, I think the other component of thinking about prioritization that's useful for you is to think about how to consider the types of categories or types of questions you should ask yourself when, when going through the exercise of prioritization. And I try to divide this out into 3 different types of considerations, looking at the impact of the action, who is affected, what types of impact, what types of benefit will, or problem resolution will happen from those, from understanding the impacts of an action. Obviously, that is the detail that we provide to you in an analysis, and we haven't You know, we have various stages of advancing an analysis on these different questions. The tasking that's currently in front of the Council, but understanding the impact is obviously really important to understanding the value of the actions you have in front of you. There's also some questions of like legal and executive considerations.

Is this something that's already on the Council's priority list? Is this, is this something within the Council statutory authority? Is the Council Is a council amendment the only way to solve that problem? Good questions to ask as you're thinking about how important it is to take action on different things. And then the capacity and logistics issues.

Uh, have you already invested time in this issue, and what's the capacity or the council agenda time required to move that forward? Um, and that generally is a function of things like, is the analysis that you're looking at a simple action, a complex action? What type of specialized expertise is needed?

Following a methodology that is something that the Council has used many times before, are we going into kind of novel territory, setting precedents with policy? Those were going to take a lot more time and care than things that are more routine actions, even if they're, you know, sort of doing something that we've done before but maybe applied to a different area.

So I'm not going to walk through the list of 22 actions. I really think that you should— recommend that you look at the discussion paper specifically and and look through that list yourselves, but I did want to orient you about how to look at that table, which is on page 7 of the paper. Um, so there are 22 actions listed, and those 22 actions represent the 22 actions that are currently reflected on your 3-meeting outlook. The 3-meeting outlook is how we characterize all of the tasking that you provide to us, and that's how we track that before bringing it back to you. So either we have that— the next stage of that action scheduled, um, for one of the next 3 meetings, or we have it in the items not yet tasked category.

So that you can see when that, that will come forward for you.

Looking at this table, we tried to pull relevant information. Mostly it's information that relates to those capacity and executive considerations that we talked about on the previous slide. But the sort order that we used, I used in putting this table together, is at the top the things in which we have invested the most staff time or possibly council agenda time. So you'll see the, the one final action, the one Action for which final action is the next step at the Council is at the top of that list. You've put a lot of time into developing, getting public testimony, getting public input on that action, which is the IFQ cost recovery improvements.

That's at the top of the list, and then at the bottom of the list are things that we haven't started yet. You asked for a discussion paper on several items, and we haven't yet done any work to bring that to, to address that, that ask. But we do track it on our items not yet tasked section of the 3 meeting outlook. Other things to point out. There are links in the paper in that next step at the Council.

All of those are links to the motion. So if you're wondering what exactly was tasked under that, you can click on that link and go back to the motion where that was originally asked. Either it was originally tasked or the most recent, you know, iteration of that was identified for the final action. I think it will be the initial review draft motion that you see. We tried to identify if this was something that was already on the Council's work plan for Executive Order 14276.

So you can see X is where that's the case. And then the other category that's really important is NIMS coordination needs, which identifies where are we— is our council staff dependent on working directly with NIMS staff for the expertise that's needed in order to bring that action to the next council review? And in general, our principle, we try not to bring— we try to bring items to you when we feel like they are ready for you to make progress they're in a fit enough state, we have enough information pulled together and a good enough explanation of the, you know, the response to whatever your— either the problem you identified or the context you requested for in an action that we can meaningfully make progress. We try not to waste your time. We try to pull the right information together so we won't, you know, not be able to answer any of the questions that you ask of us.

We really want to have a useful conversation when we schedule something at a council meeting. So you can see from looking at this list in terms of that NMFS coordination needs column, the items at the top, particularly the items at the bottom is probably a better way to think about it. A lot of those are items that have high, and this is kind of a staff subjective judgment through, look, our talking with our staff and with National Marine Fisheries Service staff, but those really require a lot of input. A lot of those are reporting and monitoring type issues. Those we really rely heavily on working closely with NMFS staff to be able to— or Alaska Fishery Science Center staff— to be able to bring those forward.

That expertise lives with staff at the National Marine Fisheries Service, and so bringing that forward to you without that input is not going to be meaningful for you to be able to kind of move that action forward or progress on that action. Compared to— there are some other actions that you can see where we, where have low listed, groundfish FMP policy modernization, for example, just to pick one, where we can do a lot of work on that as Council staff and be able to bring a product back for you. Obviously, in an ideal world, everything works better when we have had the opportunity to coordinate closely with National Marine Fisheries Service on all issues, but it really is very dependent the type of issue we're looking at. Some things we can make progress on kind of with minimal review or minimal input from National Marine Fisheries Service staff. Others really do it is essential or it's, you know, primarily led by, by Mr. Curlin's staff.

So I think with that, if there's any questions on the, on the table, I'm happy to entertain those, but this is my last slide on that particular section, and then I can move on to the staff recommendations.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I'm, I guess I'm a little hung up on the EFH component. Still being part of Table 2 as a discretionary action as opposed to Table 1 as a required action given the Magnuson Act requirements. And I think I heard you say that that was because we only do it once every 5 years.

I sure wouldn't want to make that my priority knowing that it's a required action, given that we're going to have to narrow down the list of discretionary actions. So I don't know if you could speak any more to that. That is something we must do. It's a must-do by the Council. And we must review the model and we must review the identification and designation of EFH in the maps.

And so can you give me a little bit more sense of whether we need to identify that as a priority discretionary action under this process today? Yeah, through the chair, Ms. Kimball, that is a really good point. That is the, the one action on here that we debated back and forth exactly where it should go for that reason. The reason why I ended up including it here in Table 2 is because if you think of the council's agenda time. It is— we were trying to give you the portrait of time available, and, you know, items like EFH and when we have program reviews for limited access privilege programs, those would kind of fall in that available time.

I think the comment that you make is very valid, and depending how you decide to structure your discussion about prioritization, I think it would be— we can, convey to, understanding your priorities and convey to the public that the EFH is a required action and the, your priorities might focus on those discretionary actions, if that would be a perfectly appropriate way to convey, convey that sentiment that where you're prioritizing amongst discretionary actions.

And just one more follow-up through the chairs. My only other question on the table was on the EM for Gulf rockfish. Program, and the action there is develop an EFP. Those are usually initiated, maybe wholly initiated by industry or some public participant. We haven't seen any work on that since the retirement of Julie Bonney, who was really spearheading that, that work.

And so I, I'm just not sure why it's still hanging out on a table and we have nothing underway. It's not something we technically task. Can you just give me a little more insight on, on why that's on this table, or whether we should consider dropping that before public comment? Right through the chair. The reason it's still on the table is because it was reflected on your Council Executive Order work plan.

And so in the realm of things that you have expressed interest in, I think that even though you don't have a specific motion tasking that for the precise reasons that you mentioned, it is still out there in our kind of tasking awareness that that is an item of Council interest. I think that the comments you make are very appropriate. I think, as I understand it, I think there's still interest in that Fleet from developing electronic monitoring. I'm not quite sure where the current status of that is, and I'd certainly be— I think that you would benefit from hearing public testimony if there— if anyone has status information to report on that. Otherwise, I think that that would certainly be something that's worth worth discussing when you get to the prioritization component of things or curating the lists.

Thank you.

Okay. So moving on to the last couple slides here. As I say, the suggestion here is to prioritize amongst those discretionary items with the possible exception of removing EFH from that table.

Our proposal would be to recommend that you identify 3 to 4 priorities. Again, as I talked about, Ranking the entire list would send a signal that we can work linearly through that list, which I don't think is expedient for this Council and for— certainly is not optimal for use of staff and staff capacity.

So thinking that might be the action in front of you. There's no— 3 to 4 was a useful number of something that could be perhaps achieved as priorities over the next year, but that's not a binding number for you, a binding recommendation for you. In terms of number of priorities. However, if you get too many priorities, then everything is not a priority or everything is the same. The other thing— suggestion that we have is to consider removing items from the list.

There are some actions on here that were tasked at a different time several years ago. We have not had the ability for various reasons to task staff to accomplishing those tasks. Tasks, and it might provide a clearer signal to the public of the kind of an opportunity to reevaluate the value for effort and the reflection of the current staff capacity as to whether these should stay on the list. It's not— it would not be— not necessarily be a judgment on the merit of these actions. Certainly something the Council could re-task in the future, but continuing to keep them on the 3-meeting outlook, if we don't anticipate that we're going to be able to task staff to those in the next you know, 1, 2, 3 years, it might just send a clearer signal to remove those.

And when staff looked at the list, these are the 3 items that we suggested for the reasons that are listed on the slide as to why these might be candidates for you to remove from the list.

How do the regional office— not the regional office, the regional priorities from the NIMS Assistant Administrator fit in those 4 action items in the letter. There, as I mentioned earlier, there are 2, 2 new tasks that you can consider whether or not you want to initiate an action on. There is one item that's already tasked on that list that would be a priority for the agency, so the Council consider how that factors into your priorities. And then the, the EFP action, which we we have talked about a little bit. So I'm not going to walk through those, but just highlighting that those might— you might want to think about how those fit in as you engage in this prioritization discussion.

And then the final slide here, the final section of the paper, looks at process changes for the Council process. If you are taking the time and effort to go through this prioritization process, One thing that quickly derails priorities is when we can continue to add new tasking. And so if you really want this to have the impact, an impact, you know, looking ahead for the next year, the priorities that you might set, if that's the direction you choose to go, it might be helpful to reconsider the way in which you take on board new tasking at the Council. And I think if that's a change that you're interested in making, it's helpful to signal that to the public that that's your new process or how you might engage in that. And so the proposal here would be to consider perhaps announcing or making a commitment to only taking— only tasking new actions, what we often do under staff tasking, or as part of staff tasking, either once or twice a year.

You could do that every October, or if you wanted to do it twice a year, you could do it every October and February. And so you're sending a clear signal to the public when those new ideas would be considered. Um, if that's your interest, uh, I think there's still a need for some components of what we include in staff tasking in terms of kind of the wrap-up of— wrap-up of the items that we've covered at the meeting and how do they affect kind of the looking forward for scheduling. But we would anticipate the meetings where new actions aren't initiated, instead of the normal staff tasking agenda item, we would have sort of more of a wrap-up item by the executive director and the chair to kind pull together that more general information that we sometimes include under staff tasking as well, looking forward to what does, what does the actions the Council have taken at this meeting mean for the future, future Council meetings. And then the second change would be if you are committing to this process, maybe committing to an annual process, possibly every October, where you could undertake a strategic prioritization.

So setting priorities for the next year, and then next October also looking at the year ahead and what are the 3 to 4 priorities that you want to work on in the year ahead.

I just would— one quick comment. In the paper, I'm not going to walk through, but there are some other areas where we continue to work as staff on trying to pursue efficiency and with respect to SSC agenda time, which I referenced before, and just the, you know, the way in which we bring forward our analyses. Is there a way to streamline those? We're going to continue to work on those ideas as well, but that's a little bit different than the staff tasking component, which is the focus of the prioritization this meeting. Sorry.

Thank you. Mr. Bowers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Evans, could you share any information you have on how other councils initiate new actions?

So all of the councils have a different culture, uh, with respect to initiating new tasking, but there definitely are a couple of councils, uh, particularly East Coast councils, that do have a regular and more rigorous, uh, prioritization exercise. So they'll set priorities for the upcoming year in different ways, and also they're transitioning their processes as well. But for a long time, New England actually did a poll of council members. Here are the actions that we have. Everybody does their own priorities, and then they have a discussion.

The Mid-Atlantic also sets up their agenda items for the up— for all meetings of the upcoming year, and anytime there's a change, the council has to have a conversation about if we're adding something on, what are we taking off, because we've already 100% allocated all of our meeting time over the next year. So, uh, certainly some councils do have that very structured strategic prioritization process that they undertake every year. Um, others, I believe, are a little bit more like us, a little bit more, or as we have been to date, um, a little bit more, um, kind of reactive to the needs of the moment. So different flavors across councils. Thank you.

Thank you. And Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Evans. Um, a comment and a question, um, both on the potential changes portion here.

Um, first, I guess my, my comment, um, I, I am very concerned about the workload that we're putting on the SSC and the time that they have available. I think if we do something similar to what you've proposed, it would be helpful at October to the, like you had earlier in the presentation for the council, the must-do, maybe even just on that annual basis, kind of looking at how much available time, but to do that for the SSC also, because I think that's another place where we're running into some bottlenecks with, with agenda time. On, on the proposed change also, then my question is regarding initiating new actions. And with this initiating only once or twice, I'm trying to think about, like, when we do a program review, um, and initiate new actions out of that, um, it seems to me like it would be awkward to wait until October to initiate those things. Um, and so would another avenue to be to, um, you know, take those initiate them when we do that review and the stakeholders are there to make those comments, but then not deal with the prioritization part until October when we do that priorities.

Am I interpreting that kind of the way that you were envisioning that? Through the chair, Ms. Vanderhoeven, yes, I think that's exactly an appropriate way to deal with that. And it's not even just limited to program reviews. I think when the council addresses other actions, sometimes you identify a follow-up action to, you know, that agenda item that important for that, for that issue.

But I think the idea under this process, you might, you might initiate that, but the discussion of how exactly we accomplish that would happen at these regular intervals.

Thank you, Ms. Evans and Ms. Kimball, go ahead. I just had a quick question, and that on the potential changes for staff tasking, was there a reason in terms of limiting to twice a year that you is there a real reason October and February, or were you just spacing those out a bit? I mean, I was actually thinking about this after reading the paper and thinking more about October and June being maybe more appropriate, but I didn't know if there was a staffing reason why you chose those two.

Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, I was thinking of spacing them out if we were doing it twice a year. I think the idea of having every other meeting might be a good way to transition into that for accepting, getting buy-in to a new council system. We have, you know, for many years now, our instructions to staff, as staff to public, when they're asking, when can we submit my new ideas, has been, you know, staff to staff tasking. You always have the opportunity to submit your new proposals for the council to consider. So I think the idea of having every other meeting as an option, if you're interested in doing that twice a year, makes sense, whether it's October and February.

May, or, you know, December and May. I mean, I think there's different flavors that you can look at that, whatever the timing is, right? We were just trying to get the idea on the table for you.

Oh, do you have a question?

Oh, Mr. Aichi. Thank you. Um, I guess I'm just wondering if we did go to a, uh, two, two meeting or every other meeting, however we decided to do this, if there would still be opportunity or a portal for public comment in lieu of testimony, if there would still be an opportunity as we envision, or maybe this is a conversation we have later, but the way that you're thinking about it now, would there still be opportunity for the public to provide some comment on issues maybe that have arisen in the near term and might be more recent issues?

Through the Chair, we did think about that just a little bit. Right now, the opportunity— there's an opportunity to— for people to provide provide general comments, if you like, under both staff tasking and under B reports. So I think that opportunity under B reports still exists if the public wants to comment on something that's not specifically an action item on the council's agenda, but they feel is important to convey to the council for whatever reason. Um, we would, as staff under this proposal, we would think to direct them to the B reports. Um, there's, if we wanted to look at a different process, um, we could also have an agenda item for testimony on things not on the agenda.

And then it will be very specific what types of, you know, clear to the public what types of, where to give their comments on those types of issues.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Evans. I really appreciate staff flagging this as a, you know, potential opportunity. I do think that this exercise is pretty limited in its utility if we continue to add issues in our pipeline. I just wanted to— and the answer to this is probably obvious, but, you know, if we do just move to a, you know, one or two meeting a year where we initiate new actions, we still are— the intention would still to be to do a capacity check as far as, you know, staffing and resources to initiate, wouldn't be a given that we would be taking in multiple or any new actions during those meetings. Is that— would that be your guidance to the Council?

I think so. If I understand your, your comment correctly, we will always need to have a conversation. And it, right now, that conversation about scheduling and which inevitably involves a component of understanding capacity for the meeting happens between the Chair and the Executive Director. And So there's, uh, those conversations will happen because we need to schedule out for meetings. We will report back on that each, each meeting.

Um, maybe I didn't quite understand your question. Is there an opportunity for council members to provide information to you and to me in terms of organizing that scheduling about preferences or, uh, factors to consider in Moving forward scheduling, I got— maybe you can repeat your question. Sorry, I was just clarifying that we would still be going through an exercise where we're identifying, you know, appropriate resources and our capacity to take on actions during those 2 meetings that were potentially, you know, investigating opportunities to initiate action. So it's not— I mean, we Yeah, I guess I just wanted clarification there. It's not a, you know, this wouldn't be a call for necessarily proposals.

Thank you. Through the Chair, I understand, Madam Chair, I understand you now. I was thinking about the off-cycle meetings, but you're talking about the on-cycle meetings. Yes, as always, whenever you consider new tasking as a Council, we provide you guidance about how we can, how we think the capacity is available to be able to respond to those as part of your discussion. Questions here, correct?

And Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Evans, and I apologize if you covered this, but I, I did want to note your note on the bottom of this slide about emergency actions still potentially could be considered when applicable, because I have received a question about this, and I just wondered if you could clarify that a little bit. My understanding is if the council were to change to this new approach in terms of staff tasking, if something like an emergency rule petition or an emergency action of that nature came in front of us, in my mind, that could still be taken up by the Council at whatever meeting that reveals itself, and I feel like the Council would reserve the right to do that. That under this potential change that you're, that you're laying out for us.

Is that, am I interpreting that correctly? Through the Chair, Ms. Baker, absolutely. And just noting that there are very specific criteria for what the agency considers an emergency action. Whenever those petitions are brought in front of the Council, either raised through public testimony or brought, raised with National Marine Fisheries Service, who brings to the Council for consultation, we do always provide you an opportunity to talk about, about those actions, with particularly with respect to the defined criteria for emergency action that are laid out in regulation, so that you have an opportunity to provide your input. Okay, thank you.

I guess I did I have one final slide, which is just recapping this conversation. If you, circling back at staff tasking, these are our 5 items that you can consider taking up based on the conversations we just have. So thinking about highlighting those 3 to 4 priorities amongst the discretionary actions, identifying whether there are items that should be removed from our 3-meeting outlook and a not-yet-started list, if that's appropriate. Opportunity to provide input on NIMS implementation priorities that you'll hear about in V2. And then those two process changes that we just talked about, thinking about changing the timing for when new actions would be considered by the Council on an annual basis and committing to an annual strategic planning discussion in October or a time of your choosing.

Yes, Mr. Muller. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Evans, for the presentation. On relative to agenda, available agenda time on slide 5 in your presentation, go back and look at the paper.

And, and my question centers around the discretionary time available. You reference a typical meeting is between 5 and 7 days, and in the paper references 5.5 to 6 days. Is, is the average. Um, did you take a look at, um, what it would look like if, if the meetings—. We're not looking for any more time in these meetings, but if it was stretched out to 7 days, the available discretionary time that might be available, did you take a look at that?

Uh, through the chair, I didn't specifically look at that, uh, Mr. Muller. We, when we were putting this together, we were trying to just give a kind of a thumbnail sketch of, of how we— how our agendas have been working in the recent past. That's where the information is drawn from. I think if we were to schedule 4 7-day council meetings, the issue would get back to the issue that Ms. Kimball brought up, which is at present we have some staff capacity constraints in terms of the number of the issues that we can work on. If you look at the list in Table 2 of the 22 actions There are many of those actions do require significant input from National Marine Fisheries Service to be able to move those forward.

So it depends on the type of action that you're considering. If it's something that's within Council staff, that Council staff can really produce without a lot of input from external partners, there's an opportunity to extend meetings to be able to add to the agenda. We also have capacity constraints on our side. We are trying to hire a new person, and, you know, we have a a limited number of senior analysts who are, you know, integrally involved as we train out new staff. And we have wonderful staff and lots of enthusiasm, expertise, and capacity, but we also all have our individual specialties.

So there's always capacity constraints, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Where there is an opportunity or where there is a need to have those longer meetings, we Um, within the 7-day footprint, we usually try to maximize the usefulness of council time, but I think those capacity strains are real as we're thinking about moving forward.

And Ms. Evans, then, just for clarification, the 5 to 7 days is just the council schedule. So, um, if we theoretically were— and we have had in the past meetings where extended to 7 days, but that also extends the schedule for the Advisory Panel and potentially the SSC at the same time. Is that correct? Yes, through the Chair, that is correct. So starting on a Thursday, your meetings usually end on Monday or Tuesday, which is 5 to 6 days.

We have had them extend to Wednesday, which would be the 7 days. Often the reason for that is when we know we're going to get a lot of public testimony, that's always the big accordion in scheduling schedule planning, not knowing exactly how many testifiers there's going to be, but the times when we extend that, that 7th day is generally because we know we're going to get a lot of public testimony on a particular issue.

Are there any other questions for Ms. Evans?

Thank you very much for putting this together. It was both the presentation and the paper were extremely helpful. I think we'll There's a lot to consider here, and I'm sure we'll circle back at the end of B reports to have further discussion, as well as throughout the meeting and staff tasking. Okay, thank you.

So with that, I think we're ready to move on to our B2 reports. So you have Gretchen Harrington with us and Mr. Carlin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so as Miss Evans indicated, I'm going to lead off here with a bit of an overview of the correspondence we received from the NIMS Assistant Administrator. So, uh, the Assistant Administrator wrote to all 8 of the Regional Fishery Management Councils to convey NOAA priorities under Executive Order 14276 on July 2nd. The Chair and I conferred and thought it would be helpful for me to walk through the letter to this Council and provide a bit of context as well as some updates on some of the items. Some of the items in that letter are already part of the Council's planning, or the Council has already recommended action to the Secretary, and some are new, as Ms. Evans indicated in her overview.

I'm going to start with items for which the Council has already taken action, and the first of those identified in the letter is to expedite regulations for voluntary release of small sablefish in the fixed gear, IFQ, and CDQ fisheries Recall that the Council passed a motion on this in April 2025. The Alaska Region has unfortunately not had the staff capacity to work on this as quickly as we would like. Owing to the complexity of this action combined with those staff limitations, we had anticipated implementing all of the components of the Council's motion in time for the 2028 fishing year. But per recent direction from NOAA, we are expediting the rulemaking for this action with implementation staggered in two phases. So our aim now is to have the regulations allow for release of small sablefish, less than 22 inches, in 2027, and then follow with the sablefish discard allowance and the revised stock assessment methods for 2028.

So this would all be covered in one rulemaking. But with a portion effective for 2027 and the remainder effective for 2028.

The second item identified in the Assistant Administrator's letter for which the Council has already taken action is to modify the maximum retainable amount, or MRA, calculations. Recall that the Council took action on MRAs in October of 2025. We have an internal draft of of a proposed rule that's currently undergoing review.

The timing for that is a little bit in flux. We're anticipating or aiming for publication in the Federal Register close to the end of the calendar year, or perhaps in January. So a final rule would likely take effect partway into 2027. Turning to the new actions for Council consideration. Identified in the AA's letter.

I'll start with some context behind the items identified in the letter, and I want to acknowledge that the stellar sea lion item in particular came as a surprise to many people, given that that was not included in the council's work plan for Executive Order 14276. But that was not the only new action identified, and, and what I'm going to cover here applies to all of the new actions. So Assistant Administrator Piñero Soler has assured me, and I know he has assured you as well, Madam Chair, that he respects the council process and the council's prerogatives in setting priorities. He would like the council to consider these new items in the context of the council's work plan for this executive order and other ongoing work and available staff and resources, and looks forward to hearing the council's assessment of how these new actions may or may not fit into the Council's priorities for advancing seafood competitiveness. So some people have asked me if the AA's intent in sending this letter was that the Council must do these things, and the answer is no.

A letter to another Council, just by way of contrast, identified a particular action and said if the Council did not take action on that item, that the agency would likely proceed anyway using secretarial authority, and the Assistant Administrator did not say that in his letter to this Council. So I mentioned that by way of contrast. So my advice is that the Council should consider the Assistant Administrator's requests and use the Council's best judgment as to relative priorities, just as the Council always does. And of course, we'll— as Ms. Evans has just gone through— we'll be having a more in-depth conversation on priority setting later this meeting. So in other words, the council should decide which analyses and actions are likely to yield the most benefit for Alaska fisheries, and importantly, which ones can reasonably be accomplished with available staff time and available agenda time.

So turning to the specific new items identified, I'll start with the review of the Steller sea lion closure boundaries. This item, of course, has a long history, including litigation and even an injunction that closed the fisheries over ESA compliance, so it's always been a difficult issue for the Council and the industry. The Council and the agency, in considering changes here, would need to balance the desire for access to currently closed areas against the need to ensure that the fisheries continue to comply with the Endangered Species Act and are not likely to cause jeopardy to a listed species or adversely modify critical habitat. Recall that the agency recently completed biological opinions on both the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish fisheries. The one for the Gulf we completed in December of 2024, and the one for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands in July of this year.

Those Recent biological opinions analyzed the status quo suite of management measures, including the Steller sea lion protection measures, and concluded that the fisheries as currently managed are not likely to cause jeopardy or adverse modification. But it, it's really important to keep in mind that a biological opinion is a very fact-dependent analysis, and it focuses on a specific action, and in this case, a specific set of fishery management measures. So, If the action changes such that the suite of protective measures for Steller sea lions is different, we would need to reinitiate consultation and take a fresh look and, and ensure that any resulting new suite of measures also is not likely to cause jeopardy or adverse modification. So, um, I guess the bottom line on this is that reviewing the existing closures and considering potential changes would be a very major undertaking for the council, as as well as for the agency. Recall then in 2014, the process, I believe, took at least a couple of years to develop through a Stellar Sea Lion Mitigation Committee and work its way through the council process and then agency implementation and actually led to litigation that, although it was upheld, it did take considerable agency resources to to defend the action, working with General Counsel in the Department of Justice.

So the question for the Council, I guess, is whether that investment of effort would be a good and strategic use of available time and analytical resources, carefully considering the opportunity costs. And because devoting effort to this would take resources that otherwise could be devoted to other things that the Council would like to do. Do. So, uh, definitely a consideration of trade-offs.

Turning to— it looks like there's a question. So we have a couple questions for you. I will go to Mr. Pamplin, then Ms. Kimball.

Thanks, Madam Chair, and thanks for the, the briefing thus far, Mr. Kirtland. Um, appreciate the context that you mentioned in the other letters to other councils about about, you know, if the council doesn't take it up upon— take action, that the Secretary might pursue it.

And also appreciate that the guidance that you're providing here is within context of existing resources. I'm just wondering if in other letters that the NIMS Administrator provided to councils where they identified new actions, did NIMS also identify new resources that would accompany that direction? Because I think that's a really important part of this evaluation if we knew that there was an accompanying investment to, to do the work, or is it just do it within your existing means? Thanks. Yeah, Madam Chair, Mr. Pamplin, new resources were not identified in any of the letters.

I'm— I have not heard of any subsequent discussions related to that about new resources being provided to identify any of these priorities. That's not to say that couldn't happen, but I'm not aware of that to date.

Thank you. And Miss Kimball. Thank you. Thanks, um, for providing some context around the requests. I guess the first one's pretty straightforward.

I know you were making it clear that the— that NOAA was asking us to consider these as relative priorities.

Does that mean that we are expected to add these to the work plan and then prioritize them lower priority if we think that's the wish of the council, or do we have the latitude to not add them to the work plan?

Madam Chair, Ms. Kimball, I think the council has the latitude to not add them to the work plan if the council determines that these are not this council's priorities for advancing seafood competitiveness and should not be a part of the work plan. I think that is an acceptable outcome.

And then on the— I mean, specific to Steller sea lions, and I appreciate you being clear it's a fact-dependent analysis, and I then looked at all the information that was provided to see if any of the facts had really changed in terms of trends of sea lions in the western population and the fact that we just redid these biops. And so I'm I'm wondering, did the agency already go through that trade-off discussion or thought process that you're asking the Council to go through, whether this might be worth it in terms of a major undertaking of staff time and redoing a buy-up and a consultation? And is that why this came forward to the Council, because the agency thought this might be worthwhile? I'm really having trouble with the disconnect with our priorities discussion that we just had, and then And half of that, if not more than half, is based on agency limitations for resources. And then the agency bringing us this really significant workload and undertaking on Stellar Sea Lions.

So I'm just, can you help me with the disconnect there, Mr. Perlin? Madam Chair, Ms. Kimball, you are not wrong. We have not gone through that analysis. So I am not prepared to offer any kind of insights as to the likelihood or possibility that an analysis would lead to a particular type of outcome, the feasibility of relieving measures in a manner that would not run afoul of the Endangered Species Act.

We have not done that. So that would be part of the undertaking is to do that kind of analysis to help inform the council in any recommendations going forward. Thank you.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. And following up on Ms. Kimball's question, anything picking up on part of what you mentioned, Mr. Kurland? So if the council were interested in following up on, uh, the assistant administrator's recommendation, and it is a fact-based analytical process built around a specific management action.

And so I think my question is, I am taking that to mean the council would need to identify pretty specific management actions, let's say specific Steller sea lion closure areas or other mitigation measures that we were interested in changing, and provide those to the agency for the fact-based evaluation in the biological opinion, that would be the process that you would envision that your agency would need to undertake. I'm thinking about that in terms of that is— that's a lot of counsel time, that's a lot of counsel staff work to build up to that management recommendation like we usually do.

Would there be any value, or how would NIMSP be able to engage into a less intensive process in terms of thinking through scenarios of types of things we might be able to move forward, uh, to reasonably change the current Stellar Sea Lion mitigation measures. So I guess I'm asking the level of specificity because it's— I appreciate again your, yours and the Assistant Administrator, you know, kind of presenting the council with, um, the ability to move forward with this, but ultimately the final decision is within your agency. And so our ability to truly evaluate whether this is a valuable exercise is a lot of it's dependent on you. So I'm trying to figure out how to balance that. It's really similar to Ms. Kimball's questions, maybe just a little more pointed.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Ms. Baker, um, so what you're bringing up is really very analogous to the process the council went through leading to the 2020— 2014, uh, suite of measures where the council at that time assembled a committee that went through a very iterative process that involved quite a lot of agency support to help inform the development of some measures that ultimately were recommended by the council. And then once we— once the agency had that final suite of measures, we developed a biological opinion to make sure that it passed muster, that it would not— was not likely to cause jeopardy or adverse modification under the Endangered Species Act. So I would envision something kind of similar to that if the Council wanted to move forward, that there would probably be some— it would probably be beneficial to have some sort of iterative process of back and forth where the agency can bring to bear available information to help inform the Council's selection of the specific suite of changes that the Council might ultimately recommend and, you know, perhaps highlight things that might look more or less promising to pursue. But that would be a, you know, quite an involved undertaking, as it has been in the past.

Thank you. And Mr. C.

Thanks, Mr. Kerland. And just following up, I'm thinking about the resources that are needed to undertake any of this from the agency, uh, Part 2. But if the council is thinking about, uh, potential actions they could identify for Steller sea lions, is it— would the agency be responsive if the council were to ask, say, here are some things that could be done determined upon the resources being prioritized by the agency to get this—. To do this work?

Or is that just part of the discussion that might need to be had through this kind of iterative process? Just thinking about, because if there's not—. There hasn't been identified like more staff or more resources right now available to— for— by the agency to take on some of this work. But if we like a wish list, for example, you know, based on resources being available. Is that something that would be useful for the council to provide to the agency?

Madam Chair, Mr. Sze, I'm not quite sure the best way to answer your question. If the council were to— if I'm hearing you right, if the council were to ask us to explore some possibilities and offer some preliminary feedback, back as to issues associated with those possibilities, you know, issues that may require different types of analysis or potential constraints or red flags that we can, can identify early on. We conceivably could do that, but it would take resources that we would be diverting from other, other priorities to be able to be responsive to that. So I think that gets to fundamental trade-off question at issue here is whether the Council wants to invest resources in, in this process at the potential expense of other things that the Council may want to advance.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to check with Council members. I actually have a question on a different topic than the stellar sea lion mitigation measures that Mr. Kerlin covered, so I'll pause and see if there are any other stellar sea lion related questions.

Thank you. Not seeing any. Thanks, Ms. Baker. Thank you, Mr. Kerlin. I— if I could, I'd like to go back, uh, to your— I, I can't find it anywhere, but you mentioned, um, how the agency plans to implement, I believe, the Small Sablefish Release Rule, and I just wasn't clear on— I think I heard what you said, but my question is, is, is, have your staff been working with Council staff?

Because I think the discard mortality, the second part of the implementation, is germane to this council process because that will need to go through— we'll have to develop discard mortality rates, and that will have to go through the SSC, and this as part of the harvest specifications process. So is— I just wonder, whatever information you have on how it will affect the council's harvest specifications process, as we originally thought, if it was all implemented at once, or the new way that you are going through it, can you provide some clarification on that? Madam Chair, Ms. Baker, I can start and I may look to Ms. Harrington to help me out here, but you're, you're correct that implementing the full suite of the measures included in the council's motion would require that kind of integration with the council process and the stock assessment process feeding into the harvest specs and so forth. And so that, that whole portion of the action would be for implementation in 2028. And so the, the 2027 portion would be simply providing the regulatory provision to discard sablefish without having the sablefish discard allowance and the new stock assessment measures in place for 2027.

Maybe we'll go to Ms. Harrington first. Did you have anything more to provide or And then, Ms. Kimball.

Madam Chair, um, I think Mr. Kerlin covered it. Um, we— everything is still in development right now, so as, as the council knows, it's not a proposed rule until it's published. Um, but what we're planning on and how we've, um, meeting the, uh, intent of fully implementing the council's motion while doing it very quickly with our new guidance, um, is that the proposed rule for the first this year would set the DMR in the rulemaking, so in the proposed and final rule for just for 2027, and we would collect the discard information in 2027, that all of that would feed in then to the normal Council harvest specifications process in the fall of 2027 to be fully implemented in 2028. This would allow mid-year implementation, or if, if the whole process isn't able to be completed between now and the start of the sablefish fishery in March 2027. It is unusual.

We had to do some creative thinking of how best to accomplish the full council motion while meeting the time constraints that we're under. The public will have the opportunity to comment on this implementation how we're proposing to implement it in the proposed rule prior to the final rule, and the council will have the opportunity to review it through the, through the normal FMP amendment process.

Thank you. And Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I wonder if Ms. Harrington or Mr.

Curling could just review again. I mean, we we don't approve a package in pieces. We— it really all went together. So if you could just lay out again which pieces are going to be put in place in 2027, whether it's really just the allowance to release small sablefish and then all the other stuff about discard mortality rate that Ms. Baker mentioned and catch and release mortality accounting, all of that is happening in a— in the following year in 2028?

Through the Chair, Ms. Kimball. So we're implementing the entire suite of— we're implementing the FMP amendments and the entire suite that reflect the Council's motion. And our plan is, again, we can't guarantee anything until our proposed rule is published, but our plan is to, including the careful release requirements and the size limit and the accompanying regulations would all be effective after the final rule is published. The only piece that would be delayed is the sablefish discard allowance and then how that's implemented, where it would— NMFS would have the in-season authority to close to prevent discarding if that discard allowance is reached. So it would all be in the regulations, just we wouldn't have a sablefish discard allowance for the 2027 fishery, but we would be gathering that information through, through our normal channels.

And so that information then would go to the plan teams and the SSC and the council in the fall of 2027. So we were hoping we would then, that information would provide more for the council, to the SSC and the council to have a more fully informed sablefish discard allowance.

Thank you. Through the Chair, and just, is this guidance written down somewhere? I've been just trying to track what you're saying, but I— is this provided to the public somewhere, the guidance to implement this in a different way than intended?

Through the Chair, Ms. Kimball. I think that, well, the guidance is in the letter that John, Mr. Kerlin spoke to. So that's the guidance that's providing us with our priorities on which actions, which of the actions that the Council has already taken action on are our priorities for rulemaking. Madam Chair, the particulars would be included in a proposed rule. When that is published.

And so, as Ms. Harrington indicated, it'd be available for public comment, and the agency would have to consider all those comments in deciding how to proceed with a final rule.

Thank you. And Mr. Siv. Thanks. I had a question on the MRA implementation. First, I really appreciate that moving forward, it remains very important to move forward with that.

Quickly so we can experience some of that, have the benefits from that action. I thought I heard you say so that final action on that might be envisioned for sometime in 2027 on that. So would that be a mid-year implementation of that action, or you're looking at that as something that would take place for the 2028 season instead? I believe our plan would be mid-year implementation for that. Thank you.

Thank you. Please proceed. Okay, thank you. So, Madam Chair, turning to the next new action identified in the Assistant Administrator's letter, that is the one to eliminate the 2% IFQ deduction for bled sablefish. The Council initiated action on that item in October of 2025, so the immediate question is where this fits in the scheme of council priorities, as Evans indicated.

And as with stellar sea lions, I would just say don't read the inclusion of this in the letter to mean that the bled sablefish action must be at the top of the council's list, just that the agency would like the council to consider it in deciding priorities going forward.

Another item which Ms. Evans touched upon was to to assess fishery management plans and consider removing species that no longer require conservation and management and redesignate those as ecosystem component species. As Ms. Evans indicated, the Council has done this previously and likely does not have any actively managed species that don't require conservation and management. So as Ms. Evans noted, it may be beneficial to task staff with documenting that history so the Council can show it has already been responsive to this issue, or perhaps recommend any species that could be redesignated if staff were to identify any. And then the last new item identified in the Assistant Administrator's letter was to collaborate with NMFS on expanded and continued use of exempted fishing permits. Ms. Evans recapped the item in the Council's work plan on removing the Alaska-specific regulations dealing with that.

Of course, the Council and the agency already collaborate on exempted fishing permits, and there will be more opportunities. And in fact, we'll be discussing one proposed EFP at this meeting.

Turning to the next category of actions in the Assistant Administrator's July 2 letter, that's actions that NMFS is undertaking.

First of those I'll mention is launching a public relations and communications effort to reinforce public confidence in the science-based council system. We have heard clearly interest in having the agency engage more actively in communicating both the rigor and success of the science-based fishery management process in Alaska. Although both the Alaska Region and the Alaska Fishery Science Center have quite limited communications capacity, we will be leveraging some national resources to help with that. To help us develop new web stories and other products to convey the benefits of our work in partnership with the Council and others. And I'll just mention, we posted a new web story just yesterday, an interview with Dr. Jamal Moss about his priorities as Acting Alaska Fishery Science Center Director, the stock assessment process, the integrity of our science, how we incorporate ecosystem information, how we use new technologies, and more.

So if folks haven't seen that new story, I encourage you to take a look.

Another agency-led item noted in the letter was to conduct a gold standard science review of ringed and bearded seal critical habitat designations. Recall that there was a different executive order, number 14303, on restoring gold standard science, and that lays out a kind of a process for types of evaluation of the rigor and sufficiency of science in, in decisions across the federal government. This review for ringed and bearded seals is already underway. It's being undertaken by other parts of the agency, not the Alaska Region or the Alaska Fishery and Science Center, so not the same people or offices who did the original work, but the intent is to provide a kind of an internal peer review using the framework of that gold standard science executive order.

Another item mentioned in the letter is to execute science-based salmon habitat run restoration. The agency is currently supporting 18 habitat restoration projects across Alaska, including a broad range of efforts related to fish passage, hydrologic, hydrologic reconnection, and erosion control. We recently announced funding for 2 major new Alaska projects $7.9 million awarded to Trout Unlimited to support fish passage and habitat restoration in the Chena River watershed, and $5.1 million to the K'nick Tribe to support fish passage restoration projects in the Talkeetna area.

Another item highlighted in the letter was to work with the Office of Law Enforcement to foster a collaborative compliance culture And OLE's Assistant Director Ben Cheeseman, who I believe is in the room, remains committed to this and is continuing to work to cultivate positive relationships with the industry and the Council. And Ben asked me to highlight that he welcomes suggestion by— suggestions by the Council and stakeholders on how we can sustain collaborative and positive efforts moving forward together. And the last item I'll mention Um, for agency-led efforts is to actively work to streamline and reduce the financial burden of observer and cost recovery programs. I think we've made big strides on cost recovery with a consolidated cost recovery report. We've done a couple iterations of that annual report to the Council to increase transparency and reduced overall cost recovery charges to the fishing industry.

By $1.9 million last year through that process. So, Madam Chair, that is a wrap on the items from the Assistant Administrator's letter. I can also, if it would be helpful, touch on a couple of things related to the announcement of agency-led reforms that came out in September. But maybe I'll pause and see if there are any further questions related to the July letter.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any. Thank you. Okay, so on, on September 2nd, the agency announced some additional measures meant to build upon the July 2 letter to the councils and specifying more actions that NOAA Fisheries will take that include a mix of actions focused on protected resources, fishery science, management and spatial— sorry, monuments and spatial access, standards for regulations, financial programs to assist the seafood industry, and reform of SIMMP, the Seafood Import Monitoring Program.

The announcement also noted that in the coming months, the administration will release the America First Seafood Strategy, which is a multi-agency initiative informed by extensive stakeholder feedback, and we do expect that to come out soon. I don't, I don't have a date for you, but pretty soon. The only Alaska-specific issue identified in this list of agency-led actions is to review the methodologies for assessing long-term threats to ice-associated seals for Endangered Species Act listing and critical habitat determinations. We have just recently drafted an implementation plan for that review and will soon be discussing it with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and other partners. Other items, although not Alaska-specific, but other items of interest to this council that were identified in that September announcement include evaluating several of the national standards, not embarking necessarily on revisions to the national standard guidelines at this point, but assessing and prioritizing what changes, if any, any may be needed to some of the national standard guidelines.

NIMS will, of course, engage with the councils as we move forward in that review and assessment, and I'd anticipate more discussion of that at the upcoming Council Coordination Committee meeting happening in the Washington, D.C. area on October 20th to 22nd, so just a couple weeks from now. And that's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you for the report, Mr. Kurland. Any final questions? Yes, Ms. Kimball.

Thank you, Mr. Kerlin. On the last point on national standards review, is the anticipation that, that you, the agency, would work with the councils once they determine whether guidelines should be amended or expanded or supplemented, or is it in the review process itself?

Madam Chair, Ms. Kimball, I don't, I don't have a lot of particulars on that, but certainly there will be, as I indicated, discussion of that at the Council Coordination Committee meeting coming up and opportunities for the councils to, to weigh in on the agency's evaluation before any commitment is made to opening those national standard guidelines for revision.

Thank you. Any further questions?

Thanks again. Ms. Harrington.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the council. I'm Gretchen Harrington, the Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries for the NIMS Alaska Region. I am presenting the NIMS management report. It's posted under B2 on the agenda, and I will go through first starting with our progress on rulemaking. So these are things that we have published since the last council meeting.

On June 18th, we published the final 2026 Cook Inlet salmon harvest specifications. This allowed the fishery to open for the, the summer season. On June 25th, we published the final rule to standardize the time limit in which a trawl catcher processor that is participating in the Alaska groundfish fisheries must assign catch to a management program.

On July 17th, we published a Notice of Availability to, for Amendment 129 to the Groundfish FMP and Amendment 58 to the Crab FMP. These would remove the requirements for economic data reports.

We accepted public comment on that Notice of Availability through September 15th, 2022. And we approved the amendment on October 7th. We are, we have a proposed rule that would implement these amendments that is under review. We published two cost recovery fee notices, one for the crab rationalization program and one for the Pacific Cod Trial Cooperative program. As Mr. Kurland mentioned, we have decreased reduced fees in both of these programs.

The fee percentage was reduced due to reduced costs and increased value.

On September 3rd, we published a proposed rule to modify the Area 4a halibut vessel use cap. Public comments were invited through October 5th on that proposed We have two additional proposed rules under review.

The proposed rule to improve the pelagic trawl gear definition in the regulations to clearly allow the use of common components in CODDINS and in bycatch reduction devices, and then also a proposed rule to modify the season timing regulations to allow NMFS to open the sablefish fishery at the same time as the halibut fishery. And add flexibility for NMFS to close the groundfish fisheries at an appropriate time to maximize catch.

The Status of Actions Report, which is also posted here under B2, provides additional detail. The documents that are also posted under the B2 report are the 2014 proposed and final rules to implement the Steller Sea Lion Protection Measures. This is just to provide background for the Council and the public as you're thinking about that issue. We've posted the 2024 stock assessment report for Steller sea lions. This is the most recent information on Steller sea lion abundance.

We have the NMFS in-season management report on the 2026 fisheries up through the— up through this council meeting. We have an exempted fishing permit application that I'll discuss more as we move through the agenda, I mean, through the B2 report. And we have the Alaska Fisheries Science Center chum salmon genetics report for the council, and then the status of the actions report. There's two new documents that are posted. One is a hiring notice for a permit assistant, and I'll discuss that a little bit more under personal issues.

And then we have the letter of approval for amendments to remove the EDRs.

All right, as part of the council's consideration of priorities, and to kind of provide a little bit more detail to what Ms. Evans discussed earlier, we provide the, the context for the council's priorities priority setting discussion and just a little bit more about the SF, the drivers of our workload and how we consider projects and, and how we, we do our work. The council has seen this framework before. It's not new. It's how we kind of structure our internal business plan. We divide our actions into 4 main broad categories.

The first is we call manage and must do. So these are the things that we have to get done in order to prosecute the fisheries in season management that allows us to maximize, maximize harvest opportunities below the TAC amounts by monitoring catch, opening and closing fisheries, and allocating harvest limits among fisheries. We also support our monitoring programs that collect data from fisheries, including e-landings, support for the Observer Program, electronic monitoring, We do fishery management data and quality control for catch estimation that feeds into management, and then the in-season management reports that you receive every council meeting with our, our final report each December. We do the harvest specifications, as the council is well aware, that's a big process to allow the groundfish fisheries to open. We do the halibut annual management measures and coordinating with the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

We have to respond to legal mandates, such as if we get sued, staff are responsible for doing the administrative record and providing subject matter expertise during litigation, and also responding to FOIAs, and then implementing existing management programs. Currently, you know, implementing the RQE fee portion. I'll talk a little bit more about that.

And then, as per the Council, when we have requests for emergency rules or exempted fishing permits, we process those. So that's what a large part of SF does every day. The next big piece of what we do is to regulate, and that is to develop the FMP and regulatory amendments recommended by the Council. The factors that we consider in prioritizing staff workload are the administration priorities, legal considerations, council priorities, and proximity to a mandatory deadline. If something needs to be implemented, you know, prior to the season starting or prior to the next round of, um, EDR report requirements or the opening of the application period for crab IFQ, those types of things.

We, we try to make sure that we can do the rulemaking to meet those deadlines, um, recognizing that, that the work in developing an action is only one step in a very, very long process. So once something leaves the Alaska Region, it goes into headquarters review, it's reviewed by, uh, Nymphs, Department of Commerce, and if it's a significant action, OIRA. So it's a— there's also that, and those are deadline drivers that are outside of our control, and we try our best to predict those when we're giving the council and the public estimations of timing, but those are just that, estimations. So the next piece is then the analysis. This is where we have input into Council projects, and we, we work really hard to provide Council and Council staff the information they need to analyze the items that the Council wants to take action on, providing subject matter expertise on the monitoring and managing of the fisheries and the fisheries data and all of that.

And so, and then finally, our category we call Engage. And so this is all the work we do to work with, and this is how we interact daily with resource users as part of fisheries management, mandatory activities, and implementation of new actions We engage with the public, the press, resource users through activities such as responding to data requests, informing the public. We get a lot of requests on our existing regulations. What does this mean? How do we do this?

Can I do something different? Those types of things that take a lot of staff time as well that we do to help folks understand our existing rulemaking as best as we can. So then that leads us to the priority rulemaking for 2027, and this is always in flux. Our priorities are based on also our must-do actions, the EO 14276 actions that were part of the council's work plan and actions in the Assistant Administrator's July 2nd letter that Mr. Kirland spoke to. So first off, we always try to prioritize our harvest specifications, halibut annual management measures, so that the groundfish fisheries, the Cook Inlet salmon fishery, and the IFQ halibut and sablefish fisheries can all open as expected.

We also have mandatory notices that we publish in the Federal Register, in-season actions, fee notices, exempted fishing permit notices, all of that, and then we go into the rulemaking. So our first priority right now is the small sablefish voluntary release rulemaking that has been determined by OIRA to be a significant action. We discussed that more at the last B2 report in June, what that means, so I won't go into that here, but I just thought I would indicate for the council to have it all in one place, which actions have been determined to be significant. Next is the final— oh yeah, okay, small sablefish, and then modify the MRA calculations, that was also significant. Our next in our priority is a final rule to modify the Area 4 halibut vessel use caps.

That was not— that's not a significant action.

We also are working really hard to respond to any comments or questions and help the 3 proposed rules that are under review move through the process. 2 Of those are significant, EDR removal and pelagic trawl gear, and then 1 that is not significant, and that's the season timing.

And that's a very minor reg change that just gives us a little more flexibility, mainly to allow the sablefish fishery to start with the halibut fishery. After that, we have measures to minimize chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, and that is significant. We have the crab rationalization program modifications that the council recommended to the arbitration system and to the crew share transfer eligibility requirements. And information submissions, that was determined to be significant. We also have an omnibus recordkeeping and reporting and monitoring that the council recommended under the executive order that we, we have the discussion paper that we shared with the council.

However, we have not started the rulemaking package for that action yet, just because we have, we're doing all of the other things above that. So with that, I will stop with our priorities to see if there are any questions.

I'm not seeing any. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Um, we— I've provided a little information here on the executive orders that Mr. Curlin spoke to, just as references, so people can click on, um, click to to find the executive order. We have a Cook Inlet salmon season update.

This just provides the information that we're providing to the council each October with the amount of salmon that was harvested in the Cook Inlet salmon fishery in 2026.

We, I do note that the Coho salmon TAC and ABC were exceeded due to an unexpectedly large harvest on July 30th. June 30th. This information we will incorporate then in how we manage next year's fishery, and more information will be provided to you on that when you receive the Cook Inlet stock assessment through the harvest specifications process. We, on June 17th—.

Miss Harrington, before you move on, we have a question from Mr. Bowers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Harrington, could you go into more detail on the factors that led to the TAC and ABC being exceeded this year for coho salmon?

Through the Chair, Mr. Bowers, well, we think it was, well, it was primarily because, as you know, the fishery is open 2 days a week week, and then it changes to 1 day a week, and then goes back to 2 days a week. And we think that, and that change in the amount of days per week is to allow coho and other salmon to move through Cook Inlet. And the, we just had a significant harvest that 1 day, higher than expected. I think we are going to look at how we could better predict if that's coming and maybe preemptively close that day. Again, those are things we'll discuss with the council in more detail through the harvest specifications process, but it was, you know, unexpectedly, an unexpectedly large harvest on one of the opening days, and we have an inability to— the fisheries are open Mondays and Thursdays.

If we have a high harvest on a Thursday, it's not possible to close the fishery prior for the following Monday just because of our process through the Federal Register and all of that. So we're also thinking about how to change it so that we don't get into this situation again.

Thanks, I appreciate that additional information. And, you know, I'm concerned about this because coho salmon escapement goals have not been consistently achieved in Cook Inlet. And I'm aware that the state took compensatory action in the state-managed fisheries because of the excessive harvest of Coho salmon in the federal fishery this year. So I look forward to hearing more about potential changes to the in-season management process.

So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you. And Mr. Ritchie? Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Ms. Harrington. I'm kind of following up on Mr. Bowers's question.

I don't want to get too much into the nitty-gritty here when we're going to discuss this at a later date, but, um, I'm wondering if you could remind me a little bit about the— when ABC is reached, and I can't remember how many years it is, we have accountability measures that come into effect, and I'm just wondering if if you could—. I, I can't remember how many, how many years and X amount of years it is and what exactly that means, but I'm wondering if you could just clarify that a little bit for me, please.

Um, through the chair, Mr. Ritchie, off the top of my head, I think it's 3 years, but, um, I'm seeing ahead—. Not—. If, if that is incorrect, I will get back to you, but, um, I think it's 3 years. So the OFL was not exceeded. That would, that would require asked to initiate work with the council to initiate action to end overfishing, but we do have a little bit of leeway on exceeding the ACL/ABC.

Thank you. Ms. Harrington, before we move on to the next item on your report, I think this might be a good time to take our mid-morning break. So let's come back at 10:25 and we'll resume our B2 report. Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome back, everyone. So we will be continuing on with our B2 report. Ms. Harrington. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the council.

I'm picking up here on page 4, in the middle of page 4, with announcing that on June On May 17th, NOAA announced the Fishery Resource Disaster Allocation of $123.6 million approved by Congress in the 2025 American Relief Act. And for Alaska, this appropriation included funding for the 2023-2024 snow crab fishery disaster, the 2022 Chignik salmon fishery disaster, and the 2023 Upper Cook Inlet East SETNET, Salmon Fishery Disaster, and we are in the process of doing a notification of funding opportunity, and that has yet to be released.

The next item is concerning regulations governing when a vessel must retain or discard catch. So this is kind of the umbrella term for the MRA regulations. In doing that rulemaking, going through and writing the rule, we have discovered a couple things that we thought make sure that the intent of the council motion is implemented in a comprehensive way and to avoid future inconsistencies. All of these changes would be just regulatory changes implemented under the existing provisions of the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and GOA FMPs. So specifically, we're proposing to add specifically the data that's used to calculate the MRAs.

This has been a source of confusion in the past, and we want to make sure it's clear for everyone. We're proposing adding a definition of incidental catch allowance, or ICA, and prohibiting directed fishing for an ICA. This is already in practice. It's just adding it to the regulations. Making technical edits to our recordkeeping and reporting regulations and removing conflicting regulations.

And part of that, and in response to the Council's June 2026 motion that requests NIMS identify specific updates to the regulations to improve requirements for the allowable retention of public— public records, NIMS plans to include proposed changes to simplify and strengthen the regulations, implementing the Magnuson-Stevens Act prohibition on pollock roe stripping. And all of these changes will be detailed in the preamble to the proposed rule for Council leadership review by the Chair and Executive Director, and if they concur, they would be part of the proposed rule available for public comment with the whole rulemaking. This is— so we're providing that update to the Council. We have a couple reminders. First is, you know, we have a 3-year cycle for our Federal Fisheries Permit renewal process, and 2027 is the year for that FFP renewal.

So here's information, we're providing information to remind folks to renew their FFP. This was also the first year with implementing the recreational quote entity fee collection process, so charter halibut permit operators were required to purchase stamps for electronic stamps for their clientele through eFish. We're in the process of doing the reconciliation between the trips and the amount of stamps purchased. We encourage everyone to pay for their, the stamps that they needed for 2026. There is a requirement in the regulations that the fees be paid prior to NMFS issuing next year's CHP permit, so that's an important thing, and we will be communicating with everyone directly, but we wanted to provide this update for the council and reminder for fishery participants.

We also have a new EFP that was submitted on August 21st, and it was from Seashare Inc. and Glacier Fish Company, and the applicants proposed to test an alternative processing workflow on a single catcher processor to allow a limited amount of halibut that remains in the catch after halibut deck sorting and after sampling by the fisheries observer to be retained and donated through the prohibited species donation program instead of being discarded at sea as required by regulation. So Alaska Fisheries Science Center has completed their review of the CFP, and on October 1st, NMFS published the notice in the Federal Register with a 15-day public comment period that closes on October 15th. We are also coordinating with the IPHC, the Coast Guard, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game to, per our usual process, to inform them of the EFP and provide opportunity for them for their review and comments. At this meeting, Glenn Merrill of Glacier Fish Company and Hannah Lindoff of Seashare will present their EFP after I'm finished with this B2 report.

And moving on, we also There's an IPHC Commissioner vacancy. NOAA solicited nominations for a resident of Alaska to serve as a United States Commissioner to IPHC. That application period closed September 14th. The nominations are currently under review with the intent of selecting a new Commissioner and seating them by the December 1st IPHC interim meeting. One of the issues that came up at the June council meeting was concerning the AFA inshore processor permit authorization framework.

We had received inquiry from a company interested in inshore processing, and we had provided an overview of the process. We put that here in this B2 report just to inform the council. Of the regulations governing when the council can create an additional AFA inshore processing permit under regulations.

And the next item is, so one of the things I didn't include in my must-dos but that I could have, and that's complying with the Paperwork Reduction Act. As the council knows, we have to continually we do paperwork to comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act. And one of that is requesting public comments on all of our burdens, paperwork burdens. So every time anyone has to fill out a form, submit, or a requirement, and that includes, includes information from the public that the Council has requested. So when we were doing the PRA process for the council annual cooperative reports, we received comments.

And so we're providing those comments here for the council to consider and understand the public thoughts on the council's requirement for the cooperative reports.

Next, we have a Fraser Longline Cooperative EM update. In September, we awarded a contract to an EM vendor to test the efficacy of an EM system aboard a freezer longline coalition vessel in the Bering Sea. This project intends to test the availability— the ability of EM systems to capture management data and whether EM can be successfully transmitted via satellite at a frequency and quality that meets management needs. This EM system is likely to be installed in the coming months, and initial testing should begin shortly thereafter, and this pilot project will run through next September.

And this project did not necessitate an EFP. Sometimes we've done EFPs with EM, but not for this project.

Seeing no questions, moving on. We are— NMFS staff are exploring an alternative approach for estimating the biomass of Pacific herring in the Eastern Bering Sea to inform the prohibited species catch limit of herring for the Bering Sea pollock fishery. This is an issue that the Council discussed last December.

Under the regulations, it requires an annual estimate of herring biomass on which to apply the PSC limit in regulations, and the Council, as you know, the Council is considering an action that looks at the different percentages of abundance, we would like to bring to the council then this— we're calling it a proof of concept, working through if there is a viable opportunity for using additional or different data in order to estimate the herring biomass in the— and bring that information to the council in February 2027. We're also providing, because the council had initiated action on blood sablefish, but then that was part of the—. Ms. Harrington, sorry, before you move on, we have a question. Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Harrington. On the herring piece, I really appreciate you guys doing the work. This is really important to me personally. So this would be separate from or included in that initial review that we have scheduled for Herring to tentatively come back in February.

Through the Chair, Ms. Vanderhoeven, I think that's up to the Council. You know, we, you know, the Council, the analysis is looking at the Council motion. That's its job. But we could either provide this as a separate presentation under that agenda item, or however the council thinks that would be most useful.

Thanks, Ms. Kimball. Then Ms. Baker. Thank you. Ms. Vanderhoof asked one of my questions, but the other is, do I assume that NMFS's approach for estimating the biomass of Pacific herring in the Bering Sea is from the Bering Sea trawl survey from another one of our standard third surveys? Okay, thank you.

Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, yes, we've been looking at and working with folks at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center on looking at the data from the Bering Sea trawl survey. Again, this is just work of seeing if it is possible, if it provides a reliable estimate. We've looked at then what we would have estimated from trawl survey compared to what was estimated through the ADFNG abundance estimates over time. And so we would plan to present all that information through the council process in February as an informational— informational for the council then to decide next steps.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. This may be redundant, but just since I think I have prioritization on, on the brain, NIMS staff is planning to provide that information. You're not looking for a council request to do that.

Thank you. Yes, and Ms. Evans. Through the Chair, it just would be helpful for us in scheduling if your interest is to have this as part of an agenda item that includes your council motion and analysis, because this is a separate— related but separate item from that analysis. So getting some sense from the council that we should schedule these as two items under that same agenda item would be helpful to get confirmation from the Council so that we can signal that appropriately on the agenda.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the next item on here is just— we We staff put together some information in response to the July 2nd letter on bled sablefish. This, we're just trying to pull stuff together that we hope is useful in deciding the next steps, including what's the work that's been done to date, work that under background that had occurred, a little bit of background on the PRRs and when this issue was looked at in 2006, a little bit of history, and then some of the stuff that we've been wrestling with since the council first made its motion of exactly how we would do this, how we would coordinate with everyone that uses the catch information and do it through our— you know, everything is in our catch accounting system and how we would implement an action that, that changed this. So we've provided a little bit of initial thoughts here just to help the council in thinking through these issues as it's prioritizing. I won't go into the details.

I think one of the things we do note though, that it's— we would also want the council to consider applying this to IFQ and CDQ. That's our one kind of substantive comment besides providing this background information.

Moving on to tribal engagement, we— I'll just— I think in the interest of time, I'll just move through these final items pretty quickly. We have information on our tribal engagements, we have information As Mr. Kirlian mentioned earlier on the completion of the Section 7 consultation on the BSAI FMP.

We have a gray whale listing— information on a gray whale listing petition, the sunflower sea star update, and proposed rule for subsistence use of northern fur seals in Alaska, and information on the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. As I mentioned before, we have posted a new hiring notice that's open, and that's for a permit assistant in our Restricted Access Management Division. We are also in the process of hiring 1 position in SF and 3 in Protected Resources, and those hiring actions are in progress.

Hopefully we'll have some good news at the December council meeting. Fingers crossed. Fast. Also, for personnel updates, as you know, since mid-August, Dr. Jamal Moss, who was the Deputy Regional Administrator for the Alaska Region, has been performing the duties of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director, and Brandy Gerke, who was our Chief of Staff, is serving as the Acting Deputy Regional Administrator during Dr. Moss's temporary assignment. We have 2 new hires, both in our ISD Division, John Rendulic and Tyler Dixon.

They are both in our Anchorage office. And then we had 2 departures. Many in the crab fisheries probably have worked with Amberlee Melke over her years in, in Restricted Access Management, and she is retired after 26 years of dedicated federal service. And then finally, Carolyn Cummings, who has been with our Protected Resources Division for 4 years, transitioned to a new, a new work, a new job. And with that, that concludes my B2 report.

Thank you, Miss Harrington. Any final questions on the report? Yes, Miss Rossi.

Just a question on the hiring. I appreciate the updates on the hiring, and I think that's a— it's great to hear that. Just, um, I have prioritization on my brain as well, but I, I was just curious if you have thoughts on how those new hires or prospective new hires, if there's any suggestions for how we might consider that additional capacity, um, and when thinking about projects and priorities that we're thinking about this at this meeting. So, through the chair, Mr. C, so, um, the, the hires in, um, the one hire in SF, we try to start everyone off as, um, a regulation writer. So they— that's a generalist position, and they're working on a lot of different things.

We are in the process of making sure we're matching projects with skills. And, but I'm sure they're going to start— usually we also pair them with a more experienced trig writer to learn the process, and they'll work on a part of a project.

But exactly which rule they will be working on when they start, we're not sure yet.

But it will Well, yeah, we're not sure yet at this time.

And Ms. Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was— I'm a little late. I wanted to follow up, and maybe this is more appropriate, um, after testimony, but I think during your note of notifying the council of the EFP application, you mentioned, um, coordination with the IPHT US Coast Guard, ADF&G.

Is that— are there— is that normal if it involves halibut, for example, coordination with IPHC? And does the IPHC have any decision-making authority over this, or is— I feel like this is our, you know, an exempted fishing permit, and we've— to my knowledge, the IPHC didn't have any authority over the deck sorting program or the sea share regulations, so I'm wondering what consultation means in this process.

Madam Chair, I'll field that one. Ms. Baker, thanks for the question. So the decision whether to grant the EFP is solely the National Marine Fisheries Service. IPHC doesn't have a role there. IPHC does have its own set of regulations that relate to some aspects of this, but You know, at this point, IPHC just sent us their feedback on it earlier this week.

At this point, we are anticipating bringing a— from the U.S. delegation, bringing a regulatory proposal to the IPHC to help kind of better align their regulations with with an allowance for doing this, but I would say that's kind of more of a housekeeping issue. The decision on whether to grant the EFP is up to the National Marine Fisheries Service, not up to IPHC.

Just a point of clarification, Mr. Kirland, your characterization of a housekeeping change to the regulation, I, you know, would that, I guess, the lack of adoption for any reason at IPHC of that regulation, would it preempt the ability to carry through with the EFP from your perspective in your initial read? Madam Chair, at this point, I don't think it would, but we'll have to see where that lands.

Okay, thank you for that. Any other questions? Thank you.

So I think we're ready for Mr. Merrill to present, and yes, and him and halibut And Ms. Lindoff, your last name was written in halibut. I was like, maybe she changed it.

A big fan. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the council. Just a brief introduction. My name is Glenn Merrill, and I'm I'm here today representing Glacier Fish Company, which is, I think many of you know, majority Western Alaskan-owned company. Joining me today is—.

Hi, I'm Hannah Lindhoff, and I'm the Executive Director of Sea Share, and we are a national hunger relief agency that focuses on getting seafood into food banks, and we are also the authorized distributor of the prohibited species program.

Program. Before describing the specifics of the exempted fishing permit, I did just briefly want to set the stage in terms of why we're here and what we're hoping to accomplish. I think, as everyone's aware, this year is the 50th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and throughout that entire time period, we in the industry have worked collaboratively with all of you to introduce a whole range of improvements in our management system in order to reduce and minimize waste. And that's why we're here today, to continue that process of continuous improvement, to strive to do better. I think we all recognize that there are regulations that are in place that require waste, and when it comes to halibut, those issues have been longstanding, as I think everybody is aware.

Regulations established by Canada and the United States require that halibut that are caught by trawl vessels must be returned to sea, and it's been that way for decades. 33 Years ago, the industry, in collaboration with what was the predecessor of SeaShare, came to you at the Council and said, "We would like to explore an opportunity to create a prohibited species donation program. Fish that have to be returned to sea, we would like to explore the opportunity opportunity of donating to help address hunger relief concerns that are clearly present. At that time, we suggested that both halibut and salmon be part of the program, and at that time, 33 years ago, the International Pacific Halibut Commission initially expressed concerns about the expansion of that program. They initially disapproved or would not support changes in their regulations that were also required to allow the donation of halibut.

We've continued to work through that process through a series of EFPs, and then the International Pacific Halibut Commission and the agency coordinated. We now have a program in place for halibut, but it is very limited. It is limited only to trawl catcher vessels that are delivering either shoreside or to stationary floating processors. That— those regulations for halibut donation have effectively remained in place for about 30 years now. We'd like to revisit that.

So what does this EFP do? I think as Ms. Harrington described in her presentation, it is a limited test— the logistics, the accounting, the monitoring, and the enforcement of what it would take to allow limited donations from one single trawl catcher vessel— trawl catcher processor— that is the Northern Glacier Northern Glacier. She operates in the multi-species CDQ program and then for purposes of this EFP in the Bering Sea yellowfin sole trawl limited access fishery. We would be looking at allowing donations of up to 5,000 net pounds from the Northern Glacier only and only when she's participating in that Bering Sea yellowfin sole TLAS fishery.

All of that catch The catch that we are able to donate would be distributed through SeaShare. They would provide the opportunity to have that enter into various markets. I'll let Hannah talk about that in just a moment. But all of it would be offloaded in, on Alaska Dutch Harbor. We have cold storage facilities there, and that's where that product would go.

We worked collaboratively with the Alaska Fishery Science Center, and our application includes some recommendations that they made in order to ensure that there is not conflict with the observer as they undertake their duties. I think it's really important as we look at the CFP to keep in mind a few things. Most importantly, this EFP does not increase bycatch limits. This EFP does not create new changes or new modifications to regulations other than allowing trawl catcher processors under this limited test to donate halibut. It doesn't change camera requirements, doesn't change monitoring requirements, and it's done in compliance and consistency with the Observer Program.

It also is done only for those halibut that cannot be returned to sea under our deck sorting program, which is designed to minimize halibut bycatch and mortality. It's only for those halibut that end up after deck sorting, after Observer sampling, and that are food made and are of a size that is allowable for us to process and provide, and that can be useful donations for Sea Share. It also comes at a cost. I think there have been some questions about this program and whether or not it provides some tax benefit to us. We've talked to our tax advisor.

It does not. It comes at a cost for us, both in terms of our crew and in terms of the processing, the cold storage, and the distribution that is required. But what it does do is it allows us to have a very controlled and carefully monitored process about how an exempted fishing permit will allow us to see donations from a trawl catcher processor and provide and address some of the concerns that Hannah's organization addresses. And I'll turn to Hannah to describe her efforts and her organization. Thank you, Glenn.

So for those of you who I spoke with this summer, I addressed how we handle prohibited species donations of halibut currently and our plan to make sure that all donated halibut comes back to Alaska communities from now on because of the health benefits of halibut, particularly its high vitamin D content, which is so important in our northern climate. Climate. Um, this donation would follow suit. We are not anywhere close to relieving hunger in Alaska. Um, in the United States, you have 1 in every 8 people are food insecure, but in Alaska, it's 1 in every 6, and it's 1 in every 5 children who are experiencing hunger.

Disproportionately this affects people in rural communities, coastal Alaska, particularly western Alaska. The bulk of people facing food insecurity do live here in Anchorage because that's the bulk of the population in Alaska, but in terms of percentage-wise where you see huge amounts of hunger, it is, you know, in our more remote communities. And when we talk about food insecurity and we talk about food banks, I think it's also important to know that these are our neighbors. These are not necessarily, you know, somebody who you might think of as needing food assistance. I looked up the statistics and in Alaska, 17% of elementary school and middle school teachers would be classified as food insecure, simply because this is a very expensive place to live.

8% Of nurses, 55% of janitorial staff and cleaners would fall under that umbrella. So what I wanted to just give you— those are 2024 statistics, by the way, so we are not in 2024. As you all know, a lot of things have changed. And so when we're looking specifically at Alaska and we're looking at this winter, I did have one of my colleagues from the Bethel Community Foundation, who we recently did a donation with them, give me some input on what she thought that we were looking at this winter. And she said, it's going to be a very rough winter for folks to make ends meet, whether we're talking about groceries from the store assistance-related activities with associated gas and equipment costs alongside the heating and electricity costs.

She says, we're seeing already— we're seeing that already start to ramp up with requests for a health aid emergency fund that we host, which is intended to help folks who have unexpected emergencies with their house or maybe a fire. But now— and this was late September that she wrote to me— she says, now it's already receiving requests from folks who cannot pay for their groceries or utility bills. So that's the scope of one community in Alaska. So I think we're going to see that throughout the state, and I just want to say this is, you know, this is a small project, but it's important, and there's no amount of donation that is not significant, particularly to those in need. There's a very, very strong correlation between food insecurity and violence in the home and child abuse, of which the state has very high numbers.

So everything that we can do to try to address this problem is an important thing to do, and I just want to thank I want to thank NIMFS for the work that they put into getting this through the process, and Glenn and everybody who, you know, is supporting the mission of C-Share. Thank you.

Thank you both. Do you have anything further? Great. We'll see if there are any questions. Yes, Ms. Kimball.

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation of the EFP. And I think one thing might have been a slip of the tongue, Mr. Merrill, but you said you'd provide it to C-Share so that halibut could go into various markets, and I just want to be very clear that it would go into various food banks. So that was my first question. Thank you, Ms.

Kimball. Yes, this is a donation program only. This goes to C-Share for donation purposes. It is not a commercial product. Thank you.

I'm, I'm, I just wanted to get that clear on the record. And my second question through the chair was how do you explain a little bit more how your statement about how this wouldn't reduce the amount of halibut being returned to sea alive through deck sorting?

Through the Chair, Ms. Kimball, so I think as folks are aware, we have a lot of systems on our vessels in order to minimize halibut bycatch, right? We have communication, we have excluders, and then a big tool that we use is deck deck sorting. So when, when you have a haul, fish come on board, you open the bag, we have a limited period of time during which we can deck sort. We return halibut to sea as quickly as possible with a minimum of injury, and we focus on trying to return larger halibut that have a higher viability to sea quickly. That greatly reduces the amount of halibut mortality.

After that process is completed, and that is a fully observed processed by the NIMS observers as well as our camera systems. We stop any fish that remain, go into the hold, they get sampled by the observer, they go through the observer sampling station, then any halibut that remain after that period of time have to be discarded. What we would be doing is at that point, after the observer sampling station, we would be taking those halibut that are food grade, large enough size to be able to be headed and added, we would set those aside and then go through a process of processing those. So effectively, what we're focusing on is just those halibut that end up after observer sampling where they are food grade and have basically zero viability. There is a small amount of those halibut that are in the factory that are still viable.

Those are quickly returned to sea through that process, but we would be focusing just on those halibut that we can hold and retain after they've gone through that full and complete sampling process, and we've basically undertaken all reasonable steps to try and minimize halibut bycatch and mortality.

Thank you. And Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. Mr. Merrill, the 5,000 pounds asked for under the FP application, is that round pounds or finished process pounds? Yeah, that would be equivalent to its round net pounds, if you will, and so it would end up being 3.0 metric tons of round weight equivalent.

And then a follow-up. Thanks. So what proportion of the fish that are deemed not viable for release that come aboard your vessel does 5,000— does that 5,000 pounds represent? Through the Chair, Mr. Bowers, I think that's a great question. It's a small portion of that.

I think it will— the Northern Glacier participates in a variety of different programs, and so for the TLAS fishery, it tends to be a relatively low bycatch fishery. We participate in that fishery in a number of areas that have traditionally pretty low halibut bycatch. I think it's difficult for me to say exactly how much of that 5,000 would represent of the total bycatch because there's a couple of factors at play. One is, I think, and this is why we're doing the EFP, how much of the halibut that remains after we undertake deck sorting and observer sampling is large enough that it can be set aside and donated. And that's what we're here to test.

So it's difficult for me to say, you know, overall our vessel has a relatively low bycatch rate and this would be a small portion of that. Thank you.

Yes, Ms. Kleinman. Thank you. I had a question for Seashare, and just in the context of that amount of halibut that might be able to be donated, if you had a sense of where that might go and how far and wide that could reach around the state.

So we, we are trying to make sure that we serve Western Alaska communities when we distribute halibut. We have a program now where we have funding to purchase seafood, and so I think last year we did over 400,000 pounds of donations throughout Alaska, most of which was not from the PSC program, and almost none of which was halibut because halibut is expensive and we weren't purchasing it, with a small exception where we did some halibut collars this summer and We've done some scraped meat. So there is, in terms of hunger relief, the demand is, is huge. And so we have to work with agencies that have the infrastructure to receive frozen product and then distribute it to, to households. And so, you know, we, we thought that is what our job is.

So we would look at communities in Western Alaska that, you know, where we could see this doing the most benefit.

Thank you. Mr. Pamplin.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Not a question, but just an expression of appreciation. This is a lot of hard work, and I think it's impactful work. I really appreciate how thoughtful you have been navigating the regulatory arena. Appreciate NMPS work, their work on this EFP, and just also just thank you for the positive benefits to the communities that will be benefit from this work.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you both very much. So that brings us to our, um, B3 report, and that's a written report. So I'll, uh, pause for a moment and allow council members to pull up B3 report and see if there any questions.

Okay.

I'm not seeing anything.

So we're under B5, Alaska Fishery Science Center report, and we have Dr. Moss with us.

Good morning, Madam Chair, and Good morning, Chair Foye and council members. It's a distinct pleasure to be here this morning, and I'm very excited to work with the council while I'm in this role. My name is Jamal Moss, and I'm serving as the acting science director for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. I'd like to begin by acknowledging Dr. Robert Foye and thanking him for his service. He's left some big shoes for me to fill, so I hope my presentation today measures up.

I also wanted to pass along a message from our Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, Dr. Evan Howell. He sends his regrets. He was hoping to be here at this meeting, but couldn't because of a family obligation. But he wanted me to pass along that he will be here in person in December.

So again, I'm pleased to give the State of the Center presentation today, and I wanted to just acknowledge that we at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center are continuing to make progress on many of the initiatives that have been presented in these State of the Center reports before. And so what I'll share today might be, might look familiar, but just wanting to provide our progress on these initiatives. And also wanted to mention that we remain focused on providing the information needed to fill our MSA management obligations.

So this presentation will cover our priority planning efforts to date. I'll provide a quick budget update. I'll go over our FY '27 survey plans, mention a few research highlights, and then at the end, and touch on some topics that council members flagged for me as being important to them.

See if I can advance this.

Oh, that one. Okay, thank you.

This slide is an overview of our resource allocation process, and it begins with with being informed by the President's budget and Congressional budgets, and then we look at that in consideration with the National Marine Fisheries national level priorities, and then consider that with our own internal Alaska Fisheries Science Center strategic plan. And so we've completed that stage, and in April-July, we build activity plans and those activity plans are then scored and evaluated in the spring. And right now we've just completed the develop initial allocations phase this past September, so that's actually allocating funds to those, those, those activity plans. And we did that based on the FY '27 continuing resolution level funding that we received.

Okay, so we build our activities around our strategic plan, and the goals for those are to: one, monitor and assess fish, crab, and marine mammal populations, fisheries ecosystems; and the second goal is to monitor and predict climate impacts on living marine resources and this is getting at that environmental variability piece, which has a dramatic impact on some of our species, and so we must provide information on, on how that affects the stocks that you manage. And our third goal is to advance new initiatives and innovations, and this includes figuring out how we can collect data, process it, and deliver the information in a more efficient and streamlined way.

Please note, uh, that, uh, this, uh, is the last year, or 2027 is the last year of our current, uh, strategic plan, and we intend to, uh, start work on developing the FY '28 through '32 plan, uh, this winter, uh, specifically in, in January. Uh, and so our new strategic plan will incorporate some of the current administration's priorities But in general, what we do pretty much stays the same. Our core mission will stay the same and our, and our core goals will not change.

So this graph shows our funding in millions of dollars by fiscal year beginning in 2023 over to the left, and on the far right there, 2027. Those dark blue bars at the bottom, those represent our our, our core funding, and the light blue bars above that represents temporary funding, which is agency funding that we get on a temporary basis each year. And, um, we're operating under a continuing resolution, and we expect to be flat funded this year. That FY27 bar is a little bit short right now, and that's because we're still waiting to expect still expecting to receive additional funds from headquarters, which will bring us back up to that FY '27 level. So we truly will have a, a flat funding scenario.

I'm pleased to announce some staffing updates. We're really excited to welcome Dr. Braden Van Dinezy. We stole him from Washington State Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, where he had a pretty impressive career. He built their economics program there and was also involved in leading individual research projects, which were, were quite, quite impressive. And so he's coming on board, and he will lead our economic and social science research program as the program manager.

Also very excited to let you know we have 7 positions that are in flight right now, so they're actively being recruited and interviewed for, and we've got 2 supervisors that will be coming on soon. One is to lead our agent growth program and the other is to lead our shellfish and assessment program in Kodiak. We have a bioinformatics specialist who's coming to support our genetics program and 2 fisheries biologists that will be working with fisheries independent data collection so working in the Observer Program and working with electronic monitoring. We have one fisheries biologist that's coming on board to support fisheries independent surveys and an administrative management specialist and a grants management specialist, so really thankful and excited for the support.

Yes, Ms. Kimble, I just have a quick question, Dr. Moss. Where does that put the center in adding these new positions? I mean, previously we were— we learned the center had lost, I think it was 25 to 30% of their staff. So where, where does this put us in terms of net loss with adding these new positions?

Through the Chair, thank you, Ms. Kimball, for that question. We still have— I couldn't give you an exact percentage, but we still have several more to go. I think I think if it all, um, it would be nice if we could hire 22 people back, but, um, as I mentioned, when we get the rest of our, um, our money this year, we're going to have to make some decisions on how we're going to allocate those resources to hiring some of those original 22 positions that we really need versus supporting science, putting money towards processing, for example, fish ages and stuff that.

Thank you. And Mr. C?

Thanks, Mr. Moss. Appreciate you being here today to provide this report. I, I was just curious on, on—. You were mentioning funding is flat funding, but we're also hiring new, new hires. Uh, where are those resources coming for that, for hiring those new, new staff?

Staff? Is that just part of a built into that budget to hire those new staff, or is that coming from other, from other places within the agency or the Science Center?

Through the Chair, thank you for the question, Mr. C. So those, some of that money is coming from carryover money that we will be receiving, and that's going to allow us to hire a few more. As we, as we lose staff, we now have the ability to immediately backfill them. So some of that is just base money, and we've had some departures this year, and a number of these positions are replacing those departures.

Okay, this slide— excuse me, this slide is really just a high-level view of the 2027 research and fieldwork plans. And so each bullet here represents a slide or a series of slides. That I'll speak to in the rest of the presentation. But just to begin or kick us off, we'll be speaking a little bit or be sharing information about planning and prioritization, prioritizing scheduled mission-critical surveys this year, continuing our survey modernization efforts, advancing other mission-critical research, and ending with talking about how we're preparing for the strong El Niño and sharing some information about Alaska's communication priorities.

So the Alaska Fisheries Science Center survey prioritization framework distinguishes stock priorities from data priorities, and we prioritize our core assessment and ecosystem surveys. We've also been taking into account the SSC recommendations from this past February, which specifically were to ensure that we're maintaining continuity in the coverage of core biological sampling, especially when effort is being, being reduced or must be reduced for financial reasons. Also to track loss surveys that are no longer being completed and to track surveys that only are able to partially complete their work. And then finally, to learn from our past survey reductions by completing analyses. So figuring out what critical information was lost or what uncertainty might have been introduced based on loss in survey effort.

Thank you. And question, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. Thank you. On that point, Dr. Moss, is that ongoing work?

Like, did I hear you talk about that? This is just coming to a head almost every year during our harvest specifications process, but specifically in some SSE discussions at this meeting. And I appreciate that they took— the SSE took the time to make these recommendations. I'm really focused on on the how do we quantify survey reduction impacts, particularly to the fisheries that we manage. And I've been thinking a lot about this and hoping that the Science Center might be willing to take on that kind of a report or a snapshot report or something of that level to showcase what actual consequences they are of either not just missing a survey but missing particular stations.

There's a lot of consequences that I think we just skim over because we take our recommendations from the, from the SSC and move on. But it seems to me we're coming to a place where we should try to quantify that impact, and I just wanted to hear whether this is an ongoing project or something you'd need council support for, because I do think it's really important.

Through the chair, thank you for that question, Ms. Kimball. So I think what we've been initiating and working on is understanding from a, like, a statistical and quantitative sense, like, how much certainty, for example, we would, or how much power we would lose in order to, you know, make accurate assessments. And so, for me on the science side, I believe what you're kind of referring to, and so we could do a better job of that and more of that that. But I will also mention that, you know, some of the conversations that have gone on so far about like the economic impacts of lost surveys, we are not doing that. And that's something that we could certainly look at.

Follow-up? Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I guess I am focused on the socioeconomic impact of that portion of your statement there, because I think we actually do a fairly good job on trying to assess and communicate, you know, our increased risk or uncertainty when we lose survey capacity to ABC and OFL, and we usually see the result of that as more buffers, less fishing. And so I am really focused on the piece that I don't think has been touched on much in the socioeconomic impact.

I don't know that you had a chance to listen to our SSC, but just in one example with the sablefish survey and the changes to the longline survey, potentially a 32% reduction in sablefish ABC, potentially $50 million in loss to the industry. So they're, they're big significant things, and I appreciate you providing some focus on this, and, and I just didn't want to lose sight of the socioeconomic part of the SSC's recommendation.

Thank you. And Dr. Moss, can you remind me, just to follow up to Ms. Kimball's question, was there a plan for another snapshot report Or I understand that the surveys weren't a component of that, but I thought I had remembered some tentative plans for an upcoming report that we might want to fold this into, but I could have been wrong. Thanks. Uh, yes, Madam Chair, I believe there is one. Let me get back to you on that, but I do believe there's plans for another one, but let me get back to you.

Okay, so this figure shows a list of our FY '27 priority surveys. And so just walking through this, this, this figure here a little bit, the left-hand column is our survey name, and then moving to the right, we've got the platform that that survey would be conducted off. So whether it would be a charter boat or a white ship, and then next to that we have the priority, and the two priorities, the first one being the AFSC priority and the second one being the National Survey and Data Acquisition Program ranking, and then the large marine ecosystem that that survey would be taking place in, the status in FY '26, whether that we did it or did not, and then finally in the last, the furthest right column there, whether or not we plan on conducting that survey in 2027. '27. So, for example, the first line here shows the Eastern Bering Sea Bottom Trawl Summer Survey.

That's going to be conducted off a commercial fishing vessel charter, number one priority. It happens in that Bering Sea. In FY '26, we completed that survey, and then in FY '27, we're planning, planning to complete that survey this year, this next year. This year. And then the second one, the Aleutian Island Bottom Trawl Survey, again, a charter, second priority that's in the Aleutian Islands.

Yes, we completed it last year, but no, we're not planning on completing it this year because it's a biannual survey. So I might just leave this up for a moment for folks to look at those, those surveys, but take-home message from this slide and the next slide, which will have the second-tier priority surveys, is that we are planning on completing all of our mission-critical surveys this year, coming year.

Thank you. And Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Moss.

You might have covered it. Can you please remind me what NSDA tier is— that's just not a phrase I'm familiar with. It is the National Survey and Data Acquisition Program. Okay. So it's a, it's a higher-level NOAA, NOAA ranking.

Okay.

And I guess my mic is—. Sorry, Madam Chair. Is that a longstanding program? I'm just— I don't remember hearing it before, and I'm just wondering if so, do you participate in that, or is that a completely national level process?

You know, I will— I actually don't know. So it was included in this slide for me, and so yes, so I just spoke to it, but yeah, I don't think— I think what's shown here is our priorities that NEMSIS has worked with, you know, with the council. And so this is our core congressionally mandated surveys and high-priority surveys. I think that's probably the best way to look at it. Sorry for the confusion.

Thank you. Through the chair, Dr. Moss, is there then a list of non-prioritized surveys or not core surveys. It's difficult to track maybe changes in, in survey capacity if we keep adjusting what we define as core. Maybe I'm missing the slope survey.

We keep— we've been keeping track of that, not having seen one in, in several years. We even had testimony on that in the last couple meetings, but I don't find that on here. And maybe just a note help us continue to understand the changes, or at least some note on how we redefined what core was with each presentation. I don't know if that's helpful. Yes, through the chair, we, we do keep track of that.

It's not presented here, but thank you for that comment, and the next one will be sure to either have bullets or maybe go back to the older figure that had we had that went back, I think, to 2010 that showed all of the surveys. It was just getting smaller and smaller, so we decided to redesign it. But thank you for that comment. We can find— either go back there, go back to that, or figure out another way to communicate that information in this presentation. Thank you.

Regarding survey modernization, This year we completed flume tank testing on a prototype trawl and then conducted field trials with it in the Bering Sea this summer. And so we're currently analyzing data from those side-by-side comparison trawls, from comparison toes from that effort. And hopefully at the next presentation, State of the Center presentation, I'm hoping we'll be able to share some of that information. We also deployed and developed a new data acquisition system called Poseidon, and it manages data from our new net menstruation system called MARPORT and combines that data and information with, like, catch information and other, other information in one place.

Our midwater assessment and conservation engineering team tested a camera called the CatCam, which uses stereo stereo cameras to collect quantitative optical data, and this is important because it's allowing us to actually measure fish size with, with the camera, as well as collect abundance data, and to be able to do that in rocky or otherwise untrollable habitats.

The MACE program also developed an innovative way to estimate krill density, and the problem that we're facing there was we don't really have a lot of opportunities to, on the survey, based on time to stop and, and focus on, on collecting just krill. So this team installed small pocket nets in the main trawl to capture krill while just conducting their normal fishing or tows for fish, and, and that innovation has increased our krill samples by tenfold. And then on the back end of that, they've developed new machine learning models that measure individual crew lengths, which are reducing the time needed to process those samples, which are super important in being able to use the acoustics data to come up with an accurate estimate.

So survey modernization efforts looking forward, so into FY 2027, the MACE program is going to continue to test the DRICS-016, which is a 16-meter uncrewed survey vessel that's substantially larger than the smaller DRICS, which is battery-powered, that we've tested a couple years ago. And so this larger vessel doesn't depend upon a support vessel and can be deployed from a harbor. And so it just goes out autonomously and in this case will be testing its abilities to collect acoustic data.

Additionally, we're waiting for final decisions on an OMAO funding proposal to test multiple large long-range endurance uncrewed survey vessels for integration into the acoustic trawl effort that we do. And we're also using seafloor-mounted echosounders to try track seasonal movement of fish and zooplankton from the eastern Bering Sea to the northern Bering Sea. And these are the same moorings that we deployed a couple years ago to assess pollock moving across the U.S.-Russian transboundary line with, with great success. And so really excited about this because these moorings can be deployed for an entire year, which provides invaluable information that we could not otherwise collect.

So we're continuing also to lean into omics technology that's focused on eDNA and epigenetic aging. And so this is going to help us better understand species distribution, abundance, and track range shifts. And then on the epigenetic side, this is really going to help us increase efficiency in aging fish, especially for, you know, fish that are hard to age.

And one other application that's exciting about epigenetics is it can be a non-lethal method. So we could even use this technology to sample or to collect ages on marine mammals.

Dr. Miles, a question. Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Moss.

Um, I'm not sure where else to ask the question. Um, it had to do with the growth and aging. I was able to listen to part of the plan team, not the SSC, but I'm assuming it came up there as well with the concerns about the decrease in the number of like OLIS that have been able to be read, is the epigenetics, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, is that something that's going to be able to help that concern? And if so, what are we looking at timeline since that does feed into stock assessments and it has been identified as a concern? Through the Chair, thank you for the question, Ms. Vanderhoof.

Yes, but I think what you're referring to is another advanced technology that I did not talk about, which was the near-infrared FT-NIRS application. And so basically what that does is we can use infrared light to look through otoliths and age otoliths, and it's providing us an opportunity to move through aging fish much quicker, much more quickly. We're still trying to increase capacity on that. It's still, we did that, we used that technology for aging pollock this year. We'd love to expand that to other species.

It's gonna take a little bit of R&D to get the right information to do it for the other species, but that's in the works. And I think that's really gonna be a way that we can for some of our groundfish species, increase our capacity in the aging lab. I think the epigenetic aging for groundfish, we're also developing ways to process that more quickly on the lab end. And yes, we can do like a process to tray fish through the genetics robots much more quickly, with epigenetic aging, but I think the application there is really more for fish that are hard to age. So if I may provide an example with rockfish, it's hard to age those older rockfish because of the way the old ones grow and they get old, it's just harder to see.

And we can actually more accurately assess their age by using, for example, the epigenetic aging techniques.

Technique. Thanks, that's helpful. Um, so just then on the, the timeline piece, um, I guess particularly with, with the first one with the infrared reading, um, because it sounds like that's a little further along in the process, at least for some species. Is that something that you see ramping up like over the next year, or do you think that's more like 3 to 5 years out that we're really going to be able to, to have that in a place where we can get the information that we need for the stock assessments? Through the chair, I see that ramping up this next year and moving on to other species, but it's probably going to be 3 to 5 years before we get to where we really want to be to get multiple species and more throughput on the lab.

But it is getting better and we're getting faster. Yeah.

Okay, so the Northern Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program is a $21.4 million North Pacific Research Board project, and ultimately this project seeks to understand the implications of a changing Bering Sea on the growth and survival of commercially and culturally important fisheries. And the Alaska Fisheries Science Center is playing a big role in both the upper trophic trophic and lower trophic level pieces of this project, of this study. And so, beginning with the lower trophic level piece, the project examines how ocean warming and variability in seasonal ice affects the nutritional quality and productivity of plankton. And the specific research questions being asked in this one is, how do changes in wind and ice alter water column structure, advection, and nutrient and how does the timing of spring ice melt impact ice algae, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and ichthyoplankton? And then, how do these changes affect the nutrition available for the food web?

And this is a multi-year study that's being conducted in coordination with already planned Alaska Fisheries Science Center surveys.

On the upper level— upper trophic level side, this project is examining how a changing northern Bering Sea food web affects fish, crab, seabirds, and marine mammals. And it's doing this by following energy through— energy pathways through the food web and looking at food supply and predation and how that affects juvenile fish and crab, as well as looking at seasonal distributions of those species. Issues. And so the overarching goal here really is to improve our understanding of western Alaska salmon survival, groundfish and crab interactions, and implications of expansions of populations north into the northern Bering Sea.

So stock assessment prioritization efforts. The Council has a long-established process for prioritizing stock assessments, which was developed in partnership with the Center and the SSC in 2017. It was refined again in 2023, and that prioritization is really built around 5 core themes, which are fisheries— fishery importance, stock status, ecosystem importance, assessment information, and stock biology. And as part of a broader national effort, the Fishery Service asked us to consider a different approach recently, which involved a risk-value matrix, and asked us to kind of think about our assessment prioritization process within, within sort of that box. And while that effort has been tabled at the national level for now, I'd just like to point out that our current prioritization process is already largely aligned with the spirit of that risk-value matrix.

And so I think we're really in a good place if that effort comes up again. I do not have any indication that we're going to be asked to do that again, but just wanted to note that I think we're well positioned and prepared to respond. And So just look forward to continuing to work together to prioritize stocks in a way that's timely and defensible, and it's always worth asking how we can do better, and I believe that the Council, the SSC, and the Center are constantly doing that.

Okay, so I'm not going to dive too deep into this work right now, but I wanted to kind of put this in as a teaser for something that would be great to talk a little bit more about at the June State of the Center presentation. And the Alaska Fishery Science Center has a TIGER team that's working on a scalable framework that maps ecosystem metrics against time-varying parameters stock assessments. And so this will help us identify what ecosystem factors are most important in understanding changes in stock biomass and how we can link them to the stock assessment time-varying process, processes such as growth, mortality, catchability, recruitment, and distribution. And so the approach taken in this effort is to, one, start with identifying priority stocks and the ecosystem factors that affect them. Then, secondly, to discuss the time-varying parameters that could be informed by ecosystem information, then map the ecosystem factors to the time-varying parameters, and then score the current availability of the identified ecosystem data as high, medium, or low.

And so this effort supports multiple ecosystem-based fisheries management efforts, such as the ESPs, the DSAM models, risk tables, and is very helpful with our strategic planning.

And so the, the team just finished an analysis and has a report, a paper put— pulled together on Greenland turbot, which I believe is has just gone into review or about to get reviewed. And then the team also began work on Pollock. So, looking forward to sharing more about this, this exciting work next time.

Let's see. So, also, there's a 90% chance that we're going to experience a Super El Niño this winter. And the impacts of El Niño tend to be mixed across Alaska's large marine ecosystems. Not super straightforward on what its effects will be, but it's ultimately going to depend upon the intensity of the warming and how long it lasts. We're not planning on altering our surveys in any way in response to El Niño, but we are planning on being, or we will be responsive by collecting additional samples and measurements to better understand the effects on the ecosystem.

System. And so, what does this mean? This could mean that we would add additional harmful algal bloom work, maybe take additional oceanographic measurements, potentially do some more diet energetics work back in the lab to answer some of these questions. So, in the Gulf of Alaska specifically, the El Niño typically brings increased circulation and a more shallow mixed layer, and that's due to stronger stratification, ocean, which reduces nutrient flux to the surface waters. And so that'll typically result in reduced phytoplankton biomass.

The impacts in the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea are kind of uncertain, but the extra warming could exacerbate conditions in the Aleutian Islands, which are currently just a little bit warm there at present. But the good news is there's relatively low heat content in the Bering Sea right now, so if it makes it up there, it might not have a large impact. But we could also, you know, see larval fish survival increase or decrease depending on what species we're considering. Some stocks might spawn a little bit earlier. We're likely to see a higher prevalence of more southern species moving up into northern waters, such as market squid, tuna, and even invasive green crab.

Mr. Kirland touched on this earlier this morning, and I just wanted to touch on it as well.

We're really trying at the agency to respond to stakeholders' requests for us to be more proactive objective in communicating the integrity of our science in the council process. And so the goal here is really to communicate that NOAA Fisheries and the North Pacific Council use an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management, which is backed by sound science. And so the agency is taking the approach of increasing the amount of web stories that we're— that we typically produce, as well as increasing leadership messages on this topic. There's also the MSA50 national campaign that's going on nationwide right now. They've just— the way that's rolling out is they've kind of focused on regions.

And so the Northeast region, I believe, has been done already. But we're going to try to push that. I think we're going to— we got approval to kind of push the Alaska up in the rank order, so to speak, so that we can get more information out. And in addition to increasing stakeholder engagements, and we're also looking at working with external media outlets to try to get our message out.

And with that, I'd just like to thank you for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the presentation, Dr. Moss. See if there are any final questions.

We appreciate your, your efforts towards assisting us in communications as well and being responsive to those requests. Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I just had a quick note, Madam Chair. Dr. Moss, I just want to thank you for including the Northern Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program in your presentation.

I think we have the executive director of NPRB here as well, and I think we as a council can do a better job— I could do a better job of kind of pushing out and doing communication on that program. I hope people understand that's a— over an $8 million research budget put forward by NPRB, but really leveraged into $21 million into research in the Northern Northern Bering Sea. And I think more than just the funding, it's like the level of coordination that's being created through this program, coordination of scientists from primarily NOAA and Alaska Fishery Science Center and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to answer very pressing management questions in the Northern Bering Sea in terms of distribution and productivity of stocks given a changing ecosystem. So I think it's a really exciting project. It's, I think, a 5-year project, and I hope that we can get more presentations as it starts to reach some conclusions.

But I just wanted to thank you for highlighting that. I'll do better as Chair of the NPRB in highlighting that as well. Thank you, Madam Chair, for that moment. Thank you. I know you recognized Dr. Foye at the beginning.

Would also like to recognize his service and dedication to the Center and our process. I know he's transitioned into a different role, but yeah, please extend our appreciation. Thank you.

Yes. Now we, um, we'll go to our B5 agenda item. We have a written report by ADF&G, and we'll take a moment to pull that up and see if there are any questions from council members.

Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you. I'm not—. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not quite organized, but I mean, we do have our Chinook letter from ADF&G that, that, you know, dictates what the Three River Index has been and/or will be for the coming year, but I didn't see anything on you know, salmon management or trends from Chinook and chum returns into western Alaska in the ADF&G report.

I saw some in the Fish and Wildlife report, but I just wondered if Ms. Bush had anything to provide on that for the council.

Hello, for the record, this is Carla Bush, Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Thanks for the question through the chair, Ms. Kimball. In particular for chum salmon. We did have improved returns this year on the Kuskokwim River.

The— we have our Kuskokwim sonar project, and we saw a return from the sonar counts over 500,000, which is the highest chum return we've had since that sonar project replaced the, the test fishery. So that was good news there. For Chinook salmon on the Kuskokwim River, the returns were down slightly this year from last year. We saw a return of just under 96,000 Chinook. Last year we had about 120,000 Chinook.

On the Yukon, both fall and summer chum salmon returns were over a million fish, which is almost triple the returns we've seen of fall chum since the decline started in 2020. That's the highest return we've seen since 2017 of summer chum— or excuse me, of fall chum on the Yukon River. Summer chum, as I said, were also over approximately 1 million fish, which is the highest chum return we've seen since 2019. We also saw an improved return of Chinook salmon. And this is from the Yukon pilot station sonar, of over 100,000 Chinook, which is the highest return we've seen since 2021 and almost double what we saw last year at about 60,000 Chinook.

Thank you, Ms. Lush.

Any other questions on the ADF&G report?

Yes, Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Not a question. I just wanted to provide the council— this is a little bit different— but provide the council and the public with a little bit of a signal for staff tasking, as we often do in the B reports. Um, I am going to take the council back to the December 2021 2025 meeting, the council received testimony from representatives from the Koyaanisqoos Walrus Commission expressing concerns about the potential effects of council-managed fisheries on the walrus population in the area.

At the time, US Fish and Wildlife Service representative Ms. Klein and I expressed our intent to communicate with Walrus Commission representatives and work with them to essentially clarify the request, perhaps, that the Walrus Commission was making of the council, um, collect, you know, uh, review some data and report back to the council at a future meeting. We do not have a full report, uh, at this meeting, nor have we scheduled it, but Ms. Klein and I thought it would be timely, uh, to provide the council with an update on our progress and perhaps, uh, in the staff tasking agenda item, um, potentially talk about timing for, uh, scheduling that future full report. So I'll maybe look to Ms. Cline if there's anything I missed there, or if she'd like to—. Or Madam Chair, if you— sorry. Yeah, Ms. Cline.

Thank you. I think Ms. Baker summarized that well. And just of note, in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's B7 report, there's a walrus literature review that our marine mammal staff compiled and would just suggest anyone interested in, in this issue to take a look at that document and, um, see the information that we were able to, uh, provide also in response to what we heard in the testimony from folks from Bristol Bay. Great, thank you both.

Okay, any further questions? Thank you, Miss Thank you, Commissioner Bush and Ms. Baker. So I think this is a good time to break for lunch. Let's come back at 1:15 and we will take up our B6 US Coast Guard report at that time. Thank you.

1:15.

Welcome back, everyone. So we will be continuing on with our B reports. Um, just a reminder to the public, anyone wishing to testify on any of the B reports, please sign up before the end of our B7 report. So we're on our B6 U.S. Coast Guard report, and Lieutenant Commander Rasky.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the council, and members of the public. For the record, my name is Lieutenant Commander Jed Rasky from Coast Guard Arctic District in Juneau, Alaska. Today I'll be providing a short oral report in addition to the written oral report, and this oral report is going to be on our national security mission called Operation Frontier Sentinel. Before I get into the prepared remarks, I'll just comment that this is not something we typically cover during the, the council meetings because it doesn't have anything to do with really enforcement or safety directly to the fishing fleet. However, as we've seen since about 2020 with the increase in adversarial nations' presence vessels, there's the potential for interaction interactions, primarily either neutral or negative interactions between our fishing fleet and other maritime stakeholders and the adversarial nation vessels that are coming up to operate in the Bering Sea and Arctic region.

So I'll start off with my prepared remarks.

The U.S. Coast Guard Arctic District's national security framework was formalized with the creation and implementation of Operation Frontier Sentinel in in response to increased maritime activities and foreign— of foreign adversaries. The goal of this operation is to maintain a non-escalatory posture while securing, defending, and controlling U.S. maritime borders, monitoring and documenting adversarial activities, countering malign activities, and making timely notifications to relevant stakeholders with key information. The necessity for the Arctic District to conduct these types of national security operations became evident in 2022 2020, when Russian warships forced U.S. fishing vessels off the fishing grounds within the U.S. EEZ to conduct a weapons exercise. Operation Frontier Sentinel has come to dominate the service's strategic messaging about our activities and those of our foreign adversaries throughout the U.S. Arctic.

For the current status, Arctic District primarily executes this mission with National Security or the 420, 418-foot National Security Cutters, polar icebreakers, and this year we had the Coast Guard Cutter Storis, which is a relatively new icebreaker to our fleet, and unfortunately we didn't have the Coast Guard Cutter Healy, our heavy icebreaker, due to some engineering casualties. And we also execute with fixed-wing aircraft. The primarily, primary challenge faced with executing Operation Frontier Sentinel is the tyranny of distance. Instance, in the Arctic District AOR, upon notification, the Coast Guard major cutter operating in the Bering Sea could be as far as 2,000 nautical miles from a target of interest. Advanced notice of pending foreign adversary activity through consistent monitoring provides the Arctic District early warning and of potential future response requirements.

Our partnerships with both Canada and the U.S. Alaska Command, or ALLCOM, have greatly expanded our capacity to comprehensively respond to these threats through coordination and deconfliction of surface and air activities. The U.S. and Canada demonstrate our collective capability and will— and, and will— sorry, and will to defend the homelands in the Arctic.

Last year, in 2025, the primary adversarial presence in the Arctic consisted of 5 Chinese research vessels that operated over the U.S. extended continental shelf from July through September. The China-flagged research vessel Zhui Long 2, Shanghai Yihao, GD Tansuo Sanhao, and the Liberia-flagged research vessel Zhongshan Da Zhui GD. Additionally, the Coast Guard monitored a Russian submarine rescue tug/tender vessel that transited through the Aleutians in May. Although the number and diversity of adversarial vessels was lower in 2025, the persistent presence of Chinese research vessels in the U.S. ECS, or Extended Continental Shelf Claim, was highly noteworthy. In 2026, we saw a more diverse adversarial presence in the Arctic and Bering Sea.

Our responses to these activities are shown on this slide. 4 Of the 5 Chinese research vessels above were present in the Bering Sea and Arctic from July through October. And actually, both the Liberia-flagged Zhongshan Da Zhueiji did not come into the Arctic this year, and we added the Zhuelong, which is the sister ship to the Zhuelong 2.

Arctic District responses are shown— to these Chinese research vessels are shown in the yellow stars. And this year, Coast Guard Cutter Storis, a medium icebreaker, was able to provide persistent monitoring of the Chinese research vessels operating over the U.S. ECS claim. For the first time, Arctic District also monitored 3 different Russian naval auxiliary hydrographic survey ships conducting bathymetric research inside the U.S. EEZ. These are different from Russian naval, uh, combatant ships. So these are auxiliary hydrographic geographic survey vessels.

This activity and our responses with— are shown with red stars, and the activity is permitted by the UN Conventions of the Law of the Sea. Arctic District assets monitored these ships to confirm they were not conducting marine scientific research, which is prohibited in the EZ without prior approval, and all interactions with foreign adversarial vessels were deemed safe and professional. The next This slide shows the AIS track lines of the 4 Chinese polar research vessels that operated in the Arctic this year. It's apparent that the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf claim is a primary area where they operate. Coast Guard Cutter Storis was consistently able to monitor this activity over the U.S. ECS and provided the approved, the approved Department of State language regarding the prohibition of conducting marine scientific research approval.

As the Arctic warms and traffic increases, Arctic District has observed an increase in activities from vessels owned or associated with foreign governments during the ice-free months in the Bering Strait and Arctic. Monitoring adversarial nations' vessels through Operation Frontier Sentinel will remain the primary national security mission for the Coast Guard Arctic District. So as you can see in the slide, uh, this projection is a little bit different than the previous one. This is a kind of a polar stereographic projection to show more of the Arctic in a realistic format, so it's not too exaggerated, but I'll point out that just below the white circle, which is not ice in this case, it's just a remnant of the projection, but just below that white circle is the US extended continental shelf claim, and you can see a couple of the Chinese research vessels in both red and yellow, uh, spent a spent a lot of time researching over the extended continental shelf. I didn't show the ice in this case.

There was actually ice covering most of the, the ECS this year, but the ice would have hidden the underlying bathymetry. So you can see that there's a shallower area within our ECS that the Chinese polar research vessels have concentrated on. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions on both this oral brief and the written report. Thank you very much for the report, Lieutenant Commander. Wonder if there are any questions.

Yes, Miss Gimble. Thank you. Thank you for that report, Lieutenant Commander Rasky. I— my question was on the written report and the kind of high incidence of potential incursions by Russian fishing vessels on the maritime boundary line, and I just wondered if you had any more context around that. It looked like after patrolling the area, there was no observed fishing over the line, but that's quite a high number compared to your previous reports.

So I didn't know if you had comment on that. Through the chair, thank you, Ms. Kimball, for the question. So if you remember back in June, I reported that we had an uptick right at the, at the end of the reporting period of Russian vessels incurring shallow incursions, but they were over the line, over what we consider, you know, potential fishing activity in the US EEZ. So that continued a little bit into the month of June, and we flew some aircraft, C-130 aircraft over the area, did multiple patrols, increased presence. We were not able to detect any Russian fishing vessels fishing over the line or even located over the line via aircraft.

So all of our detections of potential incursions were done via AIS. And again, they were relatively shallow incursions. We sent every single one, and there was a total of 153 this summer that we sent over to the Russian Border Guard and documented potential fishing activity in, within our EEZ. Their response is that there's, they accept a certain margin of error where they don't consider it to be fishing inside of our EEZ. There's, there's some electronic error regarding AIS.

We obviously disagree with that, but that's the Russian Border Guard's response. They did conduct investigations into a few of the vessels that had transited into the U.S. EEZ without prior notification to the Russian Border Guard and did assess some fines on that. I don't have those exact numbers, but that's their response that they had notified the vessels that they had crossed over the line to the U.S. EEZ without prior notification to the Russian Border Guard and they assessed test finds on those vessels. So we had C-130s fly the line. We, we increased presence, and then once we were able to get the Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley out to the line and do that persistent surface monitoring, we didn't even have any potential incursions after the Alex Haley was on scene.

Since then, we also had the Coast Guard Cutter Fur, that which is a buoy tender, but they actually have some pretty long legs. They were up north of the Bering Strait and they patrolled the US-Russia MBL south. So we had persistent presence with the Coast Guard Cutter Furr, and then we also had the Stratton, Monroe, and the Storis make runs up and down the MBL. So over the last few months, we haven't seen any Russian fishing activity over the line. Once the Alex Haley actually got up on the line and patrolled and made their presence known, then we did not see any further potential incursions even through AIS.

Follow-up. Thank you very much for that context, and I guess I don't know quite how to answer this question or ask this question, but in a diplomatic way, but is, is the Russian Border Guard still considered a cooperating agency in terms of both enforcement, and, and they used to also cooperate on research? Through the Chair, thank you, Ms. Kimball. Yes, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Russian Border Guard, which is which is not, not necessarily a Coast Guard, but it's, it's, it serves a lot of the same missions that we do, primarily search and rescue, law enforcement, and marine safety, which is like the pollution response. So we have those overlapping mission sets between us, and we obviously have a very close joint sea space in the Bering Strait.

So we have a joint action plan that the the U.S. government has signed with the Russian Border Guard. Right now, for the last few years, we, we've limited the agreement within that joint action plan to exactly those mission sets of law enforcement, marine pollution, and search and rescue, and we still coordinate on those three topics. Besides those three specific topics, we're not in a very proactive stance of communicating with the Russian Border Guard at the moment. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions? Okay, thank you again for the report. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, that brings us to our B7 report, and this is a written report only. Um, so if there are any questions on the report, I'll give the council members a few moments to pull that up.

Again, the last reminder to any members of the public wishing to testify, please do sign up.

Okay, are there any questions on Fish and Wildlife Service report or any need for a couple more moments?

Okay, seeing none. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to public testimony on B reports. Um, looking at the agenda, we have— let's see, I think 12 people signed up. 13.

Okay, I need to refresh. One moment.

Good. So as a reminder to the public, we will go through the list in order. Um, regarding testimony time limits, there's a time projected on the screen. Individuals and companies will have 3 minutes, organizations and associations 6 minutes. Um, you'll be— testifiers online, you'll be unmuted when it's your turn to testify.

We will also be taking probably a brief stand down around 2:10, 2:15. So if we're not done with public testimony at that time, we'll just take a brief stand down and break, and we'll resume public testimony at about 2:30. So we'll begin with Chaley Ish and Richard Peterson.

Oh, excuse me, I'm reading the comments.

Steve Miner is the first person, but I believe we're— we'll be skipping over him, coming back to staff tasking. So Oyston Loan followed by Frank O'Hara.

Oyston is joining us online? Okay, he's not online, so we'll circle back to him. Him at the end of the list. Frank O'Hara followed by Michael Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the council. For the record, my name is Frank O'Hara, and I'm speaking on behalf of O'Hara Corporation. O'Hara is a 5th generation family-owned company. We've been catching groundfish since 1880, harvesting seafood in Alaska for over 40 years. We own and operate the Defender that recently replaced the Golden Fleece.

At the June council meeting, a motion passed to analyze removing the exemption for halibut PSC sideboard limits and requiring the full monitoring for an Amemunite vessel that replaces the Golden Fleece. Today I'm asking the council to remove this action from your current list of priorities. Priorities. The prioritization framework asks you to consider under any action who's affected, what would be accomplished, whether the concern can be handled without regulation, and whether it is worth the staff and agenda time that it would consume. In this case, this action affects one license and one vessel.

The action would require an FMP amendment analysis, secretarial review, and rulemaking to regulate just one single boat. The bar is also set higher when regulating a single entity. I know you hear this a lot, but removing the exemption does not provide a conservation benefit for halibut. This is not a subjective statement. The Defender is not exempt from all halibut limits.

The exemption simply allows the Defender to prosecute the Gulf flatfish fisheries under that overall trawl halibut PSC limit, which is broken down into the 5 seasons. Every pound we catch goes towards that overall limit. If you remove the exemption, others will just simply catch the resource. Is there an alternative to the regulation? Our company voluntarily implemented the Alternative 3 monitoring requirements prior to the first trip that we did this year.

2 Observers, flow scales, and the cameras. And then also in 2026, we deck sorted halibut on over 90% of our tows, reducing halibut mortality.

Council has already addressed this issue twice in the past. In 2008, under Amendment 80, Golden Fleece, Golden Fleece received these exemptions exemptions to protect their unique historic fishing pattern in the Gulf. Then again, in 2012, the council created the vessel replacement rules for the Golden Fleece, reaffirming that exemption. Because the Golden Fleece operates under that overall trawl PSC limit, the council limited any replacement vessel to 124 feet. The Defender is under 124 feet.

Alternatively, all the other Ameminity vessels can be replaced up to 295 feet. Feet. So just the Golden Fleece has this length restriction in exchange for this exemption. The timing of this action is also difficult to understand from a conservation standpoint. At the June 9 council meeting when the motion was made, the Defender hadn't put a net in the water and hadn't even caught any fish.

And lastly, I think importantly, on March 20th last year, NMFS told us that we could replace— the Defender could replace the Golden Fleece. The Defender had been tied up, so we had to make a very significant investment in our crew, getting them back, and repairs to the boat to return the Defender to service. These investments were made in reliance on the existing regulations and on that— on the NMFS recently issued decision. The proposed action has the potential to render the Defender without a fishery. So before devoting counsel and staff resources to another regulatory action, I think the reasonable approach is to let the vessel operate with the full monitoring, the best data in the world, as we say, and determine from the actual data whether a conservation problem exists instead of assuming a conservation issue before we've even caught a single fish.

So for those reasons, we respectfully ask the Council to take no further action at this time and to remove the action from your list of priorities. Thank you very, very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Pamplin.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, Mr. O'Hara, for attending today. Would you just remind me, when did this license last fish? And then also, could you just speak to the performance of the boat this summer relative to avoiding and minimizing some of the non-target species? Yeah, so the Golden Fleece fished for like 40 years in the Gulf, and it stopped fishing in 2022 after the pandemic, some struggles there, and the boat has aged out.

It was built in the '70s or something, so it's going to be difficult to— it was difficult to return the boat back to service. And then the— so this is just a one boat in, one boat out. It's not a new vessel coming into the fishery. It's the same captain, in fact. But under O'Hara's management, I think we're doing a pretty good job managing the fishery in 2026.

And then to answer your question about how we did in 2026, obviously we took the full monitoring requirements, the 2 observers, the 2 observers allowed us to do the halibut deck sorting, which my colleague Glenn mentioned this morning, but our guys are on there and crew are on their hands and knees sorting through halibut, handing them to the federal fisheries observer to get the halibut mortality down. I was on the phone with the captain every single day making sure that our bycatch rates that we were avoiding Tanner crab, salmon, cod, and halibut, not just— this isn't just a halibut issue for us. And we were communicating with the local fleet in Kodiak, with the catcher vessels all the time to make sure that we were being good partners in that community. And that's something that, that I'm saying that we're going to continue to do into 2027 and beyond.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Michael Lake is up next, followed by Stacy Hansen.

Michael Lake— so Michael's not online yet.

Stacy Hansen. Okay, after Stacy is Austin Esterbrooks and Heidi Olson. So we'll go to Stacy first. Yeah, I think I'm on. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the council. My name is Stacy Hanson. I'm with Saltwater Incorporated.

We're an observer and EM provider based in Anchorage, Alaska. And I'm actually here to speak in support of prioritizing the observer lead Level 2 certification changes, which is currently listed listed as number 21 in the EO 14276 work plan. The implementation of EM has reduced the overall labor— observer labor pool deploying into the North Pacific full coverage program. Half of the fleet we support requires a lead level 2 observer, and expediting this review will have a direct effect on full coverage providers' ability to successfully deploy observers into the field and collect the crucial data for not only the freezer longliner sector, but also pollock CPs and Amendment 80 vessels. My understanding is that the original scope would include 3 major areas, all of which are equally important in my opinion.

Those areas that are being looked at are allowing haul sampled at the At-sea Hake Program and/or shore-side plant offloads in Alaska to count towards the Level 2 LEED endorsement. Modifying the minimum sampled haul requirement from 100 to 60 sample hauls, and then also granting the Observer Program the authority to waive fixed gear lead Level 2 requirements and allowing another experienced Observer deploy when there are no other leads available. I would like to particularly highlight allowing the hauls sampled at the at-sea Hake Program to be counted as experience. These vessels that operate in this program are the same vessels that operate in the Bering Sea, and the, the At-sea Hake program does rely on certified North Pacific observers to participate in their program, which already strains our labor force. And we actually have some observers who have refused to train and deploy into Hake, as that experience gained in this fishery does not apply towards them getting their lead Level 2 endorsement.

So allowing this experience will benefit two very important monitoring programs and would hopefully be an easy lift for the, the reviewers. Although this review was initially proposed to benefit the freezer longliner sector, it actually reaches far beyond that original intent. And the review was initially scheduled for December of 2026, but has been pushed to February of 2027. I'm just really hoping that this doesn't get delayed again. That is really important for, you know, our monitoring goals.

And with that, I'll finish. I appreciate your time and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions.

Seeing none, thank you for joining us. Thank you.

Austin Osterbrooks and Heidi Olsen are up next, followed by Ruth Christiansen.

Hello, good afternoon, members of the council. I'm Austin Osterbrooks with the At Sea Processors Association, and first just wanted to welcome a few of the new faces around the table. Thanks for your, in advance, for your service and commitment to North Pacific fisheries management. And we at APA also have a new face, and so I just wanted to give Heidi the opportunity to introduce herself briefly.

Hello, my name is Heidi Olson. I'm the At-sea Processors Association's new Vice President of Policy and advocacy. I look forward to working with all of you.

Yeah, thanks. So, um, we are here just to discuss council prioritization in particular, and specifically, um, we'd like to address the existing herring management in the Bering Sea, which is antiquated. It was a management action that was taken in 1991, and a lot of the spatial closures that are tied to that management structure were based on, you know, 1980s joint venture observer catch data.

And specifically, herring management is becoming more counterproductive. For example, we're observing distributions of herring in the Bering Sea that aren't adhering to historical time area boundaries. And for example, I have analysis on my computer that shows from 2008 to 2023, roughly 70% of the herring PSC catch in the Pollock fishery has occurred outside of the spatial temporal boundaries that are currently defined in management. And we believe this leads to some perverse management outcomes And then I also just highlight the ADFNG letter that's on your agenda from under the B reports that just basically says that due to the fact that we don't have new stock assessment information or abundance estimates for herring since roughly 2023, I think was the last aerial survey that was able to be completed, we've defaulted now to a biomass estimate that's based on a long-term historical median value, which again, the biomass estimate then sets the PSC limit for the Eastern Bering Sea fisheries. And so in summary, we're just seeing in 2027 a noticeable drop is going to occur in the actual herring PSC limit.

We're observing herring abundance that's increasing simply due to the fact there hasn't been a commercial fishery for the last few years. We— that's a hypothesis, obviously. We don't know what the herring abundance is. And then that's leading to, you know, more perverse management outcomes due to the fact that the herring aren't— the distributions aren't they're not staying within the defined existing historical management boundaries that were established in 1981. So our ask is that you place a high priority on the existing herring PSC limit action that's on your docket.

I believe it's scheduled for February 2027, and while we hope that Dr. Hapla's having quality time with her newborn, we selfishly would like to have her back to work on this issue. Um, and with that, I'll just take any questions. Thank you. We won't share that with her, but noted.

Yes, Mr. Ritchie, and then Ms. Kimball. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your testimony. Just a point of clarification, I thought I heard you say— I couldn't remember the percent you said of the, of of the catch of herring that you guys are seeing is actually outside of the savings area?

So yeah, this was analysis through the chair, Mr. Ritchie. This was analysis I did a while ago, but yeah, from 2008 to 2023, it was a total of, I think, 17,000 tons of herring and 12,000 tons of cod. Of that herring was caught outside of the, uh, both the temporal and the spatial boundary. So it was roughly 70%.

Thank you. And Miss Kimball. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony. I, I want to— I guess the main crux of it is that keep the herring PSE analysis as a priority.

And I just wanted to get a little bit more on the data that you provided because that analysis isn't looking at changing those herring savings areas that were developed decades ago. So is that just a note to us that, you know, in your mind those alternatives are too narrow to solve the problem, or just some context around what a problem this has become? Yeah, through the Chair, very great question. Yes, I understand the council action is, is a narrowly focused, uh, PSE limit change, but yes, the idea was just to foreshadow, uh, what you might want to consider, uh, in the future as the action comes back to you, um, just in terms of, yeah, the additional, um, management and conservation concerns that, uh, could, could proceed, uh, without addressing the actual, um, spatial boxes that are in place. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions? Thank you for your testimony.

Ruth Christianson is up next, followed by Andrea Kekula and Susie Zagora.

I love the stash of cough drops up here. Oh goodness. All right, good afternoon, everybody. For the record, my name is Ruth Christiansen, and I am here today testifying on behalf of Groundfish Forum, which is the trade association that represents the Amendment 80 sector. So first, I'm here to thank the administration for the opportunity to provide input on— input and recommendations on Executive Order 14276.

And we also want to thank them for their recommendation to prioritize review and modification of the Stellar Sea Lion closure areas. Second, I'm here to thank the council, you know, for scheduling this much-needed discussion on its priorities. We appreciate the constraints that limitations on funding, staff capacity, and meeting time have on the scope and scale of work that can be completed, which is what necessitates this really important conversation. So consistent with the administration's recommendation, Groundfish Forum is here today to request that the council prioritize review and modification of Stellar Sea Lion closure areas by initiating a targeted action on 8 identified closure locations in the Aleutian Islands for the directed harvest of Akamakerl. The primary question to be answered in this kind of analysis is whether the magnitude and location of Akamakerl removals in these locations is significant enough to cause demographic consequences to the current level of Steller sea lion population numbers in a small portion of the Aleutian Islands.

Alaska Islands. This is not a request to modify steller sea lion critical habitat, nor is it a request to eliminate steller sea lion conservation measures or repeal closure areas wholesale. Over 95% of the Aleutian Islands is already closed to non-pelagic trawl gear, and this will not change under this, our recommendation. The action is intended to spread our harvest out geographically by initiating an analysis to open up the small number of areas in 541 and 542 where our mackerel-dependent companies are currently restricted from targeting Aka mackerel, but where they do currently fish for other targets. So access to these areas would not only benefit the mackerel stock, but it will increase our operational flexibility for Aka mackerel harvest under the existing seller sea and related harvest restrictions.

It will also greatly improve our ability to balance multiple fishery trade-offs that we face, including reduction in bycatch, an increase in CPE, and a reduction in habitat impacts because we are all— we are spending less time on the water. So all of this is consistent with the goals of the executive order. So Steller sea lion closure areas are one example of static closure areas established decades ago based on biological assumptions, fishery conditions, management structures at the time, and without any expectation that these areas would be reviewed for their ongoing conservation benefit. Static closure areas are the opposite of adaptive management, and they do not recognize changing ecosystems, updated science, and changing fishery practices and dynamics. Periodic evaluation is therefore critical.

It's a critical component of adaptive management, and it helps to ensure that area-based closures remain purposeful, effective, and appropriate under current conditions. So there's been a significant body of scientific research related to Steller sea lions since the 2014 buy-up, which is when our current network of closure areas in the Aleutians were established. This work provides new information relevant to assumptions underlying the nutritional stress hypothesis and identifies other factors that are likely contributing to Steller sea sea lion population trends and recovery. Regarding updated research on nutritional stress, I did notice that one of the comment letters that was submitted under this agenda item that is— that recommends, you know, not taking any action on these closure areas, it cites a 2015 study that modeled prey biomass across the Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, and Gulf of Alaska. In summing up the study, the letter states that after comparing trends trends at 304 rookeries to accessible prey biomass.

Every statistically significant relationship pointed in the same direction. Stellar sea lion numbers increased in areas where more prey biomass remained accessible after fishery removals. However, I want to point out that what this comment letter fails to include from this 2015 peer-reviewed research paper is that out of the 304 rookeries included in the study, it was only 3 of the 304 sites that showed a statistically significant relationship. Along those same lines, a 2019 publication concluded that, quote, our more regionally focused single ecosystem study showed that a relationship between steller sea lion diet metrics and population trends in the Aleutians over a 22-year period is inconsistent, but it could also be described as nonexistent. Consistent.

Um, and I'm going to wrap up my testimony, um, by emphasizing that our request is intended to be deliberately narrow in focus and scope to accommodate staff and resource limitations. We understand and respect the concerns on limitations, but we also strongly believe this action would provide multiple fishery benefits, thus making it worthy of the Council and NMFS's time, especially given the overarching goals identified in Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Christiansen. Are there any questions? Yes, Ms. Vanderhoeven.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Christiansen. My question is on your letter, and the very last paragraph makes reference to supporting research through an EFP, and it was just kind of thrown in there, and I wasn't quite following. Is that something that you're currently exploring, or what do you have in mind there, and what would the scientific question be that you'd be looking to answer through an EFP? Thank you, Ms. Vanderhoeven.

Through the chair, we included that— provide you a little bit more context. When the, you know, the letter came out with the administration's priorities, got together, start putting our heads together, think about the best way to try to get at this issue, and one of our first ideas was was maybe we explore these areas through an EFP. Um, we ultimately did not go down that route. We're not here to, to propose an EFP today, um, partly because the scientific question that we were trying to get at, which would be impacts to Steller sea lions, we couldn't figure out a way to structure an EFP that get at that question. An EFP would be great for, you know, measuring our CPE, analyzing our bycatch in these areas, all this, you know, very valuable information.

But the key question being, what are the impacts to the sea lions, isn't necessarily— we couldn't figure out a way to do it. So that last paragraph, if it is the will of NMFS, if it is the will of the council, that they think a cooperative research approach of the EFP approach would be better, we would love to, to have the opportunity. We would be willing to work together to, to come up with some kind of structure that would get, um, at the key question. That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions?

Thank you for your testimony. Okay, thank you.

Andrea Kajkla and Susie Zagorski, followed by Lauren Hines.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the council. For the record, my name is Andrea Kaikela. I'm the Executive Director of the United Catcher Boats, and with me today is Susie Zagorski, the Catcher Vessel Interco-op Manager, also with UCB. UCB represents the majority of catcher vessels fishing for pollock and Pacific cod in the Bering Sea. I want to start by recognizing the difficult prioritization discussion in front with you.

UCB supports continuing the work already planned on the PSE disposition, omnibus FMP recordkeeping and reporting, and the Bering Sea herring PSE limit adjustment. At the same time, we are asking the council to initiate an analysis on the Stellar Sea Lion closure boundary areas at this meeting. I want to emphasize the word analysis. We are not asking the council today to predetermine an We are asking you to begin an analytical process necessary to determine whether measures put in place more than 20 years ago remain appropriately configured based on the current conditions and best available science. This is a timely opportunity to do that.

NOAA Fisheries leadership specifically asked the council to initiate a review of current steller sea lion closure boundaries and consider a framework using the best available science to modify or shrink those closures where appropriate. Appropriate to improve access to fishing grounds and increase domestic production. UCB believes the council should take NOAA up on that request. These closures were established using the best information and management understanding available at the time. Since then, science has advanced, fisheries management has evolved, and fishing practices have changed, and ecological conditions have changed.

We also want to be very clear about what we are not asking for. We are not asking for a complete elimination of steller sea lion protections. We are asking for a targeted analytical review to determine whether practical boundaries and overlapping protections remain necessary and appropriate. Stellar sea lions will continue to be protected, and any changes must be supported by the record and best available science. For UCB, the primary areas of interest are the Sea Lion Conservation Area, also known as the SCA, the Bering Sea pollock restriction area, more commonly referred to as the lights align, and relevant rookeries and haulout closures in the southeastern Bering Sea.

These measures do not operate independently. In some places overlap. The BSPRA, for example, overlaps 6 southeast Bering Sea rookeries and haulout areas that already have separate 10-nautical-mile closure zones for pollock and cod trawl fishing. I also want to put some context around why this matters operationally to fleet. The SCA is simple— is not simply a line on a chart that determines where vessels can fish.

It affects the entire A— how it affects how the entire A season operates, and impacts felt in A season bleed into B season. Currently, most catcher vessels are required to harvest approximately 40% of their A season quota outside the SCA. Depending on where a vessel fishes, that can mean running 90 to 160 nautical miles or more one way. Based on approximate fleet operation averages, an inside trip lasts 3.5 days and can roughly cost $22,500 in fuel. An outside trip lasts approximately 4.5 days and can cost roughly $31,000 in fuel.

Across the fleet, the additional fuel expense associated with these trips is an estimated $1 million to $2.5 million during A season own. But the significance is not just the fuel bill. Every additional day spent transiting is a day that cannot be spent efficiently harvesting fish. If A season takes longer, more quota can carry into B season. That can mean more fishing later in the year, more exposure to weather and additional pressures from other management constraints of which the fleet is simultaneously navigating, including Chinook, chum, and herring avoidance.

That is why we believe the analysis needs to look at these measures in context of today's fisheries, oceans, and economic conditions. Access to a fish— access and efficiency are not simply economic considerations. Where and when vessels can operate affects fuel use, fish quality, safety, catch per unit effort, shore plant operating costs, and the fleet's ability to respond to changing fishing conditions. Whether ice, and bycatch. And this is a mature fishery operating under 100% monitoring and a highly developed cooperative management structure that gives the council and NMFS substantial information in which they can evaluate these tradeoffs.

We understand that staff capacity is limited, and that is exactly why UCB has tried to be surgical in our request. We are asking the council to initiate an analysis focused initially on the SCA, BSPRA, and the identified rookeries and haulout closures in the southeastern Bering Sea in our our TESC comment letter. We also ask that the analysis consider related SEA percentage limits, SEA closure dates, and the BSPRA regulatory dates. Again, initiating an analysis does not assume an outcome. It creates an analytical record necessary for the Council and NMFS to determine what is necessary and what may be better configured and where changes may be warranted while maintaining appropriate protections for steller sea lions.

NOAA has specifically asked for this review. These measures have been in place for more than 2 decades. We can demonstrate that they have meaningful operational consequences for today's fleet. We believe that is enough here to ask the question. UCB respectfully asks that the council prioritize the work necessary to answer it.

Thank you, and we are happy to take questions.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Testimony. See if there are any questions.

Yes, Miss Kimball. Thank you for your testimony. I just wondered if you'd provide a little bit more context around the Rookery and Hallout closures that you identified for removing the 10 nautical mile line. Like you said, this is a targeted approach. Previous testifier had a targeted approach.

It still adds up to cumulatively a lot. Why did, why did you target those areas?

Areas. Through the chair, Ms. Kimball, for the record, Susie Zagorski, UCB. So in our, in our assessment of looking at what the current steller sea lion protection measures are and those that are most impactful to the pollock fishery as well as the cod fishery, these are the 3 that have the most impact, especially in A season. The rookeries obviously are year-round ground, but when looking at these, the all three overlap each other through in the A season timing.

So the SCA, the lights align, and the rookeries. Specifically looking at the lights align, we had thought of a few ideas, but then of maybe how that could be adjusted, but then you still have the rookeries that are protected, kind of double protected because they have a 10 nautical mile radius around them, plus then the 20-mile for the lights align.

And in our, in our assessment for the rookeries, we were just looking at the 6 that are in the southeastern Bering Sea. And when you compare those to the rookery closure areas for other species and fisheries and gear types, they're different for different gear types, different fisheries, different species. Target species like cod. So the, the UCB members had decided that, you know, the rookeries are worth looking into to understand, are they still providing protections to sea lions, and where can we find potential boundary adjustments?

However, the order in which we listed them as CA lights align and then rookeries is essentially the priority which is priority order for us of the Steller sea lion boundaries that are affecting us. So that was, that was kind of our order of operations there, but mainly if rookeries are looked at, we would prefer that they be compared as well to what the other restrictions are for other fisheries, gear types, and target species.

Thank you.

Thank you both for your testimony.

So Lauren Hines is up next, followed by Nick Jacek.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Council. For the record, my name is Lauren Hines, and I am representing Oceana. Um, as we've already covered, uh, NMFS has tasked you with to consider or to begin reviewing Stellar Sea Lion closure boundaries and to draft a framework to shrink closures where appropriate. And at this time, it sounds like there may not be staff capacity to do so, but regardless, we want to remind the council that these protections exist for a reason, and we do not believe shrinking any of these protections actions are appropriate. The western DPS stellar sea lions fell by more than 3/4 between the late '70s and 2000.

NMFS listed them as endangered in 1997 and recognized that fisheries taking large amounts of prey from small areas in short periods can make it harder for sea lions to feed. In 2000, NMFS found that the pollock cod, atka mackerel fisheries were likely to jeopardize the population. Closures and spreading catch out in time and space were the remedy. Those protections have mostly entirely carried through every review outside of 2014 since. The two most recent biological opinions in 2024 and 2026 found no jeopardy, but with these protection measures in place as a part of the action.

The 2019 study previously cited found no consistent link between sea lion diet and population trends in the Aleutian but it only looked at one region over a short time period and at what steller sea lions were eating based on their scat and not how much prey fishing removes during rookeries or how that may impact the species. The Eastern DPS was delisted in 2013 after 3 decades of recovery. The Western population has yet to meet this delisting criteria. The population is still far below its historic level in its own delisting criteria. Area, and growth has now stopped.

NMPHS 2024 survey report classified the Western DPS's juveniles and adults as increasing at 0.96% a year. One survey later in 2025, they are classified as just stable at 0.62% a year. Stable in this context means that the trend can no longer be distinguished from zero growth. NPS says this is the first time since early 2000s that juveniles and adults have not been classified as increasing. Pups are still counted as increasing, but at under 1% a year, and NPS says they're also approaching zero growth.

The population has gone from growing to flat. The recovery plan manages the western DPS as 7 subregions because growth in one place does not offset decline in another. And lastly, the 5-year ESA status review for this DPS has been open since April of 2024 and remains open. Oceana is asking that the council not initiate the boundary review at this time. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. See if there are any questions.

Appreciate you joining us.

So Nick Jacek is up next, and then I think we're going to skip over Shannon. They're in the middle of a motion, and then we'll circle back. So we'll go to Therese Vicente after Nick.

All right, thank you, Madam Chair, members of the council. Good afternoon, my name is Nicholas Jacek. I am the Fisheries Policy Manager for Ocean Conservancy. I would like to say that, provide my testimony today saying that given significant capacity and budgetary constraints, the Council should prioritize its limited resources towards actions that address clear conservation or fishery sustainability needs and are responsive to demonstrated public interest and testimony. Therefore, Ocean Conservancy urges the Council to take no action to reevaluate the current Steller's sea lion protection protection areas.

At the June 2025 meeting, the council submitted a list of 20 recommended changes for aligning with the— with Executive Order 14276. None of the items from the— from the council listed— list included recommended modifications or reductions to the current Steller sea lion habitat areas currently in place. At a time of constrained agency and council staff capacity, initiating a resource-intensive review of long-standing protections would further strain limited staff and funding, displace other council priorities, and delay actions already awaiting consideration. If the council were to initiate a review, there would be a substantial amount of resources and time required to maintain compliance with standards of the Environmental— Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, including a biological assessment, ESA consultation, and even more— and even more comprehensive biological professional opinion.

The western stock of stella sea lions are listed as endangered under the ESA and depleted under the MMPA. After nearly 30 years of protections, the western stock has not recovered across the range. As the population continues to face a less predictable, less predictable ecosystem and experience varying population trends, there's no clear conservation basis to reduce safeguards on these habitat areas. If we want to see recovery, long-term protections are needed for the western stock of stellar sea lions. The stock experienced a dramatic decline of 80% from its peak abundance ranging from 220,000 to 260,000 in 1978 to just under 50,000 in the year 2000.

Current stock estimates remain low at around 52,000 with concerning regional variability. Additionally, despite being underestimated to— due to low observer coverage, the estimated mean annual level of human-caused mortality and serious injury is notably near its PBR. Any additional fishing pressure in these protected areas could increase direct and indirect fishery effects to the stock, further prolonging recovery. And there's an important connection to be made between marine heat waves and the impacted recovery of the western stock, specifically impacts relating to the vulnerability of nursing mothers and pup abundance. I'll refer you to our comment letter where you can find relevant research that identifies how warming phases, warming phases drive long-term implications for Steller sea lion reproduction.

Moreover, our fisheries and marine ecosystem are forecasted to experience a significant El Niño event this winter. The information provided to the council this morning from the B4A ACF report presentation outlines the inability to predict the level of impact of this event, but nevertheless, impacts are expected. The council should engage with notable caution as this significant warming phase is expected to accelerate already existing warming trends in our marine system. Learning from the marine heatwave events from 2014 to 2017, we have a relevant example of how warming phases can impact the western stock. As food web dynamics shift and respond to warming predictions, predict— predictability of prey availability may be reduced, leading to increased stressors for the western stock.

The council should recognize these habitat areas are not strictly beneficial for just stellar sea lions. Instead, the council should recognize that conservation habitat and biodiversity benefits extend across multiple trophic levels in the marine system, acting as a pillar of resilience amidst these pressures. In closing, Ocean Conservancy urges that the council take no action towards initiating a reevaluation of steller sea lion protection boundaries. The potential risks of reducing these long-standing protections are substantial, while the demonstrated benefits to the associated fisheries are limited at best. These fisheries are already able to meet their total level catch under existing protection measures, providing little evidence that access to protected areas is necessary to meet current harvest objectives.

Opening these areas will induce additional pressures on ESA-listed Western steller sea lions via resource competition, bycatch, and habitat degradation. Given the substantial ecological risks, limited benefits to the fishery, and significant agency capacity constraints, maintaining existing protections represents the most prudent and efficient management course. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. We'll see if there are any questions.

Seeing none, thank you for joining us. So we're going to take about a 15-minute stand down. We'll come back at 2:35 and resume public testimony with Therese Vicente. Thank you.

Council members, please come back to order.

So, we're resuming public testimony on the reports. Uh, we'll begin with Shannon Carroll, followed by Therese Vicente.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For the record, my name is Shannon Carroll. I'm speaking on behalf of Trident Seafoods. First, I'd welcome at least one of the new members to the council. It's great to see some new faces up there. I wanted to talk about a couple of things really briefly, but the first is just to update the council and other stakeholders on what our processing plans are our northern crab in 2027-28 for the snow crab fishery and red king crab fisheries.

Like the past 2 years, we are not going to be processing up in St. Paul for a variety of different reasons, but we are very hopeful that we'll have some long-term arrangements in place to be operating as soon as there's some viable crab biomass for the north. We've been We're really lucky to have great partners in TDX, the City of St. Paul, CBSV, Alliú Corporation, and others. And so we're very invested in that plant and for the long-term future, but we won't be operating this year. We have been investing pretty significantly, both in that plant and in our Akutan crab line. And so we will be processing crab and Akutan starting the opening of the season season.

The other component to that is that we are working with stakeholders through the framework agreement to make adequate arrangements. The last thing I just wanted to touch on was just some updates on the EFP. We, we are continuing to work to test our experimental foot rope design and hope to have that expanded into some other company these operations for 2027, and that would be obviously through the EFP process and the agency. And then to update the Council, we're also piloting some new software that's from a company in Newfoundland using AI predictive mapping to help our skippers and our operations team make choices on when and where to fish for pollock. It incorporates a variety of different data points, but it helps identify both areas of high CPE for and also bycatch avoidance for Chinook, chum, and herring.

We started testing that in the A season, and we have been continuing that testing through the B season on both our CPs and CVs. We had pretty good success on a couple of the variables, and we continue to work on, on some of the other ones, but it's been a really hard effort by our captains and our operations team and led by Dr. Joachim, to, to, to carry that through, and we're, we're excited about the, the potential for it. Um, so just thought that was worth an update to the council. I'd be happy to take any questions. Thanks.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Do you have any questions? Yes, Ms. Kimball. Thank you, and, um, thank you for your testimony, Mr. Carroll. I— did you say you're— that foot rope design being tested under the EFP is on additional vessels this year, or on all Trident vessels.

Yeah, so we, uh, through the B season, we now have it on every single Trident vessel that's fishing, and we will continue to do that through the duration of the EFP. And we have been in communication with a number of other companies and are hopeful that we'll get that expanded into some of the other vessels in the fleet for 2027, hopefully.

Just follow up, thank you, through the chair, does that mean you need to amend the EFP to add vessels, or you No, there's a process in there just to account for it. So it's— vessels are listed, but it's not— it doesn't require an amendment or any council action. Thank you. Update. Thank you.

Um, thank you. You mentioned some AI software. This is the first I've heard of that. Could you elaborate? I'm not sure if you're able to.

I know Dr. Yokom is on the lead for this, as you mentioned, but elaborate a little bit on what that entails as far as data inputs and sources to— you mentioned that there are two different objectives, one CPEs as well as bycatch avoidance. So yeah, just wondering if you could provide a little bit more context for the type of information inputs that are part of that software. Thanks. It would probably— through the chair, Madam Chair, it would require probably a more formal presentation by Dr. Jocham, but it's very much an evolutionary process and we're adding more inputs as we go along, trying to ensure that it's sort of— each week we meet and look retrospectively to see how it's basically fared relative to reality. So it continues to evolve through that process.

But the goal of it is to both improve efficiency whether it's catch efficiency, fuel efficiency, etc., and to improve bycatch avoidance.

Great. Well, we'll definitely be interested in hearing how that progresses and, yeah, the timeliness of a potential update. Thank you. Okay. Okay, so our next testifier is Therese Vicente, followed by Rebecca Skinner and Patty O'Donnell.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the council. My name is Therese Vicente. I'm the Policy and Programs Director of the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission, for the record, and the Fish Commission is a nonprofit that that works to support the tribes of the Kuskokwim River Region in fisheries management, research, and monitoring, as guided by Alaska Native values and knowledge of our region and the best available Western science.

Today, I wanted to share with you a few things, starting first with a recap of the 2026 salmon season on the Kuskokwim. And one of the key takeaways is that the Kuskokwim River Region is continuing to experience a multi-species run failure with dire consequences to food security and health, cultural heritage, and ecological biodiversity. According to data from the Kuskokwim Sonar, the Chinook salmon return in 2026 was 23% below the recent 2018 to 2025 average. Sockeye were 35% below their average, and coho salmon were 41% below their average. Meanwhile, chum salmon counts were nearly 50% above average, but before we celebrate too much, it's important to recall that one year is not a trend and the average was informed by some of the lowest returns on record.

Because of near record low Coho salmon returns, there were almost 6 consecutive weeks of subsistence fishing closures in part of the Kuskokwim River in August and September. And those came on top of restrictions to Chinook and chum salmon fishing throughout June and early July. So 2026 was one of the most restricted years of fishing in recent memory. It's likely that amounts necessary for subsistence will not be met for multiple species, including coho and Chinook salmon.

So a key point from this is that Kuskokwim salmon are still in a state of recovery. Thus making marine protections urgently necessary. Salmon need gravel-to-gravel protections, and that includes closures to fisheries that are impacting salmon as well as protections for critical salmon habitat and migratory passages. These are precautionary management techniques that the Fish Commission and other managers employ in river. We ask the council to act to support parallel measures in the EEZ as well as to to continue to push for the reduction of salmon bycatch in Bering Sea trawl fisheries.

The Department of Fish and Game's Three River Index letter posted to your e-agenda for this meeting shows that returns of Chinook salmon to western Alaska in 2026 were extremely low, and they thus triggered the lower cap level of 45,000 Chinook salmon in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery next year. However, we should be asking if even this lower cap level is too high to protect the very low number of Chinook we're seeing return to our rivers. Every salmon needs every opportunity possible to return to spawn and rebuild stock sizes, and this cannot happen if sufficient protective measures are not in place. The same goes for chum salmon, and for this reason, we ask the council to urge no fish fisheries to expedite the implementation process of the recommendations that you made in February for chum salmon bycatch management.

This wasn't covered today in reports, but the preliminary genetics analysis posted in Item B2 indicates that 4.5% of the Western Alaska— excuse me, indicates a 4.5% proportion of Western Alaska stocks were in the chum bycatch in 2025, and this is lower than the number— or excuse me, this is lower than the stock proportion in 2024, but the number of chum caught in the bycatch was higher than in 2024. Additionally, in-season genetic analyses from the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute this year looking at inshore Pollock trawl fishery data and bycatch indicate that the western Alaska stock composition in at least that sector is at 15.7% this year. That's above the long-term average noted in the AFSC report, and it's equating to an estimate of nearly 14,000 chum salmon caught in the inshore sector this year. So reviewing these data are important reminders that percentages and rates can obscure actual numbers of fish removed, and that one year of a low proportion of Western Alaska chum bycatch may not be a trend but an outlier. So again, both Chinook and chum salmon from the Kuskokwim and other parts of Western Alaska need protections in the ocean, and this council can act to require industry to further reduce bycatch of salmon.

We ask you to do that. And we also ask the council to continue to protect habitat in the ocean critical to migration and rearing of salmon and other species in the marine environment, many of which support subsistence communities and ways of life. The Fish Commission is alarmed by recent announcements from the Assistant Administrator of NOAA Fisheries to review and potentially roll back closures to protect stellar sea lions, as well as to prioritize adaptive management rather than static closures for bycatch avoidance under National Standard 9. And in particular, the turn towards adaptive data-driven bycatch management tools and prioritized partnerships with the fishing industry to co-design research priorities and methods worries us. This approach appears to favor information owned by the fishing industry and the preservation of fishing interests rather than the preservation of wild salmon and the North Pacific ecosystem.

System, and it also leaves tribes and subsistence communities out of the loop for identifying what, where, and when actions must occur to protect salmon. So we ask the council and NOAA Fisheries to uphold ecosystem protections for salmon and other species, to acknowledge that these protections cannot be sacrificed for the sake of efficiency, and to act accordingly to foster ecosystem-based fisheries management, habitat protections, and protections for areas of known salmon migration. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. See if there are any questions.

Yes, Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. Ms. Vicente, I noted in your written report that regarding sockeye salmon harvest in 2026, they were restricted to conserve Chinook and chum salmon. Are people who are subsistence fishing on the Kuskokwim River for sockeye salmon using selective gear types where they could live release Chinook and chum or other species that are in low abundance? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Bowers. And through the chair, that's a great question. Yes, throughout the river, and particularly in the lower river where our Intertribal Fish Commission has co-management authority of fisheries with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, When there are closures in place to Chinook and chum salmon, specifically gillnet closures to target those fisheries, they have allowed selective gear types, namely dip nets, to try to target more abundant sockeye salmon. And federally qualified subsistence users— this is potentially too much detail— but they're allowed to retain Chinook and chum salmon, though it is really the sockeye that you're going to catch with those dip nets.

There are occasionally set gillnet fisheries to target sockeye salmon as well, or openers for set gillnets, because the sockeye run more towards the bank. So there, there are some opportunities given throughout the season to try to target those sockeye and protect Chinook and chum, but by and large, the fishery is closed because all three of those species are running at the same time, and there's been stated conservation concern for for the kings and the chums. Does that help answer your question? Yes, thank you.

Thank you, and Ms. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Vicente, for your testimony. I just wanted to focus on the last topic in your testimony just to make sure I understand your concerns.

It was essentially your discussion of adaptive management versus static closures for something like stellar sea lion protection measures. Measures. And you mentioned specifically concerns about adaptive management that involves industry-led initiatives with, I think you said, industry-owned data. Is that— I'm trying to figure out a way to ask this. Is that the primary concern you have with adaptive management, or do you consider superior— do you consider static closures just a superior form of management over something that might adaptive.

Do you understand my question? Like, what's your— what's the underlying concern between those two management approaches, to help me understand your concerns about between the two? Yeah, thank you for the question, Ms. Baker. And through the chair, um, first I should clarify that I, I did lump those comments together about the stellar sea lion protections that many have testified on already this afternoon. And then there was a specific part in the assistant administrator's Director's September letter of agency priorities that focused on National Standard 9 and talked about working to prioritize adaptive management or adaptive measures to reduce bycatch under National Standard 9.

And it's not exactly that adaptive management is inferior or static closures are superior, you know, to one another. It's not a relative thing. It's more this concern that there's a shift towards allowing the fishing industry to use its data to determine when, where, and how bycatch avoidance should take place, um, and eliminating existing static closures or opportunity to implement static closures as they make sense and as long-term and recent data show that static closures can help. And our letter discusses this in a little bit more detail than my comments did, but there are fairly clear, like, patterns of migration of species, especially salmon, and they fluctuate year over year. But there's areas that we've identified that we talked about extensively over the Chum bycatch action, for instance, because that's really fresh in my mind, where you find salmon, and salmon from Western Alaska repeatedly year over year over year.

So our concern is that the focus on restricting fishing behavior or fishing opportunity in those areas by implementing static closures may go away and be instead driven by the fisheries data, by, by the industry's data, rather than allowing potentially both of those to coexist and both to be measured. So that's a very long-winded answer, but hopefully— okay, I see you nodding, so thanks.

Thank you. And Ms. Kimball. Thank you, Ms. Vincente. I might— my question is very somewhat similar, I guess, and because I'm thinking back to CHAMA as well, where there was a combination of static closures and adaptive closures, and the industry data that drives those adaptive closures is really federal data, observer data. Um, and so I, I'm just trying to see, to be pointed, is your letter still supportive of that kind of approach, and the letter has, has you concerned that we're moving away from that approach, or should I read something different into your testimony?

Thanks, Ms. Kimball. Through the chair, I think to try to summarize our thoughts and my comments, it's not that we're not in favor of adaptive measures, it's that they shouldn't replace and remove static closures to reduce bycatch and protect critical areas for salmon and other species. Thank you.

Thank you. And I have one more, not related to that, Ms. Vincente. I— we'd heard And not just to focus on the bright spot of, of chum, but that's where I want to, want to look because it was so distinctive. And we'd heard from some agency scientists that that wouldn't be unexpected based on kind of— we had this very significant marine heat wave that's dissipated. Now we're seeing chum come back.

But I wanted to understand what you are hearing in your region and from your tribal members on the reasons for that. Like, what was different this year in the environment that they saw might cause some significant change in the amount of chum returning to the Kuskokwim? And if you don't have that information or can't share it, I understand.

Thank you for the question, Ms. Kimball.

I'm trying to think back to talking with fishermen and our in-season managers this year.

I mean, I think folks on the Kuskokwim them understand that there's multiple factors that have influenced salmon declines, including of chum salmon, and that climate change is a factor. Those marine heat waves were, were significant, and so is fishing pressure from offshore fisheries, including the trawl fisheries that catch chum salmon as bycatch. The directed salmon fisheries in Area M come up very often, and we've seen decreases in the past several years of bycatch and harvest respectively in both of those fisheries. So that was discussed amongst people, from my recollection, this year as part of the reason why chum salmon may have been a little bit more abundant this year. And, and people did notice that the chum seemed healthier, you know, which is, per my understanding, indicative of better prey availability better juvenile condition in those early years in the ocean, just kind of better marine, marine conditions as well as freshwater conditions.

I'll note that we've just been working with a team of folks from across, across western Alaska to put forward a contribution synthesizing some of these different freshwater and marine indicators for the Eastern Bering Sea Ecosystem Status Report, and And I think Dr. Siden gave a preview of that to the SSC earlier this week, and so you all should see it in December. But there might be more information in there. We're kind of looking ahead towards 2027, trying to think ahead with you all as you set specifications for the next year. But there might be some parallels between what we're thinking of for next year and what happened this year. So we might be able to continue talking more over the next couple months about— it's a very good question.

Yeah. Thank you for your testimony.

So next up is Rebecca Skinner and Patty O'Donnell, and then we will follow back to Oyston Lone and Michael Lake.

Good afternoon, and we are testifying on behalf of Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association. I just didn't get that entered into the form.

All right, good afternoon. My name is Rebecca Skinner. I'm the executive director for Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association. Association. AWTA is a Kodiak-based fishing association that represents trawl catcher vessels.

These tend to be smaller trawlers compared to the Bering Sea, and when fishing around Kodiak, all of the deliveries come back to Kodiak. We are here to ask that the council take up and prioritize reviewing the Steller sea lion closure closures. I did submit a letter. I think in case I run out of time or forget anything, please look at the letter, and there are some images in the letter that I'll be referring to at the end. And with me also is Patty O'Donnell.

He's the president of AWT. He's been trawling around Kodiak for a long time and lived through the initial Stellar Sea Lion closures, and hopefully he'll be able to speak to what it is like from a vessel owner-operator standpoint having to deal with those closures.

Since I started with Alaska Whitefish Trawlers, I have been hearing about, I guess, frustrations and concerns with the Steller Sea Lion closures, comments along the lines of, "Can we do something about those? Can we make them go away? Can we make them smaller?" they have a huge impact on the vessels that, especially trawlers around Kodiak. We have included comments around our concerns around these closures and multiple letters to DC, so we were really surprised, but pleasantly so, to see this prioritized in, in Hanyu's letter from, I think it was from July. So I'm looking at this as there's, um, bottom-up concerns coming from us, and now there's kind of top-down, maybe, you know, kind of opening the door for something to happen with this.

I never brought this to the council because frankly I did not think there was any possibility the council would take this up. I wasn't here in the first round of Stellar Sea Lion work, but I've heard it was, um, pretty, pretty horrendous. I, I understand the concern concerns, but I want to make clear that this would be significantly helpful to the boats that I work with because those closures do create a big hardship.

When, as I've been speaking to Councilmembers this week, I think one of the first questions I always get is, what has changed? What information is there? Is there science to back up actually modifying these closures? I am not a scientist, I'm not a biologist, but Um, the— some of the, the studies I have looked at, I do think there's enough there to look at. I think when the closures went into place, there was an assumption that competition from fishing was significantly impacting the prey availability for the sea lions.

And I think that studies that have happened since then indicate that those concerns or that hypothesis is not, it's not true, or it's not to the extent that that was assumed. So if what we're trying to do is protect sea lions, and we're trying to protect their food source, I think that recent science indicates it's not as big of a, it's not as big of an impact, or it's not an impact at all.

In the letter, so we do ask for reduction of all closures around Kodiak. If it looks like there's momentum on this, we're committed during the rest of the week to work on coming up with a smaller list that's not the entire Central Gulf of Alaska. But in the letter, I did identify 4 specific closures that are a priority. We ask that they be completely removed, and this is on page 3 of my letter. These are the Taqli Island, Cape Kuliak, Cape Gull, and Cape Uugat.

In the image in the letter, you can see these closures overlap. They completely block the Shelikof, so you can't, you can't fish, you can't trawl or tow a net down the Shelikof, and it significantly limits fishing ability in the upper portion of the Shelikof. That means vessels have to transit down the Shelikof. They have to go farther. Patti can speak to what that means, it also puts them in an area that is subject to much worse icing conditions.

So trawling operates in the winter. The pollock fishery opens in January. These boats are out in the Shelikof in the middle of winter, and because of the meteorology, geography— I'm also not a meteorologist— there's cold air that comes over the peninsula. I think of it as supercooled air. Where when it gets over the Shelikof, it results in more extreme icing conditions for the vessels.

This is well known. Trawlers talk about it. And that's the area where they're kind of being pushed into fishing because of those— the way that the closures overlap. I think I'm gonna pause for myself and give a minute to Patti if you had anything you wanted to add. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the Council.

I've been fishing over there for 37 years, and I was around when the, the silly rule came in and they shut down everything to 20 miles, which I did a couple of trips at that time and decided to quit fishing because it was not productive. However, in, in the early 2000s when they came out with all these haulouts, they've shut down the majority of the Shelikhov where we did fish it's right out of Kupreaniv Pass, straight across the Shelikof, and you're into them haulouts. Right now we have to go down south of Katmai Bay to the bottom haulout there, get below that and set there, and once you get down to Pualii Bay, there's a 3-mile haulout there. Once you get down there, I mean, the wind screams through there. It's just a frightening spot.

To be in the wintertime over there, and we've had to deal with it for 20 years. So I think this is very important to the fishermen around Kodiak. And, you know, in the early days in the '90s, everything was open right into the beach, and to protect the small boat fleet out of Kodiak, because it was considered a small boat fleet. But anyhow, there's a lot of it closed down down. And, and I think it's important that we take a look at this and, and, um, increase the safety factor for the fleet, especially in icing conditions in the Sherrigoff.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. We'll see if there are any questions.

Okay, being done. Thank you for your testimony. So we'll circle back to Oyston Loan and Michael Lake online?

Is Oyston online? Okay, please unmute yourself, Oyston. Okay, I'm unmuted. You hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. Yeah, good afternoon, Chair and council members. My name is Oyston Lone. I'm a commercial fisherman with more than 39 years of experience fishing in Alaska. I own 2 Bering Sea crab vessels and operate a factory longline vessel targeting cod in the Bering Sea.

I also submitted a comment letter regarding this issue. This past snow crab and Baird's Eye season was the worst I have experienced in McCarran when it comes to gear interactions. My boats are down 29 crab pots to the CP trawl fleet at approximately $3,000 per pot. That's about an $87,000 loss in gear alone. That doesn't include lost fishing time, lost catch, or the cost of replacing and redeploying the gear.

We report our gear strings through SeaState. That information is updated daily. Our boats are also continuously broadcasting AIS. We are doing what we have to make our gear locations known and avoid conflicts. Despite that, we still lose gear.

This summer, while longlining for cod in the Bering a factory pollock catcher processor went through our gear. The vessel was not broadcasting AIS. It did not answer our calls on VHF 1617. We lost 9 reels of gear, approximately 11,250 hooks, at a cost of about $10,000. Both incidents were reported to NOAA enforcement and the Coast Guard.

The issue I want the council to recognize is that the fixed-gear fisherman often ends up carrying the financial mass. While it can be difficult to identify the vessels responsible and hold a vessel accountable, there's also a safety issue. I personally had a catcher processor pass 2/10 of a mile from me in heavy fog. We were both transiting against each other. It was not broadcasting on AIS.

The visibility was poor. Knowing where large vessels are operating is extremely important, so I'm asking for action action, not just recognition of the problem. I asked the Coast Guard to review the AIS requirements for large trawlers, catcher-processors operating in the Bering Sea and move towards requiring continuous AIS broadcasting while fishing and transiting. I also asked the council to formally recognize the seriousness, seriousness of fixed gear losses and work with NOAA enforcement and the fishing sector to develop a clear process for documenting gear interactions, identifying responsible vessels, and holding them accountable when gear is damaged or destroyed. At a minimum, I believe the large trawl vessels operating around fixed gear should be visible on AIS, and there needs to be a meaningful process when they destroy someone else's gear.

I'm not here to criticize the trawl fleet. Who will have to work in the same ocean. I'm asking for reasonable rules that improve safety, reduce gear conflicts, and make sure the financial burden does not simply fall on the fishermen whose gear was destroyed. I respectfully ask the council, Coast Guard, and NOAA enforcement to take the next steps and beginning addressing this now. Fishermen are already paying the price, and we cannot afford to wait for this problem to get worse.

Thank you for allowing me to speak, and with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll see if there are any questions.

Okay, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Thank you. Okay, Michael Lake is our last testifier. I am. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for your patience.

I apologize for the gremlins running around the computer. Um, there've been a couple of changes since started this discussion with regard to a staff tasking motion last October of '25, modifications to LEED Level 2 endorsement requirements. And there was a suite of alternatives in that council motion, and I'm here to just, well, just to really support alternatives 2, 3, 4, and 5, which are not mutually exclusive. And we believe that they should be just one alternative. I know they can't be, but, uh, you know, we want all four of those things.

We have been and built a record over the last decade with regard to these things. And even though it looks like it's been pushed back to February, I'm really appreciative of the staff's time. And, um, as a side note, One of the things that surfaced its head this last spring in our union negotiations, which really didn't end until June for me, was the conditions of work on the lead level 2 vessels, the freezer longliner vessels. And one of those things is the difference between each vessel. Some put out one set a day, some two or three, um, you know, whatever.

And we don't want to change, obviously, uh, those habits and those skills that are necessary to catch the fish. However, the random sampling and random sleep schedules that are in the observer manual need to be updated, we believe. And perhaps this is not an extra ask, but during this lead level 2, uh, these discussions, I would really like to ask the council to encourage the service, uh, and we will be talking talking about this at our annual observer provider meeting on the 29th, um, but we believe that— in fact, I officially asked the union if they would get involved and discuss it with NIMPS and the observer program, uh, twice they refused. One of the observers was in, uh, the negotiation period, and he said he'd be happy to talk to NIMPS about these working conditions. And the reason they're so important is because here we're doing a suite of alternatives that will help us maintain the core observers.

One of the things that we really want to do is really pay attention to retention, and we believe this random sleep and, um, sampling schedule, uh, is something that, um, was designed— I don't know how many years ago, but it definitely needs to be updated. With that, I'll answer any questions. I appreciate the council's time again, and welcome new council members.

Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr. Lake. I'll see if there are any questions. Yes, Mr. C has a question for you. Michael, thanks for the testimony today. I just— from a prioritization standpoint here, uh, this, this action was initially, uh, included as part of the council's EO response, um, and it's been scheduled and has not now been scheduled for February, but, uh, for our consideration, could you speak to the continued need for this relative to when this was first brought up before?

Is there a consistent need for this, uh, the same need for this now, or, or is it higher or lower needs for this action to be taken since we— this was first highlighted back, uh, last year? Thank you, Mr. C, through the chair. That's a darn loaded question. Um, I would answer it simply that, again, even though this just came to attention, this is something that we built the record on for 10 years, especially the Hake endorsements. We have challenges going back and forth, various— and I don't want to phrase it any other way, I guess— a turf war or some inconsistencies agencies with the two programs on the West Coast.

And so we've chased after this hake thing for well over a decade. And, you know, as we're going into the hake fishery now, you know, there's a— with the polly fishery going longer, there's a few things that have caused some anxiety in this office, I'll tell you. With regard to hauls, again, it comes down to— well, I won't beat this thing up. I— we've said this over and over for years. It's way past due.

We could have used this 2 years. I don't think we'd be, quite frankly, in this predicament that we continue to be in, which is just a roller coaster of when observers want to work, when they don't, when people are available, what the fishery is doing, on and on and on. And so a lot of plates in the air. Care. So I can't emphasize enough, um, and I know it's a long-winded answer, Chad.

However, we need this, and we needed this way sooner than we're going to get it, and it's still going to be 2 years out, as it appears, going through this process.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions. Appreciate your testimony. Thank you.

That concludes public testimony on B reports. Um, I'd like to take a, uh, probably about a 20-minute stand down to consider public testimony. Um, see if there are any motions that the council would like to make, um, in regards to anything that we heard or anything to further flag for later on in our agenda during staff task asking. So let's come back at 3:35 and have our follow-up discussion on vReports. Thank you.

IPHC regulation. And finally, we just conclude by noting that we look forward to hearing about the EFP and its implementation if and when approved. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pamplin. Closing the loop on that.

Um, yep, I'm seeing some head shakes, so thank you very much. Anything else from council members?

Yes, Ms. Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I, I do not have a motion, um, nor am I, uh, suggesting any action. I, I just wanted to come back to, uh, again, the NIMSP 2 report the notification to the council that National Marine Fisheries Service staff are exploring an alternative approach for estimating the biomass of Pacific herring in the eastern Bering Sea to inform prohibited species catch limits in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. I appreciated that notification. I think in talking to council members, we appreciate that work and, and are supportive of continued work on that and just I just hope that we will be able to see it when it's sort of ready to bring back to the Council.

I don't think— I think it's a little premature to— we had a little bit of discussion about maybe when and in what items. I think it's a little premature to do that, and I trust that NIMS staff and the Council Executive Director will be able to keep in communication and determine what that looks like when it's ready. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you, Miss Baker. Appreciate that.

Wanted to, um, I wanted to make sure that we followed up on any direction or guidance regarding the extensive prioritization presentation and paper and work that Ms. Evans put into the, the beginning of the meeting. I think it's a really valuable process for us to go through, trying to figure out how to deal with ongoing priorities in this council in the context of capacity and resource constraints. And something that I really— I'm hopeful we can get a little get better at moving forward. I do, you know, we heard some, some recommendations from members of the public during B reports. I think we can continue these conversations throughout the meeting.

I'd like to come back at staff tasking and attempt to maybe put together a list of 3, and this is— I'm just— I'd like to kind of put this out there as an idea. I want some feedback from Council members, but thinking it might be helpful to put together a list of 3 or 4 priority items and see if we can get some consensus and provide some direction and guidance to staff moving forward in the, in the case that we, we continue to see bottlenecks and incapacity. That's not to suggest everything else on our list is unimportant, it's just— or that those priority items, as Ms. Evans reminded will, will be the ones that are worked on first, but give some directional guidance to staff. I'd like to perform that exercise before considering new actions and staff tasking, but then, um, so have that discussion first and then pick up anything new and fold that into, um, maybe a list of, you know, the, the, the bucket or pool that doesn't make the, you know, top 3 or 4, or or have a discussion that would compel us to move one of those items off the list that we just created. So want to provide some room and space for that.

Also want some feedback during staff tasking on the cadence of our staff tasking agenda items. I think Ms. Evans provided some really good background and context for that, and I think it's worthy of of considering not taking up and initiating new actions with the exception of unanticipated or emergency situations, you know, at least every single meeting. So provided some, you know, some options for maybe looking at one or two meetings a year where we're really providing public an opportunity for new recommendations and initiatives. Negotiations of action. So, um, wanted to open up the floor before we end the day to any other ideas or response to that general, um, you know, a general thinking for revisiting the conversation and staff tasking.

Yes, Miss Kimball. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to confirm then you're looking for something as explicit as a motion then in staff tasking, not just each council member member voicing their each individual 3 priorities. I, I think we can have— yes, Miss Kimball, I think we can have a conversation before hopefully a motion. But I think in, in talking to, to Miss Evans, I do think it would be helpful to have something for both our staff and, and the public to really provide a record of, you know, where we're at, at least, um, in October and gives us a baseline to, to then fold in new, new actions in future meetings.

Ms. Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just lending my support to that approach. I, I do think the most important thing we can do is provide clarity for both the staff and the public in terms of if decisions have to be made about putting staff resources in one place or another, what the council priorities are. Um, and so I think that sounds like a good approach, and we'll just have to see again since we haven't had this conversation to my knowledge before. Uh, maybe in response to, or following up Ms. Kimball's questions.

Yeah, I guess maybe, maybe a motion will be the best idea in the long run, but I think having the conversation and seeing where we are are, um, if consensus can be found, is probably a good way to go at this point. Thank you, Miss Baker. Any other reactions or ideas?

Yeah, I would, uh, support Miss Baker's comments. I was really pleased to see that document. Uh, in my past life, I became a bit of a prioritization zealot for all the reasons you you guys are dealing with. And, you know, that rock is going to keep rolling down the hill for a while. And, uh, I also like the— I— we used to do it on a 2-year basis because of our budget, but I really like the idea of 6 to 12 months to, to give the staff and the public the opportunity to just focus on what we're actually doing versus the swirling menagerie around it.

And you always got to leave room for the emergency things because they're going to happen too. So great work. Thank you, Mr. McIntosh.

Okay, okay, so we'll circle back and staff tasking, have this conversation. I'm not seeing any other hands up at this stage. Um, certainly welcome more conversation, side conversations with the public as we move through throughout the week.

Ms. Kimball, separate, separate item, are you ready to I have a motion.

Thanks.

And the motion reads The council recommends NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center develop a new snapshot report that shows the social and economic ramifications of Alaska's losses or changes in federal marine survey capacity in recent years. The intent is to quantitatively estimate the loss in economic value via forecast harvest from fewer surveys and surveys with reduced scope for several primary species in the BSAI and Gulf of Alaska. The report could use actual examples in the North Pacific of stock assessment model results and increase to increase risk table factors that result in reduced harvest limits as a direct result of less survey data or frequency. And with the second, I'll speak briefly.

Thank you for the second. Mr. Bowers. Thank you for the second. Just very briefly, I'm sure council members heard my questions during the Alaska Fishery Science Center report, and I think this was met with some positivity from Dr. Loss. I do think it's important at this point, given where we're at, to start to quantify what those losses could be.

Just at this meeting, I used sablefish as an example, and we'll hear that in the, in the SSC report and in the specifications reports that we have pending at this meeting. But no changes really in biomass, no concerns for the species, but changes in the longline survey resulting in a huge decrease in potential ABC for sablefish, up to 32%. I've mentioned Greenland turbot as another one, as the loss of the slope survey. There are just a lot of things cumulatively that are building, and I feel like if there's an opportunity, either in an ongoing snapshot or in a separate report— I like the snapshot idea because it got so much attention from the agency, and they really did a great job communicating the results. I think this is— it's worth doing for our region, if not to just show the importance of these surveys, but to be continually trying to be consistent with this EO on seafood competitiveness.

Half of that competitiveness is access to the resource, and we are just kind of assuming these cumulative cuts aren't having a big impact, and I think that they are. So I think being able to show that in a report and having Alaska Fishery Science Center on board to do that report would be fabulous. We cannot task the Science Center, and I'm not pretending to do that through this motion, motion. I'm just showing council support if this motion passes, if the agency wants to take this on.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kimball. Are there any questions? Yes, Mr. Kerlin.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, Ms. Kimball, for the motion. Um, I noted your language about recent years, and I'm just wondering what you were thinking there.

Thank you for the question, Mr. Kerlin. I really left it open on purpose to see what would make sense. I was really thinking in the last 5 years, but I think the, the reason I didn't even list examples in this of example species was to leave it open for the Science Center to maybe pick a few case studies. I could have listed the corner stations we've lost, the deep stations we've lost, the longline survey, the slope survey, having the Gulf every other year, moving to every other year in the northern Bering Sea. I think there are multiple examples in the past 5 years, that the agency could look to.

Thanks, that's helpful.

Thank you. And, uh, Mr. C.

Thanks. I just want to express my strong support for, uh, this, this snapshot should, uh, the Science Center choose to take it up. I think it is very reflective of a need to communicate clearly the, the value of these surveys. I, I would note, I think I had a question on the recent years I, I was thinking more like 10 years because the slope survey hasn't been done in 5 years. So, um, just to better capture some of those things that have not been done for more than 5 years, uh, would be, would be of value, I think.

So, but I do support this motion. Thank you, Mr. C. Ms. Vanderhoeven. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Kimball, for your motion.

I am going to support it. Um, I align myself with Mr. C's comments about maybe looking at a longer timeline. I recall some pretty dramatic impacts in 2020 when we didn't have the bottom trawl survey either. And so I think we do have quite a few examples where we can show a range of impacts from loss of our surveys.

Yeah. Okay. Any other comments?

Is there objection to the motion? Seeing none, that motion passes without objection. Thank you, Miss Kimball.

Any further items for discussion? Yes, Miss Baker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just briefly, I wanted to follow up on public comments, uh, about gear interactions. And in particular, potentially some gear conflicts that took place this year. This testimony was the first I heard about this incident, and I just, I don't have action proposed, or I just, I am not personally familiar with AIS requirements for council-managed fishing vessels. And so I just, I had an opportunity to speak with Lieutenant Commander Lieutenant Commander Rasky really briefly on the break and was just wondering if I could request, Lieutenant Commander, in the December U.S. Coast Guard management report, U.S. Coast Guard report for these B reports, if you might be able to include those AIS requirements for fishing vessels under Council authority to just sort of answer that question maybe for Council members and address that.

Because it's, it's really— I'm— I don't know. Through the chair, yes, ma'am, I'll be happy to do that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Baker. Um, it's also the first that I had heard of, um, or read about the issue, so I did take the opportunity to have just a very brief conversation during the break with some members of the trial sector, and, um, they expressed interest in trying to get some more information and better understand and the issues and to do some outreach and communication. So hopefully we'll be able to do some informal follow-up to better understand whether or not, I guess, what the challenge is and whether or not there are some options moving forward.

So any other items to follow up on?

Okay, I'm not seeing any hands. Um, thank you all for your work today. I think I would like to thank members of the public for their testimony and engagement, and we will break for the day. Again, we're a little ahead of schedule and come back tomorrow morning and begin our C1 agenda item at 8 AM. So we'll see you all tomorrow morning at 8 AM.