00:00Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to my colleague for also your great work on the subcommittee.
00:09And thank you, Senator Sullivan, just for the important discussion about illegally unreported, unregulated fisheries
00:18and how much that causes harm in both Washington and Alaska and across the nation.
00:25I'm sure that's pretty much been the subject of this conversation.
00:28The world.
00:29Okay, good.
00:30Alaska, Delaware, Texas, the world.
00:36So illegal fishinging counts for up to one-third the world's total fishery.
00:43So about 11%, 22 billion in seafood imports were caught illegally.
00:48So this really does.
00:50China and Russia are two of the worst actors in this space, and Russia in particular poses a direct threat to the livelihood of U.S. fishermen,
00:58including in my home state.
01:00One study found that one-third of fish imported from China was actually Russian fish,
01:04and we need to keep up the pressure to stop this illegal Russian seafood from disrupting the markets here in the United States.
01:12So in the 2022 defense bill, working with my colleague from Alaska, we included the largest ocean legislative package in decades,
01:23including provisions to expand NOAA's seafood traceability programs.
01:27And we worked together with the NOAA corps to expand their fleet of vessels and aircraft so that we can more and better affect stock assessments and better science,
01:37and support for fishing families to stop the illegal fishing.
01:43So the administration, though, is calling for us to be seafood dominant.
01:49That's great.
01:49They say they care about stopping illegal fishing, and yet they are gutting the core of NOAA programs and staffing.
01:56And that could have disastrous effects to our fisheries management, science, and enforcement.
02:02So far, the administration's action have led to 576 employees at the National Marine Fisheries Service being lost.
02:11That's an 18% reduction in staff from January and a 36% vacancy rate of normal staffing levels.
02:19NOAA told fishery managers not to expect basic survey data that they need to manage fisheries.
02:25This is unacceptable.
02:26To make it worse, 30% of NOAA's research ships will be tied up at the docks this summer
02:31because the administration is refusing
02:33My question to you,
02:51is science is the foundation.
02:59How are these current NOAA budget cuts and impacting on not being able to do stock assessments
03:04hurting us in our ability to combat illegal fishing?
03:09Thank you, Senator.
03:11So budget cuts to NOAA are devastating to our ability to combat IEU fishing.
03:16You can't really combat the problem without understanding what's there.
03:20The challenge, as you noted, is to have a strong foundation,
03:24a strong understanding of what is sustainable, of what is possible to catch.
03:29And without that understanding, we have a very limited ability to work to set appropriate boundaries,
03:36to work with our partners to combat IEU fishing.
03:41NOAA science is the foundation for all of these negotiations that we're doing in the international space
03:47with our partners, and it is the foundation for the work that we do here at home
03:51to prevent illegal products from coming into the nation.
03:55Thank you for that.
03:55Mr. Prout, as a crabber, are you concerned about the NOAA fisheries workforce programs
04:00and the cuts and impacts?
04:04Yes.
04:04Thank you, ranking member, Senator Cantwell.
04:06Yeah, absolutely.
04:09The NOAA surveys are an essential part of how we run our fisheries.
04:15They're essentially the backbone of our fisheries across the U.S., so without them,
04:21we don't have the data set for safe and sustainable harvest levels to be set.
04:27These surveys guide our quotas, protect the resource, and they give regulators the essential data
04:35and confidence to know whether or not they should open or, in some cases, close a fishery.
04:41So if those surveys are underfunded or not funded at all or delayed and they're operating,
04:47it causes a tremendous amount of uncertainty for the processors involved, for the fishermen involved,
04:54for the communities that rely on those species, continued investments and funding of those surveys
05:01is not just good science, in my opinion.
05:03It's also required for economic stability, so you still have these fisheries in a sustainable manner for the future.
05:13Well, I don't, again, I apologize to my colleagues and others if I'm repeating something that's been said,
05:18but we worked in a bipartisan basin to secure Coast Guard funding and infrastructure investment.
05:22We made massive upgrades to the Coast Guard infrastructure in Kodiak, your hometown, I guess,
05:28and we authorized new heavy-weather boats needed for search and rescue for the fishermen off our coast,
05:34and I'm concerned that the Coast Guard has temporary reassigned ships and aircraft away from those core missions
05:41without a concrete plan.
05:42So, for example, a C-130 based in Kodiak is now being used to fly, quote,
05:48alien expulsion missions, end quote, on behalf of ICE.
05:53We need them to do the search and rescue and to deter illegal fishing in the Bering Sea.
06:00So, you highlighted in your written statement that we should fund Coast Guard to increase to combat illegal fishing.
06:07How important is this presence in Kodiak for CRABRS?
06:13Thank you, Ranking Member Cantwell.
06:16It's tremendously important.
06:17When you start losing necessary infrastructure and pieces of equipment that are dedicated for those search and rescue efforts,
06:26those, the IUU efforts to deter IUU, and they start being allocated to different areas and then when they were originally intended,
06:36it makes it extremely difficult for fishermen to make safe and sound decisions when you know there's going to be less assets available
06:44for one of the most primary functions, which is search and rescue and protection of the fleet.
06:49So, it's very, very critical that we maintain those pieces of infrastructure for the local fishing communities throughout Alaska and the U.S.
07:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
07:01If I could, just, Mr. Salmover, for the record, I asked, talked about surveys,
07:06but I think you probably believe the fishing patrols are also important.
07:11The fishing patrols are also important.
07:13Yes, of course.
07:14To the Management Council.
07:16Absolutely, yes.
07:17Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
07:18Thank you, Senator Cantwell, and look, on stock assessments, I am adamant that we need to do it.
07:27To be honest, the Biden administration was a fail on it.
07:31We had to not focus nearly enough on stock assessments.
07:36You may recall I had the Deputy Secretary of Commerce here for his confirmation hearing just a couple weeks ago
07:43with the Trump administration, and I kind of read him the riot act on stock assessments, so it's a bipartisan abuse.
07:52I don't remember that.
07:54Oh, I think you remember that.
07:55I do.
07:56More importantly, he remembers that.
07:57I'm joking.
07:58I'm joking.
08:00So, I agree, and as I mentioned earlier, if we get to the budget reconciliation bill,
08:09would love your guys' vote on it.
08:11Maybe that's not going to happen, but one thing that will happen is a massive, historic investment in the Coast Guard,
08:20which is going to be probably, as I mentioned in my opening statement,
08:24but the biggest investment in the Coast Guard in U.S. history, $22 billion has never been seen, anything like that,
08:31and it's all going to go into cutters and icebreakers and helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft
08:36and shoreside infrastructure and Kodiak and Juneau and Seattle, so there's going to be a lot.
08:44I so appreciate your leadership on this issue and your forthright education of people who didn't quite understand
08:55how critical stock assessments were to our fisheries and to being able to manage and police,
09:01but I do hope that in these resource allocations that we will make these points about the resources being shifted
09:07and how we, I mean, this is why I believe in a NOAA organic act,
09:11because I'm tired of people coming in every two years and giving us a different statement, so thank you, Mr. Chairman.
09:16So let me ask.
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