Dan Hull, Chairman
Chris Oliver, Executive Director
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Executive Director's Report (including update on Social Science Strategy Group development, report from the Lenfest Fisheries Ecosystem Task Force, CCC update, Legislation update)
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Interim CCC meeting
The Council Coordination Committee (CCC), comprised of the leadership of the eight regional fishery management Councils and NOAA Fisheries, held its interim meeting in late February in Washington, D.C. Mr. Hull, Mr. Tweit, and myself attended on behalf of our Council (Joy Stein attended an ancillary meeting of the Council's Administrative and Finance Officers). The agenda for that meeting is attached, and includes a discussion of budget issues; legislation/MSA reauthorization (further discussed below); conflict of interest and recusal (unfortunately nothing has changed in that regard); NS1 guidelines; various science issues (including the stock assessment improvement plan, use of best scientific information available, and stock assessment prioritization); and EBFM 'roadmap' implementation.
With regard to stock assessment prioritization, we recently received a response to our February letter to the agency (attached), which generally supports our suggested approach in the North Pacific, and reiterates that the agency does not intend for this process to re-distribute funding and surveys among the different regions. On March 30 we received a letter from Dr. DeMaster (attached) which proposes some revisions to their assessment schedule, based upon Plan Team, SSC, and Council input from February, along with a correction to the GOA rex sole assessment frequency and a recommended approach to partial assessments during 'off years'. Related to this, the agency recently released a draft stock assessment improvement plan (SAIP), requesting comments by June 15. They are also in the process of releasing a document on best scientific information available (BSIA). I intend to have both of these items on our June agen...
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