§1421f–3 Reports to Congress

Summary

Require NOAA’s Administrator to give Congress a report about the Health MAP no later than 2 years after December 23, 2022. NOAA must work with the Marine Mammal Commission, the Secretary of the Interior, and the National Ocean Research Leadership Council. “Appropriate committees of Congress” means the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; the House Natural Resources Committee; and the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. The report must review the Health MAP data, list missing data and why they are missing with fixes, check how well the Observation System website works to collect, organize, show, store, and share stranding and health data, list related publications or products, describe new marine mammal health problems and any links to human health, study whether the Observation System could serve as an alert tool for strandings, entanglements, and unusual mortality events, show examples of using Health MAP data to predict larger ecosystem changes, and give recommendations on filling gaps, data standards and sharing, other ways to improve the program, and needed funding. Five years after that Health MAP report is sent, and every 10 years after, NOAA (with the Marine Mammal Commission and the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) must publish a public data-gap analysis and brief the same congressional committees. That analysis must describe who is in the marine mammal stranding network, where coverage or participant gaps exist, what data and reporting are missing, and how stranding and health data are shared with scientists and governments and made available to the public. Within 1 year after December 23, 2022, NOAA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey (with the Marine Mammal Commission) must publish and brief Congress on Arctic response capabilities. That Arctic report must describe existing stranding agreements and response resources, list state and local agencies with trained responders, assess local partners including Alaska Native communities, analyze stranding trends tied to changing Arctic conditions, identify training and resource needs, review oiled-marine-mammal response and rehabilitation capabilities, and give recommendations. “Arctic” has the meaning given in 15 U.S.C. 4111.