§8031 Interagency Working Group on Iuu Fishing

Summary

Creates a federal working group to coordinate the whole government’s effort against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and related maritime security threats. One chair leads the group and the chair role rotates every 3-year term among the Secretary of the department that runs the Coast Guard (through the Commandant), the Secretary of State, and the NOAA Administrator. There are 2 deputy chairs appointed by their agency heads from a different department than the chair (from the Coast Guard, State, or NOAA), 12 members appointed by agency heads from the listed agencies (Defense, Navy, USAID, Fish and Wildlife, Justice, Treasury, Customs and Border Protection, ICE, FTC, Agriculture, FDA, and Labor), 1 or more intelligence-community members appointed by the Director of National Intelligence, and 5 Presidential appointees from the National Security Council, Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Management and Budget, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the U.S. Trade Representative. The group must make federal actions work together to find, stop, investigate, prosecute, and break up IUU fishing operations. It must improve and set standards for information sharing and maritime enforcement, harmonize import data fields, plan how military and intelligence resources can help, increase maritime awareness, support countries in using the Port State Measures Agreement and assess their training needs, coordinate shiprider agreements, work with partner governments, industry, and NGOs, back international efforts to share certified vessel data and to follow the High Seas Driftnet rules, and publish annual reports that summarize nonsensitive work the group has done.