Susan Faraday, for those of you who don't know me, I'm the director of the Marine Affairs Institute and your hostess for this little gathering. I'm struck by a piece of conventional wisdom that I've heard before about putting all the key members of a company on the same company jet, you know, the CEO, the CFO, the members of the Board of Trustees, because we've got critical mass in fisheries law in this room today and for the next two days. I'm struck at leaders in this field over the last several years who've certainly inspired me in my professional career, and I am doubly inspired by the leaders of tomorrow that sit in this classroom and in classrooms across the way at the University of Rhode Island, who are here to learn from those in the trenches as it were. So a few housekeeping things. And I'm going to be the first one to mute my cell phone. Excellent. There is wireless connectivity in the building. It's pretty good. There's a hospitality room down the hall if you need to use that for any connection during your stay. Bathrooms and always an important thing. Across the hall, to the left as you go out of here. Can't think of any other housekeeping things right away. Charlotte in my office, who was part of our greeting table there, is the resource that keeps me together on a daily basis, and she will keep all of us together. So any questions, issues you have while you're staying here, please just let us know, and we'll do our best to make you comfortable. An event like this doesn't happen automatically, and it doesn't happen in isolation. I started coming up with the idea for this almost a year ago, and it's really been a work in progress. And so just a few thank yous. I had a wonderful planning committee. Many members are here. Many of them are doing double and triple duty as moderators and speakers. And anything else I could convey, coerce, or otherwise convince them to do, they're all listed in your program. So thank you to all of them. I have an excellent advisory board, some of them who are also on the planning committee, and they help me on a regular basis in charting our course, such as it were. And we have tremendous support from the staff at the law school, at the university communications, catering, takes a lot of pieces to make an event like this go off well. And I'm very appreciative of everybody's role in that. Let me tell you a little bit about the Marine Affairs Institute. This is our eighth marine law symposium. We've convened gatherings like this every other year on topics ranging fisheries management, to renewable energy, to ecosystem based management. So this is the kind of thing that we do on a regular basis. It's part of our mission to act as a clearing house for marine and maritime law and policy to gather experts in the field and to also help get the next generation of marine professionals ready. And several of them are here rubbing elbows with the established professionals today. And I encourage you all to take up an advantage of the opportunity to network. We do a few things here that I just want to put out a brief commercial for you about. We have a unique partnership with colleagues at the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Sea Grant. We are one of only four Sea Grant legal programs in the country. We're the only one in the Northeast. What that means is our students have an opportunity as Sea Grant law fellows to be matched up with an outside organization that has a research request. So they do actual legal live research as opposed to classroom room work and outside organizations get the benefit of supervised excellent students. We convene events like this. We also offer students who are really good and maybe a little bit masochistic an opportunity to get two degrees within three and a half years, a law degree from here and master's in marine affairs from the fabulous program of our URI. We have several alums here from that program who've gone on to do great things. We have several students here in that program who are wending their way through it. It's really unique and again, I think is very important to our purpose of developing that next generation of marine professionals. So let me just tell you a little bit about today's program and how we're going to proceed. We're going to be welcomed and here's some interesting remarks. First off, this morning from my colleagues at the university and at school of law, we also have Senator Whitehouse offering some remarks and let me tell you how things are going to go after that and sort of the design of the program. The title, Megs and Stevens Acts were visited. So we're going to start with how the act was originated, how it came to be, what people thought about it, some differing views on how it's functioned and how it might function in the future. Our panels the rest of the day are going to look at some details of the law and how the law interacts with other laws, how it functions as a natural resource scheme. Tomorrow we're going to be looking at more timely topical issues, which are pretty much almost on the front page in the news, especially here in New England, renewable energy issues and catch shares or sectors, whichever terminology you like to hear about. So that's kind of the way that we're going to go through this. And I'll talk more about the panels once we move into that part of the program after our coffee break this morning. So at this point I'm going to turn the program over to Dean David Logan. He's been a Dean of Law School here for six years, yes? Seven? Eight? Oh my goodness. And he's a terrific supporter of my program, tremendous asset to the law school and I invite him to come welcome you now, Dean David Logan. I'm low tech so I won't be doing any of this stuff but I will raise the microphone. One of the things that comes with being 6'9". I want to join Susan and welcome in you to the School of Law. Before I introduce President Champagne, I want to share with some of you here who are maybe unfamiliar with this institution, a little bit of the background that led us to where we are today. In the early 90s, Rhode Island was one of only three states that had no law school and the problem that wasn't, there weren't enough lawyers around but there was certainly a need, many lawyers felt, sort of raising the level of discourse in Rhode Island surrounding legal issues. And starting in the early 90s, we had been at our first class and we now will be graduating our 17th class this coming year. Our students do remarkably well on what are objective measures of outputs, the bar exams. They are making their way in the profession now. We're glad to report that our Peter Kilmartin class of 97 is the new Attorney General who is the first statewide officer we've had from our ranks and we have a number of members of the Senate and the House and other luminaries but never a statewide official so we're looking forward to Peter becoming the Attorney General. But one of the ways in which the law school has made its mark was to identify an area of the intersection of law and policy that was absolutely critical to New England and made perfect sense for the ocean state in Rhode Island. And so beginning in the mid 90s we began a wonderful relationship with the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Sea Grant as Susan mentioned one of the four national programs that provides legal services as part of a Sea Grant program. And that relationship has blossomed and been wonderful in a number of respects. One is it gives some of our top students a chance to also learn from one of the top sets of marine policy people in the country. I believe it's the oldest Dennis or the oldest program in the country to do this. And so our graduates not only get grounded in basic law and also environmental law, marine law, advertising the like but they get to hear about cutting edge issues from scientists and policy makers across the Bay. And our graduates in that program are making their way now in the profession as well. And there's a number of objective ways in which their success has been plotted and we're really proud of them. A number of them are here today both as some graduates and also some current students. I also want to just do a quick shout out to Susan Faraday and her staff, Julia Wyman, Charlotte Ferris. This is a big undertaking as the note said people from Hawaii to Nova Scotia from many, many different professional positions all coming to this little town in Bristol and some perfectly maritime weather I must say to talk about really, really a fundamental issue that has both local, regional, national and indeed international ramifications and Senator Whitehouse will speak to those I'm sure in his time with us and I'll be introducing him in a few minutes. Also want to say that the university and the law school in particular has benefited from some wonderful leadership and since August, Dr. Ronald Lowe Champagne has been my boss, the law school's part of the university and Dr. Champagne came to us with a PhD background in mathematics and a real interest in quickly learning the strengths of this remarkable university and in particular this remarkable part of it, the law school. Dr. Champagne has served in a number of important administrative capacities both in education and in non-governmental areas and what he really brings to the table though is a lot of passion and you'll see it I'm sure in his comments he really has hit the ground running at Roger Williams, has mastered the complexities of a university that includes a professional school which is something many universities don't have and also as you'll see today embraces this multidisciplinary multi-school approach that is represented not just by the Sea Grant URI Roger Williams program but by bringing people all over the country in all sorts of different areas here to Bristol to talk about a really, really important issue. So with that I give you Dr. Ronald Lowe Champagne, president of Roger Williams University. You can tell that David Logan last spoke at this podium. Thank you very much, David. As president of Roger Williams University it is really my honor and my privilege to welcome you all here to this very, very exciting and very interesting conference. I was once asked what is a university? What's the mission of a university? And I came up with this thing real fast. I said well it's a safe place that you can consider civilly and rationally. Ideas of any kind, controversial, radical, but it's a place where you come and you think. When you think about the role of a university in a society such as ours, a democratic society, how important a place like this is to our society where we can gather together people like yourselves to debate, to discuss, and hopefully to leave enlightened and perhaps more engaged. The program I'm very impressed with I can't say enough about the leadership that David Logan has given to this law school at Roger Williams. Where we are today is a testimony to his good work and I wanna recognize that, David, it's extraordinary. The law school is unique, yes, but it's also a center of excellence. It doesn't sit back because it's the only one in town. It takes its role very seriously. The Marine Affairs Institute is one of the law school centers of excellence that has modeled, really, for academic excellence in leveraging of complementary skill sets. The gist of this eighth symposium is pretty much contained in my welcome letter so I'm not gonna repeat it, about the compelling nature of fishery management law issues, particularly now, particularly in New England. Law is about life. And in this case, it's about life in the ocean. We have another spectacular center of excellence in our marine biology program. I had the opportunity to visit there yesterday and I would welcome you to go see it. Extraordinary. One of the few that are doing work at this level. And we just added on an entire new section which we're gonna dedicate with Senator Whitehouse's participation. And I went down and I saw all these students working away and I saw huge vats. It reminded me of a brewery. And I said, what are you doing down here? Cause it was all brown, you know, and I thought, that's an interesting room. And they said, well, we're making algae because that's where life begins in the ocean. That's where life begins. And they said, well, we really do it well. We turn out the greatest algae in the world. And I said, well, this is like a McDonald's of the ocean, isn't it? And then they came over and said, now this is what it's all about. And they handed me this handful of clams, oysters. And I kind of got to know what it meant, happy as a clam. Cause these were well attended clams and oysters. And the whole idea was our research is going to help put back what has been destroyed by recklessness. And recklessness is when life, human life, takes for granted and simply ravages the environment. Law is there to protect that. But it is all about life that I saw in that laboratory to protect our oceans and to use it. Human beings have to use oceans, has to use oil and so on, but we have to do it lawfully. We have a fabulous who's who of ocean experts gathered here. We have Senator Whitehouse who will soon be here, hopefully who leads the federal fisheries regulation committee. We have academics from Hawaii, South Carolina and Nova Scotia. I'm sure they're from Hawaii. They're wishing they were back there. We have expert practitioners who are on the ground of the law schools, of the law's passage and litigation that you're going to be discussing. We have managers, economists. We have fishermen and others grappling with current issues surrounding what it means to share the ocean. So I welcome you to this safe place in order to have a debate and to consider any and all ideas. And I really commend the Roger Williams School of Law for what it does, for what it contributes to society in Rhode Island, across the nation. So I really thank you for coming and I do wish you well with this conference. While we're waiting for Senator Whitehouse to brave the water and the traffic, which usually ties up the East Bay for those of us in Rhode Island, we know what that means. I'm gonna just walk through a bit with you how we're gonna proceed and the things we're gonna be thinking about. These panelists are earning their keep. They aren't just coming to present on their pet topic because I'm making them actually answer some key questions that I think are of interest when talking about fisheries management and fisheries law. When I thought about sort of the theme and putting together this conference, I was really struck by the fact that fishing has probably been the cornerstone of human beings' interactions with the ocean for an awfully long time. And even now, when we're in a much more technologically advanced state than we were thousands of years ago when we first threw a line into the water, when you first start talking to people about the oceans and I don't think it matters much whether it's students in my classroom or my mom across the dinner table. One of the first things they say, if you say, oh, well, I'm interested in ocean law other than they're like, what? They always say, what about the fish? What about the fishermen? That tends to be the way that people think about oceans. Now those of us that have been studying this area of law for a while know that it's much more complicated than just fisheries management law. There's a lot of other laws. There's a lot of other issues. There are a lot of other stakeholders. But even now, when we're in very interesting debates about the future of offshore renewable energy, LNG siting, offshore aquaculture, changes in maritime transportation, marine spatial planning, whatever the heck that's going to mean for the whole thing. One of the first questions is, what about fishing? So that's what we're gonna focus on today is this and tomorrow is this law, how it's developed into the state that it is. Cause it is a very fully developed law. It's been on the books for almost 35 years now. Those students in the room know there's lots of cases and we have a lot of folks that have been involved in the litigation of those cases in one way or another in the next couple of days. It's a well-developed area of law. Sometimes it's a good fit in thinking about new uses and new ways of managing the oceans. Sometimes it's not. So we're gonna tease out some of those questions and let me just give you a preview of that. How's this for some things to chew on? So the first three panels are who we are gonna be hearing from today and panels four and five will be tomorrow. So panel one, I've asked each of them within a very compressed amount of time and within their vast expertise to give us their thoughts on if they had a chance to rewrite this law today and they didn't have to worry about any of the politics, interesting conversation to have today after the election, what thing, what one thing would you most want to change? And if you take a look at the bios, I'll be introducing that panel in more detail when we get to that at 1045 after the coffee break. But you'll see this panel has some very different backgrounds and experiences and I think they're gonna offer some interesting interpretations and answers to this question. In the afternoon we're gonna look at the interaction of Magnets and Stevens with all these other laws. Some marine related, some not at all. Panel two is gonna discuss this law in relationship to other natural resources. We regulate a lot of natural resources. We regulate grazing rights and timber rights and mineral rights and oil and gas. And Magnets and Stevens is sort of a quirky law in some respects. So we've asked this panel to give us one tidbit, one bite. What's the one thing from another natural resource scheme that you would like to incorporate into US Fisheries Management and why? At the end of the day we're gonna talk about something which again students and practitioners of this area of law know is frequently litigated and that's the intersection between the Magnets and Stevens Act and other laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act. I mean that's what you call ecosystem based management. Fisheries Management has been grappling with that. The court's been grappling with the law folks in this room have been grappling with that for years. So we've asked this panel if they think we could do better if we had one law. This is not a new idea. Lots of commissions have come up with this before. There's been various versions that get reintroduced in Congress on a regular basis. I'm not optimistic this new Congress is gonna seize ocean reform any more readily than others. I'm still hoping but. So we've asked this panel to give us their thoughts on that and again I anticipate some divergent and different views on that. The second day as I mentioned in my opening remarks we're really going to sort of the heart of the debate right now, the issues that are occupying a lot of energy and deservedly so in New England and around the country. The issues of moving from an open access type of resource management scheme to a much more tightly controlled allocated out type of scheme. Cat shares, ITQs, sectors, whatever the phrase is you wanna call it. But that's what we're gonna spend tomorrow morning talking about after we hear remarks from Eric Schwab. And we've asked them to give us their thoughts on what they think the single most important issue is to address in implementing these schemes. Cause they're here. They're another tool in the toolbox that fishery managers and fishermen need to use to govern themselves. It isn't always easy to figure out the right way, the fair way, a sustainable way to utilize these schemes. Finally, we're gonna wrap up the day with what I think is the most timely sort of issue which is occupying a lot of our minds these days. And that's a combination of energy issues, old energy like oil and gas, which we've seen the impacts of in the Gulf of Mexico. New energy specifically offshore renewable and this whole brave new world, marine spatial planning, what does it all mean? So we've asked this panel to give us their thoughts on how to facilitate the relationship between fisheries and these other uses, these other ways of managing and planning access to ocean uses. So that's a preview of the work that we're all gonna be engaging in today and tomorrow. Couple of other things just in case you're tempted to get yourself a cramp in the hand from taking notes. We're gonna be posting presentations from our presenters on our website. I've also asked a number of fabulous students and alums and attendees to act as my repertoires for each panel to note the answers to these questions. And I will be pulling those together in a proceedings type of document. And I'm trying to enter into the social networking world and we'll be posting those on our Facebook page. So friend us. I'm trying to go there, I'm trying to go there. I'm just gonna check on the status of Senator Whitehouse. I don't know. Can you chat for a minute so it would be delight. You're good at that. It's a great pause. I decided initially not to mention this when I first got up here because I was all business, but since we've got a minute or two, if you've been in a cave in the last month or two, you might not have heard that one of our graduates' life stories is now a major Hollywood picture. Betty Ann Waters graduate from here in 1998 with only one reason to go to law school, indeed to go to college before law school was to free her brother Kenny who had been wrongfully convicted of murder in Massachusetts. And when Kenny was released in the early, I guess 2001 or 2002, a bunch of people that were on the lookout for a compelling story contacted Betty Ann and it took some years to get made but now it's had its national release over this last week and the movie's called Conviction. And it stars Hillary Swank, Melissa Leo, Juliette Lewis, Sam Rockwell plays Kenny and just, I mean, if he doesn't get an Academy Award, I'm not very schooled in this stuff but it really is a compelling presentation. But anyway, it's a great movie. Bring your hankies, it's a sad movie and happy in many respects as well. And there's at least one scene where Hillary Swank's in a Roger Williams university sweatshirt, so. We got our 20 seconds of fame out of that. It's a biopic, it's not a particularly specific factual story. But I also want to just refer a minute or two on something that Susan mentioned as you grow over here and Wendy's and other folks that we've worked closely with. One of the great things about being in Rhode Island and being in law school in Rhode Island is you can sort of get everybody around the table to deal with stuff. And you're never more than two steps away from the person in the state government that's got this responsibility or the person who's in the legislative branch. And so starting, I guess, a couple years ago, one of Governor Carchieri's initiatives was trying to figure out a way to move Rhode Island to the front of offshore renewable energy production in the country. And one of the things they decided to do was set up what's called the OSAMP, which is Marine Spatial Planning that Susan referred to. And the product came out, I guess, about a month ago. It's still in a sort of a semi-final draft form. But it's really quite a revolutionary way of thinking about, and this is from a very inexperienced person, sort of taking concepts that are familiar on firm land about how you might want to put businesses in one place and houses another place and schools in another place, basic idea of zoning, and applying it to the water, playing to the ocean, which is something to my knowledge that never has been done at least at this level. And one of the things that was great about it was a part of the program was carved off through Sea Grant so that some of our law students under the direction of Dennis Esposito, a very important member of our adjunct faculty, could start to roll up their sleeves and start to work with some very sophisticated materials involved in federal and state and within federal government, let's say battles, concerns about where authority will ultimately lie. And it's really one example of how a young law school can identify a place where they can make a difference and then have the people at the table say, yeah, we want to have you involved and then to see it actually come to fruition in a period of a year or two, which is really quite remarkable. And we don't know how many there will be when turbines will be offshore in Rhode Island, but Attorney General Kilmartin announced that he's not gonna pursue the litigation that Attorney General Lynch had decided to pursue against the project. That doesn't mean it's necessarily gonna happen, but it certainly makes it somewhat more likely that we're gonna see the projects approved and approved in a sensible way, approved within the context of a plan, not just let's just drop them here, but we drop them here because it has the right mix of minimal impact on fisheries, minimal impact on shipping, minimal impact on the aesthetics of the area and the maximum likelihood that it'll actually generate reasonably priced clean electricity. So OSAMP really is a wonderful little model of how the law school, URI, the CRMC, the state government can work together to solve a problem that no one else has really even taken a whack at. So I can riff some more, but I'm getting sort of tired of my own self here and knowing what the traffic is, I'll just sit down for a minute or two.  One more thing. One more thing is that I saw Michael Berger sitting out there. One of the things you'll have to see while you're here for those of you that are not part of our community is to the top members of our faculty, both sort of interestingly junior in a sense, one Michael Berger who just joined us in August from Columbia Law School and already written interesting pieces on climate change and the role of state and local government in tackling climate change. Michael's gonna be moderating one of the panels and welcome to Michael. And Jared Goldstein, who was just recently tenured as moderating another panel. And Jared's done some really interesting work, including an article fairly recently in the Virginia Law Review that looked at the Supreme Court case that involved the secretary of the Navy saying that we have to have national security discretion that Trump's concerned about sea life in order to do our, I forget it was undersea sonar or something like that. What Jared did was just great and sort of typical of Jared to sort of think outside the box, he didn't look at it as just as an environmental law question. He looked at it as a question of sort of jurisprudence. So my time is just about up. I just saw another wahoo walk in. There he is. Let me introduce you to you, the keynote speaker for today, a wonderful friend of the law school and really a terrific leader in Washington. And it's not just because he's good at Washington, it's because Senator Whitehouse has a remarkable series of experience and accomplishments before he arrived in Washington. To be the US Attorney, a federal, the chief prosecutor, to be the Attorney General of the state. To be on the governor's staff to head the small business office and do a practice law at one of the top firms in Rhode Island, it would be enough for it to be a resume and him to be an empty suit, but he's not. He's gone to Washington and made a huge impact in a very short time. I know his work for the Senate Judiciary Committee and how within his first term in Senate, he's shown a light on some really unsavory practices in the Department of Justice that occurred in the 2003 to 2006 time period. Andy also has a significant portfolio in Marine Affairs. I know he's gonna speak to you that in a minute, but when I first heard him speak, I have to say he was in this room a couple years ago, and I've been around people who have been in politics, I won't call him politician, but it's the first one that cited a book called The Tragedy of the Commons. And then I said, boy, this guy's really well read as well as deeply experienced. And so it's my great honor and pleasure to introduce to you Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Well, thank you, David. I think I have to do something with this microphone, don't I? It's not often that at six foot two, I've got to lower a microphone after introduction. But I'm delighted to be here. It's good to be back. I can very distinctly remember preparing for a Supreme Court argument. And one of the moot courts that was held, the National Association of Attorneys General held one, a group at the Georgetown Law Center held one and Roger Williams held one. And I was grilled mercilessly by professors pretending to be Supreme Court justices. And you'll be proud to know that they were rougher on me here at Roger Williams than anywhere else. But it's a great pleasure to be here and to have the new president of Roger Williams here and my dear friend, David, the Dean of the Law School here. And this murderous row of folks in the front row here, Grover Fugate, Dennis Nixon. And I understand that there'll be a good turnout here from NOAA later on, including my former colleague from Department of Justice, Lois Schiffer, who's now the counsel, but was the head of ENR Department of Justice when I was the U.S. Attorney. And I'm told that Peter Shelley, there he is, is here somewhere, who we go back to setting the first conservation rates for electricity way back in the day at the Public Utilities Commission. So Peter, thank you for being here and for your constant great work in these issues. And as Mike Conathon here also, I wanna recognize him. Where, where, where, where? There he is, hiding behind Peter. Mike is to me the most important person in the room. I'm sorry, Mr. President, I'm sorry, Dean. I'm sorry, Grover and Dennis. Mike represents Olympia Snow. And as you will hear in my remarks, she and I are the co-sponsors of the National Endowment for the Oceans. And her support for this has been critical and I'm delighted that Mike is here. The topic that we have for today, Magnus and Stephens, is a timely one as the New England ground fishery rounds out its first season under new catch limits and its first sector management plan. It appears that despite the lower catch limits overall, the fishery has earned marginally more money than during the same period last year, which is a promising number, but it is premature to draw any conclusions. And frankly, no matter what that number ends up being, we have to face the fact that our fishermen face tremendous economic troubles. Adjusting to new fishing regulations adds additional challenges to their already very difficult situation. That is why fisheries management concerns that I've heard from Rhode Island fishermen are so important. I'd like to highlight a few possible ways to address some of those concerns because our efforts to protect our fisheries simply must have the full participation and the confidence and the knowledge and expertise of our fishermen. Before we get into that though, let's just step back a minute and put this into the larger context of what is happening in our oceans. As many of you know, this is a personal as well as political issue for me. My wife Sandra is a doctorate of marine biology. I'm a sailor and a kayaker and a diver. Indeed, I got my cred with my wife when she asked me to come out sampling with her, which meant diving to the bottom of Narragansett Bay in February. I think at that point she took me seriously. But I know particularly as a senator from Rhode Island that the ocean and the coast are key economic drivers providing for us jobs and fishing and shipbuilding and tourism. It's also part of our identity as Rhode Islanders from the old Block Island double-ender to the burning of the British ship, the Gaspi. Don't let anybody tell you that Boston Tea Party mattered a hoot. We were burning British boats in Rhode Island more than a year earlier and we don't get enough credit for it. To the America's Cup, two frankly, lobster rolls and co-hogs. We identify with the sea and we are part of it. Oceans cover three quarters of the globe. They represent 90% of the earth's water. They produce more than two thirds of the world's oxygen supply. They contain more than half of its biological production and we are polluting them with catastrophic consequences. And it is showing up wherever you look. The bells of alarm are ringing from the northernmost seas where the sheets of ice that have long been essential to the environment up there are retreating. Captain Watts of the Naval War College was quoted recently in press reports saying that Arctic ice is melting faster than US military planners can prepare for northern ocean defense. And you can go from there to the south where you see coral bleaching taking place, ruining these nurseries of so many of our species, the Andaman Sea is in the middle of a coral but beaching crash right now, and it looks like 2010's record temperatures will outpace 1988 when 16% of shallow reefs worldwide died. From far away where there is an enormous garbage gyre out in the remote center of the Pacific Ocean whose size and nature we're only beginning to comprehend, to in near close for an arrogance at bay winter, water temperatures have gone up three or four degrees. Stupidly to Perry Jeffries years ago, I said, well, that doesn't sound like much. I jump in the water and I can't tell it in between 62 and 65 degrees. And Professor Jeffries said, you don't understand my son. This is an ecosystem shift. And we are living through that ecosystem shift right now with winter flounder out and scup in and many other changes. From the top of our food chain where 80% of our major pelagic species, 80% crashes have taken place in the population of most of our major pelagic species and our big marine mammals are now so poisoned according to the research of Dr. Roger Payne that if one were to wash ashore as they often do in the summers in Rhode Island and you towed it back out to sea or you hoisted into a truck and you took it to the town dump, you would likely be violating the Clean Water Act or the hazardous waste disposal laws because the concentration in the fat of marine mammals of heavy metals, of flame retardants and of other chemicals has turned them into swimming toxic waste. So, and then from the top, that's the top of the food chain. You go to the bottom and you see phytoplankton populations that have declined a percent a year for 40 years, 40% decrease in phytoplankton overall. That's the food chain on which the rest of the ocean depends. We don't know what happens when the floor falls out of an oceanic food chain but it's not good and we're getting close and ocean acidification has an enormous amount to do with it. So, real peril is facing our oceans. The danger of climate change is possibly gonna be made manifest against mankind more seriously through our oceans than through our climate and we have to prepare for that. We have to build an ocean constituency for starters. A critical mass of scientists, fishermen, young people, elected officials, coastal protection organizations and marine industries to move the human race away from being just takers to being caretakers of our seas and oceans. For that we'll have to have adequate research to improve catch assessments, analyze the life cycles of marine species, monitor trends in water temperature and chemistry and so forth. We have to expand our coastal and marine spatial planning efforts like those undertaken by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council to cite use as appropriately where they'll produce the greatest benefit with the least amount of environmental harm and reduce the conflict between uses. Just this month, the National Journal reported that Rhode Island has played a pioneering role in exploring and mapping its waters and I'm proud of the work that Grover Fugate and the Rhode Island CRMC have done and I'm glad that you'll have a chance to hear from him about that path breaking work. It is being looked at around the country. We are known in Rhode Island for this work nationally. To support these research programs and planning efforts and to protect our ocean and coastal resources, I've introduced legislation with Senator Olympia Snow of Maine to create the National Endowment for the Oceans that I mentioned when I recognized Mike. We have some fortunate co-sponsors early on. We have not reached out broadly because we don't want to get the partisan balance wrong too early, but a few sponsors were irresistible. They are Senator Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee to which the bill was referred, Senator Inouye, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which will have to sign off on the funding streams for it, and Senator Stabenow of Michigan to highlight for our colleagues the eligibility of the Great Lakes to participate in this effort. We are at a very promising stage, but it is an early stage and I hope very much that we can succeed quickly in creating this National Endowment for the Oceans. We must also, a little estuarine pun here, shore up existing programs and funding for the protection of our estuaries. About 75% of America's commercial fisheries rely on estuaries and coastal wetlands to provide nursery grounds and critical habitat. Coastal development, runoff, acid rain, pollution, sewage, all threaten these core ecosystems. For 25 years, EPA's National Estuary Program has brought together stakeholders to forge solutions to coastal pollution problems. That's why I've introduced legislation with Senator Vitter of Louisiana to reauthorize this program, to increase its authorized budget, and to better fund programs like the Narragansett Bay estuary program here in Rhode Island. These three priorities, creating an oceans constituency, fully funding oceans research and marine spatial planning programs and protecting our oceans, coasts and estuaries are absolutely necessary in a comprehensive all hands on deck approach to protecting our fisheries. However, while we work to achieve those broader goals and in that context, we have to bear down on the problem of our fisheries and our fishermen and their very real economic distress today. The US commercial fishing industry is valued in the tens of billions of dollars and our region represents a huge portion of that value. In 2009, New England commercial fisheries landed $783 million worth of fish, second as a region only to the Pacific Northwest, which includes Alaska. Men and now women have fished the Western Atlantic for over 400 years, enriching our culture, our economy and our history. Many families passed the vocation down through generations, others joined the fleet in recent years. All are facing very real economic hardship made worse by the general downturn in our economy. When you consider what is at stake, the value of this industry both economically and culturally, it comes as no surprise that tempers run high around fisheries, regulation and management. Having spoken with many Rhode Island fishermen over the past several years, I see two fundamental and longstanding problems underlying most disagreements over the limits prescribed by Magnus and Stevens. First, there is a credibility gap between scientists and fishermen on catch assessments. Fishermen express little confidence in scientist ability to perform stock assessments, saying things like they don't know how to fish, they don't see what we see when we are out on the boat. Research tells scientists one thing, experience tells fishermen another, and this conflict must be addressed head on. We may need to reconsider the data we are relying on to inform our fisheries management decisions, the methods we are using to collect data, and where data is missing, what assumptions we make in place of that data. This problem is compounded by a long history of distrust between the fishing industry and government fisheries managers. Cries of foul play from fishermen long went unheard until a 2010 report by the Department of Commerce and Inspector General revealed that New England fishermen have in fact been fined more heavily and more often than other fishermen in other regions of the country for similar or less behavior. More generally, some fishermen complain that catch limits required by Magnus and were set arbitrarily and do not respond to new information. There are several ways to overcome this tension and rebuild trust. One way to bridge the credibility gap would be to require rapid, common sense, reevaluation of stock assessments when they are challenged. Sometimes the agency itself engages in reassessments. For instance, earlier this year when the National Marine Fisheries Service exercised its emergency authorities under Magnuson and increased the Pollock catch limit based on new data. It is understandably intensely frustrating for a fisherman who thinks a stock assessment is just wrong and is the product of bad sampling rather than good science to have no means of relief as the season slips away. Without this rapid response, you cement a view in the fishing industry that catch limits are numbers made up by bureaucrats and frozen in stone long after the situation in the ocean demands a change. We also need to get scientists and fishermen speaking the same language and embracing the same data collection methods. Each group has something to teach the other so working together can only improve fisheries management science. Cooperative fisheries research can help bridge the research versus experience conflict. Early results from cooperative research are encouraging. Fishermen and scientists are gathering fisheries data together on working fishing boats using the same gear as NOAA research boats. The premises that research and experience working together makes for more solid and plausible outcomes and it does seem to be working. Just last month I spent a day on the Dorana R with Captain Jimmy Rule. Captain Rule fishes with his son and a crewman for scallops and ground fish up and down the Atlantic. His family is very well regarded in the Atlantic ground fishing community. For a month each spring and fall he's been taking scientists out on his boat to gather juvenile and adult samples of species along the North Atlantic coast. The data is then fed into the Northeast area monitoring and assessment program or NEAMAP. Jim Garland of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science where my wife did some of her graduate work was the lead scientist on board. He was impressed by Captain Rule and his experience with the gear and with the collection methods. Captain Rule in return was impressed by the hard work and earnestness of what he called his young scientists. It was a good partnership. This doesn't mean that collection gear and methods will never be questioned in the future but it is more likely that the nature of the questioning will become are we doing this the right way rather than what are those crazy scientists up to? My final point on the perception gap issue is generally that we just need more and better data. We will never have the perfect data set and we cannot wait to act until we do acting on imperfect information is the stuff of governance. However, we can certainly do a better job of gathering information, gathering it more rapidly, using the latest technology and planning tools. Coastal and marine spatial planning can map important fishing grounds and protect them from conflicting uses. CMSP can also identify critical habitats for commercial species of fish at all their different stages of life. There is interesting catch assessment work just underway using GPS positioning technology. I recently met Steve Arnold, a Rhode Island commercial fisherman who was participating in just such a study with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Steve and other participants use an electronic log integrated with GPS, depth sounders and temperature sensors mounted on the troll doors to log each trawl as it is made. In addition, the boat logs, the bycatch and landings of each voyage. Onboard observers compare this data to estimates made by the captain. These programs marry the latest technology with centuries old fishing wisdom to get accurate industry relevant data to inform stock assessments. The long history of mistrust between fishermen and fisheries managers is a tough problem, but it is not insurmountable. One reason for the mistrust, I believe, is that the National Marine Fisheries Service has been tasked with two somewhat contradictory missions, fostering conservation of the fisheries on the one hand and promoting the optimum extraction of the resource on the other. This dual role may be what helps create the impression that the agency generates inconsistent policies, which fishermen then must struggle to follow. We have to ensure that fisheries enforcement is even-handed and transparent. As I mentioned earlier, for years, we ignored complaints by New England fishermen that penalties were swifter and larger here than elsewhere and that they were conflicts of interest. This year, the Commerce Inspector General agreed. The Inspector General reported that the fisheries enforcement program had spent much of the recovered penalties on office vehicles. In fact, the program now had more cars than personnel. At a time when New England fishing families are struggling to make ends meet, hearing that excessive NOAA penalties were used to buy extra company cars was a bitter pill to swallow. Commerce is drafting a new penalty policy which can be commented on until December 20th. I hope this policy will rebuild confidence in the program. In addition, one-third of the fisheries office of law enforcement credit cards have been canceled to control extravagant purchasing and management of the asset forfeiture fund has been moved to the comptroller's office where it will be subject to more transparent accounting. These are critical first steps along the path to rebuilding trust. As I said at the outset, we're entering a new era in the New England fisheries. The post-2006 Magnuson era of catch limits. And to make sure catch limits don't deepen the divide between fishermen and fisheries managers, we must make sure regulators can nimbly respond to new catch assessments or other data. The advent of new technology like GPS permits a standard that can eliminate bycatch. Scientists and fishermen working together can rebuild confidence. Speeding up the bureaucracy can keep catch data current. There are grounds for optimism, but the weight of the past is a real burden and it will require a lot of hard work to find our way to that happy future. Thank you very much. Dennis! The situation with the melting of the ice and the fact that we're doing the research, the Healy spent some room doing the kind of research and support of 20% of jurisdiction. You think there can be enough of a discussion, a civil discussion in the Senate that would allow the parties to come together and actually let the United States get out of the club and include North Korea, Liberia, Somalia that have not yet adopted the convention? I think and I hope so. There is considerable pressure within the Senate to get the law of the C Treaty done. Chairman Kerry is very keen to get it done and has been pressing us in the caucus and with the majority leader to get it done. The problem has been that time is a very precious commodity in the Senate. To take a step back and explain that, everybody is familiar with what a filibuster is in the Senate. There's a way to close off a filibuster but it takes really six full days of Senate time to do so because you can filibuster the motion to proceed to the bill and you filibuster the bill again once you've proceeded to it so you get double filibuster on this stuff. So you burn six days of Senate time. And the transformation that has taken place in the Senate in very recent years has been the filibusters no longer used as a strategy to oppose a particular piece of legislation. It is used against every piece of legislation including legislation that the minority party supports because forcing the majority party to burn all those days shrinks our capability to do things and limits our reach and provides additional incentive to negotiate more with the minority party. So in that environment, to take up a treaty that is gonna burn potentially a lot of floor time has been the problem. I don't think there's ever been a concern that the votes aren't there at the end of the day but there is a small group of people who still believe that this is the end of civilized life as we know it and black helicopters delivering fluoridated water are going to propagate if we join the law of the sea, the Navy won't be able to leave its bases without the permission of the French and there's a whole kind of internet frenzy about the law of the sea and that leaves us with Somalia, North Korea and these other nations. An interesting transformation has taken place as a result of the unfortunate climate change consequences we are seeing and that is that the oil and extractive industries are starting to see promise up in the North where before those resources were unreachable and they're sensing competitive pressure from the Russians who might come up and begin to claim and drill and so the oil industry, which is a backer of some of the members who are most opposed to the law of the sea treaty is now in a position to I think put pressure on them to try to get it done because it's now industry backed as well, it's not just a national security and trade phenomenon, it's a national security trade and energy phenomenon and the energy industry is interested and all we need is for these people to say, look, we'll get up on the center floor, we'll give our speeches about how this is another sign of the end of time but we're not gonna burn enormous amounts of time on this, we will allow a vote, we'll move forward and I think that the oil industry ought to be able to deliver that from some of these members who are so closely affiliated with their interests, shall we say. So fingers crossed, we will get it done. The other thing is in the, with the Republican Congress, it's not clear that we'll get any legislation passed through both houses anyway, we'll have to see what their tone is. We're getting one set of tone which is no compromise, no surrender, we're not gonna let anything go through unless it's Tea Party approved, in which case it's not gonna happen but there are other people saying we gotta get to work and there are things that need to be done and maybe now there's room for compromise. Which way that shakes out, in any event be considerably less legislating done in the coming two years than in the past two years and that allows more of a window for start for law of the sea and for other things that have been held back by the pressure of legislative deeds. Peter. Senator, can you, Peter Schell from Conservation Law Foundation, can you speak at the next level down around the national endowment for the oceans which we think is a very important idea if you just elaborate a little bit on the value proposition for this endowment. The, it has very good support from the environmental union. There is beginning to be the beginnings of a pushback from extractive industries that are concerned that things like marine and coastal spatial planning will eliminate their unfettered ability to seek to drill wherever they please. I think that a calm discussion of that will lead, and particularly they become familiar with how very transparent the process is and how open the process is from making those marine spatial planning determinations. Frankly, a lot of it is determinations, just assessing information that you can draw conclusions from that information. Extractive industries might actually be better off with comprehensive coastal marine spatial planning. But they will know very quickly where good places are to locate rigs and drills versus places that are going to get in there. There's a lot of trouble with the fishing community or the shipping community with others and you've been sort of pre-sorted for them rather than having to have that fought out in every single sighting dispute. So that discussion is, I hope, one that we can calm people down on so that this wide support that we're getting is not met with opposition. It's sort of a distinctive opposition of some kind of theory. You support something until people have a look at it from a certain aspect of the business community. The value of proposition is that there is no real constituency for the ocean and if we're gonna take seriously the threats that are coming out of the ocean which have real effects on a whole wide variety of states that are beginning to come over roots to set up something so that this is done in an orderly fashion, makes a lot of sense and is in our national interest. And the dedicated funding stream, which is the core of the financial development, means that it's not a huge amount of money by federal standards for sure, but it becomes consistent, it becomes reliable. It means it can start to support long-term scientific studies as everybody knows, it was legal science. You start collecting your data set, you corrupt it, you compromise the whole data set. You wanna be able to develop it over time and have it stay meaningful. So, it's partially an appeal to senators and representatives who have significant industries that work will be adversely affected by the changes that are happening in the oceans. It's partly just, you know, the L.A. Mossner desire to do the right thing and I think to certain standards, it's a justifiable concern that we are at very grave risk of something going terribly wrong in our oceans. I mean, in geologic time, we have had oceanic die-offs that have just wiped out the entire biota of the oceans and they've had to kinda start to scratch and a whole new set of features grew. We sure don't want that to happen while we've got six plus billion of us on the planet getting a huge portion of our protein out of the oceans and we're playing pretty dangerously right now, particularly with ocean acidification effects. Ocean acidification creates an environment in which the many of the plant that are the base of the food chain are now asked to grow and succeed and multiply in an ocean that is a solvent of their shells and I don't care how big and strong, clever or phytoplankton you are, if the ocean is dissolving your shell, you have a very serious problem and we're already starting to see in various areas people are collecting these things and looking at these misshapen, undersized, degraded creatures and it's no big deal even though these things are until you realize that that's where everything else lives off of and it might crash and so we're gonna have a very, very significant perhaps Catholic problem right now. Yeah.  What about judges, building judges? I'm sorry, those, I didn't see you right away. Yes, I did. Nice to see you again. It's a pleasure. I'm starting out the judges now as you know. What about judges? Are we gonna get any more through? I don't know, it's gonna be, there's a lot of recrimination on the issue of judges. We recriminate the Republicans from instructing judges. They recriminate us where the aluminum white house is not teamed up, a whole lot of judges and that we're behind for both of those reasons. The point that I mentioned earlier that the filibusters don't over-attacked for opposing a specific piece of legislation, but just for generally disabling the Senate as a body by burning up its ability to act by four weeks more time, also applies to judges. We over and over and over again are taking votes on certain court judges that we've had to go vote on and have them burn four time on and then the vote is 98 to zero. So clearly that was not a controversial judge and yet we had to go through the process associated with controversy to get to that option we voted 98 to zero on this judge. So in fact, the general desire to burn four time has affected the fact that maybe the fact will calm down a little bit and have the Republicans have to stop up in the house, and see what we might do and feel they need to stop everything that's going on in the Senate. We're also at a potential tipping point. The Supreme Court has always been a political battle over who gets on it. I mean, all the way back to slavery days when the South wanted to make sure who was on Supreme Court. That's really never changed. Recently, that's dribbled down to the circuit courts of the evil and it's now become SOP, that a circuit court nominee gives political fair game and if you think they're not politically that associated with your views, then you can do what you can do and if there's a fight and there's Bill Bustering and all that stuff. Or threats of Bill Bustering and all that stuff. That is where the point of really deciding on the amount of practice that's going to dribble into district court judges as well. And that position is probably going to be made during the lame duck when some judges including the local one come up and decide whether they will actually fill the state of the state district judge supported by both home state senators and it's clear to the background check and passed in a bipartisan fashion out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. If those three characteristics are in place and they're still willing to fill us on the floor, all deaths are off and at that point you have a complete scrum on even district judges. And it will come for a title for a while which makes it even worse. In my, okay, forget yours. Something that otherwise would be fine is then all jammed up. Yes. City of Magnus and Steven Zack question. As you know, in the last several years the guy father of Magnus and Steven Zack is no longer in the Senate about rest of these. And my question is, which members of the Senate do you see interested in, would like you to step into that vacuum which is an enormous one and play a leadership role in future changes to the act and what do you see their interest as? The powerhouses on this in the Senate are two women, Patty Murray and Olivia Sun. Oh, I'm sorry, Andrea Campbell. I'm afraid. Patty's a leadership in our process and has a very strong voice there and represents Washington. Berea is the chair of the Congress Committee Subcommittee on Fisheries. And Senator Snow is, I believe, a ranking member, is a very ranking member and is also a very strong voice on this in her own right, giving importance to many of its fishing industries. So, good guys, I think we're very, very capable because now together we've got a powerhouse crack. And I'm sort of kicking out the door and seeing if I can get my head in that club because I feel very strongly about this from the Brown Islands Ocean State point of view. And I also feel that there is an imbalance between what needs to be done and where powerful constituencies are just part of life. And if you go to the place where the imbalance is greatest between what needs to be done and where there's a constituency argue for it, boom, it's our oceans. And so I think it's kind of important that people respond to the alarms that we're seeing and try to end that off. So I guess we're going to be really, really good. You've got tons of them online. And you're out. It's kind of a fast game.  I don't have a second year here. Can I visualize? Congratulations. Thanks. That's right, first of all. I'm just curious if you support the Western Report or if you can see it as a practical thing without it having to see the Senate give me a punch. Yes. I think we do need to do something about the filibuster related that has been applied. There has been a complete sea change in the last few years. Not in the use of filibusters always been there, but in the one that's always been there long after that we said it's always been there. But in its application to noncontroversial measures and force, delay, time, burden. If I had to guess what the lightliest measure was, that we would change when we got back in January, it would be to change the rule so that a motion to proceed is automatic. And the majority of the year can't take the Senate to the bill. And if you then want filibuster it, okay. Because everybody has an interest on Monday, all of you in the minority, if I'm lucky enough, you don't have any time to go back and forth. And the logic of the Senate is that it's a place where the Congress has involved coffee with two cocktails in this all sort of voice. Pour it out, it's a damn thing mechanism for against the popular actions of the moment in the constitutional scheme of government. So it's frustrating when you're on the wrong end of that, but it's also a meritorious piece of the governmental architecture. The problem is that you don't need to filibuster a bill twice, once, slowly enough. So the motion to proceed, I think, is an area where even the people of the old garlic that have had to live through being in the minority would feel it is important to protect the minority. The institutionalists would view this as a part of the great structure of American governance. We'll say, okay, that may be a way to sort of dial it back so that they're more inclined to filibuster things if we're really objective of a bill rather than to say to bring some time in a general way. And on that note, thank you for watching.


With that said, here we are in Job and we're going to be looking at chapter 39 and I'm going to read the first four verses to you and give you a little bit of a background reminder and then move into the 39th chapter, we'll be looking at it today. And so I'll begin reading at verse 1, Job chapter 39, read to verse 4 and we'll get into our study. Do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young? Can you mark when the deer gives birth? Can you number the months that they fulfill? Or do you know the time when they bear young? They bow down, they bring forth their young, they deliver their offspring, their young ones are healthy, they grow strong with grain, they depart and do not return to them. And so as we've been going through the book of Job, we've seen that there has been an ongoing argument. As we began the study, Job suffered the loss of everything that he valued. We saw how he lost his material blessings, he lost his children, he even lost his physical health. He was once the greatest man in the East, but he'd been reduced to a shadow of what he once was. His body is racked with pain, it's swollen, completely covered with boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He's been sitting there in ashes, he's been scraping his open wounds with broken shards of pottery. And as we saw this in the introduction to the book of Job, we saw how he had friends. He had friends who came and they just simply at first sat there in silence alongside of him. They had agreed to come together and to mourn alongside of their dear, dear friend Job. Now the Bible tells us when they saw him from afar, they didn't even recognize him, but when they recognized him, when they knew it was him, the Bible says that they lifted up their voices and they wept and they tore their clothing and they threw dust in the air, sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. And no one spoke a word, seeing that his grief was so unbelievable. And then as we've been reading through and going through Job, we saw how Job finally broke the silence and the first things he began to speak about was the fact that he was cursing the day of his birth and he began to bear his soul. He began to openly and honestly question aloud, why did this happen? He was saying, my pain pours out of me like water. I have no rest because trouble comes. And that which I feared most has come upon me. What I dreaded, he says, has happened to me. While as sometimes happens a pain that he was enduring wasn't understood by his friends, they began to fear for him and were at first even confused at his emotional explosion. And one by one, his friends, Alaphaz and Zophar and Vildad, began rebuking and began reprimanding him. You see, each one of them felt that he was dangerously close to blaspheming God by his complaining. Job, they said, you're the one who gave advice so freely, but now you suffer and are weary of it. What makes you think that you're above such things in your life? Who are you, they were saying, to complain against God? So as we've seen, Job didn't understand how they could speak to him like that. He began to question them, he questioned their kindness, he questioned their compassion. He even rebuked them for being harsh. In Job 6, verse 14, he said to him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. Why are you treating me the way that you are? Why are you saying the things that you're saying? You see, it's easy for you. You're healthy. It's easy to rebuke the one who isn't. It's easy to rebuke the one who's hurting so deeply when you yourself are without pain. He said in chapter 7, verse 5, my flesh is caked with worms and dust. My skin is cracked and breaks afresh. And as we went through all of the chapters of Job up to this point, on and on the argument went each one of his friends attempting to convince him of sin and none of them was able to do it. And because of that, another joined into the argument. Remember by the name of Elihu. Now he admits that he was young in years and what he had done is he had sat there listening for some time waiting for the elders to convince him of his sin, but they had failed. And because they had failed, he added his opinion to the situation. He was convinced that Job was self-righteous and he was convinced that Job needed to be humbled and he couldn't understand how Job could contend with God. He said in chapter 34, verse 10, far be it from God to do wickedness and from the Almighty to pervert justice. You see Job in the end, you're getting less than you actually deserve. So Elihu closed his rebuke of Job by beginning to extol how great God is. He spoke of how great the Lord is. He said that he's the Almighty. He's beyond our finding out. He's excellent in power and judgment. He's abundant in justice. Elihu said he doesn't oppress. He shows no partiality. And so he closed basically by saying, Job, you need to return to the fear of the Lord. You see when Elihu concluded his reprimand of Job, God spoke out. And as we saw, he spoke out of the whirlwind and God revealed himself to Job and he began answering his questions and his concerns. And as we looked at this and it speaks concerning the Lord, speaking out of the whirlwind. As I mentioned to you, the whirlwind is an image that is as much like the confusion that Job was suffering. It seems that there are times when God breaks into our confusion. And that's what he was doing. He was breaking into Job's confusion and he was bringing answers. You see, Job had silenced his friends, but he hadn't convinced them of his innocence. Elihu had presented his case, but Job never had a chance to respond in the midst of the confusion and in the midst of the stress God had broken in and God began to settle the problem. He said to him, your questions don't bring light. They increase the darkness. Your questions and complaints, well, they don't help anyone. They've even brought more confusion to your friends and you've been questioning me. So God said, so now I'm going to begin to question you. Did you want to argue your case with me and get ready? We're going to have a debate. And so we went through chapter 38 and as we went through chapter 38, we saw how God began by asking questions about creation. And as we went through the chapter, he spoke of the earth, he spoke of the heavens, he spoke of the seas, he even spoke of the weather. And he began to ask him, well, where were you when I determined how to create and sustain all things? And so he began to show Joe how small he is in comparison to how great God himself is. And he had closed chapter 38, as we saw by speaking of nature. He spoke of lions and and he spoke of ravens. And in chapter 39, he continues this line of questioning. And that's what we'll see as we pick up here in chapter 39 at verse one, where he says, God is speaking, he says, do you know the time when the wild mountain goats bear young or can you mark when the deer gives birth? So now he begins to speak to him concerning natural life creation. Have you ever climbed the mountains, Job, to find out when wild mountain goats bear their young? Are you personally aware of the seasons that they give birth? You see, in Job's time, more than likely, nobody really cared about these kinds of things unlike today. To observe and to chronicle these kinds of things wasn't something that people did. It would have been more difficult than it was worth. But God begins to ask these questions because Job didn't know. So God is letting them know. I know their habits. I know that they are in inaccessible cliffs, but there are no obstacles to me is what he's saying. You see, domesticated sheep and goats have a shepherd who cares for them in such times, but not so with wild mountain goats. You see, the domesticated sheep have a shepherd. Jesus spoke of that many times. He spoke of himself as being their shepherd. You see, Jesus speaking of himself being the shepherd to the sheep in the New Testament, you see God being referred to as the shepherd of the sheep in the Old. The Lord is my what? He's my shepherd. I shall not want. And so that illustration of the shepherd caring for the sheep is found in the old as well as the New Testament. And so a shepherd during that day would have been very familiar with all of these things related to the sheep and when they conceived and when they bear. They would know that. Why? Because the sheep were there with them. And so they would know their habits and they know these kinds of things. And that's what shepherds do. So God is saying to him, listen, there may be a reality of the fact that the domesticated sheep have shepherds who are aware of everything, Job. But the wild ones, these wild animals, these wild mountain goats. Well, nobody's watching over them, Job. Who's watching over them? Can you tell me these things? The shepherd would know this, God, in other words, being the shepherd. Wild mountain goats are not the same as domesticated. And therefore God is saying, I'm the shepherd to the wild goat. And when they most need attention, he's saying, I'm there with them. When they're bearing their young, I'm there with them. He says in verse two, can you number the months that they fulfill? Do you know the time when they bear young?  Their young ones are healthy. They grow strong with grain. They depart and do not return to them. So he's speaking of nature. He's speaking of the things that a shepherd would be aware of. And he's speaking concerning the mountain goats. But he also begins to speak of other things in just a moment. Because as he's speaking, he's making it very clear that he's the one who's involved with all of these things. He's aware of these things, even of the deer. Notice in verse one, can you mark when the deer gives birth? Not only am I aware, God is saying, and you're not, of the mountain goats. I'm aware of even natural life like the deer. I'm aware of them and everything that they're doing. And by the way, Joe, you need to remember something about deer. And in the in the most part, they're they're gentle and defenseless. Now, I wouldn't want to get a deer mad at me. But he's saying, you know, they need to be cared for, too. And and God is saying, and I care for him. And so he's beginning to break that down for him. So he speaks down in verse five and and he says this. Who said this is interesting and I hope I can make it interesting for you. If not, who cares? Who set the wild donkey free? Who loose the bonds of the onager? Whose home I have made the wilderness and the barren land, his dwelling. He scorns the tumult of the of the city. He he does not heed the shouts of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture and he searches after every green thing. And so now he begins to speak concerning the wild donkey, the wild donkey. And he asks, who loose the bonds of the the the the onager? The word onager, I thought, what is that? Right. I was the last time you said, you know, I was I saw an onager the other day. I mean, when's the last time you said that the last time I said that was just now. What is an onager? An onager is just another word for a wild donkey. That's all it is. It's a synonym. And so when he said, who gave the onager, who gave the wild donkey, what he's saying is who gave the wild donkey the disposition of hating and rejecting and resisting domestication. Who created him in such a way that he is unmanageable? And that's what he's speaking about. The wild donkey, who set the wild donkey free? Who put within him the instinct to reject being domesticated? Who did that? Who created him in such a way that he is so unmanageable? He says, whose home I've made. I have made the wilderness and the barren land his dwelling. He likes to live in the wild. He scorns for seven. The tumult of the city does not he the shots of the driver. So he makes his home far from the noisy city. He doesn't want to be in the city. He prefers the freedom that he that he has in the wilderness. He rejects the directions. He says, given by those driving donkey driven carts. Now, again, we here in the United States, perhaps we haven't seen too many of those, if any at all. I mean, you can find a small pony driven cart or a horse driven cart in the United States, obviously, you know, go to. I don't know if there's any around here. I haven't seen any, but perhaps there they are. I don't know. Go to New York, go to Central Park, and they have the horses and all of that. And the horses are domesticated. You can climb on the little thing that they carry you in that little carriage. And they'll take you through the park and and and you have to sell your child to afford it. But it's you can do that. But in these these wild donkeys, he's simply saying he's talking about their nature and how God knows him and Job does. And that's the whole point of the questions. He says, listen, you know that they don't like to go into the city. You know that they reject the directions of those who drive the carts. In other words, he prefers living away from man and man's control. And so how did he get that way? Is the question God is asking. And again, Job wouldn't have the answer. So he goes on in verse nine. Will the wild ox be willing to serve you? Will he bed by your manger? Can you bind the wild ox and the furrow with ropes? Or will he plow the valleys behind you? Will you trust him because his strength is great? Or will you leave your labor to him? Will you trust him to bring home your grain and gather it to your threshing floor? Now, some of you perhaps have in that verse that I just read verse nine, perhaps you have the word unicorn. Does anybody here have that out of curiosity to raise your hand so I know if there's. So yeah, the word unicorn is found in there. Let's look at that for a minute. Unicorn. Okay, why is it called a unicorn? I'm going to give you a little bit of tidbit of information that some of you might find interesting. And others just be patient. But let me share some things because this is an interesting portion of scripture. The King James uses the word unicorn. There may be other translations. I know for certain that King James does that. Unicorn simply means one horn. That's what the word means. We all know that. But the unicorn here is speaking really of a wild ox. The wild ox was known for its strength and its ferocity as well as its power. Why would it be called a unicorn in the King James? Well, the word unicorn in Hebrew is Reim, R-E, apostrophe E-M, Reim. So that's the Hebrew word that is translated here. But the Latin word is where we get the word unicorn from. The Latin word is unicornus. And that's how the word found its way into the King James Version Bible. That's how it found its way in. And one of my commentators said, and that is an unfortunate translation. Why is that? Because when the word is used in various passages in the New Testament, unicorns had at least two horns. And yet we have come to know it as a single horned beast. But unicorns had at least two horns. In Deuteronomy, for example, in the Old Testament chapter 33 verse 17, it reads, his glory is like the firstling of his bullock. And his horns are like the horns of unicorns. And Psalm 2221, save me from the lion's mouth, for you have saved me from the horns of the unicorn. The unicorn actually is a wild ox. And it had two horns. Now, here's something else that you're going to find boring. This particular animal that is being spoken of here is extinct. It is identified with what the Romans called the Auroch or the Urus. It was a black European wild ox and it was huge. So Caesar, when he was invading France, described the animal in this way. This is what Caesar said concerning this unicorn that is being used here as an example. Caesar said, great is their strength and great their speed. Nor do they spare man nor beast when once they have caught sight of him. Even when they are young, they cannot be habituated. They can't be tamed by man. They cannot be easily managed. Listen, the size and the shape of their horns are very different from our own oxen. They were huge. They were known to have been not just the size of some of the animals that we are familiar with. No, these were huge wild oxen. That's what the Lord is speaking about. And that's why he says in verse 9, will the wild ox be willing to serve you? Will he bed by your manger? You see, domesticated. Can you domesticate something like that? Can you tame him? Can you make him willing to obey your commands like other oxen? The answer is no. Can you confine him at night? Can you make him work in the day? Can you do any of that? Well, obviously he's saying no. Well, when he says in verse 11, will you trust him because his strength is great? Will you leave your labor to him? Will you trust him to bring home your grain and gather it to your threshing for? The answer is no, why? Because you can't domesticate him. So, once again, all the Lord is doing is asking questions that he has answers for and that Job does. And he's just showing Job that he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. Well, he goes on. Verse 13, the wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are her wings and pinions like the kindly storks? For she leaves her eggs on the ground and warms them in the dust. She forgets that a foot may crush them or that a wild beast may break them. She treats her young harshly as though they were not hers. Her labor is in vain without concern because God deprived her of wisdom and did not endow her with understanding. When she lifts herself on high, she scorns the horse and it's right. Again, he's speaking concerning the proud ostrich. Again, as I was reading this, I was thinking, Lord God, why would you want to talk about ostriches? Well, he's simply saying this. What do you know about this giant bird? It has beautiful plumage, but it can't fly. Its wings are useless and the female ostrich lacks maternal awareness. She's not a good mama is what he's saying. She's not aware of her eggs. She lets the warm sun incubate them. The only time the ostrich will be on the egg is at night when it's cold, but she leaves them. She leaves her babies or her eggs unattended and often her eggs will be crushed by people walking and not seeing them and they step on them and break the egg. Did you know I didn't know this? She can lay as many as 30 eggs and one commentator said that ostriches can lay as many as 50 and those eggs are big. You could use them to play basketball. That's why you need 50 of them. They're huge. And so these big old things, big pile of eggs and yet people out in the wilderness walking can step on them and crush them because they're buried in the warm dirt and because of the neglect, less than a quarter of them are ever hatched and because they're not protected, wild beasts find them and devour them. And notice verse 16, she treats her young harshly as though they are not hers. The labor's in vain. You see, you can see this and I didn't get a lot of examples of this. I just have seen it so of you of how other animals actually protect their young. Other animals will protect the young. I've seen wildlife shows in this and that. When I was a kid, my dad used to like to watch them and so even to this day, I might on occasion watch something related to wildlife and so very often it'll show a little teeny animal and then a larger one is coming to try and eat the young and this little teeny animal, whatever it is, you know it tries to make itself look bigger and it tries to look fierce and all of that. Why? To protect its young. But an ostrich doesn't do that. Ostriches don't care. You know, I had 50, I can have 50 more. I mean that's kind of how they think. And if she hears a noise, if she hears a noise, she'll wander away to see what that noise is and the predators will find her eggs and devour them because she's not protecting them. And on many occasions ostrich chicks have been found by wanderers. They've been found as they're just kind of moving around in the desert and they'll say in these little chicks, well they're not that little but these chicks are moaning and they're starving because the mother ostrich has no concern. She actually abandons them early. And here's something else. Because of this ostriches are considered to be cruel. In Lamentations in the Old Testament, Lamentations chapter 4 verse 3, it says even the jackals feed their young but not my people Israel. They ignore their children's cries like ostriches in the desert. My children, the Israelis he was saying in that day, they ignore the cries of their own children, just like an ostrich. When Paul was speaking to young Timothy concerning ministry and all, he was speaking concerning how the, in his case, how the father was to care for the children and the family that was Christian was to raise the children and the knowledge and the nurture of the Lord. And he said the one who doesn't provide for his own household, what does he say? He said they are worse than an infidel. They're like an ostrich. If a father or a mother, whatever the case may be, is not caring for their children's spiritual life, they're neglecting their children. They're like ostriches. They're cruel. They're not aware. They let the child spiritually starve while they're distracted by things that draw their attention. And if that's not happening right now in the United States, I don't know what is. Where things are distracting parents from the first things. What does it matter if you gain the whole world on a personal level and then I'll just adjust it for this way and lose the soul of your children?  And you may even have a good reason for wanting those things. And who's arguing and saying that it's bad to have? I would never say it's bad to have that. But what happens when you neglect your children for the desires you have for the other things? Because in the end, if you're trying to give to your children memories, which a lot of parents do, or we'll put them in that, and they'll be busy here or whatever, and there's so many distractions in the world. Let me just speak to you honestly and say it this way and this quickly. Your children appreciate the vacations you can give them. Maybe somebody watching right now, maybe you need to be reminded of this. Your children appreciate the vacations you give them and the memories you make together. But those memories are not going to save their souls. Not going to save their souls. And what they're doing is they're learning what you value.  All they remember is that you spend a lot of time working so you could go to Hawaii. Yes, that's right. So you could go to Hawaii or you could take them to other places. That's all they know. And so you may have good reason but the problem is with the kid is they don't know your reasons. So a long time ago, a long time ago, is it over there? It's in the other room. It's a musician who did that. Ooh. This is an ostrich. Pour into your children.  Pour into your children. Because the only thing that matters in the end is whether they got saved and went to heaven when they died. It does. I don't know how to say this. I'm looking at the ostrich and she's a bad mom. That's what God's saying. As a matter of fact, we'll see some more about her in just a moment. But she's just a bad mom. She didn't take care of her kids. But in a spiritual sense, she's always saying, I take care of you and Job, do you not understand that? But also as a Christian father and I can speak for my wife who is a Christian mother, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt the most important thing to us has always been that our children fear the Lord. That has always been that they know Jesus because that's all that matters in the end. And if you can't afford some things, guess what? A lot of people can't either in the original vacations we had. We still laugh about it because we would get with my four kids we would get the one room with actually queen size bed and we would put my baby Anna who is our littlest one. We would get a dresser drawer and open it up and we would put a blanket in it and just drop her in it. And then the boys would share you know a little cot. We'd have them roll in another one. We had six people in the one room in the least expensive thing we could find. We would drive at night I'd get them up at like three or four in the morning bundle them up, put them in the back seat of the car and take off so we could save one night a hotel or motel we didn't have to pay for it because the kids were asleep we would take them to a burger king and that was their treat they got a treat a burger king they got it but guess what they remember they remember being with us they remember spending time with us or going places with us they didn't know that we couldn't afford a lot of things that maybe other people took for granted they didn't know that all they knew is we took them places we spent time with them but Murray and I knew that we did it on a shoestring budget and guess what that's okay because the thing that mattered wasn't where they slept it's who they were with and what they were doing and so a good parent is going to care for the children in every way the ostrich isn't any good she treats her young harshly verse 16 as though they weren't even hers think about that for a minute her labor is in vain without concern why verse 17 because God deprived her of wisdom and did not endow her with understanding God is taking credit for this I have deprived her of wisdom is not by human arrangement it certainly isn't because she evolved that way it's by design you see the fact that they survive at all is a testimony that I care for them now in verse 17 when it speaks in this way God deprived her of wisdom didn't endow her with understanding there's an old Arab proverb and they'll say that that guy is as foolish or as stupid as an ostrich I mean her dumbness is proverbial why did they say it well I was reading about ostriches because I'm just so interested I was reading about them well they eat stones that's pretty stupid they'll eat iron they've been they go and eat leadon bullets bullets that have been fired they eat broken glass they even eat hot coals they're dumb and someone said well they have small heads because they have small brains you know and that's probably true so he's speaking concerning that they're just dumb and he said and deprived of wisdom in verse 18 though when she lifts herself on high when she rises after being down she scorns the horse and it's right I didn't write these down as quotes but I was reading three or four different authors who were speaking concerning the fact that the Arabs in the wilderness have spoken over the years they have said that you can see an ostrich and you'll be on the fastest horse you have but you can never catch them they run between 30 and 50 miles an hour they're huge birds they're an average of around 7 feet tall and one author was saying from you know in the 1800s I use old authors it's been said if they're not dead they're not red I use older authors and so this particular author said that in this particular zoo of his day that there were ostriches there who head stood 10 feet tall so they're huge birds as a point and so they've got these long legs and they can really run so if she's afraid or she's being pursued she runs at incredible speed and that's what he's saying when he says she scorns the horse and it's right so this thing can really, really move so in verse 19 have you given the horse strength he continues on have you clothed his neck with thunder can you frighten him like a locust his majestic snorting strikes terror he paused in the valley he rejoices in his strength he gallops into the clash of arms he mocks at fear and is not frightened nor does he turn back from the sword the quiver rattles against him the glittering spear and javelin he devours the distance with fierceness and rage nor does he come to a halt because the trumpet is sounded at the blast of the trumpet he says aha he smells the battle from afar the thunder of captains and shouting so he now speaks of the war horse do you give the horse confidence and courage Job know where did he get it from from me did you clothe his neck with thunder when he says clothe his neck with thunder one author says it's main he's speaking of its main and even the muscles that quiver in his neck is the picture in verse 20 can you frighten him like a locust now by your mere presence can you cause a war horse to leap in fear when he's in battle his snorting reveals ferocity and frightens warriors verses 21 through 23 he's intimidating he sends fear into opposing warriors and you can imagine you're on the ground and here comes this huge war horse and it's in battle gear and it sends fear into these these ancient warriors and in verse 24 and 25 he devours the distance with fierceness and rage he doesn't come to a halt I took a direct quote from an ancient and older author he said we do not believe that a body of infantry ever existed that with the bayonet alone unsupported by fire could have checked the determined charge of good horsemen the horse would run directly into the warriors even if they had spears and even if they had swords the horses had no fear they were covered with armor and when they would charge the line the people who were there with the spear trying to take the horse down could not in any way provoke that that horse to fear and that's the point he's making it says in verse 25 at the blast of the trumpet he says aha he smells the battle from afar the thunder of captains and shouting and he gets really pumped up and it goes to war that's what he's saying do you know how come Job would have to say no I don't and then finally does the hawk fly by your wisdom spread its wings toward the south does the eagle mount up at your command and make its nest on high on the rock it dwells and resides on the crag of the rock and the stronghold from there it spies out the prey its eyes observe from afar its young ones suck up blood and where the slain are there it is concerning these birds a hawk and an eagle which are carrion they eat the bodies of that which is dead so did you create the hawk did you give the hawk its strength its stamina did you give the hawk the instinct that when it begins to be cold in the winter that it flies to the south to a warmer climate did you do that no he says in verse 27 does the eagle mount up at your command did you put into the eagle the ability to fly high and make her nest in the highest rocks you see the rocks will provide protection for her from her enemies but it also gives her a vantage point where she can see her prey and she also feeds on the carcasses of the slain dead animals and sometimes in remember Jesus said in Matthew 24 28 wherever there is a carcass there the vultures will gather the vulture is another way of speaking of an eagle and so they were well known for this they devour the dead so he is asking do you understand that so what is he saying here he is saying God is in control he is saying God has all the answers and Job you don't all he is saying question after question after question he is asking him to reveal to him that he doesn't know all that he thinks he knows and you have to once again and I will close with this thought you have to go back to how Job was saying I wish that I had an opportunity to argue my case with God now those of us I have been there some of you perhaps have also where I have said God I want to talk to you about your judgments I would like to know why you did this I wouldn't have done it I know none of you have ever said anything like that to the Lord maybe you have God why did you do this Pastor David wouldn't have done that maybe you have said that I don't know let me close with one thought and then we are going to celebrate communion God is asking questions because man can't answer them God knows everything that man does not know God provides man with the information he desires so you have the apostle Peter and Jesus is speaking to him and as Jesus is speaking to the apostle Peter paraphrasing he says to Peter you know when you were young you remember how you would dress yourself and go where you wanted to go well let me tell you something Peter when you are old you are going to be dressed and taken to where you don't want to go thus he spoke concerning the death that Peter would glorify the Lord and he was speaking of his martyrdom when you were young you decided where you wanted to go but let me tell you how it is going to end you are going to be taken where you don't want to go here is the thing I want to close with before we have communion you know what Peter did at that point one of the reasons I like him and some of you perhaps do too is because he's got a big mouth and he says things sometimes that you say how could you how could you how could you say that Peter but thank you for saying it because I'm wondering too so you know what he says it says in John the gospel of John says Peter saw the one whom Jesus loved you speaking of John he saw John and after Jesus said to him this is where you are going to go and Peter understood he was speaking of the way he would glorify God in his martyrdom you know what Peter did what a lot of people do he saw John over there and he said what about him remember that and remember what Jesus said he was with you you follow me if we could grab that one we'll be okay but if we are always wondering why God does this with him and how did he get away with it and how did she do that a lot of us are that way how come and you know what the Lord taught me he said what does he got to do with you you follow me and that tells me that the Lord has each one of our lives in mind and he knows the best way to work with me put me in the place where he can bless me the greatest and if it takes a lifetime until I finally learn so this is what it's all about Lord I finally see it that's when I die he can ask you questions that you can't answer but he always has the answer and we get that Father we bless you and we thank you for your goodness to us Lord we would ask that we would also learn that you have all the answers and you can ask the questions that none of us can answer and so I'm asking Father that you would work in each one of our lives to the point where we have learned to just rest in you even as John hit on your chest and just hear your heart beat and hear you breathe and know that everything's okay because he's with you I pray that I might learn that same lesson and Father when you ask the hard questions it helps us simply to know only you have the answer so as we go through these final verses of Job I just pray that you help us to come to the same conclusion he does and so speak to us and continue to do so as we go through these passages Lord and mold us into your image and even as our eyes are closed our heads are bowed there may be some right now in this room we need to get right with the Lord and you know it maybe you've had a whole list of questions you've been asking God lately and he's simply saying you need to just hold on and trust me but if you need prayer you need to be right with him before we go a step further we're about to have communion and you want your heart right with him then as our eyes are closed our heads are bowed if you need prayer would you raise your hand let me pray for you right where you're at Father you see these hands you see them going up I ask in Jesus name that you would reach down and touch each person whose hand is raised to you and Father where there's areas of sin that you would forgive as they say God be merciful if there's areas of weakness that you would remind them that you are the one who makes them strong and Father I just ask that you would just right now fill them with your presence and as they prepare their heart to meet you in communion Father that you would just even right now just help them to be to be settled so we lift this to you we lift ourselves to you we receive those things from you and we bless you and we praise you thank you Lord you can put your hands down and Lord please just keep moving even as we're about to take up this supper in Jesus name Amen