er that she will be putting out. We've looked at the soundscape and the amount of vessel presence from 2020 up till present. And you do see in the soundscape a reduction in noise. So that was in 2021 around the time when COVID restrictions were high and then an increase in soundscape in 2022. So, at this point in time I can't say yes or no but I do know that there are the data there and we have been looking at at least vessel presence and soundscape metrics relative to the pandemic. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, I'll turn to Peter from the US re mammal commission. And I'll ask him to introduce himself. And I'll just note, I think we also have all three of our re mammal commission commissioners on the line as well. So Peter, I don't know if you want to just briefly introduce them as well. But we appreciate them joining us today also. Okay, turn it over to you. Okay, so I'm just making sure if I shared my screen yet. You have and we can see it looks great and see the presentation. Okay, thank you. And I appreciate the chance to talk to the committee on offshore science and assessment today on the subject of the recent whale strandings on the Atlantic coast, as related to offshore wind. And at the same time to talk a little bit about the implications of that for the stranding networks that are responding to these strandings. So let's see I got to click. Okay, so first, and just Stacy confirm you hear me and you see it okay. Yep. We can hear you well and we can see your slides they look great. Okay, sorry it looks funny on mine. So, okay. So first of all to introduce the Marine Mammal Commission, the Marine Mammal Commission is an independent federal agency that was created by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. And our real mission is to protect and conserve marine mammals and their environment using the best available science. And we are one of three agencies designated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and we're the one that is to provide oversight of domestic and international policies and actions related to marine mammals and their habitat. And our structure and I am thrilled to have our three presidential appointed Marine Mammal Commissioners on the line today we have Francis Gulland who is our chair, Sue Moore, and Andy Reed, who are two newly appointed commissioners appointed just prior to the end of the last Congress. So, really pleased to have a committee of scientific advisors again described in the Marine Mammal Protection Act to provide the scientific advice to the commissioners on the recommendations that they make to the agencies and other entities. And we're also a really large agency we have 14 staff. And we're featured here we kind of when someone comes into the office we cross office like a little town in the Midwest where we cross off and say population 13 or put it added up when we get, get everyone in the office. And I wanted to talk about this humpback whale unusual mortality event, which has actually been going on six 2016 and continues today in 2023. This began stranding in unusually high numbers along the Atlantic coast in January 2016. And the National Marine Fisheries Service declared an unusual mortality event or a UME in April 2017, which included those stranded whales from 2016. So instead of the unusual mortality event or UME investigation process nymphs assembled an independent team of scientists coordinate with oh I'm blessing my thing. Sorry about that can hear me now. We can yeah thank you. Let me just. I'm not sure how to get a start video again. Sorry about that. This independent team was pulled together by the working group on marine mammal unusual mortality events to conduct necropsies and sample stranded whales review the data and determine the next steps for the investigation. We should know these are large whales routinely not all whales are able to be accessed for necropsies and of those able to be necropsied determining the cause of death is often really difficult due to the level of decomposition of the animals and accessibility and logistical issues. Partial or full necropsies were conducted on approximately half of the whale so far that have stranded as part of the UME and approximately 40% of those whales examined had evidence of human interaction, either ship strike or entanglement. And I should note that even though whales may show evidence like when you first examine them of ship strike or something else, it really takes deeper analysis, follow up analysis to really figure out if that is indeed the cause of death. So it's not just like you saw the whale on the beach, you saw something and it's all fine we know exactly what happens a really difficult process. Let's see. Now I lost my cursor. So following the consistently high numbers of strandings at the outset of the UME, the number of humpback whales that have stranded is fluctuated during the last seven years, but the strandings have been consistently centered from Massachusetts to North Carolina. And the recent humpback whale stranding occurrence and numbers in New York and New Jersey have been comparable to the previous years of the unusual mortality event. And they've also been the strandings in those two states have been similar to the number of strandings in other states. And you've probably picked up that these strandings have gained a lot of attention in the media from local citizens and from non governmental organizations, concerned that there may be a link to offshore wind activities. State officials have expressed concern and assembly hearings have occurred in New Jersey in Maryland. There have been bills introduced in Congress that would require the Comptroller, Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office to conduct studies to kind of assess the environmental review processes with regard to offshore wind. And there have been sort of specific inquiries from Congress on internal memos within the National Fisheries Service. So let's talk about this a little bit. The high resolution geophysical surveys or HRG surveys have been occurring off New England and the Mid-Atlantic coast for some time. But the various HRG devices have never been implicated or causatively associated with mysticity that is baleen whale strandings. Any minor impacts from such HRG surveys would be minimized or negated by the mitigation measures that are already required to be implemented by the protected species observers on the survey vessels. Greater potential impacts are expected from wind farm construction activities that have not yet begun than from HRG surveys. Although it has been covered or will be covered in some capacity today, the possible impacts from construction activities would be minimized with seasonal restrictions on such things as impact pile driving by effective sound attenuation measures and passive acoustic monitoring measures, and by designating appropriate mitigation zones and vessel strike avoidance measures. These humpback whale strandings have occurred at a time when the whales have been concentrating in near shore areas in an apparent response to the concentration of their menhaden prey. When foraging in near shore waters, the whales are in closer proximity to major shipping channels. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection recently indicated that changes in ocean temperature and water chemistry due to climate change caused populations of marine species, including menhaden, to move closer to shore. Thereby increasing the risk that their predators, the whales may be susceptible to vessel strike. Now, Annemarie's talk, really talked about some changing distribution, which is detected by passive acoustic monitoring. I think a general observation of the folks who really know about humpback whales such as Duke Robbins up at the Center for Coastal Studies is that they've seen humpback whales in different areas recently. Normally, or in previous years, humpbacks largely were remained to the north between the Gulf of Maine and Norway from spring through summer, and then migrated south to the tropics to Cav and mate in the winter. But recently their distribution has been wider. The observation suggests that juveniles are more commonly feeding off the mid-Atlantic states in winter when previously we would have seen most of them migrating to the Caribbean. So as distributions change, risks change. So we've talked about the whales moving closer into shipping channels, some of the busiest shipping channels in the world. And also, you have to remember that entanglement is another cause of death for large whales in the North Atlantic. And as whales change their distribution, the relative risk of entanglement in fishing gear also changes. So let me talk a little bit about how we know some of this stuff, even though we don't know everything. And first of all, rapid stranding response is important for determining the causes of marine mammal deaths. And even limitation is always being able to access animals that have been founded either onshore or offshore. The whale pictured here was found floating off of Delaware. And in order to really do a necropsy on such an animal, you have to get in touch with the Coast Guard or other state entities to assist you in towing whales to the beach. And bringing heavy equipment to the beach to help you actually move the whale around and access it for necropsy, even if a whale stranded onshore, it's not that easy a task. And necropsies are very important in both determining the cause of death, and then continuing to assess the risk to large whales. It's really important that this kind of information be reported in a tiny timely manner. And we've seen some concerns on getting that information out quickly to the public who are very concerned about such such events. That's also really necessary again to minimize risks to large whales. So continuing on in this vein. We can't take the information obtained from stranding for granted. We can't take it for granted, we're going to get that information. And the stranding network is part of a strong public private partnership that routinely deals with extremely difficult circumstances, including extensive coordination and logistics, harsh weather rough seas, massive animals. We can't cut in public concern and intense media attention. And so dealing with these circumstances requires incredible skill, both among those who can actually cut up a whale, but those who assist and do the communications with regard to stranding response. So, and then after having been called out at late hours or on the holiday or on the weekend, it's almost always on the weekend to respond to a stranding. On cold windy beaches stranding network responders in their community of volunteer assistance attempt to draw conclusions regarding the cause of death from massive often heavily decomposed carcasses. Then once they leave the beach, it takes a broader community of labs and pathologists to look beyond the physical evidence uncovered on the beach to determine whether there are any underlying diseases nutritional deficiencies or which may have contributed to the death of that particular animal. So I just want to really applaud the skill and dedication of the stranding network responders up and down the coast, often working as volunteers. If it weren't for them we wouldn't be talking about this with any level of knowledge. So in regard to one to mention, there's the working group on unusual marine mammal mortality events and they're also funding sources from from, I guess sources established under the marine mammal protection act including the grant grants which support stranding efforts, but also the unusual mortality event contingency fund, which was established in 1992 to compensate persons or entities for responding to marine mammal unusual mortality events. This is dispersed by the National Marine Fisheries Service in consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service. This contingency fund has received appropriated monies only once in the last 18 years, with approximately 800,000 deposited in 2005. Since then stranding network organizations have provided many services free of charge, and have requested reasonable consultation for others. So appropriated funds are needed for the stranding network organizations to have the resources to respond adequately to ongoing and future UMEs and to conduct the necessary investigations to determine the causes of those events and tell us how to mitigate such mortalities. The appropriation congressional appropriations are needed to ensure the solvency the fund also should note that donations can be received from the general public from non governmental organizations and from industry. And I checked and you can actually, you can provide those by debit or credit card. To conclude, I want to really draw your attention to the primary focus of folks on the East Coast with respect to large whale conservation. Similar to humpback whales. An unusual mortality event was also declared for North Atlantic right whales in 2017 impacts that species from what impacts that species are even more grave. North Atlantic right whales currently number about 340 individuals with fewer than 70 breeding females. North Atlantic right whales occupy the same waters and are equal equally vulnerable to threats of vessel strike and entanglement in fishing gear. The National Marine Fisheries Services currently reviewing comments on proposed vessel speed measures to reduce the threat of vessel strike to North Atlantic right whales. These measures which are critical to the protection of this species will also protect other large whale species on the Atlantic coast once they're finalized and we hope they will be finalized soon. And now Congress while Congress is an active measures to freeze further regulatory actions of the Atlantic large whale take reduction team until 2028. It's important that work continue on reducing the other major threat to North Atlantic right whales entanglement and vertical line fishing gear. Development of buoy lists or pop up or hopeless gear and other and work to foster its adoption, as well as other work with the industry and local communities to to ameliorate the threats to North Atlantic right whales is critical. In the meantime we just heard about passive acoustic monitoring anything we can do to advance our methods to detect right whales in near real time is needed to support adaptive risk reduction, and to document the co occurrence of right whales with the threats to the survival of their species. So that all ends my little talk and welcome any questions. Thank you. I'm going to stop share. There we go. Thank you Peter. I'll look for raise hand for any questions. Kevin. Yeah, thank you Peter is very interesting. I noticed in your in your histogram on on the on the humpbacks that the, you know the really significant that the higher years seem to be from 2016 to 2020. Do you think that the unusual mortality event is continuing, and that the reduction in 2021 was was again just a result of the covert and less traffic, or do you think that the reduction in 2021 did it somewhat return to normal rate of strandings. That's a great question I'm going to have to leave that to the me working group on unusual mortality events. I think the real sort of take home for this talk is that the larger numbers were earlier in the UMA but it definitely is continuing. So we're really interested in that vessel traffic stuff as, as we know we've had a, you know, a constraint on vessels but we've also had a massive increase in vessels since the since coven as people try to resolve the supply chain problems. Thank you very much. You bet. Less. Yeah. Thanks, Peter. I know this is a reach but in trying to anticipate the possible effects and particularly indirect effects between wind fields once they're up and Wales particularly right Wales. So are you looking mainly at potential changes in ship traffic and fishing patterns or other other things to consider as well. I think that's a great question I mentioned, you know that the construction activities themselves are the ones that have slightly greater potential to impact Wales but those are being addressed through mitigation measures. So we need to reduce that impact to establish mitigation zones around individual construction sites. At the same time, the, you know, the increase in support support vessels to wind energy projects is, you know, the sort of almost a more predictable threat to large Wales, we need to manage the threat of vessel strike to Wales. As for, as for fishing vessels just one comment I don't actually know the answer to that question but fishing vessels in terms of vessel strike risk are operating at lower speeds than some of the larger commercial vessel so for instance off of Cape Cod and still wagon bank, the compliance of fishing vessels with voluntary speed measures is really great because they don't just don't go so fast. In terms of commercial vessels yes the increase of commercial shipping is going to continue to be a major problem for large Wales if we don't manage vessel speed in the habitat of large Wales. Yeah, the other concern I had was just a shift in the distribution of hot fishing if there's a lag and getting ropeless gear into play. And that goes back to the environmental changes and do, do fishing activities change, both with respect to commercial development offshore, and with respect to environmental changes. I'll call on, I'm calling on people so I'll call on Chris that way. That's fine I'll take a break. Go ahead Scott. Scott sorry. Right. Great talk Peter very, very, very helpful. Two questions. It looked like 2017 was a bad year both for humpbacks and for right whales. Do you see. What, what, what linkage do you see, or if any, you know, both of them, having increased UMEs in that general timeframe that's my first question. And my second one is, are there less any lessons learned from our European colleagues about correlations potential correlations between the activity offshore wind activities they're further along of course than we are. And they've gotten a lot more activity in the construction phase, any lessons learned there that you think we need to be giving consideration to. I am going to let some of the speakers following the answer both of these questions more effectively than I can, because both john here and Jill, I think can speak to those and both the UME and the, the European experience but on the right UME in 2017, the, the movement of right whales up to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and major ship strike and entanglement events up there. I think really fed into that as a unique, the unique change in right whale distribution with respect to humpbacks I'm not sure that there was any sort of corresponding similar, similar almost like state change and where they were so I, those are connected. And my simple answer with respect to European colleagues is that the distribution of large whales around European wind farm is just very different I mean it's been mostly focused on harbor purposes, and smaller dissertations that are in that in that region with very fewer fewer large whales to be encountered or concerned about but like I said I'd let Jill or others really answer that effectively. Thank you very much. Any last questions before we let Peter off the hook. Well, Peter, thank you so much appreciate your time. We will move on to the next session now. And for that, I believe we've got a little bit of a change in the agenda. I think we will be hearing first from john and then from Joe they're listed in the opposite order on the agenda. But I see john and turn his camera on do I have that right john that you're planning to go first. Yes, correct Stacy. Well, I'll turn it over to you just a reminder to please introduce yourself and then we'll turn it to Jill after your presentation and maybe a few clarifying questions. Great, thank you very much. I'm going to share a presentation with all you but my name is john hair I work for Noah fisheries. And I work out of the Northeast fisheries science center in Woods Hole. I'm going to talk a little bit just give an overview of, you know, our responsibilities under endangered species act. And you've muted yourself. Can you hear me now. We can hear you well again. Thank you so much. And you can see my, my slides. Yep, we can see them. So, you know, as we know the North Atlantic right whale. It's an endangered species. And the species has been in decline since approximately 2010. As of the last official stock assessment report in 2019 that number in the upper right. There are approximately 368 right whales left. But this number is caveated asterisked by, you know, information from the 2021 stock assessment indicates that there are fewer than 350 individuals left and the stock assessment report that official number will be updated. At some point during the year. And this decline is, you know, both the number of deaths have increased. And that bar chart on the bottom shows the number of calves born annually so there's also been a reduction in the number of calves born so it's a it's a dire situation for the North Atlantic right whale. Thinking about the authorities for Noah fisheries. We, with regards to North Atlantic right whales we're working under two authorities. One is the endangered species act. And the purpose of this act is to prevent the extinction of endangered species, and to conserve the ecosystems upon which they depend, and then relative to wind energy development. And this is section seven jeopardy standard, which is designed to ensure that federal actions be they fisheries management plans or offshore wind authorizations do not have significant negative impacts on the survival and recovery of the species, or designated critical habitat. And then we also are working under the marine mammal protection act with North Atlantic right whales. And the purpose of this act is to prevent marine mammals from declining beyond the point where they cease to be a significant functioning element of the ecosystems of which they are part. Some elements of this act which are relevant. One is the potential biological removal approach, whereby the level of human cause mortality of marine mammal population can sustain will still allowing them to recover for North Atlantic right whales that population biological removal threshold is less than one individual can be, you know, death can be caused by human cause mortality to allow them to recover. In terms of the the other standard which we have is the marine mammal protection act incidental take authorization. This authorizes taking taking here is you know defined as a term of art. It allows specific activities that have a negligible impact on all affected marine mammal species and stocks and authorized taking as a small amount relative to the population there's different levels of take. And then what we're really talking here is take defined as behavioral interactions or harassment. So in North Fisheries we have a, you know, a large number of our activities across the East Coast are related to our North Atlantic right whale efforts. Our goal is to halt the current population decline and recover the species. We have activities in the Northeast of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center direct science center where I am the director. We have activities in our Southeast Southeast Regional Fisheries Office and Southeast Fisheries Science Center. And then we have activities at three of our headquarters offices the office of protected resources the office of science and technology and the office of law enforcement so we work across these offices across the geography of North Atlantic right whale with a goal to halt the current population decline and to recover the species. We recently put out what we call the road to recovery, which has these sort of six elements to recovering North Atlantic right whale. I have a link to this and the presentation which I hope can be shared with you afterwards but just to kind of walk through each of these six areas one is vessel strikes. As Peter mentioned that we are currently, you know, reviewing public comment on a new vessel speed rule to reduce the probability of vessel strikes. We also have an emphasis on fishing gear entanglements. And earlier in the day you heard about the Atlantic large whale take reduction team. And that team is tasked with coming up with proposals to reduce entanglements and fishing gear. And you also heard that some of their activities have been put on hold for six years to well this idea of on demand sort of technology has time to develop. We also work to identify potential and emerging threats, and we're working in partnership with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to consider how to have offshore wind energy development well also still recovering and protecting North Atlantic right whales and you'll hear more about that from Jill. After this talk on the monitoring progress side. We have our monitoring population and health we have an extensive monitoring network you heard some of some of that this morning from Anna Marie regarding the past of acoustic monitoring we also have our base monitoring aircraft monitoring near real time mooring and glider monitoring and are working to bring other technologies to the fore as quickly as we can. We also continue to evaluate the threats to North Atlantic right whales, and also work to understand the effectiveness of our conservation activities. And these are done largely through a northeast implementation team and a southeast implementation team and those two teams work to sort of measure how our activities are being effective. In terms of the current strandings which you've heard about during winter 2022 and 2023. From December one to the present today. There's been an increase in the frequency of large whale deaths along the East Coast, with a majority of these whale deaths in the mid Atlantic. We've had 28 reported mortalities of large whales, three sperm whales, 20 humpback whales, two right whales, one say well and three Mickey whales. And our stranding network partners conducted full net crops is on 16 of these animals and collected basic biological data on six more. And I just want to, you know, Peter talked about the, the thanks that goes out to these groups for doing this work it is hard. You know, and sometimes they're doing it volunteers are doing it and so just a lot of credit goes to them for for engaging in this type of work so we understand what happens to these animals. Of the 16 that have been neck crops seen vessel strike was the likely cause of death and at least nine. And we are awaiting the histology reports to confirm and perhaps provide insights and greater insights into the death of these nine and also insights into the deaths of the others. And this you know this finding really working from a place of evidence this really sort of gives us reason to put our vessel speed rule into effect because we are seeing vessel strikes as a as an important cause of death in these strandings. As Peter also mentioned, you know, both the mortalities of humpback whales and the mortalities of North Atlantic right whales are linked as part of these unusual mortality events. The humpback whale mortality numbers were increasing in 2016 the UME was declared and it continues into 2023. Similarly, the North Atlantic right whale stranding numbers were increasing in 2017. And an unusual mortality event was declared and is still ongoing. And there's more information on both of these unusual mortality events on our web pages noted at the bottom. And this also Peter showed. This is from the web page of the humpback UME. And you can see that increase in 2016. UME is declared and it's still continuing. And then that the bar in 2023. That stands at 14 strandings thus far. It's a partial year. And just then also another point is that you know the number of actual deaths likely exceeds the number of strandings strandings are just the deaths that we observe so this what we are seeing in 2023 as part of this larger UME in humpback whales and in right whales. In terms of what we're doing with regards to offshore wind development activities. Just to be clear, no fisheries is not authorized or proposed to authorize mortality or serious injury of whales for any wind related action. Erica went through the process for determining whether activities are going to impact whales and nothing that would cause mortality or serious injury has been authorized. And similarly offshore wind developers haven't applied for nor has no fisheries approved authorization to kill any marine mammals incidental to any offshore wind site characterization survey or construction activities. And we do have a full list of active and in process into incidental take authorizations, including those related to offshore wind available on our website link there when the presentation share will take you to that list. There are 13 active incidental harassment authorizing level be harassment which is a behavioral harassment only of marine mammals incidental to the offshore wind site characterization surveys in the Atlantic Ocean from southern New England to the Carolinas And sort of thinking, you know, longer term, we have been working closely with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to develop a draft offshore wind North Atlantic right whale strategy. And in this strategy, you know, we lay out the vision that both agencies share a common vision to protect and promote the recovery of North Atlantic right whales. And this is where, you know, I'll stop my presentation, happy to take a few questions and then turn it over to Jill to go into more details about the strategy. So I believe I'm no longer sharing my screen so that's right you've you've turned it off I see Doug has raised his hand so we'll take his question first and I'll give others a moment or so to raise their hands if they have any clarifying questions also don't go right ahead. Yeah, super thanks just one quick one john just to be clear 13 active I ha's, all of which authorized only level B takes there no level a takes authorized in any of the I ha's the current currently active I ha's or those under consideration. Correct. That's my understanding. Okay, and those are 13 active I ha's for activities related to offshore wind survey activities correct. Right. Okay, thanks john. Yeah, you're welcome. Michael. Yeah, john and back to Peter to really the key of this conversation has largely been the data generated on the beach through various necropsy activities. It's struck me that the fisheries observer program for the impact of fisheries on small cetaceans and pinnipeds is fully funded, whereas the word volunteer keeps on coming up when it comes to these necropsies, and I think, as this whole debate evolves, the need for, you know, professional fully funded large whale in particular necropsies, because essentially these large whales events are being providing the same data quality, they should, at least, as the observer program, in fact, more so in some ways. So it's just it's always been a mismatch to me that the agency is looking to substantial not for profit contributions, and, and their volunteers in these diagnostic efforts. Thank you for pointing it out, you know, the those programs are funded very differently within no fisheries. And that could be a useful recommendation for this committee to make for us to sort of think about how we do that. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. And thank you, John, for that response. I will just take a quick moment to note on the record that this committee does not offer recommendations, John, for bone more otherwise. Sorry, my mistake. That's okay. I just, I gotta, I gotta make sure I'm clear with a with a hundred twenty two folks on the line want to make sure we're clear that this committee. The individuals on it provide their individual input and feedback as opposed to any formal consensus input on behalf of the national academies. However, certainly the national academies. Those convene consensus committees for ad hoc cast, and those committees can make formal recommendations. The agency. I'd like to rephrase my previous answer saying thank you very much Michael for the comment I will be sure to sort of discuss that within no fisheries. And John, don't don't worry, we're not quiet individually. I know. I'll turn to Scott next. Hey, John, great talk. Thanks for sharing that information was was your group or no fisheries consulted about potential incidental takes with respect to any of the construction projects in state waters I'm thinking about particularly block Island wind development I guess which is the most mature offshore construction project on the Atlantic. I need to check for you on that and I don't want to, to make a supposition so I will confirm and get back to the committee on that. Any additional questions for John before we move on to Jill's presentation. Is there a hand up from the friar comment or is that a new hand. We'll turn then to Jill, and they'll please, I think, many people on the line know you but please do introduce yourself. I'm Jill Lewandowski, I work for bone and I direct our division of environmental assessment which looks at how we are assessing impacts or sort of pulling the, the science together with the policy, and I also direct our center for marine acoustics. I also serve in a working group between bone and Noah that is working to develop a North Atlantic right well and offshore wind strategy. So I'm going to start by talking a little bit about the intersect of right wheels in offshore wind. Go into a bit about what bone is specifically doing or doing with its partners and then go into a greater detail about the right well strategy itself which again is is being developed between bone and Noah. And then there I always want to say, you know that this is all obviously meaning very focused on science and so yay that's great. But I also want to recognize that that I know the concern out there in the public about impacts of whales is is strong and genuine and understandable I mean, these are beloved creatures that they're aesthetically important for for many people they are a sign of what is happening in our, in our, you know, ecosystems and in our environment. And I also point out for like tribes along with historical connections along the coast. They're very, very important to culture history. And in some cases, these are actually ancestors of some of some of these tribes so there's an actual component to this that goes way beyond the science and until the real impact that this has on many people. So, moving on, if I guess I'm getting a slow I might have to advance it. Maybe moving on there we go. I guess it's just the the roller in my mouse that works. So, talking just very briefly here. So looking at the annualized right well representation so basically it's all of course all the data over the course of a period of time that's, you know, gives you a sense of where you tend to have more high density spots. You can also see here we have like on the top here along the Gulf of Maine is the call area. This right, sorry this right now is a call area, it's not actually a lease area. It's a little further down here along the Nantucket shoals which is in this area. We have leases as well as in the New York bite area. And you can see over here on the right there's some protect leases and perspective wind energy areas as you go along the coast. So this is just to give sort of a snapshot of where activity is looking to be developed. Of course in the inset there you can see where the North Atlantic right well critical habitat areas are. But as we know the whales do move a bit we do know there's some year round presence in some areas where we're finding out a lot more what we thought we knew through like year 2010. We're finding from 2010 on that things are shifting and they're shifting faster, but you know there are times of the year where you're going to see whales and greater numbers right whales and greater numbers in in some areas versus others.  And this is in the kind of New York bite area and you can see some other lease areas further offshore. But you can also see the shipping lanes and the traffic lanes so this is, you know, a 12 month look so pulling in all of those vessel track lines coming into New York Harbor, over a 12 month time period so obviously it's a very busy area out there as far as the ship's movement and you know this is part of one of the things I know that no is attempting to address with the the vessel speed rule. I would go so far to say that it's you know when you look at how much activity is out there. And if whales are coming more into these areas then it's unfortunate but not surprising we might be seeing more vessel strikes. And then specifically though to these offshore wind site characterization surveys, we heard this morning from Erica about the acoustic acoustic sort of around that and what the potential for that impact could be. When the site characterization surveys are moving and actually collecting data, they're moving at very, very slow paces. It's a transit from port to the location at faster speeds. But we do have a reporting requirement, if there is a near miss, certainly a hit, even if you see a dead animal, you have to report it immediately and we have not had any reports come in of any right whales or large whales being struck or hit by vessels and of course that is a reporting that's done from the protective species observers that are independent observers that are out there, but certainly if something were to have happened along that lines and it's found out it wasn't reported. That is a tremendous compliance issue with a lot of repercussions so we are feeling confident that you know we're not in a situation where the vessels associated with the site characterization surveys are responsible for any of these strikes. So speaking now going into a little bit, there's a long history of bone and its partners, certainly working doing right whale research along the Atlantic coast. Back in the 80s, there was interest in potential oil and gas and that resurfaced a number of years ago, although nothing came of that. But you know over that 20 year period there's a lot of different projects going on that went on that have collected a lot of information that it has sped into larger you know meta analysis that are being done. And this is a glimpse of some examples of those studies and you can get to any of their of the reports through our website as well. On going right now we are also leaning in quite a bit to to doing more to try to understand more about right whale ecology, behavior distribution abundance, how we might be able to mitigate impacts as they potentially may come along particularly as you get into that situation and operation phase. So it ranges anywhere from a really getting, you know, better approaches out there to look at population level effects by our energetic models, looking at these persistency and aggregations of right whales. Looking at the gaps in acoustic ecology so right whales are a little bit more challenging to be able to sort of detect on like passive acoustic monitoring but if we can understand a little bit more about their q rates and and how they use the environment acoustically, we may be able to pull information out of data that we have not necessarily been able to. We are looking at satellite imagery to see if there's a way to do automatic detection of right whales and other species. We are looking at developing auditory waiting functions for low frequency whale so that's a right whale like many of the bailing whales they hear and very very low frequencies. And it's really difficult to do a hearing test on a whale in order to understand, you know what are the frequencies that they hear the most. So like as humans we hear in certain frequencies where other species, even our dogs may hear in different frequencies. So getting a better understanding of what that is for whales is really helpful. We also have this expert relativistic risk assessment framework. We have obviously leaned into the potential consequences of disturbance modeling that's been going on for a number of years but of course that requires you to have a lot of data on a lot of species in order to to run those models fully. And so we worked on something that could give us just a relatively risk looking at various important factors and get helping us sort of drive decisions about what may be the best thing to drive mitigations. For example, most recently we did an assessment of two projects in the vicinity and we looked at right whales and a few other species. And you know what happens with both are constructing but if one is constructing what if one is an operation why one is constructing. There's a lot of good information about there about relative risk across those different scenarios, and we're going to continue to develop that framework, bring it up into more chronic looking at cumulative cumulative from a sense of various noise, producing activities, and then also we could ideally love to pull that up into a true cumulative risk assessment framework where we could consider other non noise stressors. We also have a lot going on right now trying to really tune in and improve upon what are we going to require during construction and operation. So the mitigation of monitoring measures, the right well strategy itself and appendix be does outline a lot of them. And so we will continue to build those require those adjust them as more information becomes available. So we do for the cops those construction and operation plans we did develop some modeling guidelines from the Center for acoustics. So that we have consistency and how each of the operators are actually evaluating the modeling and the acoustic impacts. We're coming out now with sound field verification guidelines which are essentially going to be along the lines of measurements at every pile being driven. It likely changes if it's a if it's a pile that is consistent in water depth size, compared to something that's already been really fully evaluated. Then it's a little lighter form of sound field verification which is actually measuring in the field. And if it's something that's a little bit newer, it'll be more intense. We're also looking at building a regional monitoring a Pam monitoring system up in the Northeast, and this, the way we are trying to design this would be at would be aimed at trying to determine just the presence of wind farms of change the behavior, where you know showing up moving, we want it to be able to detect that and it's a huge undertaking that's going to be have a lot of different partners with it, working closely with like the RWSC and other entities. We're right now doing a power analysis to really get a good sense of how many of these sensors will need to have out there in order to answer the questions that we're going to be looking at. And we also would I are working towards how can we pull all that data into one place make it publicly available and even create some tools where anybody could run reports, you know, kind of those basic reports that that people are interested in where we can create it so so anybody can go into that and be able to get the information that they would like. We want to expand upon real time tools so we know passive acoustic monitoring can can help detect. That's a little, we're not quite there with locating. So how can we lean into that and get better technology that I can actually not just detect but locate where I write while bright whale call is coming from. We also want to do more predictive tools. One example is dimethyl sulfide so trying to use as the zoo plankton are are, you know, chomping on the phytoplankton and there are certain things that you know certain dimethyl sulfide is released there's maybe way through satellite imagery to detect that and use it as a way to predict the likelihood that animals are going to be coming to that area to also feed and satellite imagery, just, you know, separately how that can detect. We're looking at auditory recovery time for impulsive sounds obviously pile driving is one area that we want to really focus on on. One thing that I that I skipped over accidentally was that received sound level limit we are looking to establish basically a limit. We don't want to overly prescribe it it's sort of performance based. And right now we're looking and it still needs to be finalized but we're looking like at a you know within a kilometer of each. If each of those piles, the sound cannot pass that point cannot exceed what would be considered level a harassment for any bailing well, and level a means potential injury to hearing. So by establishing that and setting the bar and letting industry develop the technology for how they're going to get there. We can protect what we're we're most concerned about when it comes to to the pile driving, and I would be remiss if I don't it didn't point out that Department of Energy has been a huge partner on that. And then there have been a lot of workshops that have gone on already, not just from bone Noah as well. Many, some of you on the phone have been part of these workshops. In the interest of time I'm going to just go ahead and proceed on but the point is there's been a lot of work done, but we still do have information gaps that we actively trying to understand and fill. And so that brings us to the strategy. We released a draft of the strategy back in October of 2022. And the vision of that is to protect and promote the recovery of North Atlantic right whales while responsibly developing offshore wind. And what it is at this point is that it's a path forward between bone and Noah on how we're going to do that. And note this will be it will be finalized and I'll talk about timing on that shortly. But it's a living document so as new information becomes available. We can update this we can adjust if there's a need to reprioritize the science needs based off new information we can do that as well. But this gives you a general sense of at least of the draft, how we sorted into table of contents, you know describing the issue a bit. I'll go a little bit more into detail on the framework and the three goals, but also talking about partners and potential financial sources resources. And of course I mentioned earlier this appendix B which has the avoidance and minimization measures. So, looking at the first one the first goal mitigation and decision support so each of the goals for the most part has a couple sub goals. So the first one is just refining our mitigation and monitoring measures so they can be as effective as possible both at a project level and at a multiple or cumulative level. We're reviewing and updating measures regularly, making sure they're complimentary across statutory reviews. These measures come up in NEPA they come up under the Remail Protection Act they come up under the Danger Species Act. And we need to make sure that they're complimentary across those reviews tracking mitigation technologies ways that we can better mitigate, and we do look internationally to see what examples we can gain and there are some. That have existed so far where where offshore wind has developed. They haven't necessarily had a bailing whale issue it's been more harbor porpoise issues. So it's a little bit of a different problem that they were seeking to solve. And then supporting research to, to, you know, develop those technologies as well as better detection technologies. So the second one here is prioritizing quieting, whether it's through the foundations, whether it's these performance standards like I just spoke to for impact pile driving, or whether it's for ways to promote quieting technologies and vessels. We also under this goal want to develop and improve upon risk and decision support tools. We have things like population viability analysis models, cumulative effects modeling. I spoke before about the expert relativistic framework risk framework, trying to build that out even further. So looking along other sort of modeling to look at what measures might be needed for vessel strike beyond. We know it's in the 2022 know a proposed vessel speed restriction rule. We're still waiting though to find out what's going to be in any final rule, and then do we have a gap there that we still need to fill. We're looking at evaluating entanglement risk so it could be from from cables or floating wind technology. But we also want to be sure that the presence of these vessels does not necessarily move. The presence of these structures the wind facilities don't necessarily move whales into other areas where they may have higher pressures for entanglement and vessel strike concerns. So one is research and monitoring. First is we need to develop, you know, a plan. We have ideas about what that'll be but we want to make sure that plan includes things to update the baseline. As more information becomes available regularly reevaluate those priority questions, perform a gap analysis, no question, we're going to need more money in order to do all of this and we're going to do that a lot through partnerships. So, you know, there, we need to understand where we have a gap between what needs to be done and what resources we have available. This next one is essentially trying to look at ecosystem services or ecosystem based management of areas so this is a project that is in the Gulf of Maine. And he is very familiar with that one he could speak to it in much more in much more detail, looking at what is our best available science standards, as we have moved forward evaluating really disseminating the results to, you know, very adaptive management approach and working with the RWSC and other federal and state partners. So, you know, we're just out there the federal government collecting data and information the states are also doing quite a bit and other organizations so we want to make sure that we're folding that into this process. The second goal here under research and monitoring is just to support, you know, have sufficient statistical power to detect changes. So that's sort of endemic to a lot of everything that we have I talked about that long term Pam network, but we want to make sure that we've got the right network setup that can detect the changes that we would be looking for. And that is the use of other kind of data on man system satellite data emerging technologies safer longer duration satellite tags coordinating with our Canadian counterparts. Again, more habitat models, looking at stress, you know, health and stress indicators, and even leaning more into how artificial intelligence or automated processes could could help get us in the right amount of system potentially a faster and even real time. One thing to point out we are keenly aware of a potential for turbines we know turbines can change the local hydrodynamics of an area. What we don't know is if that has any impact to pre fields. And so we have at this point through the National Academies we have a contractor task order, I think it's called that's out where the National Academies is going to take a closer look at that and provide us with some recommendations. Really specifically honing in on the availability and North Atlantic right well pray and seeing if we if there's an issue there that we need to to be responsive to and protective of. And the third goals collaboration. We are going to do an implementation group we're still trying to figure out exactly what that will look like. You know, I'm sure we'll continue our bone Noah one but we're certainly going to have to expand if we want to see this strategy actually be realized develop outreach and communication. So that we can keep people that are and stakeholders that are interested regularly updated, such as web pages and other sort of fact sheets, making sure we're also coordinating and integrating this strategy into things like john mentioned like the road to recovery. And I just point out at the bottom here, the expansion of partnerships is absolutely critical. And through this we also must ensure that we do. We work with our with the sovereign tribes and have effective and meaningful government to government engagement. So last two slides. The, the draft was released in October 45 day public comment period, we had 550 individual commenters of which 270 were unique comments and about 60 or 70 of them are things that we thought might require changes. Since the comments received we also did go back into all the projects. And we pulled out all the tribal input into the various projects that have been commented on and pulled out the material in there related to to right wells and folded it into these comments. So right now we're reviewing the comments we're aiming for finalization in June of 2023. There's a bit more work for us to be done but that's our goal. And again it's a living document that will be updated as new information becomes available. And just sending here again with the goal here is that we want to promote and protect the recovery and North Atlantic right whales, while responsibly developing offshore when we recognize there are stressors out there. Many of them for these whales and how can we build a different energy future with, you know, while we're still protecting and promoting these animals it's a vision that both Noah and bone are taking extremely seriously. And that is my last slide so I will stop sharing. I can't hear Stacy I don't know if anybody else can. Okay, that's my fault. I'm sorry Jill. Thank you so much. And it is 302 so I just want to be sensitive to the agenda I do want to provide the opportunity for maybe one or two clarifying comments and I'll just note that we're spotted to take a break at three o'clock and when we return at 315. We'll have the opportunity for our panelists to bring up any sort of response or thoughts that they have initially and then we'll pose a couple of specific questions to each of them as well. But after that there will be more opportunity for discussion and so I do want to just see if there's any immediate questions for Jill or for john otherwise will move quickly towards our break and then return for the panel. Mike I see your hands up go ahead. I had a couple of questions for Jill but I'll just ask the one that's burning on me. And that is, she mentioned the need for longer term tracking tags in right wells I believe. And my question is, what data type. Are you expecting to get that you cannot get with non invasive tracking techniques such as Pam and aerial survey and so on. I mean, I understand you can find new habitats, we're talking about a known habitat here. Yeah, so I would probably lean on others in my organization that are not here but I guess what I might say is. It is but I think having a bigger picture of what these animals are doing how they're moving, even if it's outside of the areas that we're looking at for wind development are certainly going to be informative. I also think Pam, we know that, you know right wells are not as vocal or not as detected as often as perhaps other whale species. And so where there are, you know we're looking at the key rates and looking at other things as well but will longer term tags also be able to help us sort of correlate some of that data. And better how they are using their environment so I think that would be the short answer but I know there are others in my organization that could probably give a much more detailed answer than I can. I agree with all of that but you need to balance that gain versus the cost of tagging a skinny scrawny poorly growing speeches 100% 100% agree on that. Yes. Has has there been a decision to proceed. Oh, has there been a decision to do that no. No. And of course any of those kinds of things any of the research as I think as you probably well know. That would include that it requires authorization under the Endangered Species Act and marine mammal protection act as well. So, I don't know if we went when there are existing tagging programs in place I mean that not the bone is directly funny but I know we do look at stuff that the Navy is doing, you know as well. Where we're animals, you know, I think we're like we can leverage other organizations that already have permits to do some of this as well. I think is the point I was trying to get at rather than, you know, perhaps a concern about a bunch of new effort on an already critically endangered species. Good point. I'll give you a quick question and then we'll go ahead and take a break we might start our panel discussion a few minutes late just to ensure the opportunity of a sufficient break for folks but go ahead Doug. Yeah, well I'm just going to follow up on that point and see if it warranted more more discussion in the panel this this issue of right well tagging. I don't know I don't know exactly what's on your on your agenda for it or where your questions are but it certainly warrants attention. I think it could certainly relate to some of the questions that we've got for the panel. So, we'll give folks a few minutes to think about that. I'm going to give everybody a sufficient break. So, let's go ahead. It's 306 now. Let's return at 320 and we'll continue with the panel discussion and Q&A and just so our panelists are all on the same page. I'm going to speak to a few minutes to share any remarks you might have or any reactions to the things you've heard today and then we'll focus on the three questions that I think I provided everybody based on what are the additional data and information that can be integrated additional questions and then thoughts about communications as it relates to this science. So, good folks until 320 and we'll see everybody then. And again, what I will do for the purposes of moderating this discussion is I will ask. I'll call on each of our panelists in order and ask them to introduce themselves and then to provide any sort of initial remarks that they would like to thoughts based on the discussions they've heard today. Other reactions, things they think are important to mention. And then once we've gone through everybody providing their introduction and initial remarks. I'll pose one question at a time and give the panelists each an opportunity to weigh in on those questions that they have any. And then we will open it for discussion. And any Q&A that the audience would like to have as well. So, just to start us off, since it is now 320. I'm going to turn first to Ann Bowls from Hubsi World Research Institute allow her to introduce herself and share any thoughts that she might have at this time. Hey, my name is Ann Bowls. I'm a senior research scientist at Hubsi World Research Institute. And I've been working on issues related to animal behavior in the presence of human disturbance mostly noise for way too long. I wanted first to say how happy I am to see the level of investment in getting the right kinds of details and all of this stuff for the wind for offshore wind I have worked in other areas and there isn't anything like this investment, even though the potential effects are a lot higher than anything that you guys are anticipating. So, you know, kudos for managing this whole discussion very well. The second thing is I'd like to say that a lot of my comments for the rest of this discussion are going to be focused on trying to get information on what the animals are actually doing in the immediate vicinity of wind placements of one kind or another. We're particularly interested in floating wind out here and there's a lot less information about that than there is about the harder structures. But even there we don't know a lot about how animals actually interact with the placement itself so that seems like an important kind of information to get. Thank you very much and appreciate that we'll turn next to Francine Kershaw. Thank you hi everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Francine Kershaw I'm a senior scientist with a natural resources defense counselor, affectionately known as NRDC. There's a little bit of background about NRDC in the hat I'm wearing. So we view offshore wind development as critical to meeting our national climate goals promises healthier air creates thousands of well paying clean energy jobs so our organization feels really strongly that we need offshore wind and we need to move it forward as rapidly as possible. Like any ocean industry offshore wind poses risks to the environment you know has been discussed today and because we're also in a biodiversity crisis, it's important to launch this new industry in a smart way that protects our valuable and vulnerable ocean wildlife including the Atlantic right wells that across other species as well and our organization believes that we can and we also must achieve both of those goals. So that's the perspective that I'm coming to this conversation with. And for my part I've worked on this issue about the last five years, also focused on developing guidance and standards so that offshore wind can be developed rapidly and also in a responsible way that avoids and minimizes harm to marine life and habitats. And I serve as a plated member of the New York State Energy Research and develop authority on NYSERDA and their environmental technical weapons with offshore wind. And I guess I only have one overarching comment and I'm excited to get into the we did the discussion but I just have been really encouraged by the conversation today and as someone that works on on this issue on the day to day basis I ever really appreciated hearing the views of and questions of the also it's really helpful for me to be able to join you and listen into this discussion and get your perspectives as well that's been very helpful. And it's also clear that that ball in the know I really want to get get this right and actively investing in and advancing real both science and to support their policy and management work. And just, just as we get into the acoustic part of this. It's also clear to our organization that science does not support any link between the acoustic activities associated with offshore wind survey activities and the recent well stranding and I look forward to the discussion of how we can share these facts more broadly, and in a way that is trusted and really taken up by the public as part of the discussion because that's, that's something our organization has been, you know, hearing this on and we're considering, you know, that challenge on a daily basis I'm really interested in hearing, you know, those other thoughts on that. Thank you. Next, I'll turn to Michael Moore. Hello. So what's all oceanographic biology department veterinary scientists spent a lot of time pulling dead right wells apart and help backs to appreciate what everybody does these days I've sort of moved back from that now and spend more time. Looking at live right whales with photogrammetry and health assessment in mind. And that really brings me to my comment that this discussion has largely focused on the mortality event related to humpbacks and offshore wind development and prospecting and so on. It's still very important, but we also need to look at the sub lethal impacts of noise and vessel trauma and, and especially the whole question of what that joint document looked at with regards to the impact of wind production on the concerns about surface waters productivity and pray for right wells and other species. And I was interested to hear the acknowledgement with regards to the hydrographic impacts of the pylons. Well I didn't hear which is in that joint document. The question of where the extraction of the energy into the grid impacts the surface, the air surface seawater interface in terms of productivity. I'm going to get out for now. And so, you know, if you've taken energy out of the ocean, what's that doing to the pray base and that's something that I don't think has necessarily become a critical question but I have solar on my house my attic is now cooler. And I worry about that. Michael, and then I'll turn to Doug and no attack as well. Yeah, thanks Stacy and thanks to the National Academy for for the invitation and the opportunity to to participate so and and certainly for convening COSA you and bone that's a great venture together so for me by way of background I'm Duke University in the Nicholas school the environment, specifically at the Duke Marine lab and then also have an appointment in the engineering school and electrical and computer engineering to to work on and develop technology for for marine conservation research. So and then, and certainly germane to this is, I'm lucky to be the lead of a big offshore wind program through the Department of Energy and bone wildlife and offshore wind we're looking at marine mammals, as well as birds and bats. So I've personally learned a lot about seabirds and bats, and there are more bats offshore that you might realize but but nonetheless, it's been a, we're lucky enough to be in a good position to be working on this issue with quite a wonderful team several several of the co ps are on this on this call. So hopefully we can become a force multiplier for for this community which I will also say has been refreshing to work in the offshore wind community there's there's a lot of folks are very forthcoming with with thoughts and ideas and potential for data sharing so I think there's a lot of good will there and a lot of positivity that's that that we can carry forward. As far as overarching issues, I think quieting as Jill pointed out and several points and I'm not sure that that everyone would appreciate how just how hard that a lot of us have been pushing on this issue for a long time, not so much how do you have time and activity just so that you have the least amount of level b takes but how do you actually make things quieter, which then by virtue has has the bird, you know, it's quieter in the ocean you also potentially impact fewer animals so so the push from bone to actually work on quieting the actual activities, I think is a good is a good step forward, very good step forward. On an additional questions, I think. Yeah, Michael Michael hit on and I think we need to understand these oceanographic things and and I think actually interestingly the turbulence around the pilings may be acting in the other direction of from the from the surface wind mixing so it's going to be a really interesting ride to find out what what what we know about that what we can what more we can learn about it so I'll leave it there and say thanks again for the invitation. Yeah, thank you each. So, as I mentioned we've drafted a few questions it sounds like some of you sort of lightly touched on them but I'll open them to first our panelists and then also to those on the line. But, you know, again just reiterating Kosas role is largely to provide informal individual input into the science and assessment programs at Boma and that really leads us to thinking about what, you know, what additional scientific information should the agency be collecting or analyzing and prioritizing So I want to first open that question up again to our panelists and and then also to others on the line. The other questions that we had posed, you know, in a similar vein. Are there additional scientific questions that need that should be asked or need further study and also how can the federal agencies, both in particular, better communicate their science as well. So the few questions that that we've posed and again I'll open that first one up to our panelists. Is there more scientific information that the agencies could be or should be collecting and analyzing. And thank you to those that have already sort of tapped into this but I'll provide an opportunity for longer explanation for brothers to weigh in as well. And go ahead. So, a little bit more into detail what I was talking about. I looked at the AIS image with the lease area stuck in between two shipping channels. There's been some discussion from the European literature that these wind farms function as a kind of refuge, because there's, for example, you're not allowed to do fishing in the area and so on. You're putting something in that could have either a positive or a negative effect, given the particular location and the mix of species. So I really think it's important to start getting an idea of what animals are doing specifically in the field of the wind farm with techniques that allow you to get close range behavioral information. So if that's not part of the technical and research goal, it should be. The other thing that came into my head as they were talking about quieting vessels. We have quieter cars around us nowadays. And one of the things that's been necessary is to make at close range, these vehicles more detectable to animals. So this is something that probably I know it's something that's been looked at in the past, but it's something that probably deserves a second look, not only for ships, but also for the farm structures themselves. Because you've got this big thing you're sticking in the ocean and you don't really know how animals are figuring out that it's there. You and any other thoughts from our panelists on this topic. I know you each offered a few areas that could be further explored Doug, you were going to say something go ahead. Well, one thing I was going to say is that after after the list of Jill's projects that are that are done or you know published or you know in process it's hard to, it's hard to think of something else so. There's certainly a nod to to bone in there and the thoroughness of that group so. So I think that they, there are a lot of things that they're hitting on in there. To speak to answer question we part of part of our project is actually to do some of that close in close and behavioral observations and collection. I think the additional additional things I don't know I mean I think that a lot of the so much of this work is going on, like Michael mentioned his work with with drones and body condition of the and things of right whales. I think that one area that. And this this actually hits on both one not questions one and three Stacy and that's the third one is the communication is really forming some kind of. Clearing house for, especially for right whales, you know and everything that we need to know about right whales. You know locations would be the ultimate thing of course if we knew where every one of them was and I don't know how many times I've been asked that question. That gets back to that satellite tagging the implantable tag question I shouldn't say satellite tag because you could do satellite tags. But but the implantable tag issue and what it what it really stands to gain us. And I know there's some attention to that as well so we don't need to we don't need to figure it out today. But I really do think that other other than this, what I call the refer to as the downwind and downstream effects of having turbines in the water. The turbines causing mixing and the, the, or I mean the foundations causing mixing and the turbines pulling energy out of the wind Michael's quite right. And that that we stand, we really need to investigate that more. I don't think it's going to be a quick answer. The modeling could be done relatively quickly and there's there's some work out there we found 30 some papers just in a quick look at this issue. So, so, but I really don't. In terms of big, significant questions. I think Boma know are doing a great job on it. And if I could think of something more broad I would bring it up. But I think get gathering all and NYSERDA has done a great is doing a great job of this with specifically with the RWSC as well. And that information and pointing to new new work that needs to be done. So, so I'll leave it there and but certainly some things to, to come back to you. Thanks. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, so I'll preface my comment by questioning why Doug didn't mention his study were in response to Anne's question in terms of alerts to right Wales in terms of some kind of noise maker what he successfully did was put the whales at 15 feet or thereabouts below the surface and put them into harm's way more than anything else. It is a great study and it's an impossible very difficult solution to reach. I doubt ships will ever be quiet enough that right wells won't know they're there. So with that, I've been thinking recently about the difference between real time management and habitat curation. Can you, well, you're never going to tag all the right wells for instance this is a debate we had last week at a workshop and you're never going to do it because the tax don't last that long, and you're never going to find them all to tag them again and you're quiet that you've lost them and it's just not going to work. So, so scale that back to where you are, when you've got an operation going on with pile driving or whatever and you've got a PSO looking, and so on. Does that really work. Do we know how efficient PSO's are to clear an area versus Pam, and how all of that goes. And that leads into my hobby horse of, you know, what do we really know about the reality of suddenly full impacts, and how to mitigate them and again, it comes down to curating habitats rather than creating individuals, because you're never going to know where all the individuals are right wells can sneak up on you they can show up in the Cape Cod Canal and everybody knew they were there and boom they are in the middle. Two weeks ago. And you know that place has got thermal cameras and video and kinds of stuff go. So, I, and I talked back to my initial comment about rarity. These guys are increasingly cryptic because there are fewer and fewer of them. And so to try and think that we can actually manage the individuals when we're not very good at finding them and they're really good at showing up in the wrong is something that really worries me and, you know, that's something I mean I think, you know, some of the stakeholders have already written the right well species off because there aren't enough of them to worry about anymore. And I'm not saying bones doing that at all, but we can't afford to do that if we do care about conserving the species so it's the whole challenge is huge. I don't have any answers for it, but I do know that we need to think about sub lethal trauma because without. And this is where I do feel very strongly that for instance the stakeholder of the entanglement folks, you know the fishery folks have been misled by by the promise that if you stop killing them everything's going to be okay well that's not the case and that we've got serious reproductive problems as a result of chronic entanglement trauma, sub lethal entanglement trauma. Right well is getting tangled between zero and 10 times in their lives is the current current spread so obviously that's a different thing to wind energy trauma, but it's, it's not when it comes to sub lethal issues that unless we manage them right we're never going to get a fit fat population that's that can actually produce. And that understanding is the piece that I feel has been a strategically and management of inadequate seriously inadequate in terms of how we've looked at it and I strongly disagree that this humpback mortality event has been a wind energy issue. It's been a vessel issue primarily from the information we have. But that doesn't mean that bone in the wind industry doesn't need to worry very significantly. In fact, more so about the sub lethal and it does about the lethal because I don't see bone killing whales for sound. But I do see them adding to, for instance right well health issues to the point where another cut of 1000 cuts to to the success of the species not because you're not killing them but because you're not letting them be who they are and doing that thing. Yeah, I didn't want to if Francine has something on that point certainly go ahead. I am I have a separate points that if you have a follow up to Michael you can go. Okay, great thanks Francine. I think I like Michael's thought on curating habitats. And I think that certainly fits into the quieting, the quieting part of this. So one thing that did occur to me to point out is is the regulatory hurdle that we have to get over in a couple ways one is implementing new things, which we all know is, you know, it has a process and the process is important. But it does, it does take time. But even if we look at something like if vibratory pile driving was a possibility. You know, from what I understand it has been demonstrated in Europe not terribly successfully but certainly with some success in the right and the right substrates is that the message that, well, the issue is that it's then considered a continuous signal. And so then the threshold drops to 120. And so, so then you're taking a, what is something that's going to actually put less sound in the water. And you're making, and you're removing an incentive to do that, and incentivizing things to curate habitats is a really important way, especially when you're dealing with with industry and trying to understand what their needs are and they need to proceed. You know what the playing field is. So I think the the I'm concerned that you know any of these ideas for curating habitats will run into regulatory issues and everybody's aware of it I know it's not it's not new news. But I, but I think it's, it's a great sentiment and I think we can apply that to several things, the curating habitats. So, and like, like suction buckets will you know I don't know but you want to get into details but it's a lot quieter than than pile driving. And that kind of thing could be incentivized by bone. Okay, thanks, Francine. Yeah, I just, I had a couple of other ideas in response to this question and bringing it back to the site assessment and characterization activities a little bit I mean I and thinking about that public trust question right so I think one of the trends that has been in these survey activities are showing is an increase of parallel survey efforts within a single geographic region. For example the same developer may be using you know multiple vessels within a together information for a single project within one region. And are in adjacent regions off the east coast and multiple developers, you know as they're being at the same time but in different areas. And I think you know as you're digging through the IHAs to try and get this information. The IHAs are really broad it's just kind of like this is the number of vessels the developer will use over this nine month period and this is the outline of the geographic area that will be operating within and usually those areas can be really large from you know even from the mid-Atlantic all the way up into Cape Cod and as a member of the public and actually is there. In this context of like a scientific question just being able to correlate even when and where those activities are happening with some type of event or interaction that may or may not have involved in marine mammal. It's really tricky to do that with the data that seems to be available at least for the public. And so you know I think some additional, maybe it's not exactly scientific information but it could inform you know scientific investigation is more specific data on the location of survey vessels and the speeds of those vessels at any given time. And I think that would help you know as improved this happening offshore it might help with kind testing and things like that to build the interaction that may have occurred. The other thought that I had was related also to vessel strikes and being able to better understand the spatial and temporal patterns in vessel traffic again including speeds. Within the proximity of our showing areas but then also you know outside of those areas are wind energy areas any different to you know other areas along the eastern sea border or the regions could be really helpful in passing out risk and public perception of risk. And just I had one other thought here. Oh, and the other thing with big trends in shipping or vessel traffic was being some significant shifts in when and where vessels are operating at the time. I think the New York New Jersey port just overtook the port of Los Angeles is being the busiest port in the nation and that you know could have some implications of vessel strike risk in the region. And I guess more recommendations and updates of it could inform scientific analysis but those types of analyses I think would, would help us all better understand risk and also help the public understand, you know, where there might be risk levels that we could become the best systems that we've been probably, you know, not not very as much about. And in the discussion that Doug and Michael had one of the and a number of the speakers brought it up as well. The use that strikes me is the numbers that they're using for impulsive and continuous noise are have been in have been used for basically my whole career, and they don't at this point really get to the details of how these sounds are affecting the animals ability to function. I think another area ought to be having a much closer look at what it is exactly the sounds are doing to the animals capacity to get their job done. And based on those things coming up with criteria that are more nuanced, because I think that would help a lot of the issues related to noise. You touched on, I think, you know, in various parts of each of your comments, I think we've touched on all three of the questions. I might focus in a little bit Francine you touched on some public perception issues. I might ask the other speakers as well to weigh in on how these very technical issues can be communicated perhaps more effectively or more thoroughly. And I think it's important for the public and even to others within the scientific discipline really. And then Doug. Well, I can give you an analogy, not analogy, but a parallel experience of trying to communicate rope trauma in right Wales I've been trying to to the general public and I've been trying to do that for 30 years. I have been reading it for 30 years now. I've been reading it for 30 years now. I've read it in 1550, and 1500 people 3000 people and I know read it maybe and I put on my heart and really I know the choir liked it. But we do not have a good way of communicating to the public good science in a way that is meaningful in their daily lives. educate our kids. And these are all things that are coming in through the mailbox or, well, virtual or real. And how to get the offshore abstract into the persona of the minds, the concerns, the costs, the benefits of you and me, if we don't have the particular jobs we have is something that I'd love an answer to. Thank you, Doug. I think Michael just is advocating for an offshore wind and right well Instagram account. I was thinking TikTok, actually. I was thinking, maybe severely limited in the coming days, well, who knows? And I would pay a lot of money to see you sing and dance, Michael, if we could arrange it. I've been rehearsing. So it's a really, it's a very good question. And I'll just give you one anecdote to just encapsulate. And I'm sure we all had these experiences, but a friend of mine here in Beaufort, who works at NOAA, not in anything related, but does habitat mapping with acoustics was out somewhere wearing a NOAA jacket or something like that. And somebody in the community stopped him and said, oh, are you helping that whale? This was when we had this entangled right whale down here. And he said, oh, no, but the team from Duke is doing a lot. And then the folks from Georgia, Florida went through the whole thing. And then this woman said, well, and it's awful what that offshore wind is doing to the whales. He just, you know, that's the, the connections are obviously not non-existent. We all know, but getting that word across is really, it's important. I thought the video that Erica showed, I know those, we're getting better at producing those things. And maybe AI, that would be a good use of AI is to produce more of those relatively quick and getting them into the circulation as Michael said, as broadly as possible. I'm not a great fan of playing to the short attention spans that sort of dominate the whole world these days, but at the same time, if you can get across a concept that and stick to one or a few, especially with things like acoustics because people just glaze over very quickly. But I do think that developing more of those animations can, they can be really powerful and infographics too. So, and then plug them into Michael's Instagram account. I'll be a follower. I just before turning quickly to Francine, I thought I'd also add my own sort of element to this question, which is thinking about conversations that the coast has had in the past and particularly the two-way engagement, that we keep hearing is really important in science communication and the listening aspect as well as the speaking. I guess I'm wondering, I want to turn to Francine as well, but I'm wondering if you all have any thoughts about how that can be done effectively on this topic, especially in light of the attention that this has been getting. Francine, I'll turn to you next and then ask folks to give some thought to that. Okay, yeah, thanks, Stacey and Jess. I know I already kind of weighed in on this question, but I had a couple of other specific thoughts. And one was the same as that, it's about the really wonderful interactive educational materials that the volunteer and others have been developing. Now I was working on these two and just getting that out more broadly and promoting that work more broadly, I think would be helpful. I think even with that, there's always going to be some mistrust of information issued by agencies, regulating an industry, also the industry. And so it is really important for independent scientists or entities like the Marine animal commission to also be communicating these steps to the general public. And this also points to the need for information on off-shore indexes like I was saying, I like to be shared more openly, so scientists do have that information to consider and they can feel confident in their speaking on these issues. Just one other thing, which has never been thought of, you know, I think the acoustic impact from survey activities, it's quite easy to explain, well, not easy, but there's explanation as to why not that very low source levels, we can explain it through video, charts and clients. I think as we look forward to construction and operations where, you know, there's not, it's as impact, apologizing of particular processes, there's going to be much greater sound and acoustic energy in the water at that time. There's going to be more vessels out there, you know, tens of vessels during the construction period. It may be a little bit more challenging for us to communicate around that when, you know, a whale happens to coincidentally strand at the same time. And so one thing that NRDC has started to do, and I think it would be helpful for us all to do is kind of look ahead to that next phase and kind of use this as a training ground of how well to, you know, communicate on these issues and really prepare for that next round of communication to the public that's going to be needed around this. Yeah, Stacey, really. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, Doug, and then Ann. Yeah, real quick, I won't be long, but it's something prompted. And then Francine, of course, set me up perfectly. And that is to engage the industry side of things. I alluded to it. They have marching orders, they have their leases, and they, you know, in this case, are trying to produce renewable energy that I think most of us agree we need. But Francine's point also about what people trust and what they hear. And maybe some of these little productions that have, you know, an industry stamp on it and the BOM stamp on it and academic stamp on it and an NGO stamp on it, then people look at it and go, oh, everybody agrees that this is, you know, this is what we're actually looking at, that that might be a little bit more powerful.  But if it comes from you or NRDC or, you know, some combination that is more likely to be taken on board, thanks. Thank you, Anne. One other thing that so far we haven't talked about is that people who are out there in the world, in the ocean, people who have time on their hands, can participate in community science. And that's a really great way of helping people understand what's going on in a situation without pushing information at them. So in other words, they're the ones that are discovering something. And maybe that helps them understand the information better. The burden community has certainly made a lot of progress doing that. Fantastic, great suggestion, Anne. So I see Les has raised his hand. And I think approaching the four o'clock hour, this is a great time to open it up for our audience as well and for COSA members to weigh in with their questions too. So we'll let Les start that off. Les, go ahead. Just on that same thread, and this, my gosh, I think it was this morning, I was on a meeting of the WINS subcommittee of the Advisory Council for Stelwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which I've been put onto. I'm not sure I even knew that. And it occurred to me, the sanctuary, of course the discussion had to do with potential impacts to the sanctuary of wind anywhere near it. But I was trying to turn people's thoughts the other way. And the sanctuary definitely could be, the sanctuary system could be an important avenue for public communication, especially if they had some help. So I wouldn't forget about them. And as one example of citizen science, Anne, we're now analyzing 10 years of bird sighting data from Stelwagen that was done systematically. And it's gonna prove useful for some of the wind planning. Yep. Great example, Les, thanks for sharing that. I'll look for any other hands from our audience, invited guests or co-members, foam staff as well. Kevin, and then Scott. Yeah, thank you. So I want to ask a question to the panel about, in listening to the discussion, I've heard a couple of things. One of them is about the prey and the shifts in prey for these species. And I guess so my first thought on that is that I think John showed in his presentation that there were actually a number of different species that have been stranded, sperm whales, semis, right whale and humpbacks. And they do, I think the right whale is mostly copepods, right? I believe calonectes, but some of the others, I heard menhaden mentioned and squid. So that's a variety of different prey. And I'm not sure that the scientific assessments of where these prey are in actual field observations and how they're shifting with climate changes is very well understood. I know we have a modeling exercise about to commence with the National Academy of Sciences, but do you feel that the field research is adequate enough to be able to tell these different prey sources? And I guess the second component of that is that why would such a variety of different animals be stranding themselves or having high mortality if their prey is different? Do you think that all the prey is overlapping? Or does that suggest some other source of a mentality rather than chasing prey? Well, I could attempt to answer that. I think the different UMEs are very independent and I think geographically so too. I mean, to compare a sperm whale stranding with a humpback whale stranding is like trying to understand Mars by looking at the moon. They're such very, very different animals and most sperm whale strandings are due to pathology.  And to compare menhaden with gopepods, right whale foraging strategy is so very, very different to juvenile humpbacks who do like small menhaden. So there are so many niche pieces to this each story that I think it's hard to try and pull together a holistic understanding of all these UMEs. And the sperm whales aren't having a UME, but that just happened to be stranding. So it's a very diverse challenge to try and pull the threads together. And the one question you asked about, do we have enough data from the science and so on? I'm a strong believer in listening to fishermen as well. And the fishermen will tell you that the pogies are running good intro. So to follow up just very quickly, would you advocate then for just focusing on the right whale rather than some of the other whales or do we try and take it as a holistic approach? Well, I believe strongly that holistic is the way to go to understand the systems. I mean, if you look at the sort of rank order of extinction, you've got the vaquita, which is a Mexican porpoise that has got in a less than 10 animals alive. You've got the right whale with less than 1000 animals alive and you've got the humpback with probably less than 100,000. I don't know what the number is, but where goes one goes the other as we go down the slippery slope of industrialization of the coastal ocean. That's what we're doing. Thank you. Yeah, great discussion. I want to thank all of our panelists for joining us today. In this morning session or this after earlier sessions today, one of the things I came away with is that it sounded like a pretty broad consensus that it leads for the right whales and the humpbacks. Bessel strikes and entanglements were key contributors to the mortality events that have been recognized in the last several years. And looking ahead to where offshore wind is going to go, two of the most attractive areas from an energy potential, one is the Gulf of Maine, the other is the Pacific, parts of the Pacific coast, they're both going to require floating wind to be viable. And in fact, they're both going to probably require floating wind at depths, water depths beyond where floating wind has yet gone. So it's another technological challenge. But I'm just wondering from a Marine mammals protection perspective, are we doing adequate research into the risks of entanglements with floating wind mooring systems at this point or secondary entanglements with fishing gear that might get entangled with the mooring lines or the... Well, I guess that's in my game again. There's little data to really answer your question. There was a Southern right whale entangled in a mooring chain in Patagonia, but I believe it was slack. And so that's really not a good example. These moorings are going to be very substantial. I don't know the diameter, depends upon, they're going to be big and stiff. And so I don't sweat that too much. Rope in any guise is a threat. And so if you've got here wrapped around a pylon or a mooring, it's a problem. I want to pick up a little bit on Anne's comment about sanctuaries. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the spacing of the U.S. pylon grids allows for fishing between them. Is that right? Because if so, it's a nod of sanctuary in that regard. I can comment on that one quickly, if that'll help. It's a one by one, not a Kamal grid, at least in the Northeast. Neither the Coast Guard nor the wind firm companies are specifically saying that you cannot fish within there, but for trawled gear, things like sculpt dredges or groundfish gear, it'll be fairly difficult to perhaps less so for gear that is potted gear and gear with ropes and such. It may turn out that, especially given the habitat changes, it may increase, for example, the number of lobster or crabs within there. And so you may have more fishing, but I think that a little bit remains to be seen on the safety and ability to get in there and what the insurance companies will allow. And they would be fishing for right whales too. So it will be a strong case to be made to make that on-demand gear a requirement for any such places. Yeah, I'm gonna turn to Francine, Doug, and then Anne. I believe you're each responding to Scott's question if I understand it correctly. Go ahead, Francine. Thanks, Daisy. I just wanted to speak real briefly to Scott, your question about entanglement. And I also agree with Michael that the infrastructure, the mooring lines and the inter-array tables are likely to be quite large and stiff. And so the risk of what we're turning a primary entanglement or an animal may get directly entangled in the infrastructure is the risk is probably quite low. I mean, we still think it's something that we should be looking for. But our concern, and this is shared by several of the ENGOs that kind of work on that intersection between entanglement and floating wind is the idea of marine debris. Those gear getting caught around that infrastructure are indeed a right whale. All of the large whale dragging gear, potentially that gear getting caught around and clinging that animal. So we've, and I can find this link to put it in the chat for folks, but we developed some ENGO recommendations for monitoring those cables fairly regularly using different tools. And then having a mitigation strategy if marine debris is observed. How can we get that marine debris off quickly? What kinds of technologies would we need to advance? So first to be able to do that for these big commercial scale projects at an affordable cost. So I'll find the recommendations, put them in the chat. We're also doing a deeper dive into those potential technology solutions. So we'll hopefully have a bit more information on that soon. But one opportunity I think that's really important is the main research array that will be, I think it's like only one or two floating turbines. But can we use that as a test bed for some of these technologies and proof of concept? So really make the most of that opportunity that's coming up in the near term. So that that can involve either lodges to be able to build that off of the Gulf of Spain or indeed also for West Coast where an entire woman of large Wales is also a key concern. And I know DOE is looking at that question as well. Thank you Francine. We'll do Doug, Ann and then Brian. Yeah, thanks Stacey. Just quickly on this entanglement issue that's where I put it in the chat. Several of us have been working on a 3D simulator to look at this potential for entanglement risk to whales and leatherback sea turtles for that matter. Primary, secondary, and tertiary entanglement. I do think it is one of those. So that simulator you can run animals by. It's physically, it's mechanically explicit. It will calculate drag and the force on animals based on the gear and the anyway. So it can be a very effective model for evaluating some of these things, particularly how animals behave when they hit some of the gear. The other part I think is important though is to look at this probabilistically if we can. How much ghost gear is actually out there floating around? What are the chances it will get stuck on those cables if it does come by? I don't know what we have for numbers in terms of ghost gear, but it seems like the downwind and downstream issue, something that we can learn a lot on the desktop as well as trying to implement some of these things that Francine just mentioned. Yep, that was it on that. Thanks, Stacy. Thank you. We'll go to Ann and then Brian and then La. Okay, what I have to ask is right quick, with the floating gear, the other issue with having these arrays of great long lines on the water is, it isn't clear how well these animals figure out that something is in their way. So you also have to think about the issue of them coming into contact with it. In other words, there's a collision risk and it's not clear exactly how that'll cope with that situation, how that would interact with, particularly for the smaller animals if they're using it as a hunting environment and for the larger ones, just how they detect it. Brian? Thanks, maybe I'll talk a little bit about, Desiree put in the chat that we are doing some modeling of looking at how animals might interact and with offshore floating facilities right now, it's an active study. And we'll say a lesion, there wouldn't be a collision because they're static. I know my Coast Guard friends would appreciate that difference. But actually the reason I initially raised my hand was that kind of going off what we were talking earlier about access, fisheries access, I think I just want to point out that we assume, at least for fixed gear on the Atlantic, we're assuming there's always going to be some level of fisheries exploitation within the facility. I know there's challenges that Kevin raised, but for our assessment purpose, we assume that the biomass will continue to be exploited. And again, just to really clarify that it, any management measures around fisheries that are operating within or adjacent to facilities would still be within the jurisdiction of the natural fishery service and not bone. So just want to make sure that was clear. Thank you. Thank you very much, Brian.  Was that to respond to this point as well? Well, that was relating to, and I was just taking a comment, but I'll say it, if a right whale is doing two to three knots and runs into a fat cable, I don't worry about it.  Michael, let's. Hey, I did it this time. Yeah, a number of us on this call and others have been fretting over this ghost gear issue on the catenary cables. And my greatest concern, I know we can use the things once they're constructed to study whether that's a serious problem or not, but my concern is the lag time to get a study going. And I mean, while we're sitting around going through our process, there really could be a big problem. And if the problem involves right whales, which is a possibility, I suppose, it's really serious. So we should think about how we can anticipate the need for that kind of study and be ready the moment the gun goes off.   There are an awful lot of floating moored structures in the oil and gas business. And a lot of them are in the Gulf of Mexico monitored by Bessie and BOEM. And there's been a lot of, there is actually quite a bit of recreational fishing that occurs around some of these. In some cases, they come mighty close to the structures. There may be some research opportunities down there, stuff that's ongoing or maybe things that could be done to kind of monitor around existing structures that have already been deployed.  Do they ignore them completely? Do they have to hit them? Could be another source of information and I would encourage our BOEM colleagues to talk to their colleagues in the Gulf of Mexico, both from BOEM and Bessie. Thank you, Scott. Michael, is your hand still up? It is because I had something to say in terms of the question about catenary and Leslie's question. And you know, there is some precedent, you know, you've got navigational marks and offshore buoys and so on, which presumably may or may not be accumulated on ghost gear at this point. There's certainly plenty of ghost gear on the bottom and you know, any Drago will tell you that all over the place. And you know, the number of right whales that have come in with ghost gear on them is really very small compared to the actively fished gear. And this is one of my hobby horses is that the not-for-profit campaign against ghost gear has been popular and fundable because there's no political cost or there is huge political cost to go and have to actively fish gear. And there's been a huge bias and tension as a result of that. Any other questions from folks? I apologize. I know there's a very active chat going on. I encourage that. I have not been monitoring it for the purposes of integrating questions, but you know, if there are folks having robust discussions on the chat, I encourage you to raise those and the discussions for the benefits of all. But I will continue to look for any additional hands at this time. So let's sort of ask my question, which is this question of lag time. You know, Bohm has a process for considering science needs and coming up with an SDP and then doing the studies and then producing the data. So we need to not only think about what we need to know today, but what we will need to know in five years from now. And it may be that we can identify some of those questions or it may be that we need to think about doing some of the science in slightly different ways, trying to figure out how to be more nimble. So I wondered if any of the panelists had any thoughts about that, whether we can effectively anticipate some of the questions we might need to know answers to in four years time or whether the answer is that we need to be more nimble with some of the science and be able to come up with results or have studies that can sort of continually provide the kind of information we need. Step in forward looking. Thanks to everybody. Not a lot comes to mind immediately. I do think that the Bohm process can take a little while, although I do know that they are responsive. And like I said with that list that Jill put up, that there's quite a lot going on enough to make me even struggle coming up with new things. But I do think that this idea of thinking about data collection avenues that can be useful for several years is a good way to go. And I'll actually go back to my thought about the sort of right wheel clearinghouse kind of approach where we centralize as much as possible. So there's one place to go to the North Atlantic right wheel consortium does a great job based at the New England Aquarium in terms of curating the catalog and a huge sightings database. But that's not the kind of not exactly what I'm thinking of in terms of aggregating all the data that we have, but it's also they're not set up to be that sort of quick response kind of situation. I do worry a little bit about saying, yes, here, this is a need that's identified today. Here somebody, here's a bunch of money tomorrow go and do it to the best of your ability without the scoping of the questions and how to structure the study. You may end up with data that's insufficient or my camera who was today talked about making sure we have the power to actually detect changes. And so things are set up to be actually able to detect changes is a big part of our whole first year with the WAL project is doing power analysis and encounter rates and what things we can undertake given all of that and how best to do it. So these things obviously as you all are well aware take time to set up, but I think it's a very good idea and sentiment to think about what things we can put in place to streamline it and also to be a good avenue and a good pathway to get the data out and available. Sorry, I couldn't solve it. Oh, bummer, shock stuck. Any other thoughts from our panelists? We have a robust audience still on the line about 97 participants that looks like. I'd like to ask if any of them have questions they'd like to pose to our panelists or to the presenters from today as well. I encourage participation from bone staff and also from others on the line. Oh, there so. Kate Williams. Hey, thanks everyone. This has been a great conversation. I have a question for the panel. I guess, are there particular aspects of the WAL stranding issue in relation to offshore wind that you feel like need particular sort of communication support to help address? So I work with groups that are trying to think about like, do we develop some educational material, like outreach information? And I'm trying to figure out there's so many aspects to this issue in terms of like, how do you do any proxy? Well, what are you and me is like, there's a lot of different things that you could focus educational information on to try to address parts of this issue. And I was wondering if folks have thoughts on like, what are the pieces that feel the most urgent or that you're hearing about the most in your work that people sort of need the most information on that isn't readily available or pulled together right now? Thanks. Very good question, Kate. Thanks for asking. Michael, I see your hands up. Sure. Well, I think, you know, your comment, the WAL strandings in relation to offshore wind has become a conspiracy theory that needs to be debunked. And, you know, that's, it seems as though the harder you push at such things, the more they conspire to continue. And so that's a challenge, you know, I'm not just gonna try and get political here at all, but it, when whales become a political football to take on a particular partisan agenda, we've gone down a tube that is kind of sad. And so how to, I mean, in many ways, it's so much bigger than a right whale or a humpback whale at this point. It's, we're all here in part because of all of that and the public attention and the media and so on. And how to bring some objectivity and data and sanity and the real questions of concern that we have talked about today in addition to some of these issues, that's the real challenge. Michael, any other feedback from our panelists on this? Yeah, oh, Jill, I'll just think quickly, Stacey, if I can, I think the website that Noah put up very quickly, I think, I don't know what the analytics are on it, but that kind of simple, it's one page, not complicated. Here's the issue and here's what the fishery service has determined is really good. And I know I've gotten lots of questions about, well, why aren't they all the animals knee crops needed? Why don't we know the cause of death right away? And so a little bit in there about what the process is for actually determining the cause of death would be helpful. But I think it doesn't have to be elaborate. We don't have to make a infomercial every time. So, but getting the information readily available, I think would be really helpful. And to Kate's point, I don't know exactly how to plug into that. I'm not a communications person, but I just want to make a pitch for the, for simple is fine. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be complicated. Is that Jill? Yeah, so, yeah, so there clearly are. So, so Boam is doing a number of things besides, you know, trying to put out information, like editorials, or we're trying to, we've got a lot of reach outs from, like community organizations that are having meetings to come and speak. And so we're trying to do that kind of thing, somewhat ironically, like the video and all the HRG, the paper and all that we did. I mean, everyone here knows, you can't do an analysis like that and get it peer reviewed and published in the timeframe. We happened to have it done, right? And we had, we made the video because we're like, it's going to be complicated to understand the paper, but we understood that people are interested in noise issues. So, so, so I have a place I'm going with all of this. So I think we do what we can to try to put information in the places where it will matter, because I would agree there are places, it doesn't matter what you say. There's an alternative motive, perhaps to raise these things. But there's also another part of this that is there's a lot of agency time that is spun up to address this, whether it's from an outreach perspective, responding to the many, many, many news articles and reporters calling to congressional letters and potential committee meetings and threats of litigation and all those things. And it just takes time away from all these things that we talked about for like getting the right rail strategy done and focusing in on the areas that we believe have the potential for an impact. It takes time away from that. And I think that's, this is more commentary on my part, but every so often, there's something that comes along where you do scratch your head a bit and you're like, this is not really, really not the issue to be concerned about, but yet it's going to take time, energy, money away from us making advances on the stuff that we need to get out in front of. So no real answer to it, but just sort of recognizing that cost. And I think that time spent spreads, right? So lots of folks have been spending time trying to write up things and recount it, but I think at heart, if there's a way to better get to the general public who may not understand and are concerned, I don't know if DOSITS or some sort of organization like that, but we just recognize there's the other part of this that it is about confusing the message and creating the urgency and we're not going to be able to address that. Thank you, Jill. I think that was a great audience question and I welcome others as well. It's 429, now we've got a fair bit of time left on our agenda if we want to continue, but certainly if we feel like we've exhausted the topic, we don't have to. So a few folks, just a couple more moments to see if any other questions come to folks. Again, I'll apologize. I'm not actively monitoring the chat. I continue to see the numbers going up. So if there's some robust discussion in the chat, I really do encourage folks to bring that out into the conversation as well. Scott and then Kevin. So yeah, Jill, this is a question I posed, a follow-up question I posed on the chat and I don't know if you got to see it or not, but you very kindly answered. Well, we heard today a lot has been learned about the incidents involving whales over the last 10 years. We've learned so much in a relatively short amount of time. The story changes of course with external factors as well, you know, what's impacting things. And it sounds like from what you said that if you learn something from research before leasing that indicates you should have certain stipulations in the leases that would allow you to put mitigation measures in place for instance during construction or operations, you can put those in at the time of the leasing. If new information comes up after leases have been awarded and the leases are basically paid for, are you able to go back and add those mitigations retroactively or do you have to renegotiate? How does that work? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think when we put out the right whale strategy we actually worked with our attorneys at least on the bowmen to come up with language to that effect. So it would be incorrect to say that once a lease is issued and you have your mitigations applied and contained in the cop approval that you can never go back and make an adjustment, right? So we do have the ability to do that. Now, are you gonna adjust constantly on all things? No, because there's a level of that that may have safety issues or there's a level of predictability that is important to this. But for example, we have, let's say you have a endangered species at consultation and there are triggers for that for re-initiation. And every consultation will list off what those triggers are. So if a trigger is met and we re-initiate and re-re-consult and there's an outcome of that we're going to need to go back and we're gonna need to apply them to things that have already been approved. So there is the room for that. There's also the room for us to apply mitigation and through other research or monitoring of the mitigation we find it's not terribly helpful or needed to also adaptively manage and pull that back. So that's always sort of been the case. But of course, there is a lot of thoughtfulness that goes in anytime you make a change but it is one that if it's warranted, we'll pursue it. Thank you. Thank you. Coming next to Kevin. Thank you. I guess my question is a little more on the board looking similar to a couple of last comments but to reach 30 gigawatts by 2030, it's gonna take about 2,400 turbines and vineyard wind starting to construct this summer they're gonna have at least 22, I think, vessels in a rather small area to put in their 62 turbines. So that's a lot of increased traffic. And then also I know that the Canadian wind farm industry is about to ramp up and a lot of the presentations we've seen on the right whales today have been focused just in the US but there's also gonna be a great deal of work up there. So I was wondering what the committee thought about scientific way, I mean, really the wind farm development really hasn't, I mean, the sightings developed but as Brian showed in his planning strategy at the first we're just at the very beginning. Are we doing enough? Are there other studies or things that we should be thinking about to try and get ready for what's coming down the pipe because the development's gonna be very quick and now's the time to set any additional studies up. Kevin, Doug, would you like to respond to that? Yeah, thanks for one thing pops to mind. I think the couple things on the vessels in a conversation recently with one of the developers I gathered that at least for their construction all the vessels are gonna be dynamically positioned so there's not gonna be any jack up. And I think I mentioned this that the dynamic positioning can be quite loud. So I imagine that's been taken into account but I also know that there and I don't think there's gonna be a lot of vessels out there. I just, I don't know what this, one thing that would be good to get from the developers is what the traffic is really set to be once the farms are operational. I know there's a lot of concern about increased vessel traffic to and from the actual sites once it's developed and operational. I just, I don't know how often they have to go out to the turbines and that would be a good thing to find out. I do know there's been a lot of discussion about vessel corridors and that is something we can get out ahead of. I gather there's some pretty elaborate ideas and plans for how to monitor those corridors. We did very successfully with very well's obstacle and it's not quite the same situation but we looked at the area where, we looked at whale densities, we looked at where the vessels needed to go and suggested some corridors and speeds within them.  So that's just one thought about the vessel corridors in terms of the operational phase. Bill, did you want to weigh in on that? Yes. That's how you come up with it. I did, I did. Yeah, so, yeah, on the vessel. So in the cops there, you know, there's something called the project design envelope that does describe out within a range what will be required from, you know, vessels during construction and operation, those sorts of things. I think as developers are moving further along and, you know, getting a better understanding of their needs, that's becoming clear and clear but I do think the information is there. I think some of what is also, you know, so the projects, they're coming in fast. Yes, there's no way about, you know, but it does take a while between when something is submitted, is it, is it sufficient? Have they, we're coming out right now with, we're calling, I think a cop checklist, an NOI checklist, NOI checklist. And what that basically means is in order for your cop application to be deemed sufficient, here's everything you have to have in there. And if you have everything in there in a way that we believe is sufficient, then we'll move to the notice of intent, which is the NOI, which starts your NIVA process. So, and what we've seen is some of these cop applications come in in various forms. Some are really mature and some are sort of still learning as they go. So there is a period of time was my point between when you get something submitted and even the ones we have right now, until things are built out, there's also supply chain issues, are there sufficient vessels available? So there, you know, I feel the pressure for sure, but there is a wider space between as these things will be built out than what we actually might feel at first. So time to adapt, time to sort of adjust and change. Our environmental studies program, yes, we do go through in order for it to be a fair and competitive process. We do look three years out and we update it every year. We do solicit input from stakeholders. There's a call that goes out once a year, although anytime anybody can certainly reach out. So that helps us a little bit get ahead, but there's only so much funding available for that. So I don't know what the exact statistic would be, but I would sort of pull out that of all the ideas that go in, we're probably able to maybe fund 25% of the ideas that come in in a given year. So we look for partners all the time, partners, partners, and I think too, we're looking at the regional wildlife, I kept upset RWSE a few times, but the regional wildlife science collaborative, I think is the right word. They're coming out with a research plan. We're gonna try to link with that. We work a lot with DOE to try to get out in front of, okay, maybe there's some technology development or the vessel quieting and working with ports. One of the things that we may be doing with DOE is a prize competition or similar to get better quieting technology for impact pile driving. So there's lots of like tendrils you're putting out to try to be more proactive and try to get out in front. And I personally believe too, when it comes to like the right whales that we really need to lean as much as we can in predictive tools and trying to get better tools so we can maybe and ideally in real time, try to get a better educated guess of where they may be showing up versus reacting once they're there when impacts can potentially happen. So I am rambling a little bit, but there are ways for us to get out in front of things, but it is big for sure in the partnerships and the feedback that we get from things like this are super helpful for us to be sure we're thinking of all the different things we need to be. I'll give one last opportunity for any additional thoughts or questions. And then I'll ask for each of our panelists maybe just to provide one or two concluding thoughts. And then I will turn to our co-chairs and we will wrap up. So any other hands? Last chance. I mean, the folks on the line want to weigh in or ask a question. I think our panelists are perhaps largely off the hook then. Let me just ask them each maybe if they have sort of one or two takeaways, one or two things they want us to take away or that they want the group to make sure we get from this meeting. And I'll start, maybe I can start with Doug and then Anne Francine and then Michael. Yeah, I don't know that I have a lot that hasn't already been said, Stacey, but thanks for the opportunity. I think that a huge part of this obviously is a public relations issue on the strandings and the wind. We've talked about a lot of priorities and a lot of things that we really like to know, but we know that there's no connection between the two. And so I think it is a PR issue I saw that somebody put in the chat that Erica did a Instagram thing, so that's great. I mean, I think those things can go a long way. So, but beyond that, no, I don't think I have anything else. I appreciate the conversation and the invitation. Thanks, Stacey. Absolutely, thank you, Doug. Anne, anything you'd like to add? Other than this has been very valuable and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to learn a lot. What I'm hoping is that down the line, it will be possible for anybody who's interested in this area to basically see what life is like for one of these animals moving through the industrial activities that we have going on because I think that's really what's missing from this whole debate about the stranded whales is that people don't really, in their minds, picture what's happening to these animals as they move about in their environment. So anything we can do to do a better job of making that accessible to them would be fantastic. Wonderful feedback, thank you. Francine. Yeah, thanks. And I tell them other things for the invitation and I've really appreciated the discussion. Trying to think of something. I think the more that we can do, and again, looking past this issue and to construction operation, I think the more that we can do to communicate and also be doing the work to be reducing impacts as much as we can at the source, be it vessel strike, be it noise reduction, quieting, be it relying on new monitoring technologies and we can really show that that's how this industry is moving forward. And then also that when monitoring the heck out of it, we have a good mechanism to use that monitoring based on such a just cost, that continually reduce risk. I think that's really the key for this industry to move forward as practically as it needs to do and with products upon them. And obviously, obviously we'll use that and do that if it's in large part doing that already. But even moments like this are helpful because they shed light on some issues that maybe need a little bit more of our attention and so hopefully we can take what's been discussed here and clean that up a little bit on some of that. Yeah, thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts. And last but certainly not least, Michael. Well, first thanks so much for the invitation. It's been interesting and I'm sorry, I've been hobbying my horse a bit, but just to reiterate, those dead whales are really informative and we can pay more to get more in terms of data. That being said, the sublethal piece is just as important and it's so much more cryptic and it's hard to get to, but we have to acknowledge that the need to be nice to these guys, to be nice to the habitat. Well, I know I speak on behalf of myself as well as the Coase and members when I thank each of you and each of our presenters today for your time and your thoughtfulness and engaging on the topic. What a lot of folks on the line don't know is that we pulled several of these people together with relatively short notice and we're really grateful and appreciative for your time and recognizing the importance of this discussion. Also wanna thank several other folks that have been willing to join the line that maybe haven't had an opportunity to speak up as much really grateful to have the commissioners from the US Marine Mammal Commission on the line as well and several of the bone staff and other folks that have joined us really appreciate everybody's time and thoughtfulness today. I wanna give our COSA co-chairs an opportunity to have sort of the last word as it relates to today's discussion and then I'll quickly talk a bit about tomorrow's agenda before adjourning the meeting. So Scott, Rod, I'll turn it over to each of you. Well, thanks, Stacy. And let me echo that special thanks to our panelists. You really did a great job for us today and we realized for many of you it was on quite short notice and we appreciate your participation in the entire day's activities. You brought a lot to the table. Also want to thank our presenters from Marine Mammals Commission from OAH and of course, very, very informative. And a special thanks to our new director at Bohm who spent some time with us. That was, I thought, a pretty enlightening discussion and we appreciate her taking time out of her schedule to visit with us. So thanks to all of you who sat in with us today. Just one other thing to keep on in our minds here and I guess this is a special challenge for you, Jill, looking down the road. You're gonna learn a lot about interactions with sound and ships and entanglements and so forth as you expand your wind program. But let's not forget, you may have a couple of the new pr