This strikes a balance between preserving traditional cultural fishing in these areas and the overall intent to prevent large scale commercial fishing of these billfish.

I applaud you for hosting this hearing.

It would be consistent with preventing shark finning.

Thank you, Chairman Lamborn and Ranking Member Huffman, for holding this hearing today.

The main goal of this fix is to ensure protection against shark finning, much like the other bills that you have here today.

I want to thank all those who helped provide input on this legislation, I'd like to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing and I'd like to thank Representative Lieu and the other co-sponsors of H.R. 5248.

H.R. 4528 clarifies that the exemption for these areas allows the sale of billfish caught by U.S. fishing vessels.

Shark conservation and ending the global shark fin trade have long been top priorities of mine.

I am proud that while I was a California assemblyman, I led the effort to ban the buying and selling of shark fins in the state of California.

H.R. 1456, The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act, would build on the leadership of these states and companies to make it illegal to buy and sell shark fins in the United States.

The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act is a strong, bipartisan piece of legislation with over 230 co-sponsors, including every Democrat and a number of Republicans on this Committee.

Ultimately, your budget, Admiral, included a $1.7 billion increase over the Fiscal Year 2017 enacted level.

the Coast Guard needs at least a 5 percent annualized increase in its budget for maintenance

We need to look no further than the last hurricane season to see the exceptional work that 56,000 Active Duty Reserve and civilians, and 31,000 Auxiliary volunteers did when the Nation needed them.

The Coast Guard served as the Federal on-scene coordinator for that disaster and is well aware of the cost of that mess and the ongoing consequences.

the 2019 budget for the Coast Guard under the revised or elevated caps provides the Coast Guard a tremendous level of support.

The Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) will be the workhorse of the Coast Guard's offshore fleet for decades to come.

Taiwan's success is a potent rebuttal to authoritarian, revisionist powers.