Are there any updates to these recommendations? Is that what this other additional report will provide?

Litigation should be the last resort, not the first resort.

I thought it was the most notable in your funding request, that, of all the funding requests, it represented the greatest increase of $100 million.

Do you think that your recommendations, if fully implemented, would be able to ease the crisis in fisheries management that we have today, especially with this litigation-based management?

There should be a sense of urgency about this, because we need to turn this agency around.

We certainly want to be involved in every way possible to ensure that we proceed in a timely fashion.

I think it's a real surprise that the judgment exceeded this settlement in a very restrictive way.

I hope we can create a national program with a national approach that will reassure the industries that are directly affected by these kinds of decisions.

I think that we have to determine what will best work in terms of restructuring the systems within the agency

I think this hearing is most appropriate and fortuitously comes at a critical juncture, particularly in regards to the New England groundfish crisis.

We seem to be driven by litigation and judicial-based remedies and decisions. This is really a failure of the system at all levels.

We obviously have to reverse this destructive trend toward litigation which is proliferating.

Something has gone terribly wrong in our fisheries management and I hope today that we will be able to provide some recommendations that will visibly improve fisheries management.

I certainly wouldn't suggest that it's working in the New England groundfish industry.

I hope the government will commit to filing an appeal on behalf of the industry, because this ruling represents devastating consequences for the groundfish industry in New England.

Fisheries management needs an overhaul of major proportions here.

I want to welcome you, Dr. Hogarth, and the rest of the witnesses to this critical hearing.

It is my judgment that we do need to have a statutory basis for the office to clarify the lines of authority.