16 U.S.C. § 1421a — Determination; data collection and dissemination

(a) Determination for release. After allowing public review and comment, the Secretary must consult the Secretary of the Interior, the Marine Mammal Commission, and knowledgeable people in marine science, marine mammal science, veterinary and husbandry practices, and conservation, including stranding network participants. The Secretary must then develop objective guidance for deciding when a rehabilitated marine mammal can be released into the wild. (b) Collection. In consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary must periodically collect and update existing information about: (1) procedures for rescuing and rehabilitating stranded or entangled marine mammals, including species-by-species criteria used by network participants for deciding when an animal can return to the wild, and procedures for collecting, preserving, labeling, and transporting tissues for physical, chemical, and biological analysis; (2) relevant scientific literature on marine mammal health, disease, and rehabilitation; (3) strandings and entanglements, including unusual mortality events, compiled and analyzed by stranding region to track species, numbers, conditions, and causes of illness and death and compare those causes with physical, chemical, and biological environmental factors; and (4) other life-history and reference-level information, including tissue analyses. (c) Information required to be submitted and collected. (1) After each stranding or entanglement response, the Secretary must collect information, including from responding NOAA staff, and must require each responding stranding network participant to submit to the NOAA Administrator or the Fish and Wildlife Service Director: (A) event data, including NOAA Forms 89-864 and 89-878, successor forms, or comparable information in the format required by the Fish and Wildlife Service for species under its authority; (B) available supplemental information, including (i) weather and tides, (ii) offshore human, predator, or prey activity, (iii) measurements of the animal, (iv) behavior, (v) health assessments, (vi) life-history samples, and (vii) stomach and intestinal contents; and (C) available laboratory tissue-analysis data and results, including (i) histopathology, (ii) toxicology, (iii) microbiology, (iv) virology, and (v) parasitology. (2) A participant must submit the data in (A) within 30 days after the response; the compiled data in (B) within 30 days after it becomes available to the participant; and the compiled data in (C) within 30 days after the laboratory reports its analysis to the participant. (3) Acting through the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and consulting the stranding network and the General Services Administration's Office of Evaluation Sciences, the Secretary must establish an online system for efficient, timely submission of this information. (d) Availability of data. (1) The Secretary must create a program making information, including data and metadata collected under (b)(3), (b)(4), and (c), available to researchers, network participants, and the public: (A) to improve real-time coordination across places and between coordinators; (B) to identify and quickly share possible public-health risks; (C) to support integrated research across fields; (D) to support peer-reviewed publications; (E) to put regional data into one national database for later analysis; and (F) for education and outreach. (2) The Secretary must ensure that data and metadata collected under (c) by NOAA or Fish and Wildlife Service staff who responded directly are public through Health MAP and the Observation System within 30 days after the Secretary collects, receives, or is told about them. Data collected by a participant who responded directly must be public through those systems two years after submission under (c). (3)(A) The Secretary may release participant data earlier if the participant gives a written release. (B) The Secretary may withhold data longer if a related law-enforcement or legal action exists. (e) Standards. In consultation with the marine mammal stranding community, the Secretary must make public guidance on uniform data and metadata standards so the information can be archived in a form the public can readily access and understand through Health MAP and the Observation System, and must periodically update the guidance. (f) Management policy. Working with regional stranding networks, the Secretary must develop and periodically update a data-management and public-outreach collaboration policy for stranding and entanglement events. (g) Authorship agreements and acknowledgment policy. Acting through the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, the Secretary must include authorship agreements or other acknowledgment considerations for public use of data, as the Secretary decides. (h) Savings clause. The Secretary may not require research data that subsection (c) does not describe.