16 U.S.C. § 1826k — Equivalent conservation measures

(a) Identification. (1) The Secretary must identify and list in the section 1826h report—(A) a nation if, during the preceding 3 years, one of its vessels fished on the high seas or in any nation’s exclusive economic zone and caused bycatch of a protected living marine resource, and the vessel’s flag state has not adopted, carried out, and enforced a program designed to end or reduce that bycatch that is as effective as the United States program, considering different conditions; and (B) a nation if, during that period, one of its vessels fished on the high seas or in another nation’s exclusive economic zone targeting or incidentally catching sharks, and the flag state has not adopted, carried out, and enforced a shark-conservation program as effective as the United States program, including a ban on removing any shark fin, including the tail, before landing the shark in port. (2) The Secretary must identify a nation whenever there is enough information. (b) Consultation and negotiation. The Secretary of State, consulting the Secretary, must as soon as practicable (1) notify the President and nations engaged in, or having vessels engaged in, the activities in subsection (a) about this Act; (2) start discussions with all such foreign nations to enter bilateral and multilateral treaties protecting the species and addressing underlying failures or gaps that may have caused the identification; and (3) begin amending existing treaties protecting and conserving those species to make them consistent with this section’s purposes and policies. (c) Conservation certification. (1) The Secretary must establish a process consistent with subchapter II of chapter 5 of title 5 to decide whether an identified harvesting nation has provided proof that it adopted a comparable conservation program and, for pelagic longline fishing, mandatory circle hooks, careful handling and release equipment, and training and observer programs; and whether it adopted a management plan requiring species-specific data collection for international stock assessments and conservation enforcement. (2) The process must give the public and the nation notice and a chance to comment. (3) By January 31, 2007, and every two years after that, the Secretary must certify to Congress whether each nation supplied that proof and established that plan. (4) The Secretary may authorize imports from a negatively certified nation shipment by shipment, shipper by shipper, or otherwise, if the imports were harvested without bycatch of a protected marine species, or with practices comparable to United States practices, considering different conditions, that collect species-specific data usable for international and regional stock assessments and conservation. (5) Section 1826a(a) and section 1826a(b)(3) and (4) apply to a negatively certified nation, but not to a positively certified nation. (d) International cooperation and assistance. To the greatest extent possible under existing authority and available funds, the Secretary must (1) assist identified nations and organizations of which they are members in qualifying for certification; (2) conduct appropriate cooperative research on species statistics and improved harvesting; (3) encourage and facilitate suitable technology transfer; and (4) help design and carry out suitable harvesting plans. (e) Protected living marine resource defined. “Protected living marine resource” means, except for paragraph (2), nontarget fish, sea turtles, or marine mammals protected by United States law or international agreement, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, Endangered Species Act of 1973, Shark Finning Prohibition Act, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora done at Washington on March 3, 1973. It does not include species, other than sharks, managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act, or an international fishery-management agreement. This section does not otherwise define the quoted names. (f) Authorization of appropriations. Congress may appropriate whatever sums are necessary for the Secretary to carry out this section for fiscal years 2007 through 2013.