16 U.S.C. § 2804 — Functions and powers of Secretaries

(a) Mandatory functions. In implementing the Plan, the Secretaries must (1) provide interested people advisory, educational, and technical assistance, including training, while avoiding duplication of similar Federal or State assistance as much as practicable; (2) consult and cooperate with interested people, Federal and State agencies, and regional fishery councils under section 1852; (3) encourage aquaculture technology for restoring and improving publicly owned fish and shellfish stocks, including work by private nonprofits, and for developing private commercial aquaculture; and (4) issue regulations needed to carry out the Plan. (b) Optional functions. They may (1) assess biological, technical, and economic feasibility by (A) testing systems and, if needed, building, operating, and maintaining developmental facilities to test laboratory results and (B) conducting other needed tests or analyses; (2) develop methods to improve aquatic-species seed stocks; and (3) conduct other tests, analyses, or actions they consider needed or appropriate. (c)(1) The Secretaries must collect and analyze scientific, technical, legal, and economic aquaculture information, including acreage, water use, production, marketing, culture methods, and related matters. The Secretary must (i) establish an Agriculture Department National Aquaculture Information Center to store information generated under (A) and other chapter provisions and provide it to the public on request; (ii) arrange foreign information exchanges and support translation; and (iii) study Federal-program access by United States aquaculture and report findings to Congress by December 31, 1986. Commerce must study and report by December 31, 1987, whether commercial aquaculture products could harm existing capture fisheries through competition, assess effects by species and region, and recommend remedies. Interior, consulting Commerce, must study and report by that date the exotic species introduced into United States waters through aquaculture and potential benefits and impacts. (2) Production information submitted under (1)(A) is confidential and may be disclosed only under court order; the Secretaries must preserve confidentiality. They may publish aggregate or summary information that does not directly or indirectly reveal a submitter’s identity, business transactions, or trade secrets. (d) The Secretary, through the coordinating group and consulting Commerce and Interior, must every two years submit a report on United States aquaculture. It must describe and evaluate Plan actions during the period, explain Plan revisions, and include other appropriate comments and recommendations. The report was due no later than February 1, 1988.