World Aquaculture December 2019

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2019 29 Tom and I created the concept for the Centers and the original specific language we drafted was included verbatim in the final FarmBill. To kickstart funding for aquaculture research and funding for the Regional Centers, I brokered a deal within USDA that paid for a sorely needed ($1 million) fence around the 400+ acre U.S. National Arboretum located in the District of Columbia, then under the jurisdiction of the ARS. The quid pro quo was support for funding of the new Special Research program for aquaculture in CSRS, now part of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and funding for the Regional Centers. The $1 million invested in that fence has by now translated into over $150 million spent on R&D in aquaculture. The fence around the National Arboretum still stands and I chuckle each time I drive by. Meryl Broussard and I crafted a mission statement for the Centers and took to the road to sell the concept to USDA research partners in the land-grant community. The private sector, extension and all research facilities in land-grant, Sea Grant or other research institutions were eligible to participate in projects sponsored by the Centers. The only limitation was that USDA channels for administration and contracting would be used. The Regional Centers now engage scientists and extension specialists in key institutions in government laboratories and in colleges and universities, regardless of the salinity in their local waters, and the private sector sits at the table helping to formulating R&D priorities. This was a cutting-edge concept in those days and was accepted only reluctantly by some institutions. Sound Foundations of National Aquaculture Policy The Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture developed the first National Aquaculture Plan and has, by now, coordinated Federal- wide activities for some 40 years. This vital ongoing partnership among key agencies is not likely to go away. Dennis Prager, then Deputy Director of OSTP in the White House and me, fearing that the parent institution of JSA, the Federal Coordinating Council on Science, Engineering and Technology (FCCSET), might disappear depending on the whims of changing administrations, added the following provision to the National Aquaculture Act of 1980: If at any time after the date of the enactment of this Act, the functions of the Federal Council are by executive action terminated or transferred to an agency other than the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the coordinating group shall carry out its purpose under the direction of the Director. In that event, the recommendations of the coordinating group referred to in subsection (b)(6) and the reports required under subsection (c) shall be made to the Director. In other words, if JSA’s parent organization FCCSET disappeared, JSAwould report directly to the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. There was precedent for this angst — Jimmy Carter disbanded FCCSET when it was operating under the National Science Foundation (NSF) and then by Executive Order recreated it under OSTP. The foundation created by the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 is solid and was poured by the dedicated efforts of a lot of dedicated individuals so many years ago, including Tom Adams (U.S. Congress), Hon. Bob Bergland (Secretary of Agriculture), Hon. Rupert Cutler (Asst. Secretary, USDA), Jan Dill (the Oceanic Institute), Ben Drucker (NMFS), Bob Foster (Agriculture Appropriations Committee, U.S. House of Representatives), Mark Freeman (Catfish Farmers of America), Clair Idyll (NOAA), Mark E. Keenum (Office of U.S. Senator Thad Cochran), George Lockwood (Monterey Abalone Farms), Chip Morgan (Delta Council), Hyde Murray (Farm Bureau), Dennis Prager (OSTP), Bob Putz (U.S. Fish andWildlife Service), R. Dennis Rouse (Dean, College of Agriculture, Auburn University), Bob Schleser (Bodega Bay Marine Research Laboratory), Rudi Schmittou (Auburn University), Bob Stevens (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Dave Wallace (NOAA) and BobWildman (Sea Grant). Above all, I was and remain grateful for the partnership and strong friendship Meryl Broussard and I formed upon his arrival in USDA in the mid-1980s. During our annual lunches over the almost 30 years since I left USDA, he and I would dissolve with laughter over shared memories and stories of those early years. I came to cherish his friendship and trust, despite his admission that his supervisor told him that the only reason he was hired was to “report on what I was up to.” Meryl became the best example of what a public servant should and could be. The pocket veto of National Aquaculture Act of 1978 launched a flurry of activities and a scramble to find a workable pathway toward a national policy on aquaculture development in the United States. It helped give birth to a family of aquaculture programs and support activities across many agencies of the federal government and stirred interest in many individual states to do likewise. Happy 40th birthday! Notes Bille Hougart is a former Aquaculture Coordinator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and former Assistant Director of the Science and Education Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture. He worked for the Oceanic Institute in Hawaii and several federal agencies before his retirement. He can be reached at bhougart@hotmail.com 1 A Pocket Veto of a bill occurs if the president neither signs nor vetoes a bill within ten days of receiving it and the Congress does not reconvene within the 10-day period. He “puts the bill in his pocket” and doesn’t act on it. 2 Former naval officer and oceanographer, explorer and expert in marine policy. In 1961, Walsh and Jacques Piccard drove bathyscaphe Trieste to the deepest point in the world’s oceans—the Mariana Trench. The pocket veto of National Aquaculture Act of 1978 launched a flurry of activities and a scramble to find a workable pathway toward a national policy on aquaculture development in the United States. It helped give birth to a family of aquaculture programs and support activities across many agencies of the federal government and stirred interest in many individual states to do likewise. Happy 40th birthday!