Ocean resources: Ocean Protection Council: sustainable seafood.

The California Ocean Protection Act establishes the Ocean Protection Council in state government. Existing law requires the council to develop and implement a specified voluntary sustainable seafood promotion program. The program would, among other things, consist of a protocol, which is required to be developed in a transparent process and adopted by the council in a public meeting, to guide entities on how to be independently certified to internationally accepted standards for sustainable seafood, as defined, a marketing assistance program, and a competitive grant and loan program. It would prohibit seafood produced through aquaculture or fish farming from being certified as sustainable under these provisions until nationally or internationally accepted sustainability standards have been developed and implemented. The Administrative Procedure Act generally sets forth the requirements for the adoption, publication, review, and implementation of regulations by state agencies. This bill would provide that the voluntary sustainable seafood program, each component of the program, and actions taken by the council to implement the program are not regulations for the purposes of the Administrative Procedure Act. The bill would expressly require that any substantive amendments or revisions to the protocol be developed in a transparent process and adopted by the council in a public meeting.