January 17, 2020 — JARED HUFFMAN: All right. Well, thank you for that introduction. And thanks to both CSIS and the Stephenson Foundation for convening such an important conversation.
As your morning keynote, my job is to kind of get things started, make sure everybody’s awake and alert and engaged. I could – I could do that, I guess, by leading us in some yoga or tai chi – (laughter) – but I thought I’d do something even more invigorating: tell you a little bit about the great congressional district that I represent. (Laughter.) I hope you will indulge that.
Members of Congress do this. They brag about their district, and sometimes they believe the things that they say. And in my case, how could you not? I represent a third of the California coast, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, and it is a spectacular and amazing place. The iconic ocean views, the marine fisheries that support working waterfronts from Sausalito to Crescent City. I’ve got amazing pristine rivers where you’ll find me fishing for salmon and steelhead every chance I get; incredible landscapes that include old-growth redwood forest, oak woodlands, some of the finest wine country in the entire world. And if you’re into this sort of thing, I’m told that the best cannabis in America is grown right in the heart of my district, so. (Laughter.) Probably a subject for a different conference.
They won’t let me spend my entire time in this speech bragging about my district, but I do want you to know that if you need more information on where to have your next vacation we’ve got a little bit of a ringer here at CSIS. The vice president of the organization for congressional and governmental affairs is Louis Lauter. He is a native of Marin County. And if you want some information on where to take your next vacation, talk to Louis. Or if you need to be hooked up with that cannabis, talk to Louis. (Laughter.) Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Getting back to our regular scheduled program, I am here today in my role as the chair of the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife. And I want to talk to you about an issue that we’ve been investigating in my subcommittee that I think has significant global implications for the security of our country, and that issue is illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Illegal, unreported, unregulated: we refer to this as IUU fishing. So when I use that term “IUU fishing,” that’s what I’m talking about this morning.
It might surprise some of you to learn that my little environmental Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife has jurisdiction over several topics, I believe, with implications for international and security issues. I see those implications in each part of my subcommittee’s title, starting with water.
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