Staff proposes EFP process changes to speed innovation and better link experiments to regulation

At the advisory briefing on Special Project One, council staff presented a structured set of options to improve the council’s role in reviewing and recommending exempted fishing permits (EFPs), which staff said are an important tool for testing innovations and building adaptive capacity.

Katie Westfall, who led the EFP portion of the briefing, summarized interviews with West Coast NMFS, council and state staff, current and former EFP applicants and other experts. She reported recurring challenges: confusing process roles and guidance for applicants, heavy workloads at NMFS and council offices, variable timelines that can prevent applicants from fishing in the season they need, inconsistent reporting formats and delays in moving EFP results into regulatory change.

To address those problems, staff proposed a tiered menu: high‑impact/low‑effort items such as creating clear EFP materials for applicants, prioritizing applicants likely to actively use EFPs, aligning council research priorities with EFP opportunities, encouraging bundling or multi‑year endorsements, standardizing initial application review, and allowing a one‑meeting endorsement pathway for certain EFPs. Staff also proposed moderate‑effort steps including technical updates to Council Operating Procedures, criteria to accept out‑of‑window EFPs, front‑loading environmental analyses (NEPA/ESA) where appropriate, standardized reporting templates and data intake protocols, checkpoint schedules to review EFP outcomes, and risk/uncertainty assessment templates.

"We identified some confusion about the process and roles," Katie said, noting that timelines vary with complexity and staff availability and that long pathways from EFP to regulatory change discourage applicants. She urged advisory bodies to prioritize which EFP actions would provide the biggest return for limited staff resources and suggested phasing more resource‑intensive options.

Staff said next steps include advisory body review and focused selection of priority actions to develop further for the September meeting; some COP changes could be considered as early as June 2026 if the council requests them.