The Council is very interested in hearing your opinions and comments, and in fostering an open and welcoming environment for all persons to provide comment on fishery management matters on the Council’s agenda. Input from oral and written comments is exceedingly valuable to the Council process, to understand the diversity of perspectives on potential Council action. This policy sets out the current practice for public comment at the Council, the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and Advisory Panel (AP), and for other Council advisory groups. The Council will periodically review and make adjustments to this process in order to allow broad access to the public to provide their comments, while ensuring that members have sufficient opportunity to read and absorb the input provided, and that throughout, we are able to maintain the conventions of respectful discourse.
All names, affiliations, comments, testimony, and supplementary attachments must be truthful. Section 307(1)(I) of the MSA prohibits any person “to knowingly and willfully submit to a Council, the Secretary, or the Governor of a State, false information … regarding any matter that the Council, Secretary, or Governor is considering in the course of carrying out this Act.”
Written comment period for an upcoming Council meeting
The comment period will usually begin about 3 weeks before the start of the Council’s meeting, once the agenda is settled and the larger analytical documents in support of Council actions (initial review and final action documents) have been posted. The dates of the comment period will be announced on the meeting’s eAgenda, and the comment period usually closes at 12pm Alaska time on the Friday before the meeting. The dates are designed to provide a balance between maximizing the opportunity for the public to digest and comment on staff documents for the upcoming meeting, and allowing an opportunity for Council, SSC, and Advisory Panel members and the public to read through and consider all the written comments before the meeting begins. Written comments on an upcoming Council action must be submitted during the open comment period and by the announced deadline, or in conjunction with oral testimony (see section below).
Written comments on an agenda item for an upcoming Council meeting are submitted through our online public comment portal that is part of the eAgenda for the meeting. The online public commenting feature was created to increase openness, transparency, and citizen participation in Council meetings. Only one written comment is allowed per agenda item per person, except that an individual may submit a comment on behalf of themself as an individual, and also be the person who submits their organization’s written comment letter. The current size limit for files included as attachments on the eAgenda is 25MB. If the file is too big to attach, please include a link to the file in your comment.
When a comment is received from a Federal, State, or international fishery agency, it is the practice of the Council to post that written comment as an attachment to the eAgenda rather than as a comment within the comment portal. Similarly, the Council allows these agencies an opportunity to make their oral comments outside of the constraints of public testimony.
Comments submitted to the Council/AP eAgenda or the SSC eAgenda will not be visible on the online portal until the comment deadline has ended, in order to minimize the opportunity for comments on comments, and disrespectful personal attacks. This is different from comments submitted to committee or Plan Team agendas, which are normally visible as soon as they come in.
Comments intended for the Council meeting should not be emailed to individual staff members. When comments are mistakenly emailed to staff, staff will work with the commenter to direct them to resubmit the comment as intended through the eAgenda portal, and may provide technical assistance when needed. Emailing a comment to Council staff does not constitute submission of the comment for the official Council meeting record. If a public comment is submitted to the Council via the postal service by regular mail rather than electronically through the eAgenda, Council staff will input the comment to the online portal.
Members of the public may email comments directly to individual Council members, however these are not included as part of the public meeting record unless they are also submitted through the formal eAgenda, or if a Council member references the specific communication during deliberation and submits it to the record. We want all information that is relevant to the Council’s action to be widely available to all Council members and the public.
All comments submitted to the Council/AP and SSC eAgendas are reviewed by Council staff. If you submitted your comment shortly before the comment deadline, it may not be visible immediately while Council staff conduct their review. While in most cases, review is primarily to ensure that comments are appropriately categorized by agenda item, there have been instances in the past of profanity or threats being included among the comments, which are at odds with the Council’s policy of maintaining a respectful and open environment; this especially is what Council staff are screening for. We want to publish your comments, but we expect conversations to follow the conventions of polite discourse. Therefore, we will not post comments that:
- Contain vulgar language, personal attacks of any kind, or offensive terms that target protected classes.
- Promote services or products (non-commercial links that are relevant to the agenda item are acceptable).
- Non-fisheries-related and far off-topic (a rare situation; primarily those that accidentally include sensitive personal information such as credit card or social security numbers. Comments that are simply not topical to an immediate Council action will continue to be included under the ‘staff tasking’ agenda item.)
We use a profanity filter to mask profanity and vulgar language, but otherwise we will not edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above, or it will be removed.
Once the written comment period has ended, a member of the public wanting to submit a written comment or other supplemental material may only do so in conjunction with giving public testimony, either in-person or online, during that agenda item.
Oral testimony during the Council meeting
If you want to give oral testimony on an agenda item, you must sign up on the eAgenda before the staff and advisory group reports are completed for that agenda item. The signups for oral testimony will open for all agenda items once each meeting begins, and the chair of the meeting will generally remind the public of upcoming deadlines for signing up for oral testimony on an agenda item. You can indicate on the signup form whether you will testify in person or remotely. If remote, either connect to the meeting through Zoom, or use the call-in number provided. If you are calling in from a phone line, please list the number from which you will be calling, so our administrative staff can give you access when it is your turn to speak. You may need to press *6 to unmute yourself as well.
If you are having trouble at any point in this process, you can email our admin team at support@npfmc.org.
The SSC, Advisory Panel, and Council all have established time limits for oral testimony, and each person may only testify once per agenda item, regardless of whether they have multiple representations. Additionally, only one “Organization” testimony is permitted per organization. Additional speakers from the same organization must register as Individuals. In the SSC, the time limit is generally 5 minutes per person, and in the Council and AP, a person representing themselves or a company generally has 3 minutes, while a person or persons representing an organization or association generally has 6 minutes to provide their testimony. Please note, while this is the Council’s standard practice, there may be times when the Chair must impose a shorter time limit per testifier for a particular agenda item, in order to provide everyone the opportunity to speak during the time allotted for the meeting.
The timer will not begin until the testifier has had an opportunity to introduce themselves and their affiliation, and there will be an onscreen visual to show when the time limit is approaching. The standard practice is for SSC, AP, or Council members to have the opportunity to ask questions after the testifier has completed their testimony; if you do not wish to receive questions, there is a box you can check on the signup form on the eAgenda.
During the process to sign up on the eAgenda to provide oral testimony, there is an option to attach written material – for example, a letter or a powerpoint slide (up to a maximum size limit of 25MB). All written supplementary materials must be uploaded by the testifier through the eAgenda testimony signup form at the time of signup. If you encounter a difficulty, contact staff for technical assistance (support@npfmc.org), but staff will not routinely accept or upload materials submitted by email.
A written attachment can be projected by staff from the eAgenda during testimony as a visual aid, if the testifier requests staff to do so, but regardless, the testifier should also refer to the attachment so that Council members and the public can know to pull it up and follow along as appropriate. If a testifier attaches written material to their signup but does not give oral testimony, the attachment will be removed from the eAgenda.
The list of testifiers is visible on the eAgenda, and if you refresh the screen, you will be able to see who has testified already and estimate when the Chair will get to you in the list. If you are out of the room when the Chair calls your name, the Chair may go through the list of missed names once before closing public testimony.
Council Committees and other Advisory Groups
The Council has established a policy that all Council committees will accept written comments. The instructions for submitting comments will be provided on the meeting agenda or in the Federal Register notice, and in most cases will direct the public to submit comments through the Committee eAgenda’s online commenting portal. Depending on the Committee’s Terms of Reference and the discretion of the Chair, the Committee may or may not allow opportunities for oral testimony. Council staff will reference whether comments were submitted to the Committee in the report, for the awareness of the Council.
The Council has also requested that out-of-cycle written comments submitted to the Council on IFQ and charter halibut management issues be included for review under the staff tasking agenda item when they are submitted. If the Council takes no action, these should automatically be compiled for review by the relevant committees at their next meeting. This also includes written comments that are submitted in person by testifiers during staff tasking. Please email support@npfmc.org if you have questions.
Last updated August 2026