U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus, released a statement after her legislation, the Bolstering Long-Term Understanding and Exploration of the Great Lakes, Oceans, Bays, and Estuaries Act, or the BLUE GLOBE Act, advanced one step closer to becoming law. Last week, the Senate passed by voice vote Sen. Murkowski’s motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 4521, the United States Innovation and Competition Act, to include her BLUE GLOBE Act in the final conference report.
Sen. Murkowski motioned to instruct conferees to include the BLUE GLOBE Act passed on the senate floor:
The legislation accelerates technology innovation, promotes a stronger maritime workforce, and bolsters the blue economy. The BLUE GLOBE Act would direct existing federal ocean-focused interagency committees to improve domestic and international coordination and enhance data management and accessibility, and accelerate ocean data and monitoring innovation by giving NOAA Cooperative Institutes a stronger focus on technology advancement.
The bill creates a new ocean innovation prize, and tasks the National Academy of Sciences with assessing the potential for an Advanced Research Project Agency–Oceans (ARPA-O). The legislation would also add innovative technology components to the 2020 NDAA’s Maritime SAFE Act to better address Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. This measure follows on work of the Oceans Caucus to support the passage of four international agreements aimed at combatting IUU fishing and the related enabling legislation.
The BLUE GLOBE Act was first introduced in the last Congress and was approved by the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in July 2020.
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