All right. So good morning. My name is carried away and I am an environmental policy senior and today I'm going to be outlining for you all a proposal for a small-scale agriculture farm and educational outreach project. So my area of interest for this is going to be boring Massachusetts, which is located on the southern part of keep college. And so my statement of need, so why exactly does this project need to happen? So every year we have around 5 million tourists come to Cape Cod every year end. They are spending a lot of money when they're here mostly on restaurants. And a lot of restaurants are large suppliers of shellfish, are consumers of shellfish rather, and they tourists that come, they also are spending a lot of time on beach and water quality is very, very important for these speeches to stay open and for people to continue to come back to them. And shellfish in particular, I'm gonna focus on oysters play a major role in keeping our coastal waters clean. And recent data has suggested that there is a rapid decline in shellfish populations over the past ten years or so. And this could be attributed largely to overharvesting both commercially and residentially. People just going and taking more than they're supposed to. And this could be due to a lack of education about shellfish and how important they are to our coastal communities as well as to our economy. Because they're very stimulating for our economy, both restaurant wise and for people coming to visit. And this, it could also be because there's a relaxed enforcement with our regulations. A lot of times you're not going to get into much trouble, especially around here. You're gonna get a slap on the wrist if you don't have your license on you or told to put them back, but there's no major hefty fines that I have found at least. So it's going to have people are less likely want to comply with the regulations set in place for shallow fishing just because there's little repercussion. So why not? So our aim with this proposal is to receive funding to help mitigate impacts and educate the public. And so we're asking for the funds for all of this first year, the startup costs. So the outcomes, our aim is for a 10% increase in our native shellfish populations over the course of ten years. So in particular, oysters. And we're also hoping to see water quality improvements. And we're aiming for 25% over the course of 15 years. We would like to also see a 50% increase in compliance amongst license holders as well. Alice, because consistent interest in educational programs and volunteer opportunities that we're going to be offering or the community. So a few of our partners, THE town of boring, where we're going to be implementing this project would be, and in particular, the National Resource department as well as the Marine and shellfish division within the National Resource department, which they will help us with kind of a little bit of recordkeeping and compliance numbers. And they're gonna be able to hopefully tell us if there has been an increasing reliance, decreasing compliance, or if there has been no change in compliance and they're also in charges permitting, so they would be able to help us out how many people have gotten a permit and if there's any correlation between those with a permanent and those without agreement and compliance and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or noaa, they're going to be trying to help us with their Sea Grant Program. And lastly, must youngest Bay agriculture ink, which will be our shellfish supplying. Okay, so some of my project strategy and activities. So I think one of the most important ones in regards to our compliance goal is the community education courses that will be created and health for all ages. They can be student groups, there can be adult courses. So these community education courses will mostly be running through early spring, through the summer, early fall, where they're going to be able to learn about shellfish. There benefits for the ecosystem, which will be helping teach them about why they're important and why we should comply with the laws and regulations in place in order to help the community that it's in. We also will be having a volunteer program to help educate as well as to provide opportunities for those that are volunteering. Volunteers will be able to help us with outreach and maintenance of shellfish farms in courses. And they will hopefully be able to help us with our compliance issue as well. And lastly, we are going to be having an agriculture farm and reintroduction program, which is going to help us with the water quality aspect of our goals. Because oysters, or they have an ability to filter up to 50 gallons of water a day per oyster. And so if we are going to set up an agriculture arm will be able to have, or my goal is to have around a 100 thousand oysters, which each filtering 50 gallons of water days, lot of water. So it's definitely going to help our water quality improve. My men THE program. So the first and most important one is going to be our community outreach plan, which will take about two to three weeks, where we will be trying to work some people from the community to help us out and just get some interest going for our project. And we will also be having a abolish setup which will take about a week, which houses all the oysters. We will also have a volunteer group coordination and training weeks. So we'll have about a month to wear me. Get all the volunteers up to speed with what our, what our mission is, what we're doing, and how they can help us in the community, as well as helping us maintain our oyster farm. And project will also be having educational courses that up and their execution which will be around five weeks long, which is going to coincide with our Eastern maintenance plan. They will go side-by-side so that these classes, you can have some hands-on activities working with the shellfish oyster over-wintering, which will be about five months. It's just so that so you're gonna take the oysters out of a, well, their systems and you're going to how's them over winter so that they, it kind of slows down the process and there'll be able to be put out the following season and continue to grow the next season. Which so after those five months, we're going to have two weeks where we set up an oyster farm, which is a floating bag system, which is basically holding oysters just above or just below the water line so that they're getting sunlight and circulating water. And we're going to also have maintenance and education courses that are going to run alongside the oyster farm setup and distribution of the over-wintering. We stir Pro plan so that they can also get more hands-on activity and working with the oysters. And then lastly, we're going to have a reintroduction program of those oysters into borne waters where the program is taking place, which will take about one week. So project management, so we're going to have a project manager who's going to be in charge of financing, payroll management, scheduling, and purchases. They're going to be a slightly removed from a lot of the hands-on activities. We're going to also have a project assistant who is also going to be the education program director. So they're going to help teach some classes and work with volunteers and do some hands on activities. And are also going to be assisting the project manager with anything else that they need, need. And we're also gonna have a marine biologists on staff where they'll be in charge of February keeping maintenance of shellfish, water quality, sampling as well as testing. And they're going to be in charge of sending out any data or samples that need to be tested. We also are going to have a volunteer and outreach coordinator whose main job is recruiting volunteers, as well as creating and distributing outreach supplies, as well as training those volunteers in the weeks that we have established citizens volunteers. Okay, so evaluation. So we're going to be evaluating in a few different ways. So was there an increase in shellfish populations after releasing our already grown shallow fish in our program, which will be done throughout the start of the program and then continue on throughout the program. With random plot sampling and trudging up the bottom to see how many oysters you've gotten each plot and has the water quality improved by 25%. Our goal is that it's going to improve by, in for that, sorry, that it will improve by 25% within 15 years. We're going to be monitoring a few different things. The major ones are going to be pH, dissolved oxygen, and free floating particulate matter. And we're hoping to see a decrease in the particulate matter. So our license holders and compliance, we're hoping to see a 50% increase within five years of our program being enacted. And we're going to be able to see this, like I said earlier, working with the town of Bourne and seeing what they have to offer us up for information about the licensing that they've done. And lastly, our community members engage our classes that we have to offer. Same full, Are we having many volunteers wanting to get involved? Is there steady amount, increasing, decreasing amount, and how we can, and that's how we're going to be able to see if it's being done properly. Some thoughts on today? Suny question. So Karina, it's Richard ability, the presentation. I like the sort of way you frame the project and the research that you talked about doing and what the benefits might be. Can you comment a little bit more about your thinking about the implementation timeline? Because having been involved in lots of places that involved local government, et cetera, it seems like the timeline might be a little bit aggressive in terms of being able to implement. And so why do you think it's realistic? And if you find out that it is going to be a challenge, what do you think you might do to increase the likelihood that you could deliver the timeline? Okay. So I think that I was very he it's kind of a short timeline, which I understand. And I think that there is a need for it. And I think a lot of people are going to be on board with that. And I know that the town of born, as well as some of the surrounding towns like found within sandwich, also have a similar program where the town themself are in-charge of growing some shellfish to help with water quality. And so I think if somebody that's removed from the town would want to kinda take on not necessarily the bird end up doing it, but they would it would allow them to have, I guess, more funding for other projects at the town might want to do. And so we would take the responsibility of growing the shellfish. And I think that a lot of people within the town are going to be on board with it as it is going to help our economy as well as keep thing keep the ecosystems clean. But Speaking to what exactly I would do if there's any pushback. I'm not too sure how I would go about being able to get more community members on board and seeing if the town would allow it to pass through and be accepted. Great. Thank you. This is Rob. I'm not sure how this works to raise my hand or not, but hiker in Berlin, I miss ano in class. I review. I'm an external reviewer for the EPA and I routinely see projects like this. Conceptually, it's a really good project. I, I would want to see who the stakeholders are in terms of both their organization, their structure, their numbers, like including the licensees, like a profile of each of your stakeholders. I would want to see some background numbers for the participants and for your budget, like what? The population is a resonance in the area licensees. And for each budget item, I'd want to see the background data. What is water quality now? What's the shellfish population? What is the shellfish quality, things like that. I'd want to see what are the effects of sea level rise on this, because with shellfish, you could have some fairly immediate consequences of that. And I'd want to see that you should just address that for observation. Like because of them, the microenvironments can be kind of particular fish, shellfish. Your, your benefits of this project, how will they be measured? How will you assess the success of it? Like you've got the right concepts laid out in your PowerPoint presentation. So I would just attach some numbers of that. Like for your assessment. I I generally if you're doing something for the EPA, you would need to have some partners designated, one of whom would be doing an external assessment of this project and its effectiveness at, at one, maybe not at the starting point, but midway and at the end, so that you know your deliverables are and how you measure them. So overall, I think it's, I think the great project. I think you could actually put a grant together for this. And if you added a little bit more about the environmental education part of it, if you would actually stand a good chance with the EPA. Thanks, Corey, and I thought this was a really great proposal. I think we're I'm going to focus my comments because Richard and Rob address some of them, but I'm going to focus because I'm an evaluator. I I do research. This isn't my area of research, but one of the things I've reviewed proposals like Rob and I would focus my comment I'll focus my comments on developing an evaluation plan for the activities that you'll be doing in that first year because you came up with some outcomes that are ten or 15 years out, there's a strong likelihood, like with a lot of these projects, you won't even be working on this project in ten or 15 years, right? So I would focus on developing at, I would, I would keep the outcomes that you've put in your project as long-term outcomes, but really focus on some short-term outcomes like follow here, engagement and community, like the education programs. What are your expected outcomes? What will be a success from doing those activities? Because as a funder, I want to know what my funding is going to be used for ten or 15 years out. You know, my funding's been long gone. I want to know what I'm going to like earn from this as a funder. And I mean, this stuff ten or 15 years out will be great. But I want to focus on what are your outcomes for that first or second year, what I call initial outcomes? A few, if you've ever heard of the term logic models, that's really what you should be focused on, I think is your initial and maybe some intermediate outcomes. So anyways, well done. You, I think have the makings of a really good proposal right here. Thinking