Mr. Michael Tosatto (ex officio Chair)

Michael Tosatto Bio

Science, Service, Stewardship

Michael D. Tosatto joined the Senior Executive Service and became the Regional Administrator for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service Pacific Islands Regional Office, based in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2010 after serving as the Deputy Regional Administrator since the creation of the Pacific Islands Region in 2004. His time served as deputy and his previous career as a senior officer in the U.S. Coast Guard including many tours of duty in the Pacific Islands region, where he routinely engaged regional domestic and international partners to carry out living marine resources management and maritime homeland security missions, made him familiar with the region, its complex challenges, varied stakeholders and constituents.

He provides leadership to all of the National Marine Fisheries Service programs in order to maintain and manage healthy marine ecosystems that provide for the sustainable use of marine fishery resources, recover endangered and threatened marine species, and enhance opportunities for commercial, recreational, and cultural marine fisheries activities. Specifically, he continues to work closely with the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council and the State, Territory and Commonwealth marine resource management agencies to manage the U.S domestic fisheries and provide leadership to the U. S. delegation to the international fisheries bodies, including the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

Unique to the Pacific Islands Region, he is the lead NOAA official for the management of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. He is also leading NOAA efforts to implement the National Ocean Policy, particularly the national framework for Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP) in the Pacific Islands region. In 2011, he was asked by the National Ocean Council to be the Federal Co-Lead for the CMSP Regional Planning Body.

Looking forward, he is, "committed to providing science, service and stewardship for the marine resources in these Pacific island communities and in particular to identify, collect and use local and traditional ecological knowledge as a tool in marine conservation and management."