Commission and Service representatives met to review on- 
going and planned activities, and by letter of 21 May 1980, 
the Service assured the Commission that actions identified 
at the 13 December meeting would be incorporated into the 
sea otter recovery plan being drafted by the Service. To 
facilitate completion and implementation of the recovery 
plan, it was agreed that a second meeting with representatives 
of the California Department of Fish and Game and the State's 
Scientific Advisory Committee on Sea Otters should be held 
and that the Service would complete and distribute a Technical 
Review Draft of the Recovery Plan sufficiently in advance of 
the meeting to allow time for incorporating comments into a 
revised plan which could serve as a focus for meeting discussions. 
On 19 June, the Commission received the Technical 
Review Draft of the Southern Sea Otter Recovery Plan, and, 
in consultation with its Committee of Scientific Advisors on 
Marine Mammals, commented to the Service by letter of 10 
July. The Commission noted that while the introductory and 
background sections of the Plan were useful and required 
relatively little work, the Plan itself was incomplete and 
useful only as a starting point. Therefore, the Commission 
suggested that the planned meeting with State representatives 
be used to: review and discuss comments on the Technical 
Review Draft; discuss and agree upon the objectives, format, 
and content of the recovery plan; determine appropriate 
steps to expedite development, adoption, and implementation 
of the Plan, including consideration of the proposal to 
establish a Sea Otter Recovery Team; identify research and 
management actions to be undertaken immediately; and assign 
responsibility for those actions. 
Although the Technical Review Draft of the Recovery 
Plan indicated that the Service had adopted some of the 
recommendations made in the Commission's 23 August 1979 
letter, it was apparent that not all of them had been adopted. 
Therefore, the Commission included copies of that letter 
with its 10 July comments on the draft Plan. In addition, 
on 11 July 1980, the Commission requested that the Service 
clarify its position with respect to certain recommendations 
during or before the meeting with representatives of the 
California Department of Fish and Game and the State's 
Scientific Advisory Committee on Sea Otters. Specifically, 
the Commission asked to be advised as to: whether the fact 
that the draft plan did not directly address the effects of 
sea otter/fisheries interactions was an oversight or indicated 
that the Service did not share the Commission's view that 
restoring the Southern sea otter population to its optimum 
