ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus spoke to a somewhat sparse crowd and addressed concerns of local officials and business owners Monday evening in a town-hall meeting in the auditorium at Robertsdale Elementary School.

The meeting was the second of two meetings held Monday along Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Earlier in the day, Mabus held a meeting at Gray Davis Elementary School in Theodore.

At Robertsdale, Monday night, Mabus told the crowd that he has been charged by President Barak Obama with long-range recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast.

“Once the well has been killed, it will be my job to come up with a long-range recovery plan for the Gulf Coast,” he said. “My purpose here is to gain input from the people of this area. The people who live here and work here know what this area needs a lot better than I do and the recovery efforts need to start here and go up.”

Mabus did not come alone to Monday’s meeting. He brought with him representatives from various government agencies, such as the Coast Guard, EPA and NOAA, that were positioned along tables at the meeting.

“If you have specific concerns that they can help with, I want you to talk to them,” Mabus said. “If there are general concerns that can be address, then I want them to address them here.”

Several questions were directed to other officials, such as concerns with testing air and water quality, and cleanup efforts directed at below-surface oil.

The first person who spoke at Monday’s meeting expressed concern over the lack of representation for the charter boat fishing industry.

“The charter boat fishing industry represents a major part of this area’s economy and yet there is no one here representing the agency that governs charter boat fishing,” said Ellen M. Peel, president of The Billfish Foundation. “The charter boat industry employs 300,000 people and brings in $41 billion per year and that’s just for fishing. That doesn’t count what those customers spend on lodging, restaurants, and other activities. What happens when those boats can’t operate here? They will go somewhere else.”

Government regulations have focussed almost solely on excessive extration and overfishing, Peel said, and almost no focus has been placed on the charter boating and other sport fishing industries, which operate a catch-and-release system extract little or no fish.

“You have to be able to reach out and engage the sport fishing community,” she said. “The longer we wait the more we are in danger of there being nothing left.”

Other charter boat fishermen also expressed their concerns for the industry at Monday’s meeting.

“I appreciate your coming to meet with us, but I would have appreciated more notice,” said Capt. Ron Woodruff. “There were a lot of people I spoke with that wanted to come, but couldn’t because they had no idea there was a meeting.”

Woodruff, along with others at the meeting, expressed concern over lifting the ban on fishing in the Gulf.

“Just lift the ban so we can go back to fishing,” Woodruff said.

Another charter boat captain reiterated those concerns, saying he took his boat recently to Port St. Joe to fish.

“That was $10,000 that I took away from Orange Beach,” he said. “It was $10,000 that I spent somewhere else on fuel and other supplies; $10,000 that I want to bring back here, but right now I can’t. We don’t need a hand out. We want to work. Just let us go back to fishing.”

An official with the EPA said right now the fishing moratoreum is in place until there is a 30-day period without visible sheen in the water. Then a testing process can begin to determine whether or not the fish are safe to eat.

“We understand those concerns,” the charter boat captain said. “And if we take those fish and try to use them, you can fine the heck out of us, but the fact is we do not consume anything we catch, we release it back into the Gulf.”

Other concerns over the area’s seafood industry were expressed at Monday’s meeting.

“We have restaurants up north with signs in front saying ‘We do not serve Gulf seafood,’” said Herb Malone, president of the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, the agency which oversees tourism on the Alabama Gulf Coast. “What they are doing is spreading a message that if the seafood is not safe, then it is not safe to come here. We’ve got to come up with a way to reassure people that it is safe.”

Fairhope Mayor Tim Kant said the fear over Gulf seafood consumption is not just up north.

“I know in my heart that it is safe,” Kant said, “but how do we convince the public that it is safe?”

Other concerns were expressed on Monday, many of which dealt with the speed, or lack thereof, of concerns being addressed.

Mabus assured everyone at the meeting Monday that their concerns would be addressed.

“Obviously when you are dealing with government agencies, speed is an issue,” he said. “Let me assure you that we are doing everything we can to see that all concerns are addressed. We have to have the support of everyone on the Gulf Coast. Without your support, nothing will get done.”