A puzzling detail was revealed recently in TradeWinds’ story about the US Maritime Administration (MarAd)’s new national maritime strategy. According to the article, the agency hired a private consultancy group to gather information for the document. This fact is puzzling because maritime stakeholders, including domestic ship recyclers, provided written and oral comments to MarAd at the two agency-sponsored symposiums held in January and May 2014 but the agency has maintained radio silence since then.