[Federal Register Volume 72, Number 248 (Friday, December 28, 2007)]
[Notices]
[Pages 73766-73770]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E7-25281]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

RIN 0648-XD81


Notice of Availability of Final Eastern Pacific Northern Fur Seal 
Stock Conservation Plan

AGENCY: National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.

ACTION: Notice; response to comments.

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SUMMARY: NMFS has revised the conservation plan (Plan) for northern fur 
seals to incorporate new information obtained since the original plan 
was completed. The Plan is required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act 
(MMPA) and was initially completed in 1993. The goal of the Plan is to 
promote the recovery of northern fur seals to their optimum sustainable 
population levels. The Plan is available to the public.

ADDRESSES: The Plan is available on the Internet at the following 
address: http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/protectedresources/seals/fur.htm. 
Copies of the Plan may also be obtained from the NMFS, Protected 
Resources Division, 222 W. 7th Ave., 43, Anchorage, AK 99513; 
or from the Alaska Regional Office, Protected Resources Division, 709 
W. 9th St., P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802.

[[Page 73767]]


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Michael Williams, NMFS, Alaska Region, 
Anchorage Field Office, (907) 271 5006, email: 
[email protected], or Kaja Brix, NMFS, Alaska Region, (907) 586 
7235, email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

    The MMPA requires NMFS to prepare a conservation plan to promote 
the conservation and recovery of any species or stock designated as 
depleted. NMFS published the northern fur seal conservation plan in 
1993, after the Pribilof Islands stock was listed as depleted. The goal 
of the Plan is to return the population to its optimum sustainable 
population (OSP) level. Significant new ecological information is 
available, and the Plan required updating. New information includes 
trends in abundance, estimation of lactating female and juvenile male 
summer foraging habitat, continued entanglement in fishing nets and 
plastic packing bands, estimates of prey consumption from scats and 
regurgitations, estimation of migration routes by adult females and 
weaned pups, development and implementation of comanagement agreements 
with Alaska Native Tribes, development of oil spill contingency plans, 
and assessments of interactions with commercial fisheries. The four 
objectives of the plan are to (1) identify and eliminate or mitigate 
the cause or causes of human related mortality; (2) assess and avoid or 
mitigate adverse effects of human related activities on or near the 
Pribilof Islands and other habitat essential to the survival and 
recovery of fur seals; (3) continue and as necessary expand research or 
management programs to monitor trends and detect natural or human 
related change in fur seals or habitat essential to its survival and 
recovery; and (4) coordinate and assess the implementation of the 
conservation plan. The plan will be reviewed and updated every 5 years. 
The goal of the Plan will be met when the depleted designation for 
northern fur seals can be removed.
    The notice of availability of the draft revised conservation plan 
was published June 5, 2006 (71 FR 32306), and the comment period closed 
August 4, 2006. Seven sets of comments were received during the comment 
period. Summaries of comments and responses to those comments are 
organized by subject area below.

Harvest Issues

    Comment 1: NMFS should verify, assess, quantify, and enforce all 
potentially illegal harvests as a source of unaccounted mortality.
    Response: NMFS Office for Law Enforcement and both tribal 
governments are cooperating to determine if illegal harvests occur and 
to develop solutions. If unreported harvests are discovered, these will 
be included in future summaries of harvest activity.
    Comment 2: NMFS should present substantive text from the 
subsistence harvest Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), including 
details of recent subsistence harvests such as reduced harvest due to 
availability or reduced interest and implications for management.
    Response: NMFS will incorporate available subsistence harvest data. 
Although the harvest has been lower since 2000 than in the 1980s and 
1990s, the cause for the reduction is unknown.
    Comment 3: NMFS should analyze archived samples or data and 
subsequently collaborate with the tribes to discuss and design any 
directed subsistence harvest research.
    Response: NMFS has coordinated and continues to coordinate any 
research associated with the subsistence harvest. NMFS is assessing 
archived samples and data to improve the collection of samples from 
subsistence harvests.

Fisheries Interactions

    Comment 4: NMFS should recognize the establishment of the Marine 
Conservation Alliance Foundation (MCAF) to fund and coordinate a 
comprehensive marine debris clean-up program in Alaska. The MCAF 
program also includes efforts to identify the age composition, and 
origin of lost or discarded gear.
    Response: NMFS recognizes MCAF's efforts as a result of over $1 
million in grant funding from NOAA's Marine Debris Program to help 
reduce the accumulation of derelict fishing gear and marine debris in 
nearshore areas of Alaska in the past few years.
    Comment 5: NMFS should change the disentanglement program emphasis 
to prioritize adult females. Low impact focal captures of females in 
rookeries after mid-August can occur after primary breeding males 
vacate territories.
    Response: NMFS continues to evaluate its disentanglement efforts 
and will modify them as appropriate. Although it would be less 
disruptive and safer to approach adult females after the adult males 
have departed their breeding territories, the potential disruption of 
female-pup pairs must be weighed against the benefits of disentangling 
adult females.
    Comment 6: NMFS should convene an entanglement workshop to discuss 
the state of entanglement research, appropriate methods, practical 
hypothesis-driven studies, and resulting management actions.
    Response: NMFS agrees and is working to fund, organize and 
coordinate such a workshop.
    Comment 7: NMFS or suitable partners should investigate the use of 
remote-sensing data on pirate fishing vessel distribution for 
comparison with satellite tracking data to evaluate the overlap in 
illegal fishing and migrating/foraging fur seals.
    Response: NMFS remains interested in developing partnerships and 
utilizing remote sensing data to better manage interactions between the 
fur seals and human activities.

Fisheries Effects-Competition

    Comment 8: NMFS should consider the competition hypothesis 
speculative and inconsistent with the following available data: (1) 
absence of nutritional stress signals in fur seals sampled on land, (2) 
similar rates of decline on rookeries where females forage in areas of 
both high and low commercial fisheries pressure, (3) size at age of 
pups has been consistent over a long time period suggesting mothers are 
able to support healthy well-suckled pups, (4) pup mortality rates are 
quite low compared to mortality rates at other northern fur seal 
rookery sites and other pinniped populations, and (5) the Pribilof 
northern fur seal decline has coincided with high levels of pollock 
abundance in eastern Bering Sea.
    Response: Hypothesis testing is the best approach to examine the 
effects of commercial fishing, and further hypothesis testing is 
warranted based on overlap between northern fur seal diets and 
commercial fisheries catch. NMFS (2001) determined conditionally 
significant adverse effects might be occurring due to the magnitude of 
overlap and changes in the proportion of trawl effort in the foraging 
ranges of specific northern fur seal breeding areas.
    Comment 9: The following statement is overly broad and inaccurate, 
``Currently, all marine areas used by northern fur seals are 
commercially fished''.
    Response: The statement is a practical generalization that is 
relevant to all aspects of interactions between foreign and domestic 
fisheries and northern fur seals throughout their range, not just the 
Bering Sea. The statement suggests that

[[Page 73768]]

fur seals interact with commercial fishing operations in all marine 
areas of the Bering Sea and North Pacific. NMFS has added 
clarifications to the statement.
    Comment 10: NMFS has not adequately described the effects of 
competition between northern fur seals and commercial fisheries near 
the Pribilof Islands. NMFS should include recent temporal and spatial 
changes in fishing and the relevant focal species. No clear plan exists 
to test the potential causal relationship between commercial fishing 
and the current decline. NMFS has documented increasing pollock catches 
in Pribilof Islands northern fur seal foraging habitat in response to 
Steller Sea Lion critical habitat protection measures; NMFS identified 
conditionally significant adverse effects of fishing on northern fur 
seals (NMFS 2001; NMFS 2005; EA FRFA: NMFS 2006).
    Response: NMFS has added additional text reflecting recent 
literature and previous analyses. The contrasting comments about 
competition between northern fur seals and commercial fisheries 
indicate more focused work needs to be done. Further hypothesis testing 
is warranted based on archived population data, historic fur seal 
foraging data, environmental data and fishery information to inform 
future investigations.
    Comment 11: NMFS should present management efforts related to 
protecting fur seal foraging habitat; identifying important marine 
canyons for foraging; mitigating impacts from the pollock fleet on fur 
seals; using marine protected areas; prescribing site-specific 
management actions to address the adverse impacts of commercial 
fisheries on fur seals. Site-specific examples could include the 
following: (1) ensure adequate food availability in fur seal foraging 
habitat, and (2) if adequate prey to achieve optimum sustainable 
population cannot be quantified and accounted in the total allowable 
catch specifications, then NMFS should employ the F75 percent (the 
level of fishing mortality which reduces the estimated spawning biomass 
to 75 percent of its pre-exploitation level) used by the Convention for 
Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources for fur seal prey. 
Actions would include closures of fur seal foraging habitat to trawl 
fisheries; if fur seal foraging habitat cannot be precisely delineated, 
expand the Pribilof Islands Area Habitat Conservation Zone to encompass 
all areas within at least 25 miles of the Pribilof Islands.
    Response: Ecosystem complexity, data and model limitations, and 
indirect linkages confound NMFS current ability to quantify 
interactions among northern fur seals, their prey, and commercial 
fisheries. Place-based management of human activities may be a 
productive and sustainable approach consistent with a growing impetus 
for ecosystem approaches to management. However, it may not be 
productive to further alter commercial fishing effort in time and space 
without additional analysis of archived data and refinements to 
previous analyses that corroborate the earlier identification of 
``conditionally significant adverse effects'' (NMFS 2001). Moving, 
reducing, or altering commercial fishing effort to reduce 
``conditionally significant adverse effects'' for northern fur seals 
may in turn result in significant adverse effects for other components 
of the ecosystem.
    Comment 12: NMFS needs to increase details in section 2.7.4 
(Determine impact from fisheries) consistent with section 2.6.4 
(Develop oil spill response plans and mitigation strategies).
    Response: Section 2.7.4 represents the integration of subheadings 
2.7 (Quantify relationships between fur seals, fisheries and fish 
resources) and 1.1 (Effects of marine debris), and as such covers the 
details we currently understand and those requiring further 
investigation. Mitigation and response plans to suspected fishery-
related threats must be developed following the outline and priorities 
described in the Plan.
    Comment 13: NMFS should measure the significance of impacts 
relative to the lack of recovery by northern fur seals to their OSP.
    Response: NMFS does not have clear causative factors linked to the 
lack of recovery of the northern fur seal population. In the absence of 
such factors it is impossible to measure their influence on the rate 
recovery to OSP. As those factors are identified they will be 
incorporated into evaluations of their effect on recovery.
    Comment 14: NMFS must assess fisheries effects by manipulating the 
fishery rather than sampling large numbers of fur seals.
    Response: An adaptive management scenario is one way of assessing 
the impact of fishing on northern fur seals. However, manipulating the 
fishery is not a substitute for investigating fur seal biology and life 
history in areas where the interactions indicate problems may exist.
    Comment 15: NMFS should prioritize assessment of potential illegal 
driftnet take of fur seals and the development of a more concrete plan. 
NMFS should reconsider priority 3 for the observer program; salmon 
drift gillnet fisheries may be an area of concern.
    Response: NMFS is evaluating the likelihood of significant 
population effects from all of the potential sources identified in the 
plan to determine their priority along with the funding realities of 
the implementation costs and population benefits.

Climate Change

    Comment 16: NMFS should include a brief section on the indirect 
behavioral implications of increased temperatures on northern fur seals 
reproduction and hyperthermia.
    Response: The impacts of climate change on northern fur seal 
behavior, reproduction, and survival are highly uncertain. NMFS will 
continue to examine the contribution of environmental factors to the 
health, survival and abundance of northern fur seals. Differential 
growth of breeding northern fur seal populations worldwide in recent 
years suggests a complex array of factors influence northern fur seals, 
but efforts to manage threats and conserve populations will need to be 
adaptive and supported by an integrated inter-disciplinary research and 
monitoring program.
    Comment 17: NMFS must consider indices of commercial and non-
commercial fish abundance are complicated by regime shifts, temporal 
and spatial changes in sampling, changes in fishery effort, resolution 
of fisheries and fur seal data, and density dependent fur seal 
population changes.
    Response: NMFS will work to capture the complexity of the ecosystem 
changes, fish abundance, fishery effort, fur seal response, and climate 
change. Text related to these factors has been clarified based on the 
available references.
    Comment 18: NMFS should formally recommend the U.S. immediately 
ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
    Response: NMFS, through DOC, will continue to participate in the 
process to develop the Administration's policies regarding climate 
change.

Coordination

    Comment 19: Coordination of research is necessary to assure results 
that are applicable to management.
    Response: Coordination of research and communication of results of 
that research are essential, and NMFS has identified this as one of the 
four primary objectives of the plan. Implementing conservation plan 
priorities, reviewing conservation action effectiveness, and updating 
the plan at 5-year intervals also assures relevance to short and long-
term management.

[[Page 73769]]

Harassment

    Comment 20: The human presence and research section should be 
updated to incorporate summary information from the current 
environmental analysis of Steller Sea lion and northern fur seal 
research.
    Response: The Plan has been revised to include the main findings 
from the EIS. The EIS is available on the Internet at http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/protectedresources/seals/fur.htm.
    Comment 21: Resighting previous marks should be prioritized above 
new marking to reiterate the importance of a resighting program with 
any marking program.
    Response: Many of the previously marked fur seals from the last 
large-scale marking program are no longer alive or have lost their 
marks. NMFS is currently evaluating the applicability of a resighting 
program based on the few individuals marked from other studies. The 
results of such a resighting program based on so few marks may have 
such high variability that the effort is not warranted. Further 
evaluation is required. Melin et al. (2006) describes the history of 
northern fur seal marking programs and the results of a 2005 workshop 
on the topic. NMFS encourages readers to obtain a copy of AFSC 
Processed Report 2006-15 on the Internet at http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Publications/ProcRpt/PR%202006-15.pdf.
    Comment 22: The plan should acknowledge mortality can result from 
research (e.g., capture myopathy).
    Response: NMFS has revised the plan to include actual and potential 
research mortality.
    Comment 23: NMFS must prioritize disturbance research, carefully 
plan ongoing, additional, or expanded research, use archived data, and 
support independent review to determine cost-effective and 
environmentally sensitive fur seal field studies.
    Response: NMFS and other northern fur seal research permit holders 
are authorized to conduct studies within the scope of their permits, 
much of which is related to research described in the Plan. Those 
research projects are implemented as funding is available. NMFS is not 
issuing new permits or major amendments to existing permits until the 
completion of the Steller sea lion and northern fur seal research EIS. 
The results of these investigations will inform subsequent study design 
and the development of hypothesis-driven studies. Those studies will be 
authorized by current and future scientific research permit 
applications and modifications that will be reviewed by NMFS, the 
Marine Mammal Commission and the public. NMFS is examining archived 
data to better understand potential correlations between research and 
fur seal survival and reproduction.
    Comment 24: An independent workshop to evaluate study design, 
sample size, appropriate and least intrusive research should be 
included as a component of the plan.
    Response: NMFS will consider convening such a workshop.
    Comment 25: Add a subsection titled: 2.6.5. Assess noise pollution.
    Response: NMFS continues to evaluate noise related to biologically 
significant harassment as individual projects are proposed. Given the 
available evidence regarding the effects of airborne and underwater 
noise exposure, adding an entire subsection to the topic is not 
warranted at this time.
    Comment 26: Section G.8.1 oversimplifies the problem of harassment 
associated with aircraft flying near and over resting and breeding 
northern fur seals.
    Response: NMFS disagrees. Currently the intensity and duration of 
aircraft overflights has been reduced to levels much lower than the 
early 1990s, and a detailed elaboration of the situation is not 
warranted.

Comanagement

    Comment 27: The priority goal for tribal governments should be to 
develop a long-term marine mammal research plan as a central part of 
their comanagement program and strengthen partnering opportunities.
    Response: NMFS considers long-term planning and strategic 
partnering with the tribes to be an essential part of the comanagement 
process. NMFS intends to work closely with the tribes to develop short 
and long-term plans together to support ongoing conservation and 
recovery actions for northern fur seals and Steller sea lions, 
respectively.
    Comment 28: NMFS must make a stronger commitment to environmental 
justice in the conservation plan.
    Response: Local involvement is essential to successful conservation 
and continues via comanagement to ensure the consumers of northern fur 
seals are involved in northern fur seal research and management.

Miscellaneous Comments

    Comment 29: Consider the following additions to the oil spill 
response section: (1) mention Island Sentinel in monitoring for spills 
year-round, (2) implement a local response training program so locals 
can respond, and (3) plan for use of carcasses for research consistent 
with bycatch section.
    Response: The oil spill response section is based on the current 
oil spill contingency plan for the Pribilof Islands. NMFS has supported 
similar revisions to the draft oil spill contingency plans (early 2007) 
for the Pribilof Islands; however, that plan has not yet been 
finalized. When the oil spill contingency plan is finalized NMFS will 
incorporate revisions as appropriate.
    Comment 30: Suggest adding new section ``B.8 Complex Social 
Behavior'' in ``II. CONSERVATION STRATEGY''.
    Response: NMFS disagrees that such a section is warranted at this 
time because fur seal social behavior is not characterized or 
quantified to a level useful for conservation, recovery and research.
    Comment 31: References to unpublished and non-refereed literature, 
some unavailable for review, should not be given the same weight as 
peer-reviewed literature.
    Response: NMFS used the best available science (published and 
unpublished) and traditional ecological knowledge in developing this 
plan. References are appropriately cited to acknowledge the source of 
information.
    Comment 32: In section 1.2 ``Incidental takes'' add to this section 
the mandatory recording of all northern fur seal sightings from vessels 
(platforms of opportunity). Observers must be trained and tested for 
reliability to distinguish fur seals in water from other pinnipeds. 
Data records should include exact location, distance, and position with 
respect to vessel, vessel state, animal state, and animal age and sex 
if possible.
    Response: The platform of opportunity program is voluntary and 
provides marine mammal sighting data to NMFS. In addition, NMFS 
observers also collect marine mammal sightings and are trained to meet 
needs across numerous disciplines. Accordingly, marine mammal 
observations and identification are part of the training received by 
each observer.
    Comment 33: NMFS should include relevant data on behavior and vital 
rate information from fur seals breeding on Bogoslof Island.
    Response: NMFS has added relevant data from northern fur seals 
breeding on Bogoslof Island.
    Comment 34: Consider revising section I.C.3 ``Carrying Capacity'' 
to include more information from Fritz et al. (in review) and a summary 
of recent work by Fowler regarding the concept of carrying capacity in 
ecosystems.

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    Response: NMFS has included a summary of Fowler's work evaluating 
ecosystem carrying capacity. Fritz et al. (in review) continues to 
develop and, in it's draft stage, is not appropriate to include at this 
time.
    Comment 35: Oil spill simulation models should be updated with the 
recent satellite and radio tracking data.
    Response: NMFS will consider such revisions and their 
implementation as appropriate. NMFS has and will continue to meet with 
other federal agencies to determine the state of oil spill risk 
assessment and oil spill trajectory simulations in northern fur seal 
marine habitat.
    Comment 36: NMFS should add the following section: Determine the 
importance of social interactions to lifetime reproductive success 
(e.g., mother-offspring relocation behavior, non-random associations 
such as between kin, observational learning). Determine how these 
interactions may be affected by changes in population size, climate, 
and whether there could be additive or positive feedback effects on a 
decreasing population (i.e., exacerbate a decline).
    Response: NMFS did not add the suggested section regarding social 
interactions among northern fur seals. NMFS is not aware of any 
published or unpublished reports on the topic.
    Comment 37: The plan needs a clear vision of the specific tasks 
that can be accomplished in the next 5 years: e.g., COFFS (Consequences 
of Female Foraging Strategies); population models; diet research.
    Response: NMFS has prioritized various conservation actions and 
research. NMFS will follow the mandates under the relevant legislation 
to continue to collect basic population data and investigate critical 
management priorities. The completion of these priorities is funding-
dependent.
    Comment 38: NMFS should develop criteria for recovery and listing 
as threatened or endangered under the ESA.
    Response: This plan addresses a depleted species as required by the 
MMPA. An evaluation for listing or recovery criteria for a population 
listed under the ESA is not appropriate for this document.

Threats Table

    Comment 39: The threats table is difficult to understand, is 
inconsistent, and has arbitrary and non-quantitative scales.
    Response: NMFS re-evaluated and revised the threats table to 
resolve inconsistencies and increase understanding for the reader.

Research Priorities

    Comment 40: In section 3.1.5, trends in age structure and age-
specific reproductive rates should be separated from the diet studies 
also recommended in this section. Longitudinal studies of marked 
females (e.g., Gentry, 1998) or cross-sectional studies of female 
vibrissae color (Scheffer, 1962; Baba et al., 1991) should be designed 
to develop stage-based structural models (e.g., Holmes and York, 2003).
    Response: NMFS separated and consolidated diet and foraging into 
sections 2.7.1 and 2.7.2. In addition NMFS discussed numerous factors 
related to vital rates during a workshop convened in September 2005. A 
longitudinal and cross-sectional study was discussed at length and 
deemed the most time and cost-effective approach to obtaining accurate 
estimates for key vital rates. See response to comment 21.
    Comment 41: In section 3.1.5, alternative methods including live-
capture at sea should be investigated as a replacement for lethal 
collections. Japanese scientists have used live captures at sea and in 
combination with lavage (diet), tooth extraction (age-structure), and 
ultra-sound or hormone assay (repro) as suitable alternatives for 
lethal sampling.
    Response: NMFS discussed all these factors related to vital rates 
during a workshop convened in September 2005. See response to comment 
21. Also see G.P. Adams, J.W. Testa, C.E.C. Goertz, R.R. Ream, and J.T. 
Sterling. 2006. Ultrasonographic characterization of reproductive 
anatomy and early embryonic detection in the northern fur seal 
(Callorhinus ursinus) in the field. Marine Mammal Science 23(2): 445-
452.
    Comment 42: NMFS should initiate a survey of late season (Sept/Oct) 
pup mortality surveys at selected study sites to assess the level of 
pup mortality following the regular August pup mortality surveys.
    Response: NMFS discussed factors related to vital rates during a 
workshop convened in September 2005. See response to comment 21. 
Reliable estimates of pup mortality at any time of the year can only be 
obtained by substantial disturbance and additional mother-pup 
separations associated with clearing an entire nursery area. Therefore, 
the recommended surveys are not warranted at this time.
    Comment 43: NMFS should use guidance from Bowen et al. (2001) 
regarding experimental design to measure the success of management 
actions.
    Response: Evaluating fur seal response to conservation actions in 
this plan is consistent with the guidance of Bowen et al. (2001).

    Dated: December 20, 2007.
James H. Lecky,
Director, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries 
Service.
[FR Doc. E7-25281 Filed 12-27-07; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-22-S