[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 132 (Monday, July 11, 2011)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 40674-40676]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-17360]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

50 CFR Part 679

RIN 0648-XA421


Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Scallops

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

ACTION: Notice of availability of a fishery management plan amendment; 
request for comments.

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SUMMARY: The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announces that 
the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) has submitted 
Amendment 13 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Scallop fishery off 
Alaska (FMP) for review by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary). If 
approved, Amendment 13 would implement an annual catch limit (ACL) and 
accountability measures (AMs) to prevent overfishing in the target 
fishery for weathervane scallops. Implementing these measures would 
require revising the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and the optimum 
yield (OY) for weathervane scallops to account for total catch. 
Amendment 13 would also clarify that, in the absence of a statewide 
estimate of spawning biomass for weathervane scallops, the overfishing 
level (OFL) is specified as the MSY. Under Amendment 13, scallop 
species not targeted in the fishery would be classified as Ecosystem 
Component (EC) species. Amendment 13 is intended to promote the goals 
and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and 
Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the FMP, and other applicable 
laws.

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DATES: Written comments on Amendment 13 must be received on or before 5 
p.m., Alaska local time, on September 9, 2011.

ADDRESSES: Send comments to Glenn Merrill, Assistant Regional 
Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region, NMFS, 
Attn: Ellen Sebastian. You may submit comments, identified by RIN 0648-
XA421, by any one of the following methods:
     Electronic Submissions: Submit all electronic public 
comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal http://www.regulations.gov.
     Fax: (907) 586-7557.
     Mail: P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802.
     Hand delivery to the Federal Building: 709 West 9th 
Street, Room 420A, Juneau, AK.
    Instructions: All comments received are a part of the public record 
and will generally be posted to http://www.regulations.gov without 
change. All Personal Identifying Information (for example, name, 
address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly 
accessible. Do not submit Confidential Business Information or 
otherwise sensitive or protected information.
    NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter N/A in the required 
fields, if you wish to remain anonymous). You may submit attachments to 
electronic comments in Microsoft Word, Excel, or Adobe PDF file formats 
only.
    Electronic copies of Amendment 13 and the Environmental Assessment 
prepared for this action may be obtained from the Federal eRulemaking 
Portal http://www.regulations.gov or from the Alaska Region Web site at 
http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Peggy Murphy or Gretchen Harrington, 
907-586-7228.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 
    The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that each regional fishery 
management council submit any FMP or FMP amendment it prepares to NMFS 
for review and approval, disapproval, or partial approval by the 
Secretary. The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires that NMFS, upon 
receiving an FMP amendment, immediately publish a notice in the Federal 
Register announcing that the amendment is available for public review 
and comment. This notice of availability announces that proposed 
Amendment 13 to the FMP is available for public review and comment.
    The Council developed the FMP under the authority of the Magnuson-
Stevens Act (16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.), and it was approved by the 
Secretary on July 26, 1995. The scallop fisheries in the U.S exclusive 
economic zone off Alaska are jointly managed according to the FMP and 
implementing regulations issued by NMFS or the State of Alaska (State). 
The FMP delegates many management measures for the scallop fisheries to 
the State with Federal oversight. Under the FMP, the State sets a 
guideline harvest level (GHL) for each scallop registration area and 
manages each fishery inseason to the corresponding GHL. The GHL is an 
amount of harvest the managers determine acceptable for the upcoming 
fishing year. The GHL for each scallop fishery is set within the 
applicable guideline harvest range, which the State has established in 
regulations.
    The FMP covers all scallop stocks off Alaska. Weathervane scallops 
are currently the only scallop species targeted in commercial 
fisheries. All other scallop species, including pink, spiny, and rock 
scallops, are not targeted but occasionally occur as bycatch in the 
weathervane scallop fisheries.
    Amendment 13 was unanimously adopted by the Council in October 
2010. Amendment 13 would (1) revise the MSY and OY to include all 
fishing mortality; (2) specify that the OFL equals the MSY in the 
absence of a statewide estimate of spawning biomass for weathervane 
scallops; (3) specify an acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rule 
to account for uncertainty in the OFL; (4) set the ACL equal to the 
ABC; (5) specify accountability measures to prevent catch from 
exceeding the ACL and to correct for an overage if the ACL is exceeded; 
and (6) create an EC category for non-target scallop species. With 
adoption of Amendment 13, the Council intended to bring the FMP into 
compliance with the new requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery 
Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2007.
    The Magnuson-Stevens Act establishes, either expressly or by 
logical extension, four basic requirements that prompted the Council's 
recommendation to amend the FMP. The Guidelines for National Standard 1 
of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (50 CFR 600.310; NS 1 Guidelines) provide 
guidance to regional fishery management councils about how to satisfy 
the obligations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act relative to preventing 
overfishing and establishing an ABC and ACL. The following is a summary 
of these four requirements.
    1. For stocks in the fishery, the FMP must establish a mechanism 
for specifying an ACL that will prevent overfishing;
    2. For each stock or stock complex in the fishery, the FMP must 
establish an ABC control rule that accounts for relevant sources of 
scientific uncertainty;
    3. The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) must 
provide the Council with scientific advice on the ABC control rule and 
periodic recommendations for specifying the ABC for each stock or stock 
complex in the fishery; and
    4. The FMP must establish accountability measures that prevent 
exceeding the ACL and correct overages of the ACL if they do occur.
    The Council designed Amendment 13 to address these requirements 
while maintaining the FMP's cooperative State and Federal management 
structure, to the extent possible.

Maximum Sustainable Yield, Optimum Yield, and Overfishing Level

    Currently, the FMP specifies an MSY and OY range that reflect only 
the retained catch in the weathervane scallop fishery. Amendment 13 
would revise the retained catch MSY and OY range to reflect total catch 
by encompassing all sources of scallop fishing mortality, including 
discards in the directed scallop fishery, bycatch in the groundfish 
fisheries, and mortality associated with research surveys. The 
additional fishing mortality from these other sources was estimated as 
3.6 percent of the annual retained catch. The statewide weathervane 
scallop MSY would be revised from 1.24 million pounds (562 metric tons) 
to 1.284 million pounds (582 metric tons) of shucked meats. The OY is 
estimated statewide with an upper bound of the MSY. Amendment 13 would 
also revise the weathervane scallop OY range to be 0 to 1.284 million 
pounds (582 metric tons) of shucked meats.
    Currently, the FMP specifies an overfishing control rule for 
weathervane scallops stocks as a fishing rate in excess of the natural 
mortality rate. If an estimate of the statewide weathervane scallop 
spawning biomass was available, the overfishing control rule would be 
applied to that estimate to determine the OFL. An estimate of the 
statewide weathervane scallop spawning biomass is not currently 
available, however, which prevents application of the overfishing 
control rule to annually determine the OFL. Therefore, until such an 
estimate of

[[Page 40676]]

spawning biomass is available, Amendment 13 would specify a default OFL 
equal to the MSY of 1.284 million pounds. The OFL would be set 
statewide because the best available information indicates that there 
is one statewide stock of weathervane scallops and the information 
necessary to set regional OFLs is not available. In practice, the 
statewide MSY has functioned as the OFL since 1996. The average annual 
weathervane scallop catch since 1996 has been less than half of the 
MSY.

Acceptable Biological Catch and Annual Catch Limit

    Amendment 13 would establish an ABC control rule and set the ACL 
equal to the ABC. Annually, the ABC control rule would be used to set 
the maximum ABC for the statewide weathervane scallop stock at 90 
percent of the OFL. This 10 percent buffer would reduce the risk of 
overfishing occurring in the weathervane scallop fishery.
    The ABC is set to account for the scientific uncertainty in the 
estimate of the OFL. Lacking a stock assessment model, the sources of 
scientific uncertainty in the scallop OFL estimate are not directly 
quantifiable at this time. Therefore, under Amendment 13, scientific 
uncertainty in the OFL estimate is incorporated in the size of the 
buffer between the OFL and the ABC.

Scientific and Statistical Committee

    The Council's SSC would annually establish the ABC for weathervane 
scallops through the following process. The Scallop Plan Team meets 
shortly after the scallop fishing season concludes to compile the Stock 
Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) report. The SAFE includes 
stock assessments, fishery information, and reference points. The 
Scallop Plan Team would evaluate whether the total catch exceeded the 
ACL in the previous fishing season. The Scallop Plan Team would then 
calculate the maximum ABC using the ABC control rule for the upcoming 
fishing season. The Scallop Plan Team may recommend that the SSC set an 
ABC lower than the maximum ABC, but it should provide an explanation 
for such a recommendation.
    The SSC would then review the SAFE and recommendations from the 
Scallop Plan Team. The SSC would set a statewide ABC for the directed 
weathervane scallop fishery prior to the beginning of the fishing 
season. The SSC may set an ABC lower than the maximum ABC calculated 
using the ABC control rule, but it must provide an explanation for why 
a lower ABC was set.

Accountability Measures

    Amendment 13 would establish AMs to prevent ACLs from being 
exceeded and to correct overages of the ACL if they do occur. First, 
under Amendment 13, the State would establish the annual GHL for each 
scallop management area at a level sufficiently below the ACL so that 
the sum of the directed scallop fishery removals and estimated discard 
mortality in directed scallop and groundfish fisheries does not exceed 
the ACL.
    Second, the inseason management measures that prevent catch from 
exceeding the GHL, and have been a part of management of the 
weathervane scallop fishery since the inception of this FMP, would also 
prevent catch from exceeding the ACL. State management requires 100 
percent observer coverage of all vessels in the weathervane scallop 
fishery. Fishery observers provide inseason data on catch and bycatch. 
Managers monitor inseason fisheries landings and observer data and have 
the authority to close a fishery inseason to prevent catch from 
exceeding the GHL.
    Third, if total catch does exceed the ACL, State managers would 
account for the overage through a downward adjustment to the GHL in the 
following season by an amount sufficient to remedy the biological 
consequences of the overage.

Ecosystem Component

    Under the NS 1 Guidelines, all stocks in an FMP are considered to 
be ``in the fishery,'' unless they are identified as EC species through 
an FMP amendment process. Council review of the FMP determined that 
weathervane scallops are ``in the fishery'' as they are targeted and 
retained for sale. Amendment 13 would establish an EC category in the 
FMP that contains all non-targeted scallop species, including pink or 
reddish scallops, spiny scallops, and rock scallops.
    Non-targeted scallops are managed under the scallop FMP but are not 
generally retained in commercial scallop fisheries off Alaska. These 
non-target scallop species occupy habitats at different depths than the 
targeted weathervane scallops; therefore NMFS does not anticipate that 
incidental catch in the weathervane scallop fishery would pose a 
serious risk to these stocks. The best available scientific information 
does not indicate that any of the non-target scallop species are 
overfished, subject to overfishing or approaching an overfished 
condition, or likely to become overfished if placed in the EC category.
    According to the NS 1 Guidelines, no reference points are required 
for EC species; however, under Amendment 13, these species would be 
monitored to ensure they are not targeted and that incidental catch 
does not reach a point where there are concerns for the sustainability 
of these stocks. Harvest limits and related management measures would 
be developed and implemented prior to developing a fishery for any of 
these species.
    An Environmental Assessment was prepared for Amendment 13 that 
provides detailed descriptions of the scallop fishery management 
background, the purpose and need for action, the management 
alternatives evaluated to address this action, and the environmental, 
social, and economic impacts of the alternatives (see ADDRESSES).
    NMFS solicits public comments on Amendment 13 and associated 
documents. Public comments on Amendment 13 must be received, not just 
postmarked or otherwise transmitted, by the close of business on the 
last day of the comment period (see DATES). Comments received by the 
end of the comment period will be considered in the decision to 
approve, disapprove, or partially approve Amendment 13. Comments 
received after that date will not be considered.

    Authority: 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.

    Dated: July 5, 2011.
Eric C. Schwaab,
Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries 
Service.
[FR Doc. 2011-17360 Filed 7-8-11; 8:45 am]
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