[Federal Register Volume 83, Number 224 (Tuesday, November 20, 2018)]
[Notices]
[Pages 58550-58552]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2018-25327]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

RIN 0648-XG535


Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Application 
for an Exempted Fishing Permit

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

ACTION: Notice; receipt of application for exempted fishing permit.

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SUMMARY: This notice announces the receipt of an application and the 
public comment period for an exempted fishing permit (EFP) from the 
Aleut Corporation. If granted, this permit would allow the applicant to 
test methods to minimize bycatch of Pacific ocean perch (POP) in the 
Aleutian Islands (AI) pollock fishery. The objective of the EFP is to 
develop an economically viable AI pollock fishery under current POP 
abundance levels. Testing will be conducted in the fishery's winter 
``A'' season in 2019 and 2020. This experiment has the potential to 
promote the objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and 
Management Act.

DATES: Comments on this EFP application must be submitted to NMFS on or 
before December 11, 2018. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council 
(Council) will consider the application at its meeting from December 3, 
2018, through December 11, 2018, in Anchorage, AK.

ADDRESSES: The Council meeting will be held at the Anchorage Hilton 
Hotel, 500 W 3rd Ave., Anchorage, AK 99501. The agenda for the Council 
meeting is available at http://www.npfmc.org. In addition to submitting 
public comments at the Council meeting, you may submit your comments, 
identified by NOAA-NMFS-2018-0117, by either of the following methods:
     Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=NOAA-NMFS-2018-0117, click the ``Comment Now!'' icon, 
complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments.
     Mail: Submit written comments to Glenn Merrill, Assistant 
Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region 
NMFS, Attn: Ellen Sebastian. Mail comments to P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, 
AK 99802-1668.
    Instructions: Comments sent by any other method, to any other 
address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, 
may not be considered. All comments received are a part of the public 
record and will generally be posted for public viewing on 
www.regulations.gov without change. All personal identifying 
information (e.g., name, address) submitted voluntarily by the sender 
will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter 
``N/A'' in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous).
    Electronic copies of the EFP application and the basis for a 
categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act are 
available from the Alaska Region, NMFS website at http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Megan Mackey, 907-586-7228.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: NMFS manages the domestic groundfish 
fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) management area 
under the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the BSAI Management 
Area (FMP), which the Council prepared under the Magnuson-Stevens 
Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). 
Regulations governing the BSAI groundfish fisheries appear at 50 CFR 
parts 600 and 679. The FMP and the implementing regulations at Sec.  
600.745(b) and Sec.  679.6 allow the NMFS Regional Administrator to 
authorize, for limited experimental purposes, fishing that would 
otherwise be prohibited. Procedures for issuing EFPs are contained in 
the implementing regulations.

[[Page 58551]]

Background

    Section 803(a-d) of Public Law 108-199 allocated the directed AI 
pollock fishery's total allowable catch (TAC) to the Aleut Corporation. 
The allocation was implemented under Amendment 82 to the FMP and became 
effective in 2005 (70 FR 9856, March 1, 2005). Since 2005, the AI 
pollock TAC has been set at 19,000 metric tons (mt) annually; however, 
AI pollock harvest since 2005 has been less than 2,000 mt.
    An obstacle to maintaining an economically viable AI pollock 
fishery has been high levels of POP bycatch due to a resurgence of POP 
in the AI and a lack of flexibility in the current management system to 
allow the fishery to adapt to this large increase. Currently the 
fishery is limited to a 5 percent maximum retainable amount (MRA) limit 
on POP per landing. POP biomass in the AI has more than tripled between 
1981 and 2011, going from 235,000 mt to 845,000 mt, and has remained 
above 750,000 mt through the last full stock assessment in 2016. During 
the same period, AI pollock biomass has decreased more than four times 
from 847,000 mt in 1981 to 191,000 mt in 2011, and has averaged 200,000 
mt since 2011.
    In the 1990s when the AI POP population was approximately 60 
percent of what it is now, the proportion of POP bycatch in the AI 
pollock fishery was consistently less than 1 percent of the total 
catch. In contrast, during a 2006 through 2008 AI cooperative acoustic 
survey study (AICASS) conducted by NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science 
Center, intended to estimate groundfish biomass in order to set 
acceptable biological catch levels inside Steller sea lion critical 
habitat, the proportion of POP bycatch in the pollock fishery was 
highly variable, with a low of 7 percent in 2006 to a high of 21 
percent in 2008. The AICASS surveys also showed a high degree of 
overlap between pollock and POP populations. The limited amount of 
fishing under the Aleut Corporation's allocation since 2008 has 
similarly demonstrated the high overlap of pollock and POP observed 
during the AICASS surveys with bycatch rates often exceeding the 5 
percent MRA, thereby constraining the pollock fishery and leading to 
POP mortality and waste. The 5 percent MRA was also exceeded in 2018.
    An additional issue is crew safety. Catcher vessels (CVs) that are 
allowed to deliver pollock in the AI are small with limited deck space. 
This fishery is conducted primarily from February through April when 
weather conditions in the AI are often hazardous with rapidly 
developing storms and high winds. The only practical means of sorting 
POP from a large mixed trawl catch in order to comply with the 5 
percent MRA is to dump the codend on deck in sections as the remainder 
of the codend hangs off the stern. Crew then manually sort and discard 
POP from the catch as the pollock flow into the holding tanks. During 
this time, vessel maneuverability is substantially hindered, and crew 
are exposed to the elements and a shifting codend on deck for an 
extended period. In good weather, the 5 percent MRA may constrict the 
full utilization of the AI pollock TAC. During the winter, the MRA 
management measure adds substantial safety risks to the vessel and the 
crew.

Need for Exempted Fishing Permit

    One potential regulatory means to address the burden to harvesting 
AI pollock while decreasing POP bycatch mortality would be to manage a 
quantity up to a cap of POP in the pollock fishery. Experience with 
constraining POP caps in the west coast whiting fishery cooperatives 
has shown that setting a cap and allowing self-management of the catch 
rates in a risk pool maximizes incentives to optimize the use of the 
cap by reducing POP bycatch to harvest as much of the whiting 
allocation as possible. If the acceptable bycatch rate of AI POP in the 
AI pollock fishery was 5 percent (the MRA), this would require an 
additional incidental catch amount of roughly 500 mt from the AI POP 
TAC of 26,381 mt (2 percent) to support a 2019 ``A'' season AI pollock 
directed fishing allowance of 10,361 mt.
    However, there are several regulatory obstacles to managing the AI 
pollock fishery as a mixed target fishery. Legislation mandates that 
the Aleut Corporation's pollock allocation be harvested either by 
vessels designated as BSAI pollock fishing vessels under the American 
Fisheries Act (AFA) or vessels less than 60 feet (ft) length overall 
(LOA). There is a targeted POP fishery in the AI; however, AFA vessels 
are subject to sideboards that prevent them from directed fishing for 
POP. The POP fishery for the non-Amendment 80 vessels (including CVs 
less than 60 ft LOA) does not open for directed fishing until April 15 
to limit halibut bycatch in the bottom trawl fishery.
    Current regulatory constraints limit the ability of the Aleut 
Corporation to achieve an economically viable AI pollock fishery, and 
current POP abundance levels put fishermen at risk when POP rates in 
excess of the 5 percent MRA are encountered and POP must be sorted and 
discarded with limited deck space. Fishing under this EFP will provide 
data about alternative fishing methods for limiting POP bycatch in the 
AI pollock fishery, which could potentially provide an opportunity for 
the Aleut Corporation to develop an economically viable AI pollock 
fishery while improving safety at sea and reducing the overall POP 
bycatch mortality.

Exempted Fishing Permit

    On September 21, 2018, Mr. Dave Fraser and Ms. Kay Larson-Blair of 
the Aleut Corporation submitted an application for an EFP for 2019 
through 2020 to test alternative management frameworks for limiting POP 
bycatch in the AI pollock fishery. The goals of the proposed 2018 EFP 
are as follows:
     To the level practicable, fully prosecute the Aleut 
Corporation's AI pollock allocation as intended by Section 803(ad) of 
Public Law 108-199 while testing methods to minimize POP bycatch.
     To limit POP bycatch mortality and waste in a fully 
prosecuted AI pollock fishery through full retention and accounting of 
POP bycatch and limiting of overall POP catch to 500 mt for this 
fishery by AFA CVs and non-AFA CVs less than 60 ft LOA.
     To improve safety at sea by eliminating the need to sort 
POP from catch on the deck.
     To evaluate timing and location of POP during the EFP AI 
pollock fishery to determine means of reducing bycatch rates.
    The experiment would be conducted on vessels selected from trawl 
CVs on the NMFS-approved list of vessels eligible to fish the Aleut 
Corporation's pollock allocation. It is anticipated that three AFA CVs 
and two non-AFA CVs less than 60 ft LOA would be selected to operate 
under the EFP in 2019. Preference would be given to vessels with 
additional fish location equipment, such as those equipped with a 
Simrad ES60 or ES70 echosounder with a 38kHz split beam transducer. 
Both AFA CVs and non-AFA CVs less than 60 ft LOA would carry an 
observer, as they are currently required to do. Fishing would be 
conducted with pelagic trawl gear, appropriate to each vessel's 
horsepower.
    No more than 500 mt of POP would be harvested under this EFP by the 
selected AFA CVs and non-AFA CVs less than 60 ft LOA. The 500-mt POP 
cap would be allocated between management areas 541 (450 mt) and 542 
(50 mt). A maximum of 10,361 mt of pollock would be harvested by the 
participating vessels under this EFP.

[[Page 58552]]

Fishing for pollock under this EFP would be required to cease should 
the pollock or POP limits be attained.
    Any salmon bycatch will be counted against the prohibited species 
catch (PSC) cap for the AI pollock fishery. Any incidental catch of 
non-pollock species will be counted against the optimum yield for that 
species. All catch will be retained for weighing and secondary sampling 
at the processing plant.

Exemptions

    Two exemptions are necessary to conduct this experiment. First, an 
exemption would be necessary from MRA requirements at Sec.  
679.20(e)(ii). The participating AFA CVs and non-AFA CVs less than 60 
ft LOA fishing for AI pollock under the Aleut Corporation's permit 
would be exempted from the 5 percent MRA limit for POP in the pollock 
fishery. This exemption would apply from the date the 2019 final 
harvest specifications are effective until April 15, 2019 and again 
during the same time period in 2020. Harvest specifications may be 
found at https://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/.
    Second would be an exemption from Sec.  679.21(b)(1)(ii)(B)(4) that 
applies to halibut PSC bycatch management and PSC limits for rockfish 
trawl fisheries in the BSAI. POP is a type of rockfish. While this EFP 
is not targeting POP directly, allowing participating vessels to retain 
POP above the 5 percent MRA may put them into the range of POP in the 
directed POP fishery. The directed POP fishery in the AI for vessels 
less than 60 ft LOA does not open until April 15 to limit halibut 
bycatch. Because vessels fishing under this EFP would be operating 
before that April 15 date, those vessels would be exempt from the 
halibut PSC limit applicable to directed fishing for POP in the BSAI.

Permit Conditions, Review, and Effects

    The applicant would be required to submit to NMFS an interim report 
of the EFP results by November 30, 2019, and a final report by November 
30, 2020. The report would include all data from this experimental 
fishery, including the catch and position data.
    The activities that would be conducted under this EFP are not 
expected to have a significant impact on the human environment, as 
detailed in the categorical exclusion prepared for this action (see 
ADDRESSES).
    In accordance with Sec.  679.6, NMFS has determined that the 
application warrants further consideration and has forwarded the 
application to the Council to initiate consultation. The Council is 
scheduled to consider the EFP application during its December 2018 
meeting, which will be held at the Hilton Hotel, Anchorage, AK. The EFP 
application will also be provided to the Council's Scientific and 
Statistical Committee for review at the December Council meeting. The 
applicant has been invited to appear in support of the application.

Public Comments

    Interested persons may comment on the application at the December 
2018 Council meeting during public testimony or until December 11, 2018 
when the 15-day comment period ends. Information regarding the meeting 
is available at the Council's website at http://www.npfmc.org. Copies 
of the application and categorical exclusion are available for review 
from NMFS (see ADDRESSES). Comments also may be submitted directly to 
NMFS (see ADDRESSES) by the end of the comment period (see DATES).

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

    Dated: November 15, 2018.
Karen H. Abrams,
Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine 
Fisheries Service.
[FR Doc. 2018-25327 Filed 11-19-18; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 3510-22-P