[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]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
[[Page 40675]]
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]
BILLING CODE 3510-22-P