Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Amendment 126 to the Fishery Management Plans for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area and Amendment 114 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska To Expand Electronic Monitoring To the Pollock Fisheries

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 679</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240126-0024] </DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM40</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Amendment 126 to the Fishery Management Plans for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area and Amendment 114 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska To Expand Electronic Monitoring To the Pollock Fisheries</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) submitted Amendment 126 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI) and Amendment 114 to the FMP for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). If approved, Amendments 126/114 would implement an electronic monitoring (EM) program for pelagic trawl pollock catcher vessels and tender vessels delivering to shoreside processors and stationary floating processors in the Bering Sea (BS), Aleutian Islands (AI), and GOA. This proposed rule is intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), Amendments 126/114, the BSAI FMP, and the GOA FMP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received no later than April 5, 2024. <E T="03">Public Meetings:</E> 1. February 28, 2024, 6 p.m. Alaska local time, Kodiak, AK. 2. March 12, 2024, 6 p.m. Pacific time, Virtual (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> for link). </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2023-0125, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and type NOAA-NMFS-2023-0125 in the Search box ( <E T="03">note:</E> copying and pasting the FDMS Docket Number directly from this document may not yield search results). Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Gretchen Harrington, Assistant Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region NMFS. Mail comments to P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802-1668. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> 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 by NMFS. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted for public viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information 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 Amendment 126 to the BSAI FMP and Amendment 114 to the GOA FMP (collectively, the FMPs), the Environmental Assessment/Regulatory Impact Review prepared for this action (the analysis), and the Finding of No Significant Impact prepared for this action may be obtained from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> Per section 313 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, NMFS will also be conducting public hearings to accept oral and written comments on the proposed rule during the public comment period. The first public hearing will be held at the Kodiak Fisheries Research Center, 301 Research Court, Kodiak, Alaska 99615. The second public hearing will be held virtually, available at <E T="03">https://meet.google.com/gcz-emgh-kkw.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joel Kraski, 907-586-7228, <E T="03">joel.kraski@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for Action</HD> NMFS manages the groundfish fisheries in the exclusive economic zone under the FMPs. The Council prepared the FMPs under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> Regulations governing U.S. fisheries and implementing the FMPs appear at 50 CFR parts 600 and 679. This proposed rule would implement Amendments 126/114 to the FMPs. The Council submitted Amendments 126/114 for review by the Secretary of Commerce, and a Notice of Availability of these amendments was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on January 22, 2024, with comments invited through March 22, 2024 (88 FR 3902). This proposed rule and Amendments 126/114 amend the Council's fisheries research plan prepared under the authority of section 313 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. NMFS published regulations implementing the plan on November 21, 2012 (77 FR 70062) and integrated EM into the plan on August 8, 2017 (82 FR 36991). The Secretary implements the fisheries research plan through the North Pacific Observer Program (Observer Program). Its purpose is to establish a research plan for the collection of data necessary for the conservation, management, and scientific understanding of the groundfish and halibut fisheries off Alaska. Section 313 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NMFS to provide a 60-day public comment period on the proposed rule and conduct a public hearing in each state represented on the Council for the purpose of receiving public comment on the proposed regulations. The states represented on the Council are Alaska, Oregon, and Washington. NMFS will conduct a public hearing at a physical location in Alaska and a virtual public hearing will be held for Oregon and Washington (see <E T="02">DATES</E> ). People wanting to make an oral statement for the record at a public hearing are encouraged to submit a written copy of their statement to NMFS using one of the methods identified under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . If attendance at the public hearing is large, the time allotted for individual oral statements may be limited. Oral and written statements receive equal consideration. There are no limits on the length of written comments submitted to NMFS. Respondents do not need to submit the same comments on Amendments 126/114 and the proposed rule. All relevant written comments received by the end of the applicable comment period, whether specifically directed to the FMP amendments or this proposed rule, will be considered by NMFS in the approval/disapproval decision for Amendments 126/114 and addressed in the response to comments in the final decision. Comments received after the end of the comment period may not be considered in the approval/disapproval decision on Amendment 126/114. To be certain of consideration, comments would need to be received, not just postmarked or otherwise transmitted, by the last day of the comment period (see <E T="02">DATES</E> ). <HD SOURCE="HD1">North Pacific Observer Program</HD> The Observer Program is an integral component in the management of North Pacific fisheries. The Observer Program was created with the implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in the mid-1970s and has evolved from primarily observing foreign fleets to observing domestic fleets. The Observer Program provides the regulatory framework for NMFS-certified observers (observers) and EM systems to be deployed on board vessels to obtain information necessary for the conservation and management of the groundfish and halibut fisheries. The information collected by observers and EM systems is entered into databases and then is used to manage the fisheries in furtherance of the purposes and national standards of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Observers and EM systems collect fishery-dependent information used to estimate total catch and interactions with protected species. Managers use these data to manage groundfish and prohibited species catch (PSC) within established limits and to document and reduce fishery interactions with protected species. Scientists use fishery-dependent data to assess fish stocks, provide data for fisheries and ecosystem research and fishing fleet behavior, assess marine mammal and seabird interactions with fishing gear, and characterize fishing impacts on habitat. In 2013, the Council and NMFS restructured the Observer Program to address long-standing concerns about statistical bias of observer-collected data and cost inequity among fishery participants with the funding and deployment structure under the previous Observer Program (77 FR 70062, November 21, 2012). The restructured Observer Program established two observer coverage categories: partial and full. All groundfish and halibut vessels and processors are included in one of these two categories. NMFS requires fishing sectors in the full coverage category to have all operations observed. The full coverage category is specified at 50 CFR 679.51(a)(2) and includes most catcher/processors, all motherships, and those catcher vessels participating in a catch share program with a transferrable PSC limit. Owners of vessels and processors in the full coverage category arrange and pay for required observer coverage from a permitted observer provider. The shoreside processors and stationary floating processors in the full coverage category are currently required to maintain observer coverage. The partial coverage category is described at § 679.51(a)(1) and includes fishing sectors (vessels and processors) that ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 160k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━