Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone; Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 680</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240229-0066]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM81</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone; Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program</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> NMFS issues a proposed rule to implement Amendments 54 and 55 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) King and Tanner Crabs (Crab FMP). This proposed rule would revise two provisions of the Crab Rationalization Program (CR Program) to do the following: change active crab fishery participation requirements for crab quota share (crab QS) established for vessel operators and crew, and expand the exemptions for CR Program custom processing from processor use caps and remove the CR Program processor facility use cap. These actions are intended to provide operators and crew greater flexibility in meeting CR Program participation requirements and to improve CR Program processor efficiency. This proposed rule is intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the Crab FMP, and other applicable laws. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on or before April 8, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2023-0159, 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 enter NOAA-NMFS-2023-0159 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 Amendments 54 and 55 to the Crab FMP, the Regulatory Impact Reviews (RIRs) prepared for Amendment 54 and Amendment 55, and the Categorical Exclusion prepared for this action may be obtained from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> NMFS determined that this proposed action amending the Crab FMP and implementing the amendments are categorically excluded from requirements to otherwise prepare an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Environmental Impact Statement (Program EIS), RIR (Program RIR), Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (Program FRFA), and Social Impact Assessment that were previously prepared for the CR Program are available from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> Written comments regarding the burden-hour estimates or other aspects of the collection-of-information requirements contained in this proposed rule may be submitted to NMFS at the above address and to <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Olson, 907-586-7228, <E T="03">andrew.olson@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The king and Tanner crab fisheries in the exclusive economic zone of the BSAI are managed under the Crab FMP. The Crab FMP was prepared by the Council under the Magnuson-Stevens Act as amended by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004 (Pub. L. 108-199, section 801). Regulations implementing the Crab FMP, including the CR Program, are primarily located at 50 CFR part 680. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NMFS implemented the CR Program as a limited access privilege program, also called a catch share program, for nine crab fisheries in the BSAI on March 2, 2005 (70 FR 10174). The CR Program FMP has been amended seventeen times since 2005. Amendments 54 and 55 to the Crab FMP and this proposed rule would revise two provisions of the CR Program to: (1) change active participation requirements for quota share established for CR Program vessel operators and crew, and (2) expand exemptions for custom processing from processor use caps and remove the processor facility use caps. <HD SOURCE="HD2">CR Program Overview</HD> The CR Program includes nine crab fisheries in the BSAI: Bristol Bay red king crab (BBR) ( <E T="03">Paralithodes camtschaticus</E> ), Western Aleutian Islands (Adak) golden king crab (WAG) ( <E T="03">Lithodes aequispinus</E> )—West of 174° W, Eastern Aleutian Islands (Dutch Harbor) golden king crab (EAG)—East of 174° W, Western Aleutian Islands (Adak) red king crab (WAI)—West of 179° W, Saint Matthew Island blue king crab ( <E T="03">P. platypus</E> ) (SMB), Pribilof Islands blue and red king crab (PIK), Western Bering Sea Tanner crab (WBT) ( <E T="03">Chionoecetes bairdi</E> )—West of 166° W, Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab (EBT)—East of 166° W, and Bering Sea snow crab (BSS) ( <E T="03">C. opilio</E> ). In this document, the phrases “crab fishery” and “crab fisheries,” quota share (QS),” “individual fishing quota (IFQ)” refer to these fisheries and the associated CR Program, unless otherwise specified. The CR Program includes QS and processor quota share (PQS) that are revocable privileges and allow the holder to harvest or process a specific percentage of the annual total allowable catch (TAC) in a crab fishery, reduced by the allocation to the Western Alaska Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program and the Adak Community Development Allocation. CDQ entities are allocated 10 percent of the crab TACs and Adak is issued an annual allocation of 10 percent of the WAG TAC to provide BSAI communities the opportunity to participate and invest in the crab fisheries. This annual calculation is explained in regulations at §  680.40(h). The CR Program initially assigned QS to persons based on their historic participation in one or more of the nine crab fisheries during a specific time period. Under the CR Program, NMFS issued four types of QS: catcher vessel owner (CVO) QS was assigned to holders of License Limitation Program (LLP) licenses who delivered their catch to shoreside crab processors or to stationary floating crab processors; catcher/processor owner (CPO) QS was assigned to LLP license holders who harvested and processed their catch at sea; catcher/processor crew (CPC) QS was issued to operators and crew on board catcher/processor vessels; and catcher vessel crew (CVC) QS was issued to operators and crew on board catcher vessels. Each crab fishing year, which is the period from July 1 of one calendar through June 30 of the following calendar year (§ 680.2), a person who holds QS in one or more of the crab fisheries may receive an exclusive harvest privilege for a portion of the annual TAC of a crab fishery, called IFQ. CVC QS and CPC QS, also called C shares, are described later in this preamble in <E T="03">C Shares and Active Participation Requirements.</E> A person's QS holdings equates to specific pounds of IFQ that are calculated on an annual basis for use in the corresponding crab fishing year. Each year, a QS holder submits a timely and complete application for a crab IFQ permit in order to receive IFQ for each crab fishery in which the person holds QS (§  680.40(g)). IFQ provides the crab QS holder with an annual allocation of pounds of crab for harvest in a specific crab fishery during the year in which it was allocated. The amount of each annual IFQ allocation is based on the amount of QS held by a person in relation to the total QS pool in a crab fishery (§  680.40(h)). For example, a person's QS equaling one percent of the QS pool in a crab fishery would receive IFQ to harvest one percent of the annual TAC allocated to QS in that crab fishery. NMFS also issued PQS to CR Program processors based on their historic participation in one or more of the nine crab fisheries during a specific period. Each year, PQS yields an exclusive privilege to process a portion of the IFQ for each crab fishery. This annual exclusive processing privilege is called individual processor quota (IPQ). Only a portion of the QS issued yields IFQ that is required to be delivered to a processor with IPQ also known as “share matching.” Share matching requires IFQ holders to match up shares with IPQ holders that have available IPQ. CVO QS is subject to designation as either Class A IFQ or Class B IFQ. Ninety percent of the IFQ derived from CVO QS is designated as Class A IFQ, and the remaining 10 percen ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 73k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━