International Affairs; Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention Act

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240311-0077]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BJ85</RIN> <SUBJECT>International Affairs; Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention Act</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule sets forth changes to the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention Act of 1984 (AMLRCA) regulations, including those that implement the trade-monitoring program for frozen and fresh <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species, commonly marketed or referred to as Chilean seabass or Patagonian toothfish. Specifically, this action: revises regulations that specify the circumstances under which NMFS would deny issuance of a preapproval certificate that is required to legally import frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species; adds regulations that specify the circumstances under which NMFS would deny issuance of a re-export or export document that is required to legally re-export or export both frozen and fresh <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species; clarifies that the applicable authorization must be received prior to re-export or export; and removes the prohibition on the importation of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species harvested from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Statistical Areas 51 and 57. NMFS also makes other non-substantive technical and procedural updates. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective April 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mi Ae Kim, Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce (IATC), NMFS (phone 301-427-8365, or email <E T="03">mi.ae.kim@noaa.gov</E> ). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The United States is a contracting party to the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (Convention) and a member of the governing body established under the Convention—the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR or Commission). During its annual meetings, the Commission formulates and adopts conservation measures (CM) that apply to fishing for Antarctic marine living resources in the Convention Area, which generally consists of the Southern Ocean. AMLRCA, codified at 16 U.S.C. 2431, <E T="03">et seq.,</E> provides the statutory authority for the United States to carry out its obligations under the Convention. Under section 307(b)(1) of AMLRCA, 16 U.S.C. 2436(b), the Secretary of Commerce has authority to promulgate regulations as necessary and appropriate to implement AMLRCA. Acting under a delegation of that authority, the Assistant Administrator for Fisheries has implemented Commission-adopted conservation measures that are binding on the United States through regulations at 50 CFR part 300, subpart G. NMFS proposed changes to its AMLRCA regulations on May 5, 2023 (88 FR 29043), and the public comment period on that proposed rule ended on June 5, 2023, but was reopened until June 30, 2023 (88 FR 39216, June 15, 2023). Further background is provided in the proposed rule (88 FR 29043, May 5, 2023), and, therefore, is not repeated here. To inhibit trade of illegal catches, CCAMLR adopted CM 10-05, which established an electronic Catch Documentation Scheme (CDS) for tracking of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species from harvest through the trade cycle, including transshipment, landing, import, export, and re-export, regardless of where the fish were harvested. Under the regulations at 50 CFR part 300, subpart G, the Assistant Administrator implemented the CCAMLR CDS, among other U.S. requirements, as a part of U.S. monitoring of trade in Antarctic marine living resources. Those regulations require a preapproval certificate for importation of frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species, 50 CFR 300.105(a). For re-export or export of frozen or fresh product, those regulations require an electronically-generated <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> re-export document (DRED), § 300.106(f)(1)(ii) or export document (DED), § 300.106(g)(1)(ii), respectively. As explained in more detail below, this final rule revises regulations at section 300.105 that apply to issuance of preapproval certificates required for importation of frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species, adds new regulations to section 300.106 that apply to issuance of DREDs and DEDs, and makes corresponding changes to the prohibitions under § 300.114. In addition, NMFS is clarifying that a person must receive the electronically-generated DRED or DED required for re-export or export of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species before re-exporting or exporting any shipments. Lastly, NMFS is updating references to the Antarctic Conservation Act (ACA) (16 U.S.C. 2401, <E T="03">et seq.,</E> as amended) and associated regional agreements, and contact information at NMFS and the Department of State for reporting violations of conservation measures adopted by CCAMLR. These regulatory revisions are further explained below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Required Import and Trade Authorizations for Dissostichus Species and Prohibitions</HD> 1. Revisions to prevent issuance of documents authorizing import, re-export, or export of illegally-harvested <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species. U.S. regulations provide that: “No shipment of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species shall be released for entry into the United States unless accompanied by an accurate, complete, valid and validated CCAMLR CDS document.” 50 CFR 300.106(a)(2). This applies to all shipments, whether or not the subject <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species were harvested within or outside of the Convention Area and regardless of whether the respective harvesting vessel is flagged to a CCAMLR contracting party or a non-contracting party cooperating with CCAMLR by participating in the CDS. See 50 CFR 300.106(a)(1). Regulations that apply to issuance of preapproval certificates for importation of frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species at § 300.105(h) provide the circumstances when NMFS will not issue a preapproval certificate. This final rule revises 50 CFR 300.105(h) by adding that NMFS will not issue a preapproval certificate for any shipment of frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species determined to have been taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of: • Any foreign law or regulation; or • Any treaty within the meaning of section 2 of article II of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, under this final rule, NMFS will not issue a preapproval certificate for any shipment of frozen <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species determined to have been taken, possessed, transported, or sold in contravention of any binding conservation measure adopted by an international agreement or organization to which the United States is a party. This implements the prohibition on such imports under other existing federal law, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> section 307(1)(Q) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), 16 U.S.C. 1857(1)(Q), and the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. 3372(a)). By implementing this prohibition, NMFS aligns the bases for denying preapprovals with prohibitions under other laws and avoids a possible scenario where a preapproval certificate is issued for product determined to be subject to enforcement action. Because this prohibition applies without geographic condition, NMFS will deny a preapproval certificate for <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species illegally harvested or transshipped outside the Convention Area, including within foreign exclusive economic zones or high seas areas under the competence of a regional fisheries management organization or other international agreement or organization. This final rule also revises regulations to implement the prohibition on the export and re-export of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species determined to have been harvested in a manner inconsistent with CCAMLR conservation measures provided in the conservation measure that established the CCAMLR CDS. Specifically, this final rule revises regulations at § 300.106(f)(1)(ii) and (g)(1)(ii) to provide that NMFS will not issue a DRED or DED when <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species are harvested or transshipped in contravention of a CCAMLR conservation measure in force, AMLRCA, or the regulations of this subpart. In addition, NMFS revises these paragraphs to include, as relevant, the bases for denial that are added to § 300.105(h) (preapproval certificates) as discussed above. As with preapproval certificates, these bases for denial of a DRED or a DED will prevent a situation where NMFS issues a re-export or export document for <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species that is prohibited from trade and that may be subject to an enforcement action under other existing Federal law ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Section 307(1)(Q) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. 3372(a)). The final rule makes corresponding revisions to the prohibitions under § 300.114(o). 2. Removal of the prohibition on imports of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species from FAO Statistical Areas 51 and 57. This final rule removes the prohibition on the importation of <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species harvested from FAO Statistical Areas 51 and 57 in what was § 300.105(h)(1) and 300.114(o). The removal of this prohibition is appropriate because the management, monitoring, and control of fishing for <E T="03">Dissostichus</E> species in the Southern and Indian Oceans have much improved since 2003, when this prohibition was ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 37k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━