Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary: Establishment of Temporary Special Use Area for Coral Nursery

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Part 922</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240618-0166]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN10</RIN> <SUBJECT>Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary: Establishment of Temporary Special Use Area for Coral Nursery</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS), National Ocean Service (NOS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce (DOC). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule; temporary emergency rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is issuing an interim final rule, temporary emergency rule in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) establishing three special use areas that will prohibit all entry except for restoration activities under a valid Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) permit. These special use areas are needed for the relocation of coral nursery stock to cooler waters in response to an anticipated marine heatwave this summer with a high likelihood of coral bleaching. NOAA is establishing three special use areas, each of which are individually approximately 0.07 square miles and are within Federal waters of FKNMS. This temporary rule is necessary to prevent or minimize destruction of, loss of, or injury to sanctuary resources by facilitating restoration activities to improve or repair living habitats through protecting coral nursery stock at this site from potential impacts caused by anchor damage and/or fishing gear. These special use areas would expire within 60 days unless they are extended an additional 60 days. NOAA also requests comments on this action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This interim final rule is effective on June 27, 2024, through August 26, 2024. NOAA will consider all comments received by July 29, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may navigate to the plain language summary of this rule by visiting <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NOS-2024-0064.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NOS-2024-0064, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and type NOAA-NOS-2024-0064 in the Search box (note: 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">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 NOAA. 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, etc.), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NOAA will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). Additional background materials can be found on the FKNMS website at <E T="03">https://floridakeys.noaa.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sarah Fangman, Superintendent, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 33 East Quay Road, Key West, FL 33040, 305-360-2713 phone, or by email at <E T="03">sarah.fangman@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NOAA is issuing an interim final rule to create three special use areas in the Federal waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries in order to protect nursery corals being relocated to cooler, deeper waters, in response to a marine heat wave. All entry will be prohibited in these three areas except for conducting restoration activities under a valid ONMS permit, continuous transit without interruption, and law enforcement purposes. These special use areas will be effective for 60 days after publication of this final rule, and could be extended an additional 60 days. If the special use areas are extended another 60 days, NOAA would publish another document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . NOAA took similar action last summer, and established a 0.07 square mile temporary special use area approximately five miles southeast of the community of Tavernier Key on the island of Key Largo from September 6, 2023 through January 5, 2024 (88 FR 60887, September 6, 2023). During this time period, nursery coral relocated to this deeper water site experienced double the rate of survivorship as compared to nursery coral that remained at inshore, shallow sites. NOAA also anticipates the potential for a reoccurring marine heat waves in the future summers that will require temporary relocation of coral nurseries. NOAA seeks public comment on a long-term solution to avoid issuing emergency temporary rules in the future to protect temporarily relocated coral nurseries. The FKNMS regulations at 15 CFR 922.164(e) allows the ONMS Director to set aside discrete areas of the Sanctuary as special use areas in order to provide for, among other uses, the restoration of degraded or otherwise injured sanctuary resources (15 CFR 922.164(e)(1)(ii)). A special use area shall be no larger than the size the ONMS Director deems reasonably necessary to accomplish the applicable objective. No person may enter a special use area designated to carry out a restoration objective except to conduct such restoration activities under a valid ONMS permit, for continuous transit without interruption, or for law enforcement purposes. Activities that are currently allowed in the area, including fishing, will be prohibited. This action is also taken in accordance with 15 CFR 922.165 of the FKNMS regulations (62 FR 32154, June 12, 1997). Section 922.165 provides that, where necessary to prevent or minimize the destruction of, loss of, or injury to a Sanctuary resource, any and all activities are subject to immediate temporary regulation, including prohibition, for up to 60 days, with one 60-day extension. NOAA is establishing three temporary special use areas for the purpose of coral restoration. The sites are as follows: (1) Tavernier Special Use Area is approximately five miles southeast of the community of Tavernier, on the island of Key Largo, within Federal waters of FKNMS; (2) Marathon Special Use Area is approximately 4 miles offshore from the City of Key Colony Beach/Marathon, within Federal waters of FKNMS; and (3) Looe Key Special Use Area is approximately 6.5 miles offshore from Summerland Key, within Federal waters of FKNMS (GPS coordinates for each special use areas are included below). These special use areas will serve as sites for the temporary relocation of nursery corals to deeper waters to protect the nursery corals from heat stress caused by the anticipated marine heat wave this summer. Creation of these temporary special use areas will limit the potential for physical impact to this sensitive coral nursery stock from anchoring, unintentional fouling of fishing gear, and bottom tending fishing gear including traps. The ONMS Director has determined that the size of 0.07 square miles for each site is no larger than the size reasonably necessary to protect the coral nursery stock from physical damage. The specific zone areas are 0.068 square miles for Tavernier, 0.066 square miles for Marathon, and 0.069 square miles for Looe Key. Individual coral practitioners would need to apply for a sanctuary permit to relocate nursery stock to any of the areas. Coral practitioners must also obtain any other necessary Federal permits. NOAA will provide notice of the location of this area through sanctuary radio announcements and press releases. NOAA has also requested that the U.S. Coast Guard give notification to vessels, via notice to mariners, to remain in continuous transit through this temporary area. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Justification for the Temporary Emergency Action</HD> This interim final rule is necessitated by the anticipated marine heat wave this summer that will likely impact and kill coral reefs in the Florida Keys at an unprecedented rate and scale. This action is informed by lessons learned from an emergency rule NOAA promulgated in response to the marine heat wave in the summer of 2023. In 2023, NOAA implemented an emergency regulation to establish a 0.07 square mile temporary special use area approximately five miles southeast of the community of Tavernier Key on the island of Key Largo (88 FR 60887). At the time, the south Florida sea temperatures as reported by NOAA were 35°C, which were the warmest on record. These conditions became unsustainable for coral reef ecosystems in July of 2023 and the extreme ocean temperatures persisted until at least October 2023. The 2023 special use area was in place for an initial 60 days (from September 6, 2023, through November 6, 2023) and was extended by an additional 60 days (from November 6, 2023, to January 5, 2024, 88 FR 75229, November 2, 2023), after which the special use area expired. During this time period, nursery coral relocated to this deeper water site experienced double the rate of survivorship as compared to nursery coral that remained at inshore, shallow sites. Data shows forecasts for similarly warm waters for 2024, and NOAA anticipates the need for three special use areas to move and protect coral species in this summer of 2024. As in the summer of 2023, NOAA anticipates that a summer heat wave will put at risk coral nursery stock because these are located in shallow, nearshore ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━