Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to a Marine Geophysical Survey in the Northwest Gulf of Mexico

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE398]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to a Marine Geophysical Survey in the Northwest Gulf of Mexico</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; proposed incidental harassment authorization; request for comments on proposed authorization and possible renewal. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to a marine geophysical survey in coastal waters off Texas in the northwest (NW) Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) to incidentally take marine mammals during the specified activities. NMFS is also requesting comments on a possible one-time, 1-year renewal that could be issued under certain circumstances and if all requirements are met, as described in the Request for Public Comments section at the end of this notice. NMFS will consider public comments prior to making any final decision on the issuance of the requested MMPA authorization and agency responses will be summarized in the final notice of our decision. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and information must be received no later than December 19, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should be addressed to Jolie Harrison, Chief, Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service and should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.wachtendonk@noaa.gov.</E> Electronic copies of the application and supporting documents, as well as a list of the references cited in this document, may be obtained online at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protection/incidental-take-authorizations-research-and-other-activities.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> NMFS is not responsible for comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period. Comments, including all attachments, must not exceed a 25-megabyte file size. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit confidential business information or otherwise sensitive or protected information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Rachel Wachtendonk, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The MMPA prohibits the “take” of marine mammals, with certain exceptions. Sections 101(a)(5)(A) and (D) of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) direct the Secretary of Commerce (as delegated to NMFS) to allow, upon request, the incidental, but not intentional, taking of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens who engage in a specified activity (other than commercial fishing) within a specified geographical region if certain findings are made and either regulations are proposed or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed IHA is provided to the public for review. Authorization for incidental takings shall be granted if NMFS finds that the taking will have a negligible impact on the species or stock(s) and will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stock(s) for taking for subsistence uses (where relevant). Further, NMFS must prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other “means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact” on the affected species or stocks and their habitat, paying particular attention to rookeries, mating grounds, and areas of similar significance, and on the availability of the species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (referred to in shorthand as “mitigation”); and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of the takings. The definitions of all applicable MMPA statutory terms used above are included in the relevant sections below and can be found in section 3 of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1362) and NMFS regulations at 50 CFR 216.103. <HD SOURCE="HD1">National Environmental Policy Act</HD> To comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA; 42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 216-6A, NMFS must review our proposed action ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the issuance of an IHA) with respect to potential impacts on the human environment. This action is consistent with categories of activities identified in Categorical Exclusion B4 (IHAs with no anticipated serious injury or mortality) of the Companion Manual for NAO 216-6A, which do not individually or cumulatively have the potential for significant impacts on the quality of the human environment and for which we have not identified any extraordinary circumstances that would preclude this categorical exclusion. Accordingly, NMFS has preliminarily determined that the issuance of the proposed IHA qualifies to be categorically excluded from further NEPA review. We will review all comments submitted in response to this notice prior to concluding our NEPA process or making a final decision on the IHA request. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On July 25, 2024, NMFS received a request from UT for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to a marine geophysical survey in coastal waters off Texas in the NW GOM. The application was deemed adequate and complete on September 24, 2024. UT's request is for take of bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins, and rough-toothed dolphins by Level B harassment only. Neither UT nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> Researchers from UT propose to conduct a low-energy marine seismic survey using airguns as the acoustic source from the research vessel (R/V) Brooks McCall (McCall) or similar vessel operated by TDI-Brooks International. The proposed survey would occur within Texas State waters in the NW GOM from approximately January to April 2025. The proposed survey would occur within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the United States and in Texas State waters, in water depths less than 30 meters (m). To complete this high resolution 3D (HR3D) seismic survey, the McCall would tow a 2-airgun array with a total discharge volume of ~210 cubic inches (in <SU>3</SU> ) at a depth of 3-4 m, with a shot interval of 12.5 m (5-10 seconds (s)) as the primary acoustic source. The airgun array receiver would consist of four 25-m-long solid-state hydrophone streamers, spaced 10 m apart. Approximately 4,440 km of seismic acquisition is proposed. The airgun array would introduce underwater sounds that may result in take, by Level B harassment, of marine mammals. The purpose of the proposed survey is to study the geologic section beneath the GOM for secure, long-term, large-scale carbon dioxide storage and enhanced hydrocarbon recovery. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> The proposed survey is anticipated to take place from January to April 2025. The survey is expected to last 23 days, including approximately 20 days of seismic operations and 3 days of transit and equipment deployment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specific Geographic Region</HD> The proposed survey would occur within approximately lat. 27.1-29.6° N, long. 93.6-97.4° W, the EEZ of the United States and in Texas State waters, in water depths less than 30 m. The primary study area is around the 10 m isobaths, and if no suitable sites are within Texas State waters, the alternate study area is on the outer continental shelf within the 30 m isobaths. The region where the survey is proposed to occur is depicted in figure 1; the tracklines could occur anywhere within the polygon shown in figure 1. The McCall would likely mobilize and demobilize from the nearest available port. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="357"> <GID>EN19NO24.000</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Specified Activity</HD> The procedures to be used for the proposed survey would be similar to those used during previous seismic surveys by UT and would use conventional seismic methodology. The survey would involve one source vessel, the McCall, or similar vessel operated by TDI-Brooks. During the low-energy HR3D seismic survey, the McCall would tow two Generator-Injector (GI) airguns with a total discharge volume of 210 in <SU>3</SU> . The airgun array would be deployed at a depth of about 3-4 m below the surface, spaced about 2 m apart, and have a shot interval of 12.5 m (about 5-10 s). The receiving system would consist of four 25-m solid-state hydrophone streamers, spaced 10 m apart and towed at a depth of 2 m. As the airguns are towed along the survey lines, the hydrophone streamer would transfer data to the on-board processing system. Approximately 4,440 km of seismic acquisition are planned. The survey would take place in water depths less than 30 m. Proposed mitigation, monitoring, and reporting measures are described in detail later in this document (please see P ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 177k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━