Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Gary Paxton Industrial Park Vessel Haulout Project in Sitka, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE193]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Gary Paxton Industrial Park Vessel Haulout Project in Sitka, Alaska</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; issuance of an incidental harassment authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the regulations implementing the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) as amended, notification is hereby given that NMFS has issued an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) to City and Borough of Sitka (CBS) to incidentally harass marine mammals during construction activities associated with Gary Paxton Industrial Park Vessel Haulout Project in Sawmill Cove in Sitka, Alaska. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This authorization is effective one year from the date of issuance. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> 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-construction-activities.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kate Fleming, Office of Protected Resources (OPR), 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 mitigation, monitoring and reporting of the takings are set forth. The definitions of all applicable MMPA statutory terms cited above are included in the relevant sections below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On January 18, 2024, NMFS received a request from CBS for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to construction associated with the Gary Paxton Industrial Park Vessel Haulout Project in Sawmill Cove in Sitka, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application, CBS submitted a revised version on March 20, 2024, and another on April 27, 2024. The application was deemed adequate and complete on May 20, 2024. CBS's request is for take of nine species of marine mammals by Level B harassment and, for a subset of those species, by Level A harassment. Neither CBS nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. NMFS previously issued an IHA to CBS for similar work (82 FR 47717, October 13, 2017). CBS complied with all the requirements ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> mitigation, monitoring, and reporting) of the previous IHA, and information regarding their monitoring results may be found in the Potential Effects of Specified Activities on Marine Mammals and Their Habitat section. This IHA covers one year of a larger project; CBS intends to request a future take authorization for subsequent facets of the project. In year 1, construction of the following elements are planned: 150-ton capacity vessel haulout piers, expanded uplands including stormwater collection and treatment, and a vessel washdown pad. The larger multi-year project involves construction of a queuing float, approach dock and gangway, a pile-supported deck area, vessel haulout ramp, an uplands shipyard, and pile anodes. While not planned to be constructed as part of this project, CBS's goal is to eventually construct additional haulout piers to accommodate removal of vessels up to 300 tons. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Specified Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The CBS is constructing a vessel haulout facility at Gary Paxton Industrial Park in Sawmill Cove in Sitka, Alaska. Across 62 construction days across a 1-year period, CBS plans to ibratory and impact install 36-in steel haulout pier support piles (both vertical and battered), vibratory install 24-in steel fender piles, and vibratory install and remove 24-in steel temporary template pipe piles. These methods of pile driving would introduce underwater sounds that may result in take, by Level A and Level B harassment, of marine mammals. A detailed description of the planned construction project is provided in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice for the proposed IHA (89 FR 56317, July 9, 2024). Since that time, no changes have been made to the planned activities. Therefore, a detailed description is not provided here. Please refer to the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice for the description of the specific activity. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> A notice of NMFS' proposal to issue an IHA to CBS was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 9, 2024 (89 FR 56317). That notice described, in detail, CBS's activity, the marine mammal species that may be affected by the activity, and the anticipated effects on marine mammals. In that notice, we requested public input on the request for authorization described therein, our analyses, the proposed authorization, and any other aspect of the notice of proposed IHA, and requested that interested persons submit relevant information, suggestions, and comments. During the 30-day public comment period, NMFS did not receive any substantive public comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes From the Proposed IHA to Final IHA</HD> On May 3, 2024, NMFS published (89 FR 36762) and solicited public comment on its draft updated Technical Guidance for Assessing the Effects of Anthropogenic Sound on Marine Mammal Hearing Underwater and In-Air Criteria for Onset of Auditory Injury and Temporary Threshold Shifts (Version 3.0) (2024 Technical Guidance), which includes updated thresholds and weighting functions to inform auditory injury (AUD INJ) estimates. The public comment period ended on June 17th, 2024, and the 2024 Technical Guidance was finalized on October 24, 2024. The 2024 Technical Guidance represents the best available science and has been incorporated into the analysis in this final IHA. The relevant updated hearing group names, thresholds, and weighting functions may be found in the executive summary of the 2024 Technical Guidance. The resultant updated isopleths for this project are presented in table 9 of the Estimated Take of Marine Mammals section. There were no substantive changes to Level A harassment isopleths for low frequency cetaceans (they increased slightly during vibratory activities and decreased slightly during impact pile driving). However, for high-frequency cetaceans (categorized as mid-frequency cetaceans prior to application of the 2024 Technical Guidance), phocids, and otariids, Level A harassment isopleths increased substantially during all pile driving activities. Additionally, for very high frequency cetaceans (categorized as high frequency cetaceans prior to application of the 2024 Technical Guidance), Level A harassment isopleths decreased slightly during vibratory activities and substantially during impact pile driving. Necessary modifications to mitigation zones are presented in table 12 in the Mitigation section. In cases where the Level A harassment zones were smaller, the mitigation zones were not adjusted. In cases where the Level A harassment zones were larger, the mitigation zones were increased to either meet the Level A harassment isopleth, or to whatever distance was established after consideration of practicability and observability. For all species, the total number of takes proposed for authorization is equal to the total number of takes authorized by Level A and Level B harassment; for some species, estimates of take by Level A harassment were updated based on the analysis under the 2024 Updated Technical Guidance. Updated take numbers are presented in table 10. Specifically, species with increased take by Level A harassment include Pacific white-sided dolphin ( <E T="03">Lagenorhynchus obliquidens</E> ), harbor porpoise ( <E T="03">Phocoena phocoena</E> ), Steller sea lion ( <E T="03">Eumetopias jubatus</E> ), California sea lion ( <E T="03">Zalophus californianus</E> ), Northern fur seal ( <E T="03">Callorhinus ursinus</E> ), and harbor seal ( <E T="03">Phoca vitulina</E> ). Take by Level A harassment increased from 5 from 6 for harbor porpoise, 89 to 240 Steller sea lion (88 to 237 Eastern Distinct Population Segment (DPS); 1 to 3 Western DPS), and 34 to 5 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 117k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━