Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Marine Site Characterization Surveys Off Rhode Island and Massachusetts

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE475]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Marine Site Characterization Surveys Off Rhode Island and Massachusetts</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 modification of an incidental harassment authorization; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS is proposing to modify an existing incidental harassment authorization (IHA) issued to Bay State Wind, LLC (Bay State Wind) on October 3, 2024, authorizing take of marine mammals incidental to marine site characterization surveys conducted off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Commercial Lease of Submerged Lands for Renewable Energy Development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Lease Area OCS-A 0500 and the associated export cable route (ECR) area. While conducting said marine site characterization surveys, Bay State Wind has encountered common dolphins ( <E T="03">Delphinus delphis</E> ) at a rate greater than anticipated under the analysis for that IHA and, therefore, requests that NMFS modify the IHA to increase the number of authorized take by Level B harassment for that species only. No other changes to the IHA were requested or are proposed herein, and the expiration date remains unchanged. NMFS will consider public comments on the requested modification prior to making any final decision 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 26, 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. Written comments should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.hilt@noaa.gov.</E> <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 Hilt, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. Electronic copies of the original application and supporting documents (including NMFS <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices of the original proposed and final authorizations, and the previous IHA), 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/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed above. </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 issued or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed incidental take authorization may be 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 such 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 such takings are set forth. <HD SOURCE="HD1">History of Request</HD> On March 27, 2024, NMFS received a request from Bay State Wind for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to conducting high-resolution geophysical (HRG) surveys off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts in OCS-A 0500 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Ørsted's planned Bay State Wind development) and the associated ECR area. Following NMFS' review of the application, Bay State Wind submitted a revised version on June 10, 2024. After additional NMFS review of the revised application, Bay State Wind submitted another revised version on July 29, 2024. That application was deemed adequate and complete on August 1, 2024. Bay State Wind's request was for the take of 17 species of marine mammals by Level B harassment only. Notice of proposed IHA and request for comments were published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 21, 2024 (89 FR 67597). The IHA was issued on October 3, 2024 (89 FR 81458, October 8, 2024), with effective dates October 6, 2024 to October 5, 2025. On November 1, 2024, NMFS received a request from Bay State Wind for a modification to the existing IHA. Bay State Wind informed NMFS that they were encountering common dolphins during the marine site characterization surveys at a rate greater than anticipated. Bay State Wind expressed concern that this elevated encounter rate could potentially result in the authorized take for common dolphins being exceeded. Therefore, Bay State Wind requested that NMFS modify the existing IHA by increasing the number of authorized take of that species only. NMFS is proposing to modify the IHA to increase the number of authorized take by Level B harassment of common dolphin only. No other changes to the IHA are proposed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of the Proposed Activity and Anticipated Impacts</HD> The proposed modified IHA would include the same HRG surveys in the same geographic locations that were described in the analysis for the initial IHA. The nature of the specified activity that could result in take of marine mammals ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> underwater sound from Bay State Wind's marine site characterization surveys), including the types of equipment planned for use, the methods, the duration of the specified activity (up to 350 survey days in one year), and number of vessels planned for use are identical to those previously analyzed. The mitigation, monitoring, and reporting measures, as well as the expiration date of the IHA, also remain the same. With the exception of the number of estimated take of common dolphin, no increased number of take of other species is estimated or proposed for authorization. NMFS refers the reader to the documents related to the initial IHA issued on October 3, 2024 (89 FR 81458, October 8, 2024), for more detailed description of the project activities. Other relevant documents include the notice of proposed IHA and request for comments (89 FR 67597, August 21, 2024). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Action</HD> A detailed description of the survey activities is found in these previous documents. The location, timing, and nature of the activities, including the types of HRG equipment planned for use, daily trackline distances and number of survey vessels (four) are identical to those described in the previous notices. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Description of Marine Mammals</HD> A description of the marine mammals in the area of the activities is found in these previous documents, which remains applicable to the proposed issuance of the modified IHA as well. In addition, NMFS has reviewed recent draft Stock Assessment Reports, information on relevant Unusual Mortality Events, and recent scientific literature, and determined that no new information affects our original analysis of impacts under the initial IHA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Potential Effects on Marine Mammals and Their Habitat</HD> A description of the potential effects of the specified activities on marine mammals and their habitat may be found in the documents supporting the initial IHA (89 FR 81458, October 8, 2024), which remains applicable to the issuance of the modified IHA. There is no new information on potential effects. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Estimated Take</HD> A detailed description of the methods and inputs used to estimate take for the specified activity are found in the notice of IHA for the initial authorization (89 FR 81458, October 8, 2024). The HRG equipment that may result in take, as well as the source levels, marine mammal stocks taken, marine mammal density data, and the methods of take estimation applicable to this authorization remain unchanged from the initial IHA. With the exception of the common dolphin, the number of estimated take of marine mammal species remains unchanged. The initial IHA issued to Bay State Wind on Oc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━