Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; North Pacific Observer Program Standard Ex-Vessel Prices

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE516]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; North Pacific Observer Program Standard Ex-Vessel Prices</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of standard ex-vessel prices. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS publishes standard ex-vessel prices for groundfish and halibut for the calculation of the observer fee under the North Pacific Observer Program (Observer Program). This notice is intended to provide information to vessel owners, processors, registered buyers, and other Observer Program participants about the standard ex-vessel prices that will be used to calculate the Observer Program fee associated with landings of groundfish and halibut made in 2025. NMFS will send invoices to processors and registered buyers subject to the fee by January 15, 2026. Fees are due to NMFS on or before February 15, 2026. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The standard prices take effect on January 1, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Additional information about the Observer Program is available on NMFS Alaska Region's website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/fisheries-observers/north-pacific-observer-program.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For general questions about the observer fee and standard ex-vessel prices, contact Amy Hadfield at (907) 586-7376. For questions about the fee billing process, contact Charmaine Weeks at (907) 586-7231. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Regulations at 50 CFR part 679, subpart E, governing the Observer Program, require the deployment of NMFS-certified observers (observers) and electronic monitoring (EM) systems to collect information necessary for the conservation and management of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) and Gulf of Alaska (GOA) groundfish and halibut fisheries. Fishery managers use information collected by observers and EM to monitor quotas, manage groundfish and prohibited species catch, and document and reduce fishery interactions with protected resources. Scientists use observer-collected information for stock assessments and marine ecosystem research. The Observer Program includes two observer coverage categories: the partial coverage category and the full coverage category. All groundfish and halibut vessels and processors subject to observer coverage are included in one of these two categories. Defined at § 679.51, the partial coverage category includes vessels and processors that are not required to have an observer or EM at all times when fishing, and the full coverage category includes vessels and processors required to have all of their fishing and processing activity observed. Vessels and processors in the full coverage category arrange and pay for observer services from a permitted observer provider. Observer coverage and EM for the partial coverage category is funded through a system of fees based on the ex-vessel value of groundfish and halibut. Throughout this notice, the term “processor” refers to shoreside processors, stationary floating processors, and catcher/processors in the partial coverage category. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Landings Subject to Observer Coverage Fee</HD> Pursuant to section 313 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, NMFS is authorized to assess a fee on all landings accruing against a Federal total allowable catch (TAC) for groundfish or commercial halibut quota landings made by vessels that are subject to Federal regulations and not included in the full coverage category. A fee is only assessed on landings of groundfish from vessels designated on a Federal Fisheries Permit or from vessels landing individual fishing quota (IFQ) or community development quota (CDQ) halibut or IFQ sablefish. Within the subset of vessels subject to the observer fee, only landings accruing against an IFQ allocation or a Federal TAC for groundfish are included in the fee assessment. A table with additional information about which landings are subject to the observer fee is at § 679.55(c) and on page 2 of an informational bulletin titled “Observer Fee Collection” that can be downloaded from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/resource/document/observer-fee-collection-north-pacific-groundfish-and-halibut-fisheries-observer.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Fee Determination</HD> A fee equal to 1.65 percent of the ex-vessel value is assessed on the landings of groundfish and halibut subject to the fee. Ex-vessel value is determined by multiplying the standard price for groundfish by the round weight equivalent for each species, gear, and port combination, and the standard price for halibut by the headed and gutted weight equivalent. Standard prices are determined by aggregating prices by species, gear, and area grouping to arrive at an average price per pound for each grouping. NMFS reviews each vessel landing report and determines whether the reported landing is subject to the observer fee and, if so, which groundfish species in the landing are subject to the observer fee. All IFQ or CDQ halibut in a landing subject to the observer fee will be included in the observer fee calculation. For any landed groundfish or halibut subject to the observer fee, NMFS will apply the appropriate standard ex-vessel prices for the species, gear type, and port and calculate the observer fee associated with the landing. Processors and registered buyers can access the landing-specific, observer fee information through the NMFS Web Application ( <E T="03">https://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/webapps/efish/login</E> ) or eLandings ( <E T="03">https://elandings.alaska.gov/</E> ). Landing-specific observer fee information is either available immediately or within 24 hours after a landing report is submitted electronically. A time lag occurs for some landings because NMFS must process each landing report through the catch accounting system to determine which groundfish in a landing accrues against a Federal TAC and are subject to the observer fee. Under the fee system, catcher vessel owners split the fee with the registered buyers or owners of shoreside or stationary floating processors. While the owners of catcher vessels and processors in the partial coverage category are each responsible for paying their portion of the fee, the owners of shoreside or stationary floating processors and registered buyers are responsible for collecting the fees from catcher vessels and remitting the full fee to NMFS. Owners of catcher/processors in the partial coverage category are responsible for remitting the full fee to NMFS. NMFS sends invoices to processors and registered buyers by January 15 of each calendar year. The total fee amount is determined by the sum of the fees reported for each landing at that processor or registered buyer in the prior calendar year. Processors and registered buyers must pay the fees to NMFS using eFISH. Payments are due by February 15 of each year. Processors and registered buyers have access to this system through a User ID and password issued by NMFS. Instructions for electronic payment are provided on the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/commercial-fishing/observer-fee-collection-and-payment-north-pacific-groundfish-and-halibut</E> and on the observer fee invoice to be mailed to each processor and registered buyer. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Standard Prices</HD> This notification provides the standard ex-vessel prices for groundfish and halibut species subject to the observer fee in 2025. Data sources for ex-vessel prices include the following: • For groundfish other than sablefish IFQ and sablefish accruing against the fixed gear sablefish CDQ reserve, the State of Alaska's Commercial Fishery Entry Commission's (CFEC) gross revenue data, which are based on the Commercial Operator Annual Report (COAR) and Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) fish tickets; and • For halibut IFQ, halibut CDQ, sablefish IFQ, and sablefish accruing against the fixed gear sablefish CDQ reserve, the IFQ Buyer Report that is submitted to NMFS annually by each registered buyer that operates as a shoreside processor and receives and purchases IFQ landings of sablefish and halibut or CDQ landings of halibut under § 679.5(l)(7)(i). The standard prices in this notification were calculated using the following procedures for protecting confidentiality of data submitted to or collected by NMFS. NMFS does not publish any price information that would permit the identification of an individual or business. For NMFS to publish a standard price for a particular species-gear-port combination, the price data used to calculate the standard price must represent landings from at least four different vessels delivered to at least three different processors in a port or port group. NMFS has aggregated price data that are confidential because fewer than four vessels or three processors contributed data to a particular species-gear-port combination. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Groundfish Standard Ex-Vessel Prices</HD> Table 1 shows the groundfish species standard ex-vessel prices that will be used to calculate the fee for 2025. These prices are based on the CFEC gross revenue data, which are based on landings data from ADF&G fish tickets and information from the COAR. The COAR contains statewide buying and production information and is considered the most complete routinely collected information to determine the ex-vessel value of groundfish harvested from waters off Alaska. The stan ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 68k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━