Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Small Boat Harbor Preconstruction Activities (Geotechnical Surveys) in St. George, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE543]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Small Boat Harbor Preconstruction Activities (Geotechnical Surveys) in St. George, 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; 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 United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to geotechnical drilling in St. George, Alaska. 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 Request for Public Comments 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 April 4, 2025. </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.Fleming@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-construction-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> Kate Fleming, 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On October 30, 2024, NMFS received a request from USACE for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to geotechnical surveys to be conducted as part of preconstruction activities associated with a new small boat harbor in St. George, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application, and discussions between NMFS and USACE, the application was deemed adequate and complete on January 29, 2025. The USACE submitted a final revised version on February 19, 2025. The USACE's request is for take of northern fur seal, by Level A and Level B harassment and, of harbor seal, by Level B harassment only. Neither USACE nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. This proposed IHA would cover 1 year of preconstruction activity associated with a larger project involving construction of a new small boat harbor. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The USACE is in the preconstruction, engineering, and design (PED) phase for constructing a small boat harbor in St. George, Alaska. Between April 15, 2025 and June 15, 2025, USACE would conduct Large Penetration Testing (LPT) and borehole drilling. These methods would introduce underwater sounds that may result in take, by Level A and Level B harassment, of marine mammals. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> The proposed IHA would be effective from April 15, 2025 to June 15, 2025, reflecting a proposed seasonal work window designed to minimize effects on northern fur seal reproductive behavior. See Proposed Mitigation for further detail. The project would require approximately 15 days of geotechnical drilling. In-water construction activities would occur during daylight hours only, between a 14 to 18 hour daily work window. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specific Geographic Region</HD> St. George is on St. George Island, the southernmost and second largest group of five inactive volcanic islands that compose the Pribilof Archipelago located in the southern Bering Sea, approximately 760 miles [(mi.), (1,223 kilometers, (km)] west of Anchorage, Alaska and 220 mi. (354 km) north-northwest of Unalaska Island. St. George Island's position at the western margin of Alaska's continental shelf puts it in close proximity to much deeper waters of the Bering Sea's abyssal plain. The abrupt change in seafloor elevation occurring at the continental slope facilitates natural upwelling processes; as a result, surface waters in the region are extremely productive. The project site is adjacent to St. George, on the north side of St. George Island, and spans the embayment between the Old Jetty (eastern side of the project area) east across to North Rookery (western side of the project area), which is the largest northern fur seal rookery in the world (Williams, 2024 personal communication) (see figure 2). Water depths at borehole locations range from approximately 3 feet [(ft.) (0.9 meters (m)] deep nearshore to approximately 20 ft. deep (6.1 m) near the entrance channel. The site experiences strong northerly winds and swell. Fog is highly variable but can persist for days or weeks, though USACE indicates that fog is most consistent in July and August. <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="368"> <GID>EN05MR25.000</GID> </GPH> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Detailed Description of the Specified Activity</HD> USACE plans to conduct geotechnical surveys in the embayment between the Old Jetty west to North Rookery, to inform preconstruction, engineering, and design for construction of a small boat harbor on St. George Island, Alaska. Activities to be completed during the period of the proposed IHA include geotechnical sampling at 15 borehole sites within the harbor footprint (figure 1-2 in application). Two additional sites would be sampled on land to the east of the in-water footprint. The geotechnical sampling would involve two components: (1) LPT, using a 2.5 in (6.4 centimeter) (inside diameter) to 3.0-inch (7.6 centimeter) (outside diameter) split barrel sampler, and impact hammer weighing 340 pounds (154 kilograms) falling 30 inches (76.2 centimeters), ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 143k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━