Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Lubec Harbor Project in Lubec, Maine

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE772]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Lubec Harbor Project in Lubec, Maine</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 the Maine Department of Transportation (ME DOT) to incidentally harass marine mammals during construction activities associated with the Lubec Harbor project in Lubec, Maine. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This authorization is effective from April 10, 2025 through April 9, 2026. </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#authorizations-in-process.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kelsey Potlock, 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">Summary of Request</HD> On August 29, 2024, NMFS received a request from ME DOT for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to construction activities in Johnson Bay in Lubec, Maine. Following NMFS' review of the application, ME DOT submitted a revised version on December 19, 2024. The application was deemed adequate and complete on December 20, 2024. ME DOT's request is for take of six species of marine mammals, by Level B harassment and by Level A harassment for 3 of those species. Neither ME DOT nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of the Specified Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> The Maine Department of Transportation and the Town of Lubec are planning to construct a boat launch and breakwater structure that would extend into Johnson Bay from the northern coast of Lubec. The town was once one of Maine's most active commercial fishing ports, consisting of several large herring processing operations until the late 1970s. A collapse of the herring fishery led to the closure of those processing canneries; however, there is a rebound of the fishing industry in the area due to lobster fishing, shellfish harvesting, and growth of salmon farming. The project will address the lack of sheltered boat access and safe launch locations. The breakwater is expected to provide a sheltered area that mariners may launch behind and recover and moor their vessels during periods of inclement weather. This project is scheduled in order to provide a safer harbor for the mariners and townspeople of Lubec. This construction project includes installation of a falsework platform, a pile supported platform (PSP), and two floating docks. The falsework platform will be installed using impact and vibratory pile driving, while the PSP and floating docks will require DTH (down the hole) drilling. ME DOT is requesting authorization of take by Level B harassment for five marine mammal species over an estimated 234 days of pile driving/drilling activities. <GPOTABLE COLS="8" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s30,r30,12,12,12,12,12,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Number and Types of Piles To Be Installed</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Project component</CHED> <CHED H="1">Pile diameter and type</CHED> <CHED H="1">Number of piles</CHED> <CHED H="1">Impact strikes per pile</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Vibratory duration per pile (minutes) </CHED> <CHED H="1">DTH drilling duration per pile (minutes)</CHED> <CHED H="1">Production rate (piles per day)</CHED> <ENT I="01">Pile Supported Platform</ENT> <ENT>36″ steel pipe pile</ENT> <ENT>72</ENT> <ENT/> <ENT/> <ENT>780</ENT> <ENT>0.5</ENT> <ENT>144</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Floating Docks</ENT> <ENT>24-30″ steel pipe pile</ENT> <ENT>0.5</ENT> <ENT>64</ENT> </ROW> <ROW RUL="n,s"> <ENT I="01">Falsework Platform</ENT> <ENT>14″ steel H pile</ENT> A detailed description of the planned construction project is provided in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice for the proposed IHA (90 FR 11262, March 5, 2025). Since that time, no changes have been made to the planned activities. Therefore, a detailed description is not provided here. Please refer to that <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 ME DOT was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 5, 2025 (90 FR 11262). That notice described, in detail, ME DOT'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 public comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes From Proposed IHA to Final IHA</HD> NMFS has corrected a typographical error related to the source level values for 14-inch (35.56-centimeter) impact H piles. The proposed IHA specified source levels of 183 dB sound exposure level (SEL) and 170 dB root mean square (RMS) for this pile type. However, these levels were erroneously transposed, and the source levels have been corrected to 170 dB SEL and 183 dB RMS. The correction of these values results in updated estimated harassment isopleths and associated ensonified areas and, as a result, updated take numbers associated with impact driving of 14-inch piles. Please see the Estimated Take of Marine Mammals section for updated isopleth distances, areas, and take numbers. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Marine Mammals in the Area of Specified Activities</HD> Sections 3 and 4 of the application summarize available information regarding status and trends, distribution and habitat preferences, and behavior and life history of the potentially affected species. NMFS fully considered all of this information, and we refer the reader to these descriptions, instead of reprinting the information. Additional information regarding population trends and threats may be found in NMFS' Stock Assessment Reports (SARs; <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protection/marine-mammal-stock-assessments</E> ) and more general information about these species ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> physical and behavioral descriptions) may be found on NMFS' website ( <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/find-species</E> ). Table 2 lists all species or stocks for which take is authorized for this activity and summarizes information related to the population or stock, including regulatory status under the MMPA and Endangered Species Act (ESA) and potential biological removal (PBR), where known. PBR is defined by the MMPA as the maximum number of animals, not including natural mortalities, that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach or maintain its optimum sustainable population (as described in NMFS' SARs). While no serious injury or mortality is authorized here, PBR and annual serious injury and mortality (M/SI) from anthropogenic sources are included here as gross indicators of the status of the species or stocks and other threats. Marine mammal abundance estimates presented in this document represent the total number of individuals that make up a given stock or the total number estimated within a parti ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 91k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━