Marine Mammals; Incidental Take During Specified Activities; Proposed Incidental Harassment Authorization for Southcentral Alaska Stock of Northern Sea Otters at the Cruise Ship Passenger Dock and Terminal Facility in Seward, AK; Draft Environmental Assessment

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R7-ES-2025-0056; FXES111607MRG01-256-FF07CAMM00]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Marine Mammals; Incidental Take During Specified Activities; Proposed Incidental Harassment Authorization for Southcentral Alaska Stock of Northern Sea Otters at the Cruise Ship Passenger Dock and Terminal Facility in Seward, AK; Draft Environmental Assessment</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of receipt of application; proposed incidental harassment authorization; notice of availability of draft environmental assessment; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), in response to a request under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, as amended, from Turnagain Marine Construction (applicant), propose to authorize nonlethal, incidental take by harassment of small numbers of Southcentral Alaska stock northern sea otters ( <E T="03">Enhydra lutris kenyoni</E> ) for a period of up to 1 year from the date of issuance. The applicant has requested this authorization for take by harassment that may result from activities associated with pile-driving and marine construction activities on the northern shore of Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. We estimate that this project may result in, and propose to authorize, the nonlethal incidental take by harassment of up to 347 individual northern sea otters from the Southcentral Alaska stock. Neither the applicant nor the FWS anticipate any lethal take, and the FWS does not propose to authorize any lethal take. We invite comments on the proposed incidental harassment authorization and the accompanying draft environmental assessment from the public, and local, State, Tribal, and Federal agencies. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by October 23, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Document availability:</E> You may view the application package, supporting information, the draft environmental assessment, and the list of references cited herein at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R7-ES-2025-0056, or you may request these documents from the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Comment submission:</E> You may submit comments on the proposed authorization by one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In the Search box, enterFWS-R7-ES-2025-0056, which is the docket number for this notice. You may submit a comment by clicking on “Comment.” Comments must be submitted to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> before 11:59 p.m. eastern time/7:59 p.m. Alaska time on the date specified in <E T="02">DATES</E> . • <E T="03">U.S. mail:</E> Public Comments Processing, Attn: Docket No. FWS-R7-ES-2025-0056, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB (JAO/3W), 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. We request that you send comments only by the methods described above. We will post all comments at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> You may request that we withhold personal identifying information from public review; however, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. See Request for Public Comments for more information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dr. Stephanie Burgess, by email at <E T="03">r7mmmregulatory@fws.gov,</E> or by telephone at 1-800-362-5148 or 1-907-786-3800. Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 101(a)(5)(D) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA; 16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) to allow, upon request, the incidental, but not intentional, taking by harassment of small numbers of marine mammals in response to requests by U.S. citizens (as defined in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in part 18, at 50 CFR 18.27(c)) engaged in a specified activity (other than commercial fishing) in a specified geographic region during a period of not more than 1 year. The Secretary has delegated authority for implementation of the MMPA to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS, or we). According to the MMPA, the FWS shall allow this incidental taking by harassment if we make findings that the total of such taking for the 1-year period: 1. Is of small numbers of marine mammals of a species or stock; 2. Will have a negligible impact on such species or stocks; and 3. Will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of these species or stocks for taking for subsistence use by Alaska Natives. If the requisite findings are made, we issue an authorization that sets forth the following, where applicable: 1. Permissible methods of taking; 2. Means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact on the species or stock and its habitat and the availability of the species or stock for subsistence uses; and 3. Requirements for monitoring and reporting of such taking by harassment, including, in certain circumstances, requirements for the independent peer review of proposed monitoring plans or other research proposals. The term “take” means to harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or to attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal. “Harassment” means any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which (i) has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild (the MMPA defines this as “Level A harassment”), or (ii) has the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering (the MMPA defines this as “Level B harassment”). The terms “negligible impact” and “unmitigable adverse impact” are defined in 50 CFR 18.27 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> regulations governing small takes of marine mammals incidental to specified activities) as follows: “Negligible impact” is an impact resulting from the specified activity that cannot be reasonably expected to, and is not reasonably likely to, adversely affect the species or stock through effects on annual rates of recruitment or survival. “Unmitigable adverse impact” means an impact resulting from the specified activity: (1) that is likely to reduce the availability of the species to a level insufficient for a harvest to meet subsistence needs by (i) causing the marine mammals to abandon or avoid hunting areas, (ii) directly displacing subsistence users, or (iii) placing physical barriers between the marine mammals and the subsistence hunters; and (2) that cannot be sufficiently mitigated by other measures to increase the availability of marine mammals to allow subsistence needs to be met. The term “small numbers” is also defined in 50 CFR 18.27. However, we do not rely on that definition here as it conflates “small numbers” with “negligible impact.” We recognize “small numbers” and “negligible impact” as two separate and distinct considerations when reviewing requests for incidental harassment authorizations (IHA) under the MMPA (see <E T="03">Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc.</E> v. <E T="03">Evans,</E> 232 F. Supp. 2d 1003, 1025 (N.D. Cal. 2003)). Instead, for our small numbers determination, we estimate the likely number of takes of marine mammals and evaluate if that take is small relative to the size of the species or stock. The term “least practicable adverse impact” is not defined in the MMPA or its enacting regulations. For this IHA, we ensure the least practicable adverse impact by requiring mitigation measures that are effective in reducing the impact of project activities, but they are not so restrictive as to make project activities unduly burdensome or impossible to undertake and complete. If the requisite findings are made, we shall issue an IHA, which may set forth the following, where applicable: (i) permissible methods of taking; (ii) other means of effecting the least practicable impact on the species or stock and its habitat, paying particular attention to rookeries, mating grounds, and areas of similar significance, and on the availability of the species or stock for taking for subsistence uses by coastal-dwelling Alaska Natives (if applicable); and (iii) requirements for monitoring and reporting take by harassment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On November 8, 2024, Turnagain Marine Construction (hereafter, TMC or the applicant) submitted a request to the FWS for an authorization to take by Level A harassment and Level B harassment of northern sea otters ( <E T="03">Enhydra lutris kenyoni</E> ) (hereafter, sea otters or otters unless another species is specified) from the Southcentral Alaska stock. The FWS sent a request for additional information on January 7, 2025. We received additional information on January 10, 2025, and requested further information on January 31, 2025. We received an updated version of the request on April 7, 2025, and determined the application to be adequate and complete. The applicant expects take by harassment may occur during the construction of their cruise ship berth and associated facilities on the northern shore of Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Descript ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 84k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━