Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act Provisions; General Provisions for Domestic Fisheries; Application for Exempted Fishing Permits

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XF289]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act Provisions; General Provisions for Domestic Fisheries; Application for Exempted Fishing Permits</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries, Greater Atlantic Region (GARFO), NMFS, has made a preliminary determination that an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) application contains all of the required information and warrants further consideration. The EFP would allow federally permitted fishing vessels to fish outside fishery regulations in support of exempted fishing activities proposed by the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). Regulations under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act require publication of this notification to provide interested parties the opportunity to comment on applications for proposed EFPs. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 19, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit written comments by email: <E T="03">nmfs.gar.efp@noaa.gov.</E> Include in the subject line “NEFSC On-demand EFP”. All comments received are a part of the public record and may be posted for public viewing without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “anonymous” as the signature if you wish to remain anonymous). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Christine Ford, Fishery Management Specialist, <E T="03">Christine.Ford@noaa.gov,</E> (978) 281-9185. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The NOAA NEFSC submitted a complete application for an EFP to conduct commercial fishing activities that the regulations would otherwise restrict, to continue trials of on-demand fishing gear that use one or no surface buoys and to test the ability of gear marking systems to consistently locate gear. This EFP would exempt the participating vessels from the following Federal regulations: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="xs90,xs100,r100"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Requested Exemptions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">CFR citation</CHED> <CHED H="1">Regulation</CHED> <CHED H="1">Need for exemption</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">50 CFR 697.21(b)</ENT> <ENT>Gear marking requirements</ENT> <ENT>For trial of trap/pot gear with no more than one surface marking on trawls of more than three traps, and trial of trap/pot gear with no surface marking on trawls of three or fewer traps.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">50 CFR 648.84(b)</ENT> <ENT>Gear marking requirements</ENT> <ENT>For trial of gillnet gear with no more than one surface marking.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">50 CFR 648.264(a)(5)</ENT> <ENT>Gear marking requirements</ENT> <ENT>For trial of red crab trap/pot gear with no more than one surface marking on trawls.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,p1,8/9,i1" CDEF="xs100,r200"> <TTITLE>Table 2—Project Summary</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> </CHED> <CHED H="1"> </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Project title</ENT> <ENT>Development and trials of on-demand fishing systems in fixed gear fisheries.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Project start</ENT> <ENT>01/01/2026.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Project end</ENT> <ENT>12/31/2026.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Project objectives</ENT> <ENT>To expand the trials of on-demand fishing systems with additional participants and fisheries to ensure testing has been conducted adequately across the breadth of regional commercial fishing conditions, with the aim of sustaining the fixed gear fishing industry, while reducing the entanglement risk to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Project location</ENT> <ENT>Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, Southern New England, and Mid-Atlantic, including but not limited to Statistical Areas: 512, 513, 514, 515, 521, 522, 561, 562, 525, 526, 537, 538, 539, 621, 626.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Number of vessels</ENT> <ENT>Trap/pot: Up to 180, including up to 5 using grappling; Gillnet: Up to 20.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Number of trips</ENT> <ENT>Trap/pot: Up to 15,000 trips (180 vessels making an average of 1.5 trips/week); Gillnet: Up to 1,600 trips (20 vessels making an average of 1.5 trips/week).</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Trip duration (days)</ENT> <ENT>Variable based on fishery, target species, and fishing location, but within the range of standard commercial fishing trips and consistent with FMP regulations.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Gear type(s)</ENT> <ENT>Lobster traps, deep-sea red crab pots, fish pots, and anchored-fixed gillnets.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Number of tows or sets</ENT> <ENT>Trap/pot: Effort capped at 1,800 total modified trap/pot trawls actively fished, including grappled trawls. Gillnet: Effort capped at 200 modified gillnet strings. Per vessel effort will vary by season, fishing operation, and the number of active participants, but will not exceed 20 modified trawls and/or strings. In Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan (ALWTRP) Restricted Areas, vessels will be allowed to modify up to 20 lobster trawls, with a cap of 600 total trawls actively fished across the Restricted Areas.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Duration of tows or sets</ENT> <ENT>Trap/pot: Variable, but expected to be 14 days or less. Will not exceed 30 days, as required by regulation; Gillnet: Typical commercial soak times.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Project Narrative</HD> This project is a continuation and broadening of the development of on-demand (also known as ropeless) fishing systems aimed at reducing the entanglement risk to protected species, mainly the North Atlantic right whale, in trap/pot and gillnet fisheries. The NEFSC's existing EFP (DA24-004) authorizes on-demand gear trials on up to 180 lobster trap/pot vessels and up to 20 total gillnet, red crab trap, and black sea bass pot vessels. The EFP will expire on December 31, 2025. This project would allow up to 180 total trap/pot vessels and up to 20 gillnet vessels to replace up to 20 of their existing trawls/strings (up to 2,000 total trawls/strings) with modified trawls/strings, including in the ALWTRP Restricted Areas. Modified gear would replace one or both traditional end lines with acoustic on-demand systems and other alternatives to persistent buoy lines (including, but not limited to, spooled systems, buoy and stowed-rope systems, lift-bag systems, and grappling). The ultimate goal of this project is to enable the continuation of some of the region's most valuable and historically significant fisheries while also meeting the requirements set forth by the ALWTRP and section 118(f) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, specifically reducing the level of serious injury and mortality of North Atlantic right, humpback, and fin whales in commercial fisheries. To achieve this, the project includes objectives to test the efficacy of fully on-demand trawls/strings and the adequacy of gear marking systems that use data hubs and visualization platforms to share on-demand gear locations. The research focus for this project includes: • Gear performance evaluation in varied environmental conditions among varied vessel and gear characteristics to inform safety decisions, refine reliability and user experience, compare timing across operations and fishing modalities, and determine alternative (digital) gear location marking accuracy; • Data analysis focused on durability, manufacturer-specific performance, and criteria that could be used to later approve gear technologies; • Continued evaluation of the reliability of new innovative gears as they come on the market by working with manufacturers and fishermen to pilot test gears; • Expansion of experimental fishing in Restricted Areas in ways that make sense with a focus on safety (protected species and fishermen) and equity (fishermen and manufacturers) to assess the feasibility and efficiency of fishing fully on-demand trawls; and • Expansion of communication efforts to the broader fishing community, managers, and partners. To ensure that on-demand fishing and gear marking technologies are adequately tested across the breadth of regional commercial fishing conditions, the NEFSC requests the flexibility to test on-demand gear across the geographic range of the Federal American lobster and Jonah crab fishery, including testing fully on-demand gear (no persistent vertical lines) in ALWTRP Restricted Areas. It also requests the opportunity to trial on-demand gillnet and other trap/pot gear across the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, Southern New England, and the Mid-Atlantic. To cover a greater area and target areas where data is needed, NEFSC has requested the flexibility to have greater than 200 participants during the permit period (with only 200 fishing at one time). It would provide requested modifications to the active participants, general locations, and technologies to be tested one month in advance. Priority would be given to participants who are seasonally excluded from fishing in certain areas and/or in offshore fisheries with limited entanglement mitigation options. This permit would only exempt vessels from the specified Fed ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━