Taking and Importing Marine Mammals; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Geophysical Surveys Related to Oil and Gas Activities in the Gulf of America (Formerly Gulf of Mexico)

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XF328]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Taking and Importing Marine Mammals; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Geophysical Surveys Related to Oil and Gas Activities in the Gulf of America (Formerly Gulf of Mexico)</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 letter of authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), as amended, its implementing regulations, and NMFS' MMPA regulations for taking marine mammals incidental to geophysical surveys related to oil and gas activities in the Gulf of America, originally published as “Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Geophysical Surveys Related to Oil and Gas Activities in the Gulf of Mexico,” notification is hereby given that a Letter of Authorization (LOA) has been issued to Future Energy Consultants (FEC) for the take of marine mammals incidental to geophysical survey activity in the Gulf of America (GOA). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The LOA is effective from November 6, 2025 through April 19, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The LOA, LOA request, and supporting documentation are available online at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/incidental-take-authorization-oil-and-gas-industry-geophysical-survey-activity-gulf-mexico.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> ). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jenna Harlacher, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 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 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 issued or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed authorization is provided to the public for review. An authorization for incidental takings shall be granted if NMFS finds that the taking will have a negligible impact on the species or stock(s), will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stock(s) for subsistence uses (where relevant), and if the permissible methods of taking and requirements pertaining to the mitigation, monitoring and reporting of such takings are set forth. NMFS has defined “negligible impact” in 50 CFR 216.103 as 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. Except with respect to certain activities not pertinent here, the MMPA defines “harassment” as: any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which (i) has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild (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 (Level B harassment). On January 19, 2021, we issued a final rule with regulations to govern the unintentional taking of marine mammals incidental to geophysical survey activities conducted by oil and gas industry operators, and those persons authorized to conduct activities on their behalf (collectively “industry operators”), in U.S. waters of the Gulf of America (GOA)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> over the course of 5 years (86 FR 5322, January 19, 2021). The rule was based on our findings that the total taking from the specified activities over the 5-year period will have a negligible impact on the affected species or stock(s) of marine mammals and will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of those species or stocks for subsistence uses, and became effective on April 19, 2021. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Pursuant to Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,” and Department of the Interior Secretarial Order 3423, “The Gulf of America,” the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico is now called the Gulf of America. Accordingly, NMFS amended the incidental take regulations to reflect the change. See 90 FR 38001 (August 7, 2025). </FTNT> The regulations at 50 CFR 217.180 <E T="03">et seq.</E> allow for the issuance of LOAs to industry operators for the incidental take of marine mammals during geophysical survey activities and prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammal species or stocks and their habitat (often referred to as mitigation), as well as requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of such taking. Under 50 CFR 217.186(e), issuance of an LOA shall be based on a determination that the level of taking will be consistent with the findings made for the total taking allowable under these regulations and a determination that the amount of take authorized under the LOA is of no more than small numbers. NMFS subsequently discovered that the 2021 rule was based on erroneous take estimates. We conducted another rulemaking using correct take estimates and other newly available and pertinent information relevant to the analyses supporting some of the findings in the 2021 final rule and the taking allowable under the regulations. We issued a final rule in April 2024, effective May 24, 2024 (89 FR 31488, April 24, 2024). The 2024 final rule made no changes to the specified activities or the specified geographical region in which those activities would be conducted, nor to the original 5-year period of effectiveness. In consideration of the new information, the 2024 rule presented new analyses supporting affirmance of the negligible impact determinations for all species, and affirmed that the existing regulations, which contain mitigation, monitoring, and reporting requirements, are consistent with the “least practicable adverse impact” standard of the MMPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request and Analysis</HD> FEC plans to conduct a FloatSeis seismic field trial survey in the lease block LA5A, with water depths ranging from approximately 50—180 meters (m). See section F of the LOA application for a map of the area. FEC plans to use both a 2,450 cubic inch (in <SU>3</SU> ) airgun array, and a 220 in <SU>3</SU> airgun array. Please see the LOA application for additional detail. Consistent with the preamble to the final rule, the survey effort proposed by FEC in its LOA request was used to develop LOA-specific take estimates based on the acoustic exposure modeling results described in the preamble (89 FR 31488, April 24, 2024). In order to generate the appropriate take number for authorization, the following information was considered: (1) survey type; (2) location (by modeling zone  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> ); (3) number of days; (4) source; and (5) month. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The acoustic exposure modeling performed in support of the rule provides 24-hour exposure estimates for each species, specific to each modeled source and survey type in each zone and month. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  For purposes of acoustic exposure modeling, the GOA was divided into seven zones. Zone 1 is not included in the geographic scope of the rule. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Acoustic propagation modeling was performed for two seasons: Winter (December-March) and Summer (April-November). Marine mammal density data is generally available on a monthly basis, and therefore further refines take estimates temporally. </FTNT> FEC survey type was not included in the modeled survey types, and use of existing proxies ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> two-dimensional (2D), three-dimensional (3D) narrow-azimuth (NAZ), 3D wide-azimuth (WAZ), Coil) is generally conservative for use in evaluation of both types of survey efforts, largely due to the greater area covered by the modeled proxies. Summary descriptions of these modeled survey geometries are available in the preamble to the proposed rule (83 FR 29212, 29220, June 22, 2018). For the survey effort using the 2,450 in <SU>3</SU> airgun array, the 4,130 in <SU>3</SU> airgun array was selected as the best proxy and coil was selected as the best available proxy survey type in this case because the spatial coverage of the planned survey is most similar to the coil survey pattern. For the survey effort using the 220 in <SU>3</SU> airgun array, the above proxies are conservative, therefore the exposure modeling results were generated using the single airgun proxy. Because these results assume use of a 90-in <SU>3</SU> airgun, the take numbers authorized for this part of the survey activity are considered the most similar to the 220 in <SU>3</SU> sound source planned for use by FEC, as compared to the other proxies modeled for the rule. The survey will take place over approximately 5 days all operating in Zone 2. The monthly distribution of survey days is not known in advance, though we assume that the planned 5 days of source operation would occur contiguously. Take estimates for each species are based on the time period that produces the greatest value. Based on the results of our analysis, NMFS has determined that the level of taking expected for this survey and authorized th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━