Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Military Readiness Activities in the Hawaii-California Training and Testing Study Area

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 218</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 251211-0182]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN44</RIN> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Military Readiness Activities in the Hawaii-California Training and Testing Study Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; notification of issuance of Letters of Authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS, upon request from the U.S. Department of the Navy (including the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps (Navy)) and on behalf of the U.S. Coast Guard (Coast Guard) and U.S. Army (Army; hereafter, Navy, Coast Guard, and Army are collectively referred to as Action Proponents), issues these regulations pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to govern the taking of marine mammals incidental to training and testing activities and modernization and sustainment of ranges conducted in the Hawaii-California Training and Testing (HCTT) Study Area over the course of 7 years from December 2025 through December 2032. These regulations allow for the issuance of letters of authorization (LOAs) for the incidental take of marine mammals during specified activities and timeframes, prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammal species and their habitat, and establish requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of such taking. The Action Proponents' activities are considered military readiness activities pursuant to the MMPA, as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (2004 NDAA) and the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2019 (2019 NDAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective from December 21, 2025, through December 20, 2032. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A copy of the Action Proponents' incidental take authorization (ITA) 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-military-readiness-activities.</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> Leah Davis, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Purpose and Need for Regulatory Action</HD> These regulations, issued under the authority of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), allow for the authorization of take of marine mammals incidental to the Action Proponents' training and testing activities and modernization and sustainment of ranges (that qualify as military readiness activities) involving the use of active sonar and other transducers, air guns, and explosives (also referred to as “in-water detonations”); pile driving and vibratory extraction; land-based missile and target launches; and vessel movement in the HCTT Study Area. The HCTT Study Area includes areas in the north-central Pacific Ocean, from California west to Hawaii and the International Date Line, and including the Hawaii Range Complex (HRC) and Temporary Operating Area (TOA), Southern California (SOCAL) Range Complex, Point Mugu Sea Range (PMSR), Silver Strand Training Complex (SSTC), areas along the Southern California coastline from approximately Dana Point to Port Hueneme, and the Northern California (NOCAL) Range Complex. Also included in the HCTT Study Area are Navy pierside locations in Hawaii and Southern California, Pearl Harbor, San Diego Bay, and the transit corridor on the high seas where training and testing may occur (see figure 1 of the proposed rulemaking and figure 1.1-1 of the application). Please see the Legal Authority for the Proposed Action section for relevant definitions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Legal Authority for the Final Action</HD> The MMPA prohibits the “take” of marine mammals, with certain exceptions. Section 101(a)(5)(A) and (D) of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) directs 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 authorization is provided to the public for review and the opportunity to submit comment. 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; 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 (collectively referred to as “mitigation”); and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of the takings. The MMPA defines “take” to mean to harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal. The Analysis and Negligible Impact Determination section discusses the definition of “negligible impact.” The 2004 NDAA (Pub. L. 108-136) amended section 101(a)(5) of the MMPA to remove the “small numbers” and “specified geographical region” provisions and amended the definition of “harassment” as applied to a “military readiness activity” to read as follows (section 3(18)(B) of the MMPA): (1) any act that injures or has the significant potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild (Level A Harassment); or (2) any act that disturbs or is likely to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of natural behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, surfacing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering, to a point where such behavioral patterns are abandoned or significantly altered (Level B Harassment). The 2004 NDAA also amended section 101(a)(5)(A)(iii) of the MMPA establishing that “[f]or military readiness activity . . . , a determination of `least practicable adverse impact' . . . shall include consideration of personnel safety, practicality of implementation, and impact on the effectiveness of the military readiness activity.” On August 13, 2018, the 2019 NDAA (Pub. L. 115-232) amended the section 101(a)(5)(A)(ii) of the MMPA to allow incidental take regulations (ITRs) for military readiness activities to be issued for up to 7 years. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Major Provisions Within the Final Rule</HD> The major provisions of this rule are: • Take of marine mammals by Level A harassment and/or Level B harassment; • Take of marine mammals by mortality or serious injury (M/SI); • Use of defined powerdown and shutdown zones (based on activity); • Measures to reduce the likelihood of vessel strikes; • Activity limitations in certain areas and times that are biologically important ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> for foraging, migration, reproduction) for marine mammals; • Implementation of a Notification and Reporting Plan (for dead, live stranded, or marine mammals struck by any vessel engaged in military readiness activities); and • Implementation of a robust monitoring plan to improve our understanding of the environmental effects resulting from the Action Proponents' training and testing activities and modernization and sustainment of ranges. This rule includes an adaptive management component that allows for timely modification of mitigation, monitoring, and/or reporting measures based on new information, when appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On September 16, 2024, NMFS received an application from the Action Proponents requesting authorization to take marine mammals, by Level A and B harassment, incidental to training, testing, and modernization and sustainment of ranges (characterized as military readiness activities) including the use of sonar and other transducers, explosives, air guns, impact and vibratory pile driving and extraction, and land-based missile and target launches conducted within the HCTT Study Area. The Action Proponents also requested authorization to take, by serious injury or mortality, a limited number of marine mammal species incidental to the use of explosives and vessel movement during military readiness activities conducted within the HCTT Study Area. The Action Proponents requested multiple 7-year LOAs for Navy training activities, Coast Guard training activities, Army training activities, and Navy testing activities. In response to our comments and following an information exchange, the Action Proponents submitted a revised application, deemed adequate and complete on December 13, 2024. Also on that same date (December 13, 2024), NMFS published a notice of receipt of the application (NOR) in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 100982), requesting comments and information related to the Action Proponents' specified activities. During the 30-day public comment period, NMFS received one public comment from the Center for Biological Diversity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 764k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━