Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Marine and Aviation Operations Research Vessel Relocation at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XF254]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Marine and Aviation Operations Research Vessel Relocation at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; proposed issuance of an Incidental Harassment Authorization (IHA); request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the U.S. Navy on behalf of NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) for an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) that would authorize take for a subset of activities in an IHA previously issued to OMAO to incidentally take marine mammals from construction activities at Naval Station (NAVSTA) Newport, Rhode Island, by Level B harassment only. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an IHA to incidentally take marine mammals during the specified activities. NMFS is also requesting comments on a possible 1-year renewal IHA that could be issued under certain circumstances and if all requirements are met, as described in Request for Public Comments at the end of this notice. NMFS will consider public comments prior to making any final decision on the issuance of the requested MMPA authorizations and agency responses will be summarized in the final notice of our decision. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and information must be received no later than January 20, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should be addressed to the Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service and should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.cockrell@noaa.gov.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> NMFS is not responsible for comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period. Comments, including all attachments, must not exceed a 25-megabyte file size. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/incidental-take-authorizations-under-marine-mammal-protection-act</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit confidential business information or otherwise sensitive or protected information. Electronic copies of the original application and supporting documents (including NMFS <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices of the original proposed and final authorizations, and the previous IHA), 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/action/incidental-take-authorization-noaa-office-marine-and-aviation-operations-research-vessel.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Craig Cockrell, 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 issued or, if the taking is limited to harassment, a notice of a proposed incidental take authorization may be 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 such species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (referred to in shorthand as “mitigation”); and requirements pertaining to the mitigation, monitoring and reporting of such takings are set forth. <HD SOURCE="HD1">National Environmental Policy Act</HD> To comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA; 42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 216-6A, NMFS must review our proposed action ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the issuance of an IHA) with respect to potential impacts on the human environment. This action is consistent with categories of activities identified in Categorical Exclusion B4 (IHAs with no anticipated serious injury or mortality) of the Companion Manual for NOAA Administrative Order 216-6A, which do not individually or cumulatively have the potential for significant impacts on the quality of the human environment and for which we have not identified any extraordinary circumstances that would preclude this categorical exclusion. Accordingly, NMFS has preliminarily determined that the issuance of the proposed IHA qualifies to be categorically excluded from further NEPA review. We will review all comments submitted in response to this notification prior to concluding our NEPA process or making a final decision on the IHA request. <HD SOURCE="HD1">History of Request</HD> On May 6, 2022, NMFS received a request from the U.S. Navy on behalf of OMAO for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to construction activities associated with the relocation of NOAA research vessels to the Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island. OMAO's request was for authorization of take of seven species of marine mammals by Level B harassment and, for four of these species, Level A harassment. NMFS published a notice of the proposed IHA in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 2, 2022 (87 FR 66133). NMFS subsequently issued the IHA on December 21, 2022 (87 FR 78072), which was effective from February 1, 2024 through January 31, 2025. On November 15, 2024, NMFS received an application for the renewal of the 2024 IHA. The remaining activities of the construction project included removal of abandoned guide piles along the bulkhead, demolition of the current floating dock, installation of gangway support piles and fender piles, installation and removal of piles for a construction template, and construction of a small boat floating dock. Therefore, NMFS issued a renewal (90 FR 11400, March 6, 2025) (herein referred to as the 2025 renewal IHA) to OMAO authorizing take incidental to the remaining work that could not be accomplished during the timeframe of the 2024 IHA. This renewal will expire on January 31, 2026. On August 27, 2025, the Navy on behalf of OMAO submitted an application for the remaining work that was not accomplished under the 2024 IHA and the 2025 renewal IHA. The application was deemed adequate and complete on December 5, 2025 (the 2025 Request). OMAO's request is for take of the same seven species of marine mammals, comprising three cetacean and four pinniped stocks, by Level B harassment only. Neither OMAO nor NMFS, expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity, and therefore, an IHA is appropriate. Take by Level A harassment (injury) is considered unlikely, even absent mitigation, based on the small sizes of the associated harassment zones. The 2024 IHA and the 2025 renewal IHA included take by Level A harassment because during that phase of construction the use of impact and a down the hole (DTH) mono-hammer was used and resulted in larger Level A harassment zones increasing the likelihood of that level of take. This request is very similar to the 2024 IHA and NMFS relies substantially herein, as appropriate, on the information previously presented in the notices associated with the issuance of the 2024 IHA (87 FR 78072, December 21, 2022). This proposed IHA would authorize take for a subset of the activities originally planned during the 2024 IHA and the 2025 renewal IHA. However, some changes have occurred during this year's evaluation of the project. Source levels and harassment zone distances have been adjusted based on updated source level information and amount of time pile driving is expected to occur each day. Marine mammal densities have also been updated based on new information. The proposed mitigation, monitoring, and reporting measures remain the same as prescribed in the 2024 IHA with slight modifications ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> shutdown zones distance changes) (see Proposed Mitigation and Proposed Monitoring and Reporting). The proposed IHA would be valid for the statutory maximum of 1 year from the date of effectiveness, and will become effective upon written notification from the applicant to NMFS, but not beginning later than 1 year from the date of issuance or extending beyond 2 years from the date of issuance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of the Proposed Activity and Anticipated Impacts</HD> The proposed activity would establish adequate pier, shoreside, and support facilities to support the relocation of fo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━