Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities' Cold Bay Ferry Terminal Reconstruction Project in Cold Bay, Alaska

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XF215]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities' Cold Bay Ferry Terminal Reconstruction Project in Cold Bay, Alaska</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 incidental harassment authorization; request for comments on proposed authorization and possible renewal. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS has received a request from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) for authorization to take marine mammals incidental to the Cold Bay Ferry Terminal Reconstruction Project in Cold Bay, Alaska. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an incidental harassment authorization (IHA) to incidentally take marine mammals during the specified activities. NMFS is also requesting comments on a possible one-time, 1-year renewal 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 authorization 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 28, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should be addressed to Permits and Conservation Division, Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service and should be submitted via email to <E T="03">ITP.Potlock@noaa.gov.</E> Electronic copies of the 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-construction-activities.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kelsey Potlock, 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 “ <E T="03">take</E> ” 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 IHA is 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 the species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (collectively referred to as “ <E T="03">mitigation</E> ”); and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of the takings. The definitions of all applicable MMPA statutory terms used above are included in the relevant sections below and can be found in section 3 of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1362) and NMFS regulations at 50 CFR 216.103. <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 NAO 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On July 30, 2025, NMFS received a request from ADOT&PF for an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to pile-driving activities for the Cold Bay Ferry Terminal Reconstruction Project in Cold Bay, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application, ADOT&PF submitted revised versions on November 14, 2025, November 21, 2025, December 11, 2025, and December 19, 2025. The application was deemed adequate and complete on December 12, 2025. ADOT&PF's request is for take of six species (eight stocks) of marine mammals by Level B harassment and, for a subset of these species, Level A harassment. Neither ADOT&PF nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from this activity and, therefore, an IHA is appropriate. NMFS previously issued several IHAs to ADOT&PF for similar coastal construction work between 2018 and 2025 ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> 83 FR 5063, February 5, 2018; 83 FR 29749, June 26, 2018; July 19, 2023, 88 FR 46145; 90 FR 24385, June 10, 2025; 90 FR 38134, August 7, 2025). To date, ADOT&PF has complied with all the requirements ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> mitigation, monitoring, and reporting) of the previous IHAs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of Proposed Activity</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Overview</HD> ADOT&PF has requested an IHA to take marine mammals incidental to in-water construction activities. The original Cold Bay Dock was constructed by the State of Alaska in 1978, expanded in 1993, and then refurbished in 2015. Currently, the structure is nearing the end of serviceable life and is at risk of failing, which would be detrimental for the communities that so heavily rely on this infrastructure. At present, use restrictions are currently in place that limit axel loads and gross vehicle weights until the dock can be fully replaced. Given the receipt of additional funding, ADOT&PF plans to replace the aging public dock to improve accessibility; support commercial, subsistence, and recreation users; continue uninterrupted ferry service; secure cargo delivery and bulk materials offloading; ensure public safety; and safeguard vessel moorage. Additionally, this project would maintain access to essential services for surrounding communities that rely on Cold Bay as a hub for fuel, goods, cargo, and potable drinking water. The new dock would be designed and built to accommodate commercial use, freight and fuel transportation, private vessel use, and public uses like emergency medical services and public transportation through the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS). Given the proposed use of vibratory and impact pile driving to remove and install piles, there is potential of the take of marine mammals by Level B harassment and, for a subset of the species, Level A harassment. No serious injury and/or mortality is expected or proposed for this project. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Dates and Duration</HD> ADOT&PF has been awarded funds by the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Maritime Administration (MARAD) under the Port Infrastructure Development Program (via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Pub. L. 117-58, November 15, 2021)), a discretionary grant program awarded on a competitive basis to projects that improve the safety, efficiency, or reliability of the movement of goods into, out of, around, or within a port ( <E T="03">https://www.maritime.dot.gov/PIDPgrants</E> ). These grants are awarded to improve port and related freight infrastructure to meet the nation's freight transport needs and ensure that port infrastructure can keep up with the growth of freight volume as it continues to increase. ADOT&PF intends to begin their project on May 1, 2028, and continue for one year through April 30, 2029. The entire project is anticipated to consist of 18 months of activities (in-water and on-shore), whereas the in-water activities ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> pile driving) are expected to occur for 12 months, consisting of 231 (not necessarily consecutive) days requiring 10 to 12 hours of activities per day, following the general sch ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 188k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━