[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 32 (Thursday, February 18, 2010)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 7228-7230]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-3115]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

50 CFR Part 679

RIN 0648-AX89


Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Chinook 
Salmon Bycatch Management Measures for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and 
Aleutian Islands Management Area; Amendment 91

AGENCY:  National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.

ACTION:  Notice of availability of fishery management plan amendment; 
request for comments.

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SUMMARY:  The North Pacific Fishery Management Council submitted 
Amendment 91 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the 
Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (FMP) to NMFS for 
review. If approved, Amendment 91 would be a novel approach to managing 
Chinook salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery that combines 
a limit on the amount of Chinook salmon that may be caught incidentally 
with an incentive plan agreement and performance standard designed to 
minimize bycatch to the extent practicable in all years and prevent 
bycatch from reaching the limit in most years. This action is necessary 
to minimize Chinook salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery to 
the extent practicable while maximizing the potential for the full 
harvest of the pollock total allowable catch within specified 
prohibited species catch limits. Amendment 91 is intended to promote 
the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation 
and Management Act, the FMP, and other applicable laws.

DATES:  Comments on the amendment must be received on or before April 
19, 2010.

ADDRESSES:  You may submit comments, identified by RIN 0648-AX89, by 
any one of the following methods:
    <bullet> Electronic Submissions: Submit all electronic public 
comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal http://www.regulations.gov.
    <bullet> Fax: (907) 586-7557, Attn: Ellen Sebastian
    <bullet> Mail: P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802.
    <bullet> Hand delivery to the Federal Building: 709 West 9th 
Street, Room 420A, Juneau, AK.
    Instructions: No comments will be posted for public viewing until 
after the comment period has closed. All comments received are a part 
of the public record and will generally be posted to http://www.regulations.gov without change. All Personal Identifying 
Information (for example, name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by 
the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit Confidential 
Business Information or otherwise sensitive or protected information.
    NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter N/A in the required 
fields, if you wish to remain anonymous). You may submit attachments to 
electronic comments in Microsoft Word, Excel, WordPerfect, or Adobe PDF 
file formats only.
    Electronic copies of Amendment 91, the Final Environmental Impact 
Statement (EIS), the Final Regulatory Impact Review (RIR), and the 
Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) prepared for this action 
may be obtained from the Alaska Region website at http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/regs/summary.htm.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:  Gretchen Harrington or Seanbob Kelly, 
907-586-7228.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation 
and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) requires that each regional 
fishery management council submit any fishery management plan or 
fishery management plan amendment it prepares to NMFS for review and 
approval, disapproval, or partial approval by the Secretary of 
Commerce. The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires that NMFS, upon 
receiving a fishery management plan amendment, immediately publish a 
notice in the Federal Register announcing that the amendment is 
available for public review and comment.
    This document announces that proposed Amendment 91 to the Fishery 
Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands 
Management Area (FMP) is available for public review and comment. The 
groundfish fisheries in the exclusive economic zone of the Bering Sea 
and Aleutian Islands Management Areas are managed under the FMP. The 
FMP was prepared by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council 
(Council) under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 
1801 et seq.
    The Bering Sea (BS) pollock fishery is managed under the American 
Fisheries Act (AFA) (16 U.S.C. 1851 note) enacted by Congress in 
October 1998. The AFA identifies vessels and processors eligible to 
participate in the directed pollock fishery and allocates pollock among 
the Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program, the catcher/processor 
sector, the mothership sector, and the inshore sector.
    The BS pollock fishery is the largest single species fishery, by 
volume, in the United States. The first wholesale gross value of this 
fishery was over $1.4 billion in 2008. Pollock is harvested with 
fishing vessels using trawl gear during two seasons: the A season 
(January 20 to June 10) and the B season (June 10 to November 1). 
Chinook salmon and pollock occur in the same locations in the BS. 
Consequently, Chinook salmon are accidentally caught in the nets as 
fishermen target pollock.
    The BS pollock fishery catches up to 95 percent of the Chinook 
salmon taken incidentally as bycatch in the Bering Sea and Aleutian 
Islands groundfish fisheries. From 1992 through 2001, the average 
Chinook salmon bycatch in the BS pollock fishery was 32,482 Chinook 
salmon. This average increased substantially from 2002 to 2007, to 
74,067 Chinook salmon. A historic high of approximately 122,000 Chinook 
salmon were taken in the BS pollock fishery in 2007. However, Chinook 
salmon bycatch has declined in recent years to 20,493 Chinook salmon in 
2008 and 12,410 Chinook salmon through October 31, 2009, the end of the 
2009 fishing year for pollock.
    Chinook salmon is a culturally and economically valuable species, 
which is fully allocated and, in some cases, facing conservation 
concerns. Estimates vary, but more than half of the Chinook salmon 
bycatch in the BS pollock fishery may be destined for river systems in 
western Alaska. In general, western Alaska Chinook salmon stocks 
declined sharply in 2007 and remained low in 2008 and 2009. 
Consequently, the in-river harvest of western Alaska Chinook salmon has 
been severely restricted and, in some cases, river systems have not met 
escapement goals.
    Chinook salmon is a prohibited species in the BS pollock fishery 
and is closely regulated. Over the past fifteen years, the Council and 
NMFS implemented several management measures to limit Chinook salmon 
bycatch in the BSAI trawl fisheries. In 1995, the Council adopted and 
NMFS

[[Page 7229]]

approved, Amendment 21b to the FMP. Amendment 21b established annual 
prohibited species catch (PSC) limits for Chinook salmon and specific 
seasonal no-trawling zones in the Chinook salmon savings area that 
would be triggered when the limits were reached (60 FR 31215; November 
29, 1995). In 2000, the Council and NMFS implemented Amendment 58 to 
the FMP which reduced the Chinook salmon savings area closure limit, 
redefined the Chinook salmon savings area as two non-contiguous areas 
of the BSAI, and established new closure periods (65 FR 60587; October 
12, 2000).
    The Council adopted Amendment 84 in October 2005, to address 
increases in Chinook and non-Chinook salmon bycatch that were occurring 
despite PSC limits that triggered closure of the Chinook and chum 
salmon savings areas. Amendment 84 established the salmon bycatch 
intercooperative agreement (ICA) which allows vessels participating in 
the directed fisheries for pollock in the BS to utilize their internal 
cooperative structure to reduce Chinook and non-Chinook salmon bycatch 
using a method called the ''voluntary rolling hotspot system''(VRHS). 
The VRHS provides real-time salmon bycatch information in time for the 
fleet to avoid areas of high Chinook or non-Chinook salmon bycatch 
rates. Regulations implementing Amendment 84 were approved in 2007 (72 
FR 61070; October 29, 2007) and a salmon bycatch reduction ICA using 
the VRHS was approved by NMFS in January 2008.
    Although the management measures implemented under Amendment 84 
provided the pollock fleet with tools to reduce salmon bycatch, these 
measures contained no effective limit on the amount of salmon bycatch 
that could occur in the BS pollock fishery. Therefore, the Council 
further evaluated measures to limit both Chinook and non-Chinook salmon 
bycatch.
    In April 2009, the Council adopted Amendment 91 and recommended 
that NMFS develop regulations to implement that action. Amendment 91 
would be a novel approach to managing Chinook salmon bycatch in the 
Bering Sea pollock fishery that combines a limit on the amount of 
Chinook salmon that may be caught incidentally with an incentive plan 
agreement and performance standard designed to minimize bycatch to the 
extent practicable in all years and prevent bycatch from reaching the 
limit in most years. The Council is currently considering a separate 
action to modify the non-Chinook salmon management measures to minimize 
non-Chinook salmon bycatch.
    In developing Amendment 91, the Council recognized that the number 
of Chinook salmon caught as bycatch in the BS pollock fishery is highly 
variable from year to year, from sector to sector, and even from vessel 
to vessel. Current information about Chinook salmon is insufficient to 
determine the reasons for high or low encounters of Chinook salmon in 
the pollock fishery or the degree to which encounter rates are related 
to Chinook salmon abundance or other conditions. The uncertainty and 
variability in Chinook salmon bycatch led the Council to create a 
program with a combination of management measures that together achieve 
its objective to minimize bycatch in all years while providing the 
fleet the flexibility to harvest the pollock total allowable catch 
(TAC).
    Under Amendment 91, the PSC limit would be 60,000 Chinook salmon if 
some or all of the pollock industry participates in an industry-
developed contractual arrangement, called an incentive plan agreement 
(IPA), that establishes an incentive program to minimize bycatch at all 
levels of Chinook salmon abundance. Participation in an IPA would be 
voluntary; however, any vessel or CDQ group that chooses not to 
participate in an IPA would be subject to a restrictive opt-out 
allocation (also called a backstop cap).
    To ensure participants develop effective IPAs, participants would 
demonstrate to the Council through performance and annual reports that 
the IPA is accomplishing the Council's intent that each vessel does its 
best to avoid Chinook salmon at all times while fishing for pollock and 
that collectively, bycatch is minimized in each year. The Council 
believed that the addition of an IPA that could impose rewards for 
avoiding Chinook salmon bycatch, penalties for failure to avoid Chinook 
salmon bycatch at the vessel level, or both, would warrant setting the 
PSC limit at 60,000 Chinook salmon. The Council recognized that while 
the IPA should minimize bycatch in all years to a level far below the 
limit, a limit of 60,000 Chinook salmon would provide the industry the 
flexibility to harvest the pollock TAC in high encounter years when 
bycatch was extremely difficult to avoid.
    A 47,591 Chinook salmon PSC limit would apply fleet-wide if 
industry does not form any IPAs. This PSC limit of 47,591 Chinook 
salmon is the approximate 10-year average Chinook salmon bycatch from 
1997 to 2006. The Council determined that the 47,591 PSC limit was an 
appropriate limit on Chinook salmon bycatch in the BS pollock fishery 
if no other incentives were operating to minimize bycatch below this 
level.
    Both PSC limits would be divided between the A and B seasons and 
allocated to AFA sectors, cooperatives, and CDQ groups as transferable 
PSC allocations. Transferability is expected to mitigate the variation 
in the encounter rates of salmon bycatch among sectors, CDQ groups, and 
cooperatives in a given season by allowing eligible participants to 
obtain a larger portion of the PSC allocation in order to harvest their 
pollock allocation or to transfer surplus allocation to other entities. 
When a transferable PSC allocation is reached, the affected sector, 
inshore cooperative, or CDQ group would have to stop fishing for 
pollock for the remainder of the season even if its pollock allocation 
had not been fully harvested.
    The sector-level performance standard is an additional tool to 
ensure that the IPA is effective and that sectors do not fully harvest 
the Chinook salmon PSC allocations under the 60,000 Chinook salmon PSC 
limit in most years. For a sector to continue to receive Chinook salmon 
PSC allocations under the 60,000 Chinook salmon PSC limit, that sector 
may not exceed its annual threshold amount in any 3 years within 7 
consecutive years. If a sector fails this performance standard, it will 
permanently be allocated a portion of the 47,591 Chinook salmon PSC 
limit. The Council believed that the risk of bearing the potential 
economic impacts of a reduction from the 60,000 PSC limit to the 47,591 
PSC limit would create incentives for fishery participants to cooperate 
in an effective IPA.
    In selecting the appropriate Chinook salmon bycatch management 
program, the Council considered a wide range of alternatives to assess 
the impacts of minimizing Chinook salmon bycatch to the extent 
practicable while maximizing the potential for the full harvest of the 
pollock TAC within the PSC limit. In selecting these PSC limits, the 
Council considered the trade-offs between the potential Chinook salmon 
saved and the forgone pollock catch. The EIS, RIR, and IRFA contain a 
complete description of the alternatives and a comparative analysis of 
the potential impacts of the alternatives (see ADDRESSES).
    Public comments are being solicited on proposed Amendment 91 to the 
BSAI FMP through the end of the comment period (see DATES). NMFS 
intends to publish in the Federal Register and seek public comment on a 
proposed rule that would implement Amendment 91,

[[Page 7230]]

following NMFS's evaluation of the proposed rule under the Magnuson-
Stevens Act. The requirements governing the transfer and use of the 
proposed Chinook salmon PSC allocations, IPA application process, 
annual reporting requirements, and other aspects of Amendment 91 will 
be specified in the proposed rule implementing this action.
    Public comments on the proposed rule must be received by the end of 
the comment period on Amendment 91 to be considered in the approval/
disapproval decision on Amendment 91. All comments received by the end 
of the comment period on Amendment 91, whether specifically directed to 
the FMP amendment or the proposed rule, will be considered in the FMP 
amendment approval/disapproval decision. Comments received after that 
date will not be considered in the approval/disapproval decision on the 
amendment. To be considered, comments must be received, not just 
postmarked or otherwise transmitted, by the close of business on the 
last day of the comment period.

    Authority: 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.

    Dated: February 12, 2010.
Emily H. Menashes,
Acting Director, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, National Marine 
Fisheries Service.
[FR Doc. 2010-3115 Filed 2-17-10; 8:45 am]
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