Department of Commerce April 24, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

Based on recommendations contained in Amendment 6 to Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC) Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Amendment 6) and comments received from an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR), NMFS previously announced its intent to begin a scoping process to gather information for the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS). Initial scoping occurred during nine public hearings in November-December 2003. Due to the significant time that had passed since these initial scoping hearings, NMFS is seeking additional scoping on its preliminary draft analyses of Federal management options to open the EEZ to the harvest of Atlantic Striped Bass. The purpose of this notice is to alert the interested public of this further scoping process and to provide for public participation in compliance with environmental documentation requirements.

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13 (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A)).

NMFS proposes changes to the regulations implementing the Crab Rationalization Program. This action is necessary to correct two discrepancies in the scope of the sideboard protections for Gulf of Alaska (GOA) groundfish fisheries provided in a previous rulemaking. Specifically, this action would remove the sideboard restrictions from vessels that did not generate Bering Sea snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) quota share and would apply the sideboards to federally permitted vessels operating in the State of Alaska (State) parallel fisheries. This proposed rule is intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Fishery Management Plan for Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands (BSAI) King and Tanner Crabs (FMP), the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), and other applicable law.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is publishing the proposed List of Fisheries (LOF) for 2006, as required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The proposed LOF for 2006 reflects new information on interactions between commercial fisheries and marine mammals. NMFS must categorize each commercial fishery on the LOF into one of three categories under the MMPA based upon the level of serious injury and mortality of marine mammals that occurs incidental to each fishery. The categorization of a fishery in the LOF determines whether participants in that fishery are subject to certain provisions of the MMPA, such as registration, observer coverage, and take reduction plan requirements.

NMFS has received an application from the U.S. Navy (Navy) for an Incidental Harassment Authorization (IHA) to take marine mammals, by harassment, incidental to conducting RIMPAC ASW training events, in which submarines, surface ships, and aircraft from the United States and multiple foreign nations participate in ASW training exercises, utilizing mid-frequency sonar (1 kilohertz (kHz) to 10 kHz), in the U.S. Navy's Hawaiian Operating Area (OpArea) in the summer of 2006. Pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NMFS is requesting comments on its proposal to issue an authorization to the Navy to incidentally harass several species of marine mammals during the training exercises.

This final rule amends the Export Administration Regulations to implement the Wassenaar Arrangement's December 2005 agreement to revise the formula for calculating computer performance from Composite Theoretical Performance (CTP) measured in Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second (MTOPS) to Adjusted Peak Performance (APP) measured in Weighted TeraFLOPS (Trillion Floating point Operations Per Second) (WT). This rule also establishes new control levels in Category 4 of the Commerce Control List (CCL) expressed in WT. In addition, this rule renames License Exception CTP to License Exception APP (Adjusted Peak Performance) to correspond to the new formula. This rule also makes conforming changes to the EAR based on the new computer parameter, such as, revising the parameters for eligibility of License Exception APP. This rule also moves Bulgaria from Computer Tier 3 to Computer Tier 1, removes High Performance Computer (XP) and Missile Technology (MT) controls from certain Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) in Category 4 of the CCL, and removes the section of the EAR dedicated to various requirements for high performance computers.