Department of Commerce August 10, 2017 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The NMFS Southeast Region, in collaboration with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council), is preparing an EA in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for Amendment 43 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for the Snapper- Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region (Amendment 43). This notice is intended to inform the public of the change from the preparation of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) to an EA for Amendment 43. Additionally, this notice serves to announce the change of the scope of actions being considered in Amendment 43 by the Council. The purpose of Amendment 43 is to revise annual catch limits (ACLs) for red snapper in the South Atlantic to provide fishing access while preventing overfishing.

The Census Bureau publishes this notice to announce a change in the expected burden for the 2018 End-to-End Census TestAddress Canvassing Operation. The Census Bureau invites public comment on the increase in burden, as described below. Agency: U.S. Census Bureau. Title: 2018 End-to-End Census TestAddress Canvassing Operation. OMB Control Number: 0607-0997. Type of Request: New Collection. Number of Respondents: 85,093. Average Hours per Response: 5 minutes. Burden Hours: 7,091. Needs and Uses: The Address Canvassing operation is the first operation in the 2018 End-to-End Census Test, with field activity beginning in the summer of 2017. The purpose of the Address Canvassing operation is (1) to deliver a complete and accurate address list and spatial database for enumeration and tabulation, and (2) to determine the type and address characteristics for each living quarter. The Address Canvassing operation consists of two major components: In- Office Address Canvassing and In-Field Address Canvassing. Only the latter component involves collection of information from residents at their living quarters. The following objectives are crucial to a successful Address Canvassing operation: Test the listing and mapping capabilities required by In- Field Address Canvassing. Validate the creation of In-Field Address Canvassing workload by In-Office Address Canvassing. Conduct a listing quality control operation during In- Field Address Canvassing. The results of this test will inform the Census Bureau's final preparations for the Address Canvassing Operation in advance of the 2020 Census. The number of housing units with respondent burden in the original OMB package was calculated based on the national estimate of 25 percent of addresses in the Self-Response areas needing In-Field Address Canvassing. This estimate was based on our original approach to In- Office Address Canvassing Operation, which included two phases: Interactive Review and Active Block Resolution. In the Interactive Review phase staff make an initial assessment of the stability of the blocks under review, determining whether a block is ``stable,'' or undergoing minor changes or no changes at all, or ``unstable,'' which indicates that there are significant changes within the block. In the Active Block Resolution phase, which we are no longer pursuing for the 2020 Census, staff would have done a second, ``deep dive'' into the ``unstable'' blocks to attempt to resolve them by accurately identifying the changes taking place. The Census Bureau discontinued this second phase because we were experiencing significant issues with productivity and quality control in the Active Block Resolution phase. The result of this decision is that our estimated national workload for In-Field Address Canvassing has increased from 25 percent to 30 percent. Prior to the suspension of Active Block Resolution, some of the blocks in the three test sites were removed from In-Field Address Canvassing workload as result of this phase of the In-Office Address Canvassing operation. Therefore, in order to ensure that the operations implemented in the 2018 End-to-End Census Test are consistent with the operations we plan to execute in the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau determined it was appropriate to add the blocks originally resolved during Active Block Resolution back into the in-field workload for this test. The original estimate of burden was calculated to be: Estimated Number of Respondents: 43,965 households. Estimated Time per Response: 5 minutes. Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 3,664 hours.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Pacific Council) Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and the SSC's Groundfish Subcommittee will convene two meetings, which are open to the public. The SSC meetings will also be streamed online for those who want to follow the proceedings remotely.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Pacific Council) Habitat Committee (HC) will hold a meeting via webinar that is open to the public.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's (Council) Spiny Dogfish Advisory Panel (AP) will meet to review recent fishery performance and develop a Fishery Performance Report and/or other recommendations in preparation for the Council's review of specifications at the October 2017 Council meeting.

We announce the reduction of the commercial per-trip possession limit for northern red hake for the remainder of the 2017 fishing year. This action is required to prevent the northern red hake total allowable landing limit from being exceeded. This announcement informs the public that the northern red hake possession limit is reduced from 3,000 lb (1,361 kg) to 400 lb (181 kg).