National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration June 13, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) submitted Amendment 105 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI FMP) to the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) for review. If approved, Amendment 105 would establish a process for Western Alaska Community Development Quota (CDQ) groups and cooperatives established under the Amendment 80 Program (Amendment 80 cooperatives) to exchange harvest quota from one of three flatfish species (flathead sole, rock sole, and yellowfin sole) for an equal amount of another of these three flatfish species, while maintaining total catch below acceptable biological catch (ABC) limits for each species and below the sum of the total allowable catches (TACs) for all three species. This action would modify the annual harvest specification process to allow the Council to establish the maximum amount of flathead sole, rock sole, and yellowfin sole that may be exchanged based on social, economic, or biological considerations. This action is necessary to mitigate the operational variability, environmental conditions, and economic factors that may constrain the CDQ groups and Amendment 80 cooperatives from achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield (OY) in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI) groundfish fisheries. This action is intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Magnuson- Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, BSAI FMP, and other applicable laws.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's (MAFMC) Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel (AP) will hold a public meeting.

With this final rule, NOAA re-establishes the process by which communities may submit applications to have NOAA consider nominations of areas of the marine and Great Lakes environments as national marine sanctuaries. Communities, in this context, are defined as a collection of interested individuals or groups (e.g., a friends of group, a chamber of commerce); local, tribal, state, or national agencies; elected officials; or topic-based stakeholder groups, at the local, regional or national level (e.g., a local chapter of an environmental organization, a regionally-based fishing group, a national-level recreation or tourism organization, academia or science-based group, or an industry association). Through this nomination process, NOAA is seeking to give communities an opportunity to identify special marine and Great Lakes areas they believe would benefit from designation as a national marine sanctuary. There is no requirement for who may nominate an area for consideration; however, nominations should demonstrate broad support from a variety of stakeholders and interested parties. This rule contains the criteria and considerations NOAA will use to evaluate national marine sanctuary nominations, describes the process for submitting national marine sanctuary nominations, and promulgates the regulations necessary to implement this action. If NOAA determines a nomination adequately meets the final criteria and considerations, it may place that nomination into an inventory of areas for the NOAA Administrator, as delegated from the Secretary of Commerce, to consider for designation as a national marine sanctuary. As such, NOAA is not designating any new national marine sanctuaries with this action. In issuing this rule, NOAA replaces the currently inactive Site Evaluation List with a new process for communities and other interested parties to work collaboratively and innovatively in their submission of national marine sanctuary nominations. The re-opening of the sanctuary nomination process was supported by the majority of the nearly 18,000 comments NOAA received on its proposed rule issued June 28, 2013.