National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration December 1, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

NMFS is transferring 80 metric tons (mt) of Atlantic bluefin tuna (BFT) quota from the Reserve category to the General category for the remainder of the 2015 fishing year. This transfer results in an adjusted 2015 General category quota of 646.7 mt. NMFS also is adjusting the Atlantic tunas General category BFT daily retention limit from four large medium or giant BFT per vessel per day/trip to three large medium or giant BFT per vessel per day/trip for the remainder of the 2015 fishing year. This action is based on consideration of the regulatory determination criteria regarding inseason adjustments and applies to Atlantic tunas General category (commercial) permitted vessels and Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Charter/Headboat category permitted vessels when fishing commercially for BFT.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expanded the boundaries of Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (now renamed Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary or GFNMS) and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary (CBNMS) to an area north and west of their previous boundaries with a final rule published on March 12, 2015. The Final Rule entered into effect on June 9, 2015. At that time, NOAA postponed the effectiveness of the discharge requirements in both sanctuaries' regulations with regard to U.S. Coast Guard activities for 6 months. This document extends the postponement of the discharge requirements for these activities for another 6 months to provide adequate time for completion of an environmental assessment, and subsequent rulemaking, as appropriate.

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council) will hold a public hearing to solicit public comments on Electronic Reporting for For-Hire Vessels via webinar.

NMFS has received an application from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Lamont-Doherty) in collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF), for an Incidental Harassment Authorization (Authorization) to take marine mammals, by harassment only, incidental to conducting a marine geophysical (seismic) survey in the South Atlantic Ocean, January through March 2016. The proposed dates for this action would be early January 2016 through March 31, 2016, to account for minor deviations due to logistics and weather. Per the Marine Mammal Protection Act, we are requesting comments on our proposal to issue an Authorization to Lamont-Doherty to incidentally take, by Level B harassment, 38 species of marine mammals during the specified activity and to incidentally take, by Level A harassment, 16 species of marine mammals. Although considered unlikely, any Level A harassment potentially incurred would be expected to be in the form of some smaller degree of permanent hearing loss due in part to the required monitoring measures for detecting marine mammals and required mitigation measures for power downs or shut downs of the airgun array if any animal is likely to enter the Level A exclusion zone. NMFS does not expect mortality or complete deafness of marine mammals to result from this survey.