National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration May 22, 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The NMFS Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries, Greater Atlantic Region, has made a preliminary determination that an exempted fishing permit application contains all of the required information and warrants further consideration. This exempted fishing permit would allow up to six commercial fishing vessels to use raised-footrope trawl gear to target small-mesh multispecies (silver and red hake) within Small Mesh Area 1 before the start of the open season. Regulations under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act require publication of this notification to provide interested parties the opportunity to comment on applications for a proposed exempted fishing permit.

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.

NMFS announces scoping meetings and webinars for three actions that will evaluate possible revisions to measures implemented under the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fisheries Management Plan (FMP). The public process for these actions commences with scoping to determine the range of issues for each action. For each action, a notice announcing NMFS' intent to prepare an environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, and availability of an issues and options paper, is published in a separate Federal Register Notice. In Amendment 13 to the HMS FMP, NMFS considers refining the Individual Bluefin Tuna Quota (IBQ) Program, reassessing allocation of bluefin tuna quotas, including the discontinuing or phasing out of the Purse Seine category, and other regulatory provisions regarding bluefin directed fisheries and incidental pelagic longline fisheries. Amendment 14 explores options to implement the newly-revised National Standard 1 (NS1) guidelines in the context of shark annual catch limits (ACLs), including how to account for uncertainty stemming from either stock assessments or the management process. In the third action, NMFS considers ways to perform research and collect data in closed areas to assess the effectiveness of spatial HMS management.