Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Multispecies Fishery; Exempted Fishery for the Cape Cod Spiny Dogfish Fishery

Federal Register, Volume 77 Issue 203 (Friday, October 19, 2012)

Federal Register Volume 77, Number 203 (Friday, October 19, 2012)

Proposed Rules

Pages 64305-64308

From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office www.gpo.gov

FR Doc No: 2012-25809

Page 64305

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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

50 CFR Part 648

Docket No. 120905422-2521-01

RIN 0648-BC50

Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Multispecies Fishery; Exempted Fishery for the Cape Cod Spiny Dogfish Fishery

AGENCY: National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.

ACTION: Proposed rule, request for comments.

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SUMMARY: NMFS proposes to modify the regulations implementing the Northeast (NE) Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to allow vessels to fish with gillnet and longline gear from June through December, and with handline gear from June through August, in a portion of inshore Georges Bank (GB) each year, outside of the requirements of the NE multispecies fishery. This action would allow vessels to harvest spiny dogfish and other non-groundfish species in a manner that is consistent with the bycatch reduction objectives of the FMP.

DATES: Comments must be received no later than 5 p.m., eastern daylight time, on November 5, 2012.

ADDRESSES: An environmental assessment (EA) was prepared for the Secretarial Amendment that describes the proposed action and other considered alternatives, and provides an analysis of the impacts of the proposed measures and alternatives. Copies of the Secretarial Amendment, including the EA and the Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA), are available on request from John K. Bullard, Regional Administrator, Northeast Regional Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930. These documents are also available online at http://www.nero.noaa.gov.

You may submit comments, identified by FDMS docket number NOAA-

NMFS-2012-0195, by any one of the following methods:

Written comments (paper, disk, or CD-ROM) should be sent to Paul J. Howard, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Mill 2, Newburyport, MA 01950. Mark the outside of the envelope, ``Comments on Spiny Dogfish Exempted Fishery.''

Comments also may be sent via facsimile (fax) to (978) 465-3116.

Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-

Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov.

Instructions: Comments will be posted for public viewing as they are received. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted to http://www.regulations.gov without change. All Personal Identifying Information (for example, name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit Confidential Business Information or otherwise sensitive or protected information.

NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter N/A in the required fields, if you wish to remain anonymous). You may submit attachments to electronic comments in Microsoft Word, Excel, WordPerfect, or Adobe PDF file formats only.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Travis Ford, Fishery Policy Analyst, 978-281-9233; fax 978-281-9135; email: travis.ford@noaa.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

Current regulations, implementing Framework Adjustment 9 (60 FR 19364, April 18, 1995) and expanded under Amendment 7 to the FMP (61 FR 27710, May 31, 1996), contain a NE multispecies fishing mortality and bycatch reduction measure that is applied to the Gulf of Maine (GOM), GB, and Southern New England (SNE) Exemption Areas found in Sec. 648.80. A vessel may not fish in these areas unless it is fishing under a NE multispecies or a scallop DAS allocation, is fishing on a sector trip, is fishing with exempted gear, is fishing under the Small Vessel Handgear (A or B) or Party/Charter permit restrictions, or is fishing in an exempted fishery. The procedure for adding, modifying, or deleting fisheries from the list of exempted fisheries is found in Sec. 648.80(a)(8). A fishery may be exempted by the NMFS Regional Administrator (RA), after consultation with the New England Fishery Management Council (Council), if the RA determines, based on available data or information, that the bycatch of regulated species is, or can be reduced to, less than 5 percent by weight of the total catch and that such exemption will not jeopardize the fishing mortality objectives of the FMP.

Representatives from the NE multispecies sector fleet submitted two exempted fishery requests to the RA in December 2011, requesting we consider an exempted fishery for gillnet, longline, and handline vessels targeting dogfish in portions of the GOM and GB. Sector vessels targeting spiny dogfish in the requested areas are currently required to fish on a declared NE multispecies trip. Vessels are charged a discard rate for regulated species bycatch that is determined by the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP) and at-sea monitoring (ASM) discard data. The discard rate is based on the sector, area fished, and gear type, and is referred to as a discard stratum. Because the specified target species (groundfish) is not a distinctive part of each discard stratum, vessels that are targeting spiny dogfish (and catching very little to no groundfish) are being charged the same discard rate as all other declared groundfish trips in that discard stratum. This leads to applying higher than observed discard rates of groundfish when targeting spiny dogfish. Forfeiting the value of these calculated discards, that otherwise could be available for catching and landed for sale on directed regulated species trips, has created an economic burden for sector fishermen. This has particularly affected the sector's ``choke stocks,'' i.e., fish for which the sector has a small amount of quota, either because of a low catch history or a small annual catch limit (ACL) for the stock.

The original requests from industry proposed a year-round exempted fishery in statistical areas 514, 515, and 521 for vessels using gillnet gear with large and extra-large mesh (>6.5-inches (16.5-cm)), longline, and handline gear. Due to relatively higher groundfish bycatch in large portions of these requested areas, this action proposes to exempt vessels from the NE multispecies regulations in a smaller portion of statistical area 521 off the coast of Cape Cod, MA. We further modified the time for the exemption to only during the months of June through December for vessels using gillnet and longline gear. In addition, this action proposes to exempt handline gear in the same smaller portion of statistical area 521 for June through August.

NEFOP and ASM data from all declared groundfish trips using large and extra-large mesh gillnets (>6.5-inch (16.5-cm) mesh), longline, and handline gears from 2010 to 2011 were analyzed. The area and months were revised based on information that shows, of a total of 642 observed trips using the proposed gears in fishing years (FY) 2010 and 2011, the average percentage of groundfish caught was 0.09 percent for this proposed alternative (Alternative 1, as referred to in the Environmental Assessment). Further, observed trip data

Page 64306

for Alternative 1 show no trips that caught greater than 5 percent regulated groundfish.

The majority of groundfish bycatch species in the spiny dogfish fishery are GB cod and pollock. In a 2012 operational assessment, GB cod was determined to be overfished and experiencing overfishing. In the Stock Assessment Review Committee 50 assessment in 2010, it was determined that pollock was not overfished and was not subject to overfishing.

For the trips analyzed under Alternative 1, no single month's average NE multispecies catch exceeded 0.38 percent of the total catch. On the 642 trips analyzed, a total of 798.6 lb (362.2 kg) of cod and 324.8 lb (147.3 kg) of pollock were caught. This represents an average of 1.24 lb (0.56 kg) and 0.51 lb (0.23 kg) per trip, respectively. Based on these very low observed amounts, the discards expected from this exemption should not cause the ACL for these species to be exceeded.

We assessed a second alternative exemption for gillnet, longline, and handline gears in the same modified area year-round. The data indicate that Alternative 2 (the non-preferred alternative) would likely result in a higher percentage of groundfish catch because several handline trips caught greater than 5 percent multispecies from September through December. In addition, the RA could not make a determination as to whether regulated groundfish bycatch was

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