SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

The applicant, CFF, has submitted a complete application for an EFP to conduct commercial fishing activities that the regulations would otherwise restrict. This EFP would exempt participating vessels from the following Federal regulations:

Project Narrative

CFF requests an EFP for a project funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Electronic Monitoring and Reporting Grant Program that aims to evaluate the benefits and challenges of EM systems in the Atlantic sea scallop fishery as a tool to modernize data collection, improve management efficiencies, and augment the IFS observer program. Through a pilot program begun in 2024, EM systems have been installed on six limited access commercial sea scallop fishing vessels. The project has successfully trialed EM for observing and documenting fishing effort and behaviors with over 500 DAS and over 5,000 hauls reviewed. However, it remains unclear whether EM systems can be utilized to provide incentives for fishing vessels to augment their installation and maintenance costs.

Each vessel is outfitted with two cameras positioned on fixed structures that have an unobstructed view of the entire deck. Cameras are activated at the start of a trip by winch-mounted sensors that are either triggered by a spike in winch pressure (employed on 3 vessels) or by 10 full rotations of the winch (employed on 3 vessels). Each EM system also contains a Global Positioning System unit with a sampling interval of 10 seconds. During every trip, sensor and still-image video would be exported via Starlink from the system during the first five winch activations and during the last five winch ( printed page 46901) activations to confirm when fishing began and ended. CFF plans to export these data from vessels every 12 hours to a secure web server during the project period and determine within 5 days of each trip's completion the start/stop times based on paired winch sensor activations and video footage stills.

As an additional confirmation of fishing activity, participating vessels will be asked to record haul-level catch information on an electronic logbook (eLog). CFF will monitor vessel activity and ensure eLogs are submitted within 5 days after a vessel returns from a trip. CFF has an existing agreement in place with NOAA's Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office to access eVTR for these six vessels biannually. These records include all relevant variables, such as sail dates, number of tows, fishing area, gear type, catch, discards, and port. In addition to eLogs, CFF would use eVTR records to confirm fishing activity.

Through a Community Projects Award, CFF has developed a novel fish measuring and identification system with Acbotics Research, LLC, designed for use offshore on commercial fishing vessels. CFF would use this fishboard and a paired scale to enable participating fishermen to collect length and weight data for scallops and priority bycatch species following the IFS sampling protocol during one trip per year. For multiday trips, this protocol includes observation of at least 50 percent of hauls during a trip, measuring and weighing scallops from one basket during the first haul of each watch, measuring and weighing priority bycatch species, and opportunistically monitoring for scallop diseases. A CFF scientist will join one fishing trip with a minimum duration of seven DAS on each vessel. On these trips, they would train the captain and at least one crew member on fishboard use, data collection, and system maintenance.

This EFP would authorize two regulatory exemptions as incentives for participation in this developing EM program. The first exemption would allow an alternative calculation method for DAS used per trip; rather than beginning and ending the trip's DAS upon crossing the demarcation line, the start of DAS accounting for a trip would be based on the time at which a vessel's dredge(s) first enter the ocean, and the end of DAS for a trip will be determined based on the time at which a vessel's dredge(s) last leave the ocean before returning to port. By removing transit time between port departure and first dredge deployment and between final dredge deployment and port arrival, DAS would be used only while on the fishing grounds, and not during transit time. In the previous two years of piloting the EM system, the six participating vessels took 36 trips where the trip length could be calculated by both DAS estimation methods. By the typical DAS calculation method (days between outgoing and return crossing of the VMS demarcation line), these trips used 259.75 DAS. If DAS had been calculated using the alternative method (days between start of first haul and end of final haul), the trips would have used 217.3 DAS, a difference of 42.45 DAS. This equates to an average of 1.18 fewer DAS being used for each of the 36 trips. Under this EFP, CFF expects participating vessels to take 24 trips during each year of the 2-year project. If each trip uses approximately 1.18 fewer DAS under the alternative calculation method, this could result in a total difference of 28.32 DAS that participating vessels could apply to other scallop trips. For fishing year 2026, NMFS allocated 11,023 DAS to the commercial fleet. This EFP could potentially result in an approximately 0.26-percent increase to maximum fleetwide DAS use for the year.

The second exemption would allow participating vessels continuous transit through Scallop Rotational Areas, which are closed during the project duration. Vessels would not be permitted to fish in these Areas and would be required to stow their gear. Allowing transit of closed areas would additionally allow vessels to take more direct routes to fishing grounds, reducing fuel expenditures and potentially DAS used. These incentives would allow vessels to recoup EM system installation and maintenance costs and incentivize further participation in this developing EM program. The applicant expects that participating vessels would primarily transit the Nantucket Lightship-North and -South Access areas.

If approved, the applicant may request minor modifications and extensions to the EFP throughout the year. EFP modifications and extensions may be granted without further notice if they are deemed essential to facilitate completion of the proposed research and have minimal impacts that do not change the scope or impact of the initially approved EFP request. Any fishing activity conducted outside the scope of the exempted fishing activity would be prohibited.

Authority:16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.

91 FR 46899