Justification for Change

CHANGE REQUEST
ALASKA CRAB REPORT FORMS
OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0570

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE: A program change associated with a final rule,
RIN 0648-AY28, “Groundfish Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska;
Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program; Recordkeeping and
Reporting,” to remove reporting requirements for a crab offload report and shoreside
weighing requirements
The Crab Rationalization (CR) Program is a limited access system that allocates Bering Sea and
Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI) crab resources among harvesters, processors, and
coastal communities.
Currently, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) requires that: 1.) all crab individual
fishing quota (IFQ) harvested and processed by catcher/processors be weighed at sea prior to
processing and 2.) crab weights obtained from at-sea scales be audited at the point of offload.
This requires a crab catcher/processor to offload all product shoreside at a designated port and
weigh that product again on a scale approved by the state in which the CR crab is removed from
the vessel.
In addition, the owner or operator of a catcher/processor that harvested and processed CR crab
must complete a catcher/processor offload report at the time of offload of CR crab, and attach a
scale printout showing gross product offload weight.
Advancements in at-sea reporting (eLandings, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Control No. 0648-0515) and the reliability of the at-sea motion-compensated hopper scales have
changed the need for CR catcher/processor offload reporting. Catcher/processors use eLandings
to report total harvest of CR crab to NMFS weekly while at sea, which provides NMFS with upto-date accounting of total crab harvested.
NMFS Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) has the ability to conduct inspections and audits at the
offload of any vessel. OLE has found eLandings reports, the printouts from the hopper scales
showing the total weight of crab harvested, and their own auditing methods more useful for the
monitoring and enforcement of CR quota accounting than the catcher/processor offload reports.
To avoid redundancy in accounting and to reduce costs to NMFS and the industry, NMFS
removes the requirement to weigh all offloaded crab on a state-approved scale and removes the
requirement to report this information to NMFS on a catcher/processor offload report.
This change request removes 2,400 responses, 792 hours and $7,260 from this information
collection.

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