Justification for change

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE

NORTHEAST REGION PERMIT FAMILY OF FORMS

OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0202

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) proposes to authorize and monitor fishing activities in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Regulatory Area (NRA), pursuant to the High Seas Fishing Compliance Act (HSFCA), Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Convention Act of 1995, and Magnuson-Steven Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

One fishing vessel would be issued a high seas fishing permit and a Letter of Authorization (LOA) to be exempt from U.S. Northeast (NE) multispecies and monkfish regulations while transiting the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone with such species. Although the United States (U.S.) is allocated several stocks managed under NAFO, it must compete with vessels from 11 other countries to harvest available quotas of other stocks. These quotas are caught very quickly, with several quotas already harvested since the fishing year began on January 1, 2012. Thus, approval of this information collection is requested as soon as possible.

The permit and LOA would require information to be submitted to NMFS or maintained on board the vessel (depending on the information collection requirement), so that NMFS can monitor the catch and other activities of the fishing vessel and ensure that the vessel is in compliance with the Conservation and Enforcement Measures of NAFO. The requirements include geographic position information from vessel monitoring units, pre-trip notifications, and daily catch reports. The information to be maintained on the vessel includes drawings or description of storage capacity on the vessel. The aforementioned information is part of collections already approved under OMB Control No. 0648-0202 as a part of the implementation of Amendment 16 to the NE Multispecies Fishery Management Plan and previous management actions in other fisheries.

This change request clarifies that there will be one vessel submitting the already approved information as a requirement of the NAFO high seas fishing permit, and not as a requirement of the NE multispecies fishery.

A few items not already included in OMB Control No. 0648-0202 would be required as part of the issuance of the high seas fishing permit to maintain compliance with NAFO measures. These are requirements for the permit holder to maintain the following information on board the vessel:

• Record the cumulative production by species and product in a production logbook each day.

• Maintain a stowage plan that shows the location of different species in the holds, as well as the quantities of such species on board in product weight stated in kg. The stowage plan would need to be updated every day.

• Label all processed fish harvested in the NRA in such a way that each species and product category is identifiable. It shall also be clearly marked as having been caught in the NRA.

This information may need to be presented to any inspectors or enforcement agents that board the vessel. NMFS estimates that the recording of all of the above listed information would average 10 minutes each day. If the vessel completes 10 trips, averaging 5 days each, there would be an additional 50 responses, and the annual additional burden would be 8 hours and 20 minutes (8 hours). There is no monetary burden associated with this change request.

1