Justification for change

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE

ATLANTIC MACKEREL, SQUID, AND BUTTERFISH

AMENDMENT 14 DATA COLLECTION

OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0679

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) proposes to increase catch reporting in the Atlantic mackerel fishery through the submission of slippage events on daily catch reports using vessel monitoring systems (VMS). The MSA (402(a)(2)), in conjunction with regulations at 50 CFR Part 648.7, provide NMFS with the authority to revise fishery reporting requirements as necessary to monitor a Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Recognizing the importance of timely catch information to better monitor catch and address slippage in the Atlantic mackerel fishery, NMFS proposes adding information to the VMS catch reporting in the Atlantic mackerel fishery through Framework Adjustment 9 to the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish FMP (Final Rule 0648-BF00).

Under this action, all limited access mackerel vessels carrying an observer will be required to report all slippage events on the VMS mackerel and longfin squid daily catch report. This information collection is intended to improve monitoring the catch of river herring and shad in the Atlantic mackerel fishery. Currently daily catch reports include the following information: Vessel name, VTR serial number, date, and the amount of Atlantic mackerel and/or longfin squid retained, and total fish kept. Framework 9 will require that owner/operators also indicate if a slippage event occurred and, if so, indicate the reason for the slippage.

In a given fishing year, NMFS estimates that these additional reporting requirements will not cause any additional time or cost burden from that which was previously approved under OMB Control Number 0648-0679. Time and cost burdens that were previously approved include estimated time of 5 minutes to complete daily catch reports; the proposed changes would not increase the completion time. The previously approved cost estimates were calculated per transmission of VMS daily catch reports; this action would not increase the number of transmissions.

NMFS published a proposed rule for Framework 9 which solicited comments for this request on May 19, 2015 (80 CFR 28575), and the comment period ended on June 18, 2015. We received three comments on the proposed rule, none of which were relevant to this collection-of-information request.