Justification for Change

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE

NORTHEAST MULTISPECIES AMENDMENT 16

OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0605

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is requesting a non-substantive change to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Control No. 0648-0605, Northeast (NE) Multispecies Amendment 16, by adding to it the collection OMB Control No. 0648-0475, Multispecies Days-At-Sea (DAS) Leasing Program.

The DAS Leasing Program was first implemented by Amendment 13 to the NE Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP) (RIN 0648-AN17, final rule published April 27, 2004) to increase the economic efficiency of vessel operations by allowing vessels to acquire additional DAS, or lease unused DAS to another vessel. All eligible vessels with a valid limited access multispecies DAS permit are able to participate in the leasing program by submitting an application to NMFS. Permit holders may request to lease DAS throughout the fishing year. No sub-leasing of DAS is allowed, and leased DAS do not carry over to the next fishing year. Therefore, once a DAS is leased, it must be used by the lessee prior to the end of the fishing year in which the lease occurred.

The ability for vessel owners to downgrade their baseline to current vessel specifications for the purposes of DAS leasing was approved under a revision to the information collection in 0648-0475 as part of Framework Adjustment 40B to the FMP (RIN 0648-AS33, final rule published June 1, 2005). This program has provided flexibility to the fishery. Vessel owners may elect to use their downgrade provision only once.

Participants in the DAS Leasing Program and baseline downgrades are the same group of users as those who submit information under OMB Control No. 0648-0605, which includes the DAS transfer program and the sector annual catch entitlement transfers, and it is reasonable to combine these information collections, increasing administrative efficiency.

This action would add 602 responses, 52 hours and $365.98 ($356) in recordkeeping reporting costs.

Collection	Number of Entities	Items per Entity	Total Number of Items	Recordkeeping/Reporting Costs per Vessel	Response Time (Hours)	Total Burden (Hours)	Cost ($) to Public
DAS Leasing	300	2	600	$0.59	0.08	50	$354.00
Request to Downgrade	2	1	2	$0.59	1	2	$1.18
TOTALS:			602			52	$355.18

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