Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pink Shrimp and Midwater Trawl Exemptions to Vessel Monitoring System Requirements for the West Coast Groundfish Fishery

Issuing agencies

Abstract

This rule revises monitoring provisions that specify exemptions for non-groundfish trawl vessels participating in the Pacific coast pink shrimp fishery and for groundfish midwater trawl vessels. In a final rule on vessel movement, monitoring, and declaration management for the Pacific coast groundfish fishery published on June 11, 2020, vessels in the pink shrimp trawl fishery were incorrectly included with other open access non-groundfish trawl vessels that became subject to a higher position transmission rate on their NMFS type-approved vessel monitoring system (VMS) units. This final rule corrects the error and returns the required transmission rate for vessels in the pink shrimp trawl fishery to once every 60 minutes, as recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council). This action also corrects a citation error in the VMS regulations with regards to exemptions for midwater trawl vessels, as well as a typographical error in the trawl fishery prohibitions.