83 Housekeeping Amendments
Purpose and Need
After the adoption of the Programmatic Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (PSEIS) as BSAI Amendment 81 and GOA Amendment 74 in 2004, the Council identified the need to reorganize the content of the FMPs, technically edit the language, and update certain descriptions within the FMPs that did not reflect the current status of the groundfish fisheries. In December 2004, the Council unanimously recommended BSAI Amendment 83 and GOA Amendment 75 to update harvest, ecosystem, and socioeconomic information, consolidate text, and reorganize the FMPs to make them consistent with the adopted provisions in the PSEIS. Additionally, the Council adopted a substantive change to the groundfish FMPs, namely to remove language in the BSAI and GOA FMPs that allows TAC or OY to be set higher than ABC or the sum of ABCs, respectively. This change reflected to the new policy objectives in the FMPs.
Regulation Summary
BSAI Amendment 83 and GOA Amendment 75 consisted of housekeeping changes to update information and technically edit the FMPs to make them consistent with the PSEIS. The Amendments also revised the harvest specifications process in the FMPs to make them consistent with the new policy objectives established in Amendments 81 and 74.
Results
The FMP text better reflected existing conditions.