Purpose and Need

Actions included in this package fall under GOA Amendments 65 and 73, and BSAI Amendments 65/78. The purpose of this action is to determine whether and how to amend the Council’s FMPs to identify and manage site-specific HAPCs. HAPCs identified as a result of this EA would provide additional habitat protection and further minimize potential adverse effects of fishing on EFH.

The HAPCs are subsets of EFH that are particularly important to the long-term productivity of one or more managed species, or that are particularly vulnerable to degradation. HAPCs may be identified based on one or more of four considerations listed in the EFH regulations: ecological importance, sensitivity, stress from development activities, and rarity of the habitat type. The Council required that each HAPC site should meet at least two of those considerations, with one being rarity.

HAPCs and associated management measures considered by the Council would provide additional habitat protection and further minimize potential adverse effects of fishing on EFH. Such actions are consistent with the EFH EIS (completed in April 2005) because they address potential impacts that are discussed in the EIS, even though the EIS indicates that new management measures may not be required under the Magnuson-Stevens Act to reduce those impacts. In effect, through its evaluation of HAPCs, the Council is considering new precautionary measures. The need for this action also stemmed from a May 2003 joint stipulation and order approved by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That agreement reflected the Council’s commitment to consider new HAPCs as part of the response to the AOC v. Daley litigation that challenged whether Council FMPs minimize to the extent practicable the adverse effects of fishing on EFH.

Analysis

A 281-page EA/RIR/IRFA (Secretarial review draft dated October 2005) was prepared for this package of amendments. The three actions analyzed were as follows:

1) HAPCs for Seamounts in the EEZ
2) HAPCs for GOA (GOA) corals
3) HAPCs for AI corals (BSAI FMP)

Each action had a different number of alternatives.

Regulation Summary

This package of amendments revised the FMPs by identifying and describing essential fish habitat (EFH), designating habitat areas of particular concern (HAPC), and including measures to minimize to the extent practicable adverse effects on EFH. 

The preferred alternative for Action 1 designated 16 named seamounts in the EEZ off Alaska as HAPC, and prohibited all bottom contact fishing by Council-managed fisheries within five smaller areas inside these HAPCs.

Action 2 designated three areas in Southeast Alaska (in the vicinity of Cape Ommaney, Fairweather grounds NW, and Fairweather grounds SW) as HAPC. Bottom contact gear was prohibited in several subareas within the HAPC designated areas.

Results

This amendment addressed habitat conservation requirements, which were further addressed in Amendments 90 and 105. This amendment also resulted in minor changes to the existing EFH description and identification for GOA groundfish stocks, to incorporate more recent information, improve mapping, and identify new EFH descriptions for a few species that have been separated out from a complex since the existing description and identification were compiled.

Sibling Amendments