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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 150 / Monday, August 9, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
business planning opportunities for Atlantic Tunas General category permittees and HMS Charter/Headboat owners/operators. As such, NMFS
believes that a 30-day delay in setting RFDs would be contrary to the public interest.
For the reasons described above, the Assistant Administrator finds good cause to make this rule effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register.
A Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis FRFA was prepared for this rule. The FRFA incorporates the initial regulatory flexibility analysis IRFA, a summary of the significant issues raised by the public comments in response to the IRFA, our responses to those comments and a summary of the analyses completed to support the action. The full FRFA is available from NMFS see ADDRESSES. A summary is provided below.
Section 604a1 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act RFA requires agencies to state the need for and objective of, the final action. The objective of this final rulemaking is to set a schedule of RFDs for the 2021 fishing year that should slow the rate of General category landings to extend fishing opportunities through a greater portion of the subquota periods similar to past RFD
schedules that set RFD schedules for the fishing year. Additionally, this final rule clarifies the regulations regarding applicability of RFDs to vessels permitted in the HMS Charter-Headboat category.
Section 604a2 requires that a FRFA
include a summary of significant issues raised by public comment in response to the IRFA and a summary of the agencys assessment of such issues, and a statement of any changes made in the rule as a result of such comments. As described above, during the public comment period, NMFS received comments both in support of and opposed to resuming RFDs. No comments specifically referenced the IRFA, although some comments raised a variety of economic concerns including whether RFDs would affect the market see comments 1 and 7, whether RFDs would affect some parts of the fishery more than others see comments 8 and 11, and whether RFDs would negatively affect tournaments see comments 4 and 5. NMFS responses to those comments are summarized above.
After careful consideration of all the comments received, except for changing the start date of the first RFD to account for the date of publication of this final rule, no other changes were made to the proposed rule.

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Section 604a3 of the RFA requires NMFS to respond to any comments filed by the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the Small Business Administration SBA in response to the proposed rule and provide a detailed statement of any change made to the proposed rule as a result of the comments. NMFS did not receive any comments from the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the SBA on the proposed rule.
Section 604a4 of the RFA requires agencies to provide an estimate of the number of small entities to which the rule would apply. NMFS established a small business size standard of $11
million in annual gross receipts for all businesses in the commercial fishing industry NAICS 11411 for RFA
compliance purposes 50 CFR 200.2.
The Small Business Administration SBA has established size standards for all other major industry sectors in the United States, including the scenic and sightseeing transportation water sector NAICS code 487210, which includes for-hire charter/party boat fishing entities. The SBA has defined a small entity under the scenic and sightseeing transportation water sector as one with average annual receipts revenue of less than $8.0 million. Therefore, NMFS
considers all HMS permit holders, both commercial and for-hire, to be small entities because they had average annual receipts of less than their respective sectors standard of $11
million and $8 million. The 2019 total ex-vessel annual revenue for the BFT
fishery was $9.8 million. Since a small business is defined as having annual receipts not in excess of $11.0 million, each individual BFT fishing entity would fall within the small business definition. Thus, all of the entities affected by this rule are considered to be small entities for the purposes of the RFA. The numbers of relevant annual Atlantic Tunas or Atlantic HMS permits as of October 2020 are as follows: 2,645
General category permit holders and 3,839 HMS Charter/Headboat permit holders, of which 1,681 hold HMS
Charter/Headboat permits with a commercial sale endorsement.
Section 604a5 of the RFA requires agencies to describe any new reporting, record-keeping, and other compliance requirements. This final rule does not contain any new collection of information, reporting, or recordkeeping requirements. This final rule would set a schedule of RFDs for 2021
as an effort control for the General category quota and would clarify existing regulatory text about the applicability of RFDs to HMS Charter/
Headboat permitted vessels.

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Section 604a6 of the RFA requires agencies in the FRFA to describe any steps taken to minimize the significant economic impact on small entities consistent with the stated objectives of applicable statutes.
This final rule does not change the U.S. Atlantic BFT quotas or implement any new management measures not previously considered under the 2006
Consolidated HMS FMP and its amendments. This final rule will instead resume the use of RFDs, set a schedule of RFDs for 2021, clarify existing regulatory text about the applicability of RFDs to HMS Charter/
Headboat permitted vessels, and make a minor change to correct two permit title references in a section of the regulations. Under the regulations, when a General category time-period subquota is reached or projected to be reached, NMFS closes the General category fishery. Retaining, possessing, or landing BFT under that quota category is prohibited on and after the effective date and time of a closure notice for that category, for the remainder of the fishing year, until the opening of the subsequent quota period or until such date as specified. In recent years, these closures, if needed, have generally occurred toward the end of a particular subquota time-period.
According to communications with dealers and fishermen, several of the high-volume HMS Atlantic tunas dealers in 2019 and 2020 were limiting their purchases of BFT and buying no or very few BFT such as harpooned fish only on certain days during the beginning portion of the June through August subquota time-period in order to extend the available quota until later in the subperiod given market considerations. However, while these actions may have prevented large numbers of BFT from entering the market at the same time and may have lengthened the time before any particular subquota was closed, because these actions were not pre-scheduled or consistently implemented across the fishery, some General category and Charter/Headboat permitted fishermen especially those who could not find buyers for their BFTexperienced negative impacts. As a result, a number of BFT that normally would have been sold were not, and opportunities may not have been equitably distributed among all permitted vessels. Table 1
shows the number and total metric tons mt of BFT that were landed but not sold by fishermen fishing under the General category quota for 2017 through 2020. The number and weight of unsold BFT has been increasing since 2017 and
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