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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 51 / Thursday, March 18, 2021 / Notices IHA remains accurate. The following measures are proposed for this authorization:
Conduct briefings between construction supervisors and crews and the marine mammal monitoring team prior to the start of all pile driving activity and when new personnel join the work, to explain responsibilities, communication procedures, marine mammal monitoring protocol, and operational procedures;
For in-water heavy machinery work other than pile driving e.g., standard barges, etc., if a marine mammal comes within 10 m, operations shall cease and vessels shall reduce speed to the minimum level required to maintain steerage and safe working conditions.
This type of work could include the following activities: 1 Movement of the barge to the pile location; or 2
positioning of the pile on the substrate via a crane i.e., stabbing the pile;
Drive all piles with a vibratory hammer until achieving a desired depth or refusal prior to using an impact hammer;
For those marine mammals for which Level B harassment take has not been requested, in-water pile installation/removal will shut down immediately if such species are observed within or on a path towards the Level B harassment zone;
If take reaches the authorized limit for an authorized species, pile installation will be shut down as these species approach the Level B
harassment zone to avoid additional take;
Implement all mitigation measures described in the biological opinion;
Establish shutdown zones for all pile driving/removal and drilling activities. Shutdown zones will vary based on the activity type and marine mammal hearing group see Table 3;
Monitor the Level B harassment zones and Level A harassment zones;
The placement of protected species observers PSOs during all pile driving and removal and drilling activities will ensure that the entire shutdown zone is visible during pile installation. Should environmental conditions deteriorate such that marine mammals within the entire shutdown zone will not be visible e.g., fog, heavy rain, pile driving and removal must be delayed until the PSO
is confident marine mammals within the shutdown zone could be detected.
Due to the large Level B harassment zones Table 3, PSOs will not be able to effectively observe the entire zone.
Therefore, Level B harassment exposures will be recorded and extrapolated based upon the number of observed takes and the percentage of the
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Level B harassment zone that was not visible;
Soft StartFor impact pile driving, contractors will be required to provide an initial set of three strikes from the hammer at 40 percent energy, followed by a 1 minute waiting period. This procedure will be conducted three times before impact pile driving begins. Soft start will be implemented at the start of each days impact pile driving and at any time following cessation of impact pile driving for a period of thirty minutes or longer;
Pre-activity MonitoringPrior to the start of daily in-water construction activity, or whenever a break in pile driving/removal or drilling of 30
minutes or longer occurs, PSOs will observe the shutdown and monitoring zones for a period of 30 minutes. The shutdown zone will be considered cleared when a marine mammal has not been observed within the zone for that 30-minute period. If a marine mammal is observed within the shutdown zone, a soft-start cannot proceed until the animal has left the zone or has not been observed for 15 minutes. If the Level B
harassment zone has been observed for 30 minutes and no species for which take is not authorized are present within the zone, soft start procedures can commence and work can continue even if visibility becomes impaired within the Level B harassment monitoring zone. When a marine mammal for which Level B harassment take is authorized is present in the Level B
harassment zone, activities may begin and Level B harassment take will be recorded. If the entire Level B
harassment zone is not visible at the start of construction, pile driving or drilling activities can begin. If work ceases for more than 30 minutes, the pre-activity monitoring of both the Level B harassment zone and shutdown zones will commence;
Monitoring will be conducted 30
minutes before, during, and 30 minutes after pile driving/removal and drilling activities. In addition, observers shall record all incidents of marine mammal occurrence, regardless of distance from activity, and shall document any behavioral reactions in concert with distance from piles being driven or removed or anchor shafts being drilled.
Pile driving and drilling activities include the time to install, remove, or drill inside a single pile or series of piles, as long as the time elapsed between uses of the pile driving or drilling equipment is no more than thirty minutes;
A draft marine mammal monitoring report will be submitted to NMFS
within 90 days after the completion of
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pile driving and removal activities. If no comments are received from NMFS
within 30 days, the draft report will constitute the final report. If comments are received, a final report addressing NMFS comments must be submitted within 30 days after receipt of comments; and In the event that personnel involved in the construction activities discover an injured or dead marine mammal, the IHA-holder must immediately cease the specified activities and report the incident to the Office of Protected Resources OPR 3014278401, NMFS and to Alaska Regional Stranding Coordinator 9075867209 as soon as feasible.
Preliminary Determinations The action in this IHA is identical to the action in the 2020 IHA except that work will now be allowed from April 15, 2021 through April 14, 2022, Stellers sea lion daily rate of take has increased, and the down-the-hole drilling Level A harassment source levels and zones have been updated to our current standards. As described in the notice of issuance of the 2020 final IHA 85 FR 21399, April 17, 2020 we found that HPMS construction activities would have a negligible impact and that the taking would be small relative to population size. For this analysis of the new IHA we found that marine mammal abundance was still estimated to be the same or larger than was known for the 2020 IHA and that any changes did not affect our analysis or findings. Other marine mammal information and the potential effects were identical to the 2020 IHA.
The estimated take was calculated identically to the 2020 IHA, except for Stellers sea lions. For Stellers sea lions the total take that occurred during the 2020 IHA plus the take authorized here are less than the take authorized in the 2020 IHA. Mitigation and monitoring are identical to the 2020 IHA except for the increase in Level A harassment and shutdown zones for the down-the-hole drilling for four hearing groups. These new zones are smaller that the existing zones for impact driving of the 48-inch piles, meaning there is no change to the largest Level A harassment or shutdown zones for the project as a whole, just potentially the number of days where larger Level A harassment and shutdown zones would need to be implemented.
NMFS has preliminarily concluded that there is no new information suggesting that our analysis or findings should change from those reached for the 2020 IHA. This includes consideration of the estimated
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