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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 108 / Tuesday, June 8, 2021 / Notices
Marine Mammal Monitoring Protocols The Navy will monitor all Level B
harassment zones and Level A
harassment zones before, during, and after construction activities. The Marine Mammal Monitoring Plan must include the following procedures:
At least two 2 PSOs shall be posted to monitor marine mammals during in-water pile driving and removal, drilling, and blasting.
Additional PSOs will be required in conditions of low visibility i.e., rain or light fog, for activities producing the largest ensonified zones, and/or if marine mammal occurrence is higher than expected in the project area;
PSOs must be stationed at the best possible vantage points in order to properly see the entire shutdown zones and zones associated with behavioral impact thresholds, which may include the following locations:
Berth 2, Berth 12, Isle of Shoals Steamship Company, Prescott Park, Four Tree Island, Peirce Island, and/or a boat or barge within the project limits;
PSOs must record all observations of marine mammals, regardless of distance from the construction activity;
During all observation periods, PSOs will use high-magnification 25X, as well as standard handheld 7X
binoculars, and the naked eye to search continuously for marine mammals;
Monitoring distances will be measured with range finders. Distances to animals will be based on the best estimate of the PSO, relative to known distances to objects in the vicinity of the PSO;
Pile driving and removal, drilling, and blasting will only take place when the shutdown zones are visible and can be adequately monitored. If conditions e.g., fog prevent the visual detection of marine mammals, activities with the potential to result in Level A
harassment shall not be initiated. If such conditions arise after the activity has begun, blasting and impact pile driving or removal will be halted but drilling and vibratory pile driving or removal will be allowed to continue;
Information Collection:
PSOs shall collect the following information during marine mammal monitoring:
PSO locations during monitoring;
Date and time that monitored activity begins and ends for each day conducted monitoring period;
Construction activities occurring during each daily observation period, including how many and what type of piles driven, number of blast holes drilled, and number or blast events;
Environmental conditions during monitoring periods at beginning and
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end of PSO shift and whenever conditions change significantly;
including Beaufort sea state and any other relevant weather conditions, including cloud cover, fog, sun glare, and estimated observable distance;
For each marine mammal sighting:
Name of PSO who sighted the animals and PSO location and activity at time of sighting;
Time of sighting;
Species, numbers, and, if possible, sex and age class of marine mammals;
Description of any observable marine mammal behavior patterns, including bearing and direction of travel and distance from construction activity;
Location, distance, and bearing from pile driving, drilling, and blasting activities to marine mammals and distance from the marine mammals to the observation point;
Animals closet point of approach and estimated amount of time that the animals remained in the Level B
harassment and Level A harassment zones; and Detailed information about implementation of any mitigation e.g., shutdowns or delays, a description of specific actions that ensued, and resulting changes in behavior of the animals, if any.
Percentage of time that activities i.e., drilling occur at night.
Hydroacoustic Monitoring The Navy must conduct hydroacoustic monitoring of in-water construction activities, including the installation of 10 28-inch Z-shaped sheet piles and 10 18-inch flat-webbed sheet piles for both impact and vibratory pile driving, 4 30-inch steel piles for vibratory pile driving, 10 120 lbs blasting events, and 10 4.5-inch blastcharge hole drilling events. Near-field monitoring will occur at 10 m from the pile driving hammers and drilling location. During blasting, near-field data will be collected using a pressure transducer to estimate sounds levels based on received impulse. The far-field hydrophone will be placed as far from the acoustic source as is practicable, although the distance will limited by DD1s proximity to a navigable channel outside of the entrance to the super flood basin. Monitoring will only be conducted when concurrent activities are not occurring, limiting interference in the recordings from other sources of noise in the environment.
Reporting Requirements The Navy is required to submit a draft monitoring report including all PSO
data sheets and/or raw sighting data within 90 days after completion of the
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construction work or the expiration of the IHA, whichever comes earlier. This report must detail the monitoring protocol, summarize the data recorded during monitoring, and estimate the number of marine mammals that may have been harassed. The draft hydroacoustic monitoring report must be submitted within the same timeframe and must contain the informational elements described in the hydroacoustic monitoring plan for all acoustically monitored events, including: A
description of the hydrophones used, hydrophone locations both nearand far-field and water depths, recording devices, distance from the acoustic source, and sediment type at the recording location; type and size of pile being driven, method of pile-driving during recording hammer model and energy, and total driving/removal or drilling duration. For impact pile driving, the Navy must also report:
Number of strikes and strike rate, depth of substrate penetrated, pulse duration, and mean, median, and maximum sound levels db re 1 m Pa root mean square sound pressure level SPLrms;
cumulative sound exposure level SELcum, peak sound pressure level SPLpeak, and single-strike sound exposure level SELs-s. For vibratory pile driving or removal and drilling, the Navy must also report: Median, minimum and maximum sound levels db re 1 m Pa SPLrms, SELcum, and the timeframe over which the sound is averaged. For blast events, the Navy must also report: Number of blast events per day, time between blast events if two are conducted within a 24-hour period, total number of charges/delays, maximum net explosive weight NEW
of a single charge and the total NEW of the event, timeframe between delays and total timeframe of event, impulse in Pa-sec, SPLpeak for each event and SELcum values for the entire 24 hours over which blasting occurs. For all activities, reported SPLrms values must be based on a time window that consists of 90 percent of the acoustic energy.
Power spectral density plots and onethird octave band spectra must be provided for all acoustically monitored construction activities. If, for any reason, the total number of events included in the hydroacoustic monitoring plan are not monitored within the overall construction timeframe, the Navy must report the actual number of events monitored.
NMFS will have an opportunity to provide comments on the report and, if NMFS has comments, the Navy will address the comments and submit a final report to NMFS within 30 days.

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