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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 174 / Monday, September 13, 2021 / Proposed Rules
Classification Pursuant to section 304b1A of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the NMFS
Assistant Administrator has determined that this proposed rule is consistent with the Atlantic Bluefish FMP, other provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and other applicable law, subject to further consideration after public comment.
The Council reviewed the proposed regulations for this action and deemed them necessary and appropriate to implement consistent with section 303c of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
This proposed rule has been determined to be not significant for purposes of Executive Order 12866.
This proposed rule contains no information collection requirements under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.
The Mid-Atlantic Council prepared an EA for this action that analyzes the impacts of the measures contained in this proposed rule. This EA includes an initial regulatory flexibility analysis IRFA, as required by section 603 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act RFA, which is supplemented by information contained in the preamble of this proposed rule. The IRFA describes the economic impact that this proposed rule, if adopted, would have on small business entities, as well as the comparative possible impacts of the other alternatives considered. A copy of the detailed RFA analysis is available from the Council see ADDRESSES. A
summary of the Amendment 7 IRFA
analysis follows.
Description of the Reasons Why Action by the Agency Is Being Considered, and the Statement of the Objectives of, and Legal Basis for, This Proposed Rule This action is taken under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and regulations at 50 CFR part 648. This action proposes a range of management measures for the Atlantic bluefish fishery. A complete description of the action, why it is being considered, and its legal basis, are contained in the EA
see ADDRESSES and in this rules preamble, and are not repeated here.

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Description and Estimate of the Number of Small Entities to Which This Proposed Rule Would Apply This proposed rule affects those small entities engaged in commercial fishing operations in the Atlantic bluefish fishery those with commercial bluefish permits, and those with Federal party/
charter recreational permits for bluefish.
Private recreational anglers are not considered entities under the RFA,
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thus economic impacts on private anglers are not considered here. For the purposes of the RFA analysis, the ownership entities or firms, not the individual vessels, are considered to be the regulated entities. Ownership entities are defined as those entities or firms with common ownership personnel as listed on the permit application. Because of this, some vessels with bluefish permits may be considered to be part of the same firm because they may have the same owners. To identify these small and large firms, vessel ownership data from the permit database were grouped according to common owners and sorted by size. In terms of RFA, a business primarily engaged in commercial fishing is classified as a small business if it has combined annual receipts not in excess of $11 million, for all its affiliated operations worldwide. A business primarily engaged in for-hire party/
charter fishing is classified as small business if it has combined annual receipts not in excess of $8 million.
The current ownership data set used in this analysis is based on calendar years 20182020 the most recent and complete data available. According to the vessel ownership database, 526
commercial fishing affiliate firms landed bluefish during the 20182020
period, with 521 of those entities categorized as small businesses, and 5
categorized as large businesses. The three-year average 20182020
combined gross receipts all species combined for all small entities only was $197,251,017 and the average bluefish receipts was $899,490; this indicates that bluefish revenues contributed approximately 0.46 percent of the total gross receipts for these small entities.
For the recreational for-hire party/
charter fishery, 361 for-hire affiliate firms reported revenue from recreational fishing for various species from 2018
2020. All 361 of those firms are categorized as small businesses. It is not possible to derive what proportion of the overall revenues for these for-hire firms came from fishing activities for an individual species. Nevertheless, given the popularity of bluefish as a recreational species in the Mid-Atlantic and New England, it is likely that revenues generated from bluefish may be somewhat important for many of these firms at certain times of the year.
The 3-year average 20182020
combined gross receipts all for-hire fishing activity combined for these small entities was $49,916,903, ranging from less than $10,000 for 105 entities lowest value $46 to over $1,000,000 for 8 entities highest value $3.6 million.

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Description of the Projected Reporting, Recordkeeping, and Other Compliance Requirements of This Proposed Rule There are no new reporting, recordkeeping, or other compliance requirements contained in this proposed rule, or any of the alternatives considered for this action.
Federal Rules Which May Duplicate, Overlap, or Conflict With This Proposed Rule NMFS is not aware of any relevant Federal rules that may duplicate, overlap, or conflict with this proposed rule.
Description of Significant Alternatives to the Proposed Action Which Accomplish the Stated Objectives of Applicable Statutes and Which Minimize Any Significant Economic Impact on Small Entities The proposed amendment would implement several measures that could potentially impact small businesses in both the commercial and recreational sectors of the bluefish fishery; most notably the reallocation of quota among the sectors and states, the rebuilding plan, and the revision of sector transfer of quota. While the revised FMP goals and objectives and the sector-specific accounting of management uncertainty during the specifications process could have an indirect economic impact on businesses, these alternatives are largely administrative and not discussed here.
On average, bluefish revenues contributed approximately 0.46 percent to the total gross receipts for the small businesses and 0.02 percent for the large businesses. Due to the slightly higher dependence on bluefish for the small businesses compared to the large businesses, the small businesses may feel the effects of this action to a greater extent than the large businesses. Even so, the small businesses did not rely on bluefish for a substantial amount of their annual income either; although when considered individually, some businesses may be more dependent on this species than others.
Several alternatives were considered for the sector quota allocations based on different time series of catch and landings data; however, all of these alternatives resulted in quota shifting from the commercial sector to the recreational sector by varying degrees.
The No Action alternative would continue to allocate 83-percent of the fishery-level ACL to the recreational fishery, and 17 percent to the commercial fishery, while the alternatives considered shift this distribution by 1, 3, 4, and 6 percentage
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