Justification for Change

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE
NORTHEAST REGION PERMIT FAMILY OF FORMS
OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0202

As part of Final Rule RIN 0648-BB08, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
(NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) proposes to modify catch reporting in the
herring fishery through the submission of an additional field on the daily vessel monitoring
systems (VMS) herring catch reports approved in conjunction with Final Rule RIN 0648-BA79.
This action would require any limited access permit holders (Category A, B, or C), fishing with
midwater trawl gear in Herring Management Areas 1A, 1B, and/or 3 (Gulf of Maine and
Geroges Bank), to report the total estimated weight of all fish kept from each of the two haddock
stock areas via their daily herring fishery VMS catch report. This reporting is necessary to
facilitate the accurate and timely monitoring of haddock catch in the Atlantic herring fishery and
for the enforcement of the incidental catch cap for the herring fishery and timely implementation
of accountability measures, if necessary.
An estimated 42 vessels out of the 97 Category A, B, and C permitted herring vessels required to
submit herring catch reports through VMS will have to fill out the ‘kept all’ field on each of 76
catch reports, which will add: 1) 2 minutes to each catch report, and a total of 106 hours for all
reports; 2) $0.05 per report for the additional characters, for a total additional $160.
Final burden table for proposed catch reporting requirements:

Information
Collection
New Information
Collection

Vessel
Permit
Categories

Some A, B, C

# of
Entities

Items
per
Entity

Total #
of
Items

42

76

3192

Response
Time (Min)

Total
Burden
(Hr)

Public
Cost
Per
Item

Cost to
Public

2

106

$0.05

$160