AFA Annual Cooperative Report

Revised: 09/23/2014 OMB Control No. 0648-0401 Expiration Date 12/31/2014

American Fisheries Act (AFA) Annual Cooperative Report

U.S. Dept. of Commerce/NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Restricted Access Management (RAM) P.O. Box 21668 Juneau, AK 99802-1668 (800) 304-484ll free / 586-7202 in Juneau (907) 586-7354 fax

The AFA allowed for development of pollock fishing cooperatives in the non-CDQ sectors. A private company performs parallel accounting of “sideboard” species for each cooperative. Sideboard species are non-pollock groundfish species allocated annually as incidental catch to AFA and other fishery cooperatives. A summary of each cooperative’s target species and sideboard information is done by another private company which maintains comparable analyses of cooperatives compared with each other in order to keep any one and all cooperatives from overfishing. All three types of information for each cooperative are included in the final report.

Each AFA cooperative must submit an AFA annual report by April 1 of each year. Annual reports must be postmarked by the submission deadline or received by a private courier service by the submission deadline. The AFA annual cooperative report must be sent to:

North Pacific Fishery Management Council

605 West 4th Avenue, Suite 306

Anchorage, AK 99501

The AFA Annual cooperative reports are posted on the NMFS website at

http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/afa/afa_sf.htm.

The AFA Annual Cooperative Report must contain the following information:

Cooperative’s allocated catch of pollock and sideboard species

Sub-allocations of pollock and sideboard species made by the cooperative to individual vessels on a vessel-by-vessel basis

Cooperative’s actual retained and discarded catch on an area-by-area and vessel-by-vessel basis of pollock, sideboard species, and PSC

Method used by the cooperative to monitor fisheries in which cooperative vessels participated

Actions taken by the cooperative in response to any vessels that exceed their allowed catch and bycatch in pollock and all sideboard fisheries

Total weight of pollock landed outside the State of Alaska on a vessel-by-vessel basis.

Number of salmon taken by species and season

List each vessel's number of appearances on the weekly “dirty 20” lists for non-Chinook salmon

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PUBLIC REPORTING BURDEN STATEMENT

Public reporting burden for this collection-of-information is estimated to average 8 hours per response, including the time for reviewing the instructions, searching the existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding the burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing the burden, to Assistant Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802-1668.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Before completing this form, please note the following: 1) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person is required to respond to, nor shall any person be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with, a collection-of-information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act, unless that collection-of-information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number; 2) This information is mandatory and is required to manage commercial fishing efforts under 50 CFR part 679 and under section 402(a) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (16 U.S.C. 1801, et seq.) as amended in 2006; 3) Responses to this information request are confidential under section 402(b) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act as revised in 2006. They are also confidential under NOAA Administrative Order 216-100, which sets forth procedures to protect confidentiality of fishery statistics.

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AFA Annual Cooperative Report

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