According to NOAA the proposed rule published in the Federal Register on December 10, 2009 (74 FR 65500) and time limit for the public comment ends on January 11, 2010. On July 2, 2009, NOAA Fisheries Service approved Amendment 29, which creates an IFQ program for grouper and tilefish species in the Gulf of Mexico. A final rule implementing the amendment published on August 31, 2009.
It is said that the change sin this rule would remove several measures constraining harvest of shallow-water grouper species that were inadvertently not removed in the final rule for Amendment 29, further specify criteria for approval of new landing locations for both the red snapper IFQ program and grouper and tilefish IFQ program, and provide a definition of “offloading” for IFQ participants.
This proposed rule would remove these provisions as they are no longer needed with the implementation of the grouper and tilefish IFQ program. NOAA Fisheries Service Office for Law Enforcement must approve landing locations prior to landing or offloading red snapper, groupers, or tilefishes. Current regulations state that landing locations must be publicly accessible by land and water, and a street address must be provided for a landing location.
When IFQ fish are offloaded to a vehicle for transportation to a dealer or are trailered to a dealer, a transaction approval code must accompany those fish. The final rule implementing Amendment 29 specifies that an accurate weight must be submitted to complete an IFQ landing transaction to determine that the fishermen has sufficient allocation to cover the amount of fish landed. Therefore, the fishermen must have on-site capability to weigh their fish and connect electronically to the online IFQ system to complete the transaction and obtain a transaction approval code to transport these fish.
