Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fishing Capacity Reduction Program; Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands King and Tanner Crabs; Industry Fee System for Fishing Capacity Reduction Loan

NMFS publishes this final rule to exempt any crab landed under the Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program from the fee regulations for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands King and Tanner Crab Fishing Capacity Reduction Program, to provide that crab buyers disburse fee collections to NMFS not later than the 7th calendar day of each month, and to provide that the annual report from each crab buyer shall be submitted to NMFS by July 1 of each calendar year. The fee regulations otherwise remain unchanged. The intent of this final rule is to modify the fee rules so that they do not apply to any crab allocated pursuant to the CDQ Program, and to ease the fee collection burden for crab buyers.