National Marine Sanctuary Regulations

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published in the Federal Register on May 13, 2022 an interim final rule amending the National Marine Sanctuaries program regulations, which has not yet gone into effect. With this final rule, NOAA administratively withdraws the amendatory instructions and associated regulatory text of the interim final rule, and, in response to public comment replaces it with slightly revised amendatory instructions and regulatory text for a few--but not all--provisions that were in that interim final rule. NOAA, however, retains the preamble and the responses to public comments provided in the interim final rule. Even with these revisions, this final rule is largely similar to the interim final rule, except that NOAA retains the existing regulatory language on the definition of "commercial fishing" and retains the opportunity for third party appeals of sanctuary permitting decisions by interested parties in those sanctuaries that currently recognize such appeals. In addition, this final rule removes amendatory instructions for updating the boundary description and boundary coordinates for the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (NMS), which were inadvertently included in the interim final rule and did not reflect a boundary expansion that went into effect on March 22, 2021. This document provides responses to additional comments received on the interim final rule.