Fisheries Off West Coast States; Emergency Action To Temporarily Remove Seasonal Processing Limitations for Pacific Whiting Motherships and Catcher-Processors

This emergency rule temporarily allows at-sea Pacific whiting processing platforms to operate as both a mothership and a catcher- processor during the 2020 Pacific whiting fishery. This action is necessary to ensure catcher vessels in the mothership cooperative sector are able to fully harvest sector allocations. Emergency measures under this rule will allow catcher-processors to operate as motherships later in the year, and replace mothership processing platforms that have chosen not to operate in the cooperative in response to high economic uncertainty in 2020.