Alaska Crab Arbitration

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Alaska Region requests extension of this currently approved information collection, which supports the arbitration system, a component of the Crab Rationalization Program. The arbitration system was designed to fairly and equitable resolve price, delivery terms, performance standards, and other disputes in the event that individual fishing quota and individual processor quota holders are unable to reach agreement on price and related issues. The arbitration system is necessary to reduce contention in and provide certainty of resolution to price negotiations. The information collected is necessary to verify arbitration organization membership and maintain the arbitration system. There are five elements of this information collection, four of which are submitted to NMFS annually: the Annual Arbitration Organization Report, Market Report, Non-binding Price Formula Report, and Cost Allocation Agreement. However, these reports are only prepared and collected by NMFS for open fisheries. Arbitrations only occur if the parties are unable to reach a directly negotiated agreement. If there is an arbitration, the Contract Arbitrator Report for that fishery’s arbitration is submitted to NMFS. With this extension, the template for the Annual Crab Arbitration Organization Report is updated to include email as a submission method, and the miscellaneous costs for the Cost Allocation Agreement are updated to more accurately reflect the costs for this information collection.

The latest form for Alaska Crab Arbitration expires 2027-10-31 and can be found here.

Annual Arbitration Organization Report

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Natural Resources - Conservation, Marine and Land Management

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