SINGLE SOURCE (24-375) SIGNED FD_Redacted.pdf

143031-24-0196

Version 2.0 19Aug2020

SINGLE SOURCE DETERMINATION USING

SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION PROCEDURES (SAP)

FOR AN ACTION NOT EXCEEDING THE SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION

THRESHOLD (AUTHORITY: FAR 13.106-1(b)(1))

143031-24-0196

1. Agency and contracting activity. Department of Commerce, NOAA Acquisition and Grants Office (AGO), Eastern Acquisition Division (EAD) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and SEFSC Panama City FL Laboratories

2. Description of supplies or services required to meet agency needs (including the estimated value).

Services to coordinate and obtain multiple registered commercial fishing vessels located in Puerto Rico to conduct hook and line sampling at no more than 300 pre-selected stations island-wide, in addition to an on-board observer to conduct data collection on both fishing gear and fish information. This work will occur island-wide in Puerto Rico from depths of 20 m - 450 m. Additional data collection objectives include obtaining biological information from queen snapper Etelis oculatus, silk snapper Lutjanus vivanus, blackfin snapper L. buccanella, vermilion snapper Rhomboplites aurobens, wenchman snapper Pristipomoides aquilonaris, cardinal snapper P. macrophthalmus, black snapper Apsilus dentatus, misty grouper Hyporthodus mystacinus, and red hind Epinephelus guttatus. Targeted snapper species will be subsampled at sea. Subsampled specimens will be retained for biological processing on land as part of a collaborative effort funded by the territorial initiative. Biological samples (otoliths, gonads, eyes, and tissue) will be collected and archived for use in age, growth, reproduction, and population connectivity studies. Tissue samples will be collected from both target species and incidental catch for use in a concurrent DNA barcoding study. The results of these efforts will support this year’s approved Cooperative Research Program project, “Deep-water Fishery Independent Survey of Reef Fishes in Puerto Rico”. The scope and corresponding funding for this research is assessed and approved annually and this year’s project approval expands the scope island-wide as well as into a shallower depth bin (20-50 m) to provide overlap with over fishery-independent surveys. The work is to be conducted from 09/01/2024 - 12/31/2025. A firm fixed price purchase order is anticipated and the estimated value is .

3. Identification of the single source or the brand name to be solicited.

Hector Jose Ruiz Torres

URBAN VALLE HEMOSA ARRYIBA CALLAVE P4

HORMIGUEROS, PR, 00660-0000

4. Supporting rationale. Only one source or brand name is reasonably available as detailed below:

Other - Only one source is capable –

This project builds off of several previously awarded contracts that Hector Jose Ruiz Torres is either currently conducting, or conducted in past years. In order to ensure the success of this project, the methods must remain standardized and usable in analysis, and the gear must be deployed using the same standardized approach as used in previous years. Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized.

The Government believes that Hector Jose Ruiz Torres is the only source capable of providing the services required at the level of quality required because the entity was awarded the 3 contracts, one in 2018, 2019, and 2020 with the exercising of an option year to continue work through FY22. An almost identical project is currently awarded to Hector Jose Ruiz Torres to sample island-wide using commercial fishers, with this new project maintaining the same protocols, with the addition of one shallow-water depth bin (20-50 m). These contracts that have been completed by Hector Jose Ruiz Torres have provided the necessary building blocks for the current 2024-2025 proposed project. It is absolutely necessary for the contractor to have working relationships with the commercial fishing industry with insured fishers hired and trained on the protocols prior to it beginning, as well as the observer program in Puerto Rico, which Hector Jose Ruiz Torres unequivocally does. There are multiple justifications for a sole source award in this project. The strongest rationale is scientific quality. The ability to detect treatment effects relies on the ability to reduce extraneous variability; changing vendors midway through the project will unquestionably introduce bias and variance as different anglers will vary in their procedures, even if following the same set of instructions.

Small changes in procedures can have profound impacts on outcomes. Based on the previously awarded contracts, the CV’s generated by the methods and procedures used by Ruiz Torres have reduced sampling efforts by 46% for queen snapper, and 36% for silk snapper when compared to a simple random survey design. By doing so, the data collected resulted in CVs of mean CPUE ranging from 13-15% for queen and silk snapper. These low CV’s are critically important to the success of the project and their use in Caribbean stock assessments.

The second rationale is logistical cost. This work is conducted in Puerto Rico with remote oversight from Florida. Using the established vendor precludes the need for costly and timely travel restrictions. Additionally, it would cost significantly more to conduct completely new training which would require travel to the island in order to orient a new vendor on NOAA specific requirements, as well as insure the scientific integrity of the data collection.

The third rationale is scheduling. Specialized permits are required to complete the field work. Permits are awarded by the territorial government through a tightly controlled and lengthy process. The time required for a new vendor to navigate the complex labyrinth of governmental entities in Puerto Rico and obtain the required permits would almost certainly push the start date of the project beyond the date it must begin to maintain the scientific integrity described in the first rationale.

If we are unable to execute the contract, commercial fisherman would not receive funding to conduct the deployments and thus vital fisheries independent monitoring data not collected. The survey is collecting data for a wide variety of commercially and recreationally important fishes (e.g. queen snapper, silk snapper, red hind, misty grouper). This data is used to create abundance indices that form the key components of stock assessments conducted by NMFS and on which catch limits are being set (for more information visit http://sedarweb.org/). If not conducted the result would be data gaps in the abundance trends and the stock assessment would be based on inadequate estimates of abundance. This deficiency in the survey could result in evidence for commercial and recreational fishing entities to argue that NMFS is inadequately surveying populations of fish and basing fishing restrictions on unrepresentative data. Minimally this would create a situation where NMFS is heavily

Contracting Officer