Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2024 Catch Sharing Plan and Recreational Fishery Management Measures

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240130-0031]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM75</RIN> <SUBJECT>Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2024 Catch Sharing Plan and Recreational Fishery Management Measures</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes to approve changes to the Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan for the International Pacific Halibut Commission's regulatory Area 2A off Washington, Oregon, and California. In addition, NMFS proposes to implement new management measures for the 2024 recreational fisheries in Area 2A that are not implemented through the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC). These measures include the recreational fishery seasons and subarea allocations for Area 2A. This action would also add a new inseason management provision to transfer anticipated uncaught recreational fishery allocation between states. Additionally, this action proposes to establish a new management line at Point Arena, CA, creating two subareas with separate allocations off California. These actions are intended to conserve Pacific halibut and provide angler opportunity where available. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the proposed rule must be received on or before March 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0014, by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2024-0014 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Jennifer Quan, Regional Administrator, c/o Melissa Mandrup, West Coast Region, NMFS, 501 W Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> NMFS may not consider comments if they are sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the comment period ends. All comments received are a part of the public record and NMFS will post them for public viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender is publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). <E T="03">Docket:</E> This rule is accessible via the internet at the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information and documents are available at the NMFS West Coast Region Pacific Halibut Recreational Fishery website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2023-pacific-halibut-recreational-fishery</E> and at the Council's website at <E T="03">http://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Other comments received may be accessed through <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Melissa Mandrup, phone: 562-980-3231 or email: <E T="03">melissa.mandrup@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (Halibut Act), 16 U.S.C. 773-773k, gives the Secretary of Commerce responsibility for implementing the provisions of the Convention between Canada and the United States for the Preservation of the Halibut Fishery of the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea (Halibut Convention), signed at Ottawa, Ontario, on March 2, 1953, as amended by a Protocol Amending the Convention (signed at Washington, DC, on March 29, 1979). The Halibut Act requires that the Secretary of Commerce adopt regulations to carry out the purposes and objectives of the Halibut Convention and Halibut Act (16 U.S.C. 773c). Additionally, as provided in the Halibut Act, the regional fishery management councils having authority for the geographic area concerned may develop, and the Secretary of Commerce may implement, regulations governing Pacific halibut fishing in in U.S. waters that are in addition to, and not in conflict with, approved International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) regulations (16 U.S.C. 773c(c)). At its annual meeting January 22-26, 2024, the IPHC recommended an Area 2A catch limit also known as the Fishery Constant Exploitation Yield (FCEY) for 2024. This FCEY is derived from the total constant exploitation yield (TCEY) for Pacific halibut, which includes commercial discards and bycatch estimates calculated using a formula developed by the IPHC. The 2024 TCEY and FCEY for Area 2A will be published as part of a separate rulemaking. As provided in the Halibut Act at 16 U.S.C. 773b, the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce, may accept or reject, on behalf of the United States, regulations recommended by the IPHC in accordance with the Convention. Following acceptance by the Secretary of State, the annual management measures promulgated by the IPHC are published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to provide notice of their immediate regulatory effectiveness and to inform persons subject to the regulations of their restrictions and requirements (50 CFR 300.62). Allocations based on IPHC's recommended 2024 Area 2A FCEY will be subject to acceptance by the Secretary of State with concurrence by the Secretary of Commerce and will be included in the final rule. Since 1988, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) has developed a Catch Sharing Plan that allocates the IPHC regulatory Area 2A Pacific halibut FCEY between treaty tribal and non-tribal harvesters, and among non-tribal commercial and recreational (sport) fisheries. NMFS has implemented at 50 CFR 300.63 <E T="03">et seq.</E> certain provisions of the Catch Sharing Plan and implemented annual rules containing annual management measures consistent with the Catch Sharing Plan. In 1995, the Council recommended and NMFS approved a long-term Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan (60 FR 14651, March 20, 1995). NMFS has been approving adjustments to the Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan based on Council recommendations each year to address the changing needs of these fisheries. While the full Catch Sharing Plan is not published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , it is made available on the Council website. This rule proposes to approve the changes the Council recommended at its November 2023 meeting to the Catch Sharing Plan for Area 2A. The recommended changes to the Catch Sharing Plan were developed through the Council's public process over multiple meetings. This rule also proposes to implement recreational Pacific halibut fishery management measures for 2024, which include season opening and closing dates. These management measures are consistent with the recommendations made by the Council in the 2024 Catch Sharing Plan as modified based on its 2023 recommendations and are detailed below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Proposed Changes to the Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan</HD> Each year at the Council's September meeting, members of the public have an opportunity to propose changes to the Catch Sharing Plan for consideration by the Council. At the September 2023 Council meeting, per the typical annual process, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) proposed changes to the Catch Sharing Plan for the fisheries that occur off of their respective coasts. At its November 2023 meeting, the Council considered the results of state-sponsored workshops on the proposed changes to the Catch Sharing Plan, along with public input provided at the September and November 2023 Council meetings, and made its recommendations for modifications to the Catch Sharing Plan. NMFS proposes to approve all the Council's recommended changes to the Catch Sharing Plan, which are discussed below. 1. In multiple sections of the Catch Sharing Plan, the Council recommended administrative changes to the management objectives and fishery flexibility language contained in the Catch Sharing Plan. These changes are intended to provide consistency and clarity throughout the document. The Council also recommended changes to section 5.7.5 that would allow incidental retention of Pacific halibut to continue in the salmon troll fishery beyond June 30 without the need for NMFS to specifically notice that continuation, improving efficiency. 2. In section 6.8 of the Catch Sharing Plan, the Council recommended creating a new management provision that would allow NMFS to take inseason action to reallocate or transfer recreational fishery allocation between states if one or more states was projected to not fully attain their recreational fishery allocation for the current season. This new proposed type of inseason action is intended to allow greater utilization of overall Area 2A recreational allocation by providing additional angler opportunity later in the season across a larger portion of the coast. 3. The Council recommended changes to Section 5.6.4 of the Catch Sharing Plan regarding the notice and timing of non-tribal directed commercial fishery sequential season openings. Specifically, NMFS proposes to announce one or two open periods for the non-tribal directed commercial fishery each year, with intervals between open periods anticipated to be 2 to 4 weeks. Th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 44k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━