Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustments to Northeast Multispecies, Atlantic Sea Scallop, Monkfish, Northeast Skate Complex, and Atlantic Herring Fisheries; Southern New England Habitat Area of Particular Concern Designation

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240130-0029]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM51</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustments to Northeast Multispecies, Atlantic Sea Scallop, Monkfish, Northeast Skate Complex, and Atlantic Herring Fisheries; Southern New England Habitat Area of Particular Concern Designation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action implements the New England Fishery Management Council's Framework Adjustment that identifies a Habitat Area of Particular Concern offshore of Southern New England. This rule adjusts the following fishery management plans: Northeast Multispecies; Atlantic Sea Scallop; Monkfish; Northeast Skate Complex; and Atlantic Herring. The Habitat Area of Particular Concern is within and around wind lease areas in Southern New England, including Cox Ledge, to focus conservation recommendations on cod spawning habitats and complex benthic habitats that are known to serve important habitat functions to Council-managed fishery species. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective March 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Copies of the Southern New England Habitat Area of Particular Concern Framework and other supporting documents for this action are available upon request from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Mill 2, Newburyport, MA 01950. The supporting documents are also accessible via the internet at: <E T="03">https://d23h0vhsm26o6d.cloudfront.net/230926-SNE-HAPC-Framework-FINAL.pdf.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sabrina Pereira, Marine Habitat Resource Specialist, email: <E T="03">Sabrina.Pereira@noaa.gov;</E> phone: (978) 675-2178. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This action identifies a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) in and around offshore wind lease areas in Southern New England, including Cox Ledge. The New England Fishery Management Council recommended the HAPC designation due to concerns about the potential adverse impact on essential fish habitat (EFH) from the development of offshore wind energy projects. The designation focuses on important cod spawning grounds and areas of complex habitat that are known to serve important habitat functions to federally managed species within and adjacent to offshore wind development areas. Complex benthic habitat provides shelter for certain species during their early life history, refuge from predators, and feeding opportunities. The HAPC designation will be applied during EFH consultation when data indicate that cod spawning and/or complex habitats occur within or near the footprint of a project located within the border of the HAPC area identified in Figure 6 of the Framework document. HAPCs highlight specific types or areas of habitat within EFH that may be particularly vulnerable to human impacts. HAPC designations should be based on one or more of the following criteria: (1) The importance of the ecological function provided by the habitat, including both the historical and current ecological function; (2) the extent to which the habitat is sensitive to human-induced environmental degradation; (3) whether, and to what extent, development activities are, or will be, stressing the habitat type; and (4) the rarity of the habitat type (50 CFR 600.815(a)(8)). As detailed below, the HAPC designated by this action has all four of these attributes. An area's status as an HAPC is intended to lead to special attention regarding potential adverse effects on habitats within areas of particular concern from various activities ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> fishing, offshore wind energy). An HAPC designation does not provide any specific habitat management measures, such as restrictions on gear types, harvest levels, fishing locations, offshore wind survey and construction activities, or other activities with adverse effects on habitat in the area. The proposed rule for this action was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on September 26, 2023 (88 FR 65944), and comments were accepted through October 26, 2023. NMFS received 14 comments from the public, and no changes were made to the final rule because of those comments (see Comments and Responses for additional detail). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Habitat Area of Particular Concern Designation</HD> This action implements Alternative 5, the Council's preferred alternative for the Southern New England HAPC designation, which identifies as an HAPC certain habitats in the area overlapping offshore wind lease sites in southern New England. The spatial extent of the HAPC is based on the footprint of the lease areas, buffered by approximately 10 km on all sides, combined with the footprint of the Cox Ledge spawning ground, which is based on recent evidence of cod spawning activity. Figure 6 on page 29 of the Framework document (online at <E T="03">https://d23h0vhsm26o6d.cloudfront.net/230926-SNE-HAPC-Framework-FINAL.pdf</E> ) contains a map of the HAPC designation area. As noted in the Framework document (at 27), when projects are proposed within this area, “The HAPC designation will be applied during EFH consultation when data indicate that cod spawning and/or complex habitats occur within or near the project footprint.” The HAPC area is located within designated EFH for the following species that occupy complex habitats within the footprint: Atlantic cod egg, larvae, juveniles, and adults; Atlantic herring eggs; Atlantic sea scallop eggs, juveniles, and adults; little skate juveniles and adults; monkfish juveniles and adults; ocean pout eggs, juveniles, and adults; red hake juveniles and adults; winter flounder eggs, juveniles, and adults; and winter skate juveniles and adults. Complex habitats are defined as hard bottom substrates, defined by the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) as Substrate Class Rock Substrate, and by the four Substrate Groups: Gravels; gravel mixes; gravelly; and shell. This CMECS modifier was developed by NMFS for habitat mapping recommendations, including both large-grained and small-grained hard habitats. Hard bottom substrates with epifauna or macroalgae cover are also defined as complex habitat. Evidence of cod spawning activity at a site could be based on: Capture of ripe, running, or spent cod during fishery independent surveys; detections of acoustically tagged fish between November and April; detections of cod grunts in acoustic surveys; capture of cod larvae in ichthyoplankton surveys; and/or evidence of eggs in ichthyoplankton surveys (not species specific but indicative of spawning success). Designation of this HAPC places a focus on areas that are experiencing current development stresses. The designated area overlaps areas leased for renewable energy development. Some projects are already permitted, others are currently undergoing environmental review, and others are still within the site assessment phase. The HAPC's spatial footprint closely aligns with the wind lease areas because these areas face differential levels of foreseeable on-going development-related threats compared to surrounding areas. The HAPC boundary includes a buffer of approximately 10 km beyond the leased areas, recognizing that some types of development activities can generate impacts at scales of tens of kilometers beyond the site of construction and operations. For example, acoustic impacts may extend kilometers from a pile driving site. Greater scrutiny would be given to activities within the HAPC designated area when data indicate that cod spawning and/or complex habitats occur within or near a project or activity footprint. An HAPC focused on these conservation objectives is consistent with the Council's Offshore Wind Energy Policy, as well as prior offshore wind project specific comments provided by the Council in recent years. The cod spawning habitats within the HAPC meet all four of the HAPC criteria identified above, and the complex bottom habitats meet all criteria except for “rarity.” The HAPC area is important for current ecological function because it includes spawning sites, juvenile settlement areas, and feeding areas for species with EFH in the area, including various cod stocks. Georges Bank Atlantic cod, which is in poor stock condition ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> overfished and experiencing overfishing), spawns in the area, and Southern New England cod represents a genetically distinct subpopulation. The subpopulation also contributes to the Georges Bank cod stock; thus, any impacts to Southern New England cod could also detrimentally impact the Georges Bank stock. With regard to sensitivity to anthropogenic stresses, cod spawning activities are particularly sensitive to adverse impacts from fishing and non-fishing activities, namely from offshore wind development (construction, operations, and maintenance), and complex habitats are susceptible to conversion and sedimentation. The HAPC meets the “extent of current or future development stresses” criterion because this area is facing an existing on-going development-related threat from offshore wind. Finally, regarding “rarity,” cod spawning habitats (based on acoustic environment, seafloor and water column setting) are rare with only one known grouping of active sites in Southern New England. On the other hand, complex habitat features alone are not considered rare ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> spatially or temporally very limited). The HAPC identified herein is a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━