Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2024 and 2025 Summer Flounder and Scup, and 2024 Black Sea Bass Recreational Management Measures

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240214-0048]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM83</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2024 and 2025 Summer Flounder and Scup, and 2024 Black Sea Bass Recreational 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 Federal management measures for the summer flounder and black sea bass recreational fisheries. The implementing regulations for these fisheries require NMFS to publish recreational measures for the fishing year and to provide an opportunity for public comment. The intent of this action is to set management measures that allow the recreational fisheries to achieve, but not exceed, the recreational harvest targets and thereby prevent overfishing. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by March 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0020 by the following method: • <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 type NOAA-NMFS-2024-0020 in the Search box ( <E T="03">note:</E> copying and pasting the FDMS Docket Number directly from this document may not yield search results). Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered by NMFS. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted 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 will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter“N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emily Keiley, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9116, or <E T="03">Emily.Keiley@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) cooperatively manage summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass. The Council and the Commission's Management Boards meet jointly each year to recommend recreational management measures. For summer flounder and black sea bass, NMFS must implement coastwide measures or approve conservation-equivalent measures per 50 CFR 648.102(d) and 648.142(d), as soon as possible following the Council and Commission's recommendation. This action proposes establishing conservation equivalency ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> waiving Federal recreational management measures) for both species in 2024 and for summer flounder in 2025. For scup, no adjustments to the Federal recreational management measures are proposed. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Recreational Management Measures Process</HD> Framework Adjustment 17 to the Summer Flounder and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan (FMP) and Framework Adjustment 6 to the Bluefish FMP (March 9, 2023, 88 FR 14499), referred to as the Percent Change Approach, established a new process for determining when recreational management measures ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> possession limits, size limits, and season) should be changed and by what magnitude. The Percent Change Approach uses two factors to determine if management measures could remain status quo, could be liberalized, or must be restricted: (1) a comparison of a confidence interval (CI) around an estimate of expected harvest under status quo measures to the average recreational harvest limit (RHL) for the upcoming 2 years; and (2) biomass compared to the target level, as defined by the most recent stock assessment. These two factors also determine the appropriate degree of change, defined as a percentage change in expected harvest. Changes to recreational management measures to achieve the required percent change are evaluated by the Monitoring Committee, which consists of representatives from the Commission, the Council, state marine fishery agencies from Massachusetts to North Carolina, and NMFS. The FMP limits the choices for the types of measures to: (1) minimum and/or maximum fish size; (2) per-angler possession limit; and (3) fishing season. A description of the application of this process for each species is provided below. The Council and the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass (Board) then consider the Monitoring Committee's recommendations and any public comment in making their recommendations. The Council forwards its recommendations to NMFS for review. The Commission similarly adopts recommendations for the states. NMFS is required to review the Council's recommendations to ensure that they are consistent with the targets specified for summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass in the FMP and all applicable laws and Executive Orders before ultimately implementing measures for Federal waters. Commission measures are final at the time they are adopted. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2024 and 2025 Scup Recreational Management Measures</HD> Application of the Percent Change Approach and the bio-economic model used to evaluate recreational behavior and catch resulted in a recommended 10-percent reduction in recreational scup harvest. According to the 2023 management stock assessment (using data through 2022), scup is not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring. Scup biomass is 246 percent of the biomass target, which puts scup in the “very high” ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> biomass greater than 150 percent of the target level) biomass category in the Percent Change Approach. The Recreational Demand Model was used to generate an estimate of expected 2024-2025 harvest under status quo ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 2023) measures, with an associated 80-percent confidence interval. The median coastwide projected 2024-2025 harvest under 2023 measures is 15.29 million pounds (lb) (6,935 metric ton (mt)), with an 80-percent confidence interval of 14.07-16.29 million lb (6,382-7,389 mt). The average 2024-2025 scup recreational harvest limit (RHL) of 12.51 million lb (5,674 mt) is below the lower bound of the confidence interval around expected harvest. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,r75,r50,xs50,xs90"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Estimated Scup Harvest, Associated Confidence Interval (CI), 2024-2025 Average RHL, Stock Size Category, and Resulting Percent Change Recommended</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Estimated harvest under status quo measure</CHED> <CHED H="1">80-Percent confidence interval</CHED> <CHED H="1">Average 2024-2025 RHL</CHED> <ENT I="01">15.29 million lb (6,935 mt)</ENT> <ENT>14.07-16.29 million lb (6,382-7,389 mt)</ENT> <ENT>12.51 million lb (5,674 mt)</ENT> <ENT>Very High</ENT> <ENT>10-Percent Reduction.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> In 2023, recreational management measures were implemented to achieve a 10-percent reduction in scup harvest. Preliminary harvest estimates through wave 5 suggest that harvest was approximately 37 percent lower in 2023 than the 2022 harvest through wave 5. The current Federal recreational scup management measures are a 10-inch (25.4-centimeter (cm)) minimum fish size, a 50-fish per person possession limit, and a year-round open season. State measures are similar but vary slightly due to differences in scup availability. We are proposing no changes to the Federal recreational scup management measures for 2024 or 2025. Recreational scup harvest in Federal waters accounts for approximately 5 percent of the total recreational harvest. Because the majority of recreational scup harvest occurs in state waters, the Council and Commission determined that changes to state-waters measures would be the most effective way to achieve the required 10-percent reduction. The current Federal measures, in conjunction with changes to state-waters measures, are projected to achieve the needed 10-percent harvest reduction. The state and Federal measures will remain in place through 2025. Recreational scup measures will be reevaluated prior to the 2026 fishing year. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summer Flounder and Black Sea Bass Conservation Equivalency</HD> Under conservation equivalency, Federal recreational measures are waived and federally permitted party/charter vessels and all recreational vessels fishing in Federal waters are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. This approach allows for more customized measures at a state or regional level that are likely to meet the needs of anglers in each area, compared to coastwide measures that may be advantageous to anglers in some areas and unnecessarily restrictive in others. The combination of state or regional measures must be “equivalent” in terms of conservation to a set of “non-preferred coastwide measures,” which are recommended by the Council and the Board. The Council and Board recommend that either state- or region-specific recreational measures be developed ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> conservation equivalency) or that coastwide management measures be implemented. Even when the Council and Board recommend conservation equivalency, the Council must specify a set of non-preferred coastwide measures that would apply if conse ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━