Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 38 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No.: 240314-0080]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 38 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan</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> NMFS approves and implements the measures included in Framework Adjustment 38 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan as adopted and submitted by the New England Fishery Management Council. Framework 38 establishes scallop specifications and other measures for fishing years 2024 and 2025. Framework 35 implements measures to protect small scallops which would thereby support rotational access area trips to the fleet in future years. To promote uniformity in the fishery, this final rule also corrects and clarifies regulatory text that is unnecessary, outdated, or unclear. This action is necessary to prevent overfishing and improve both yield-per-recruit and the overall management of the Atlantic sea scallop resource. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective on April 1, 2024, except for the amendment to § 648.10(c)(1)(ii), which is effective April 22, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The New England Fishery Management Council (Council) has prepared an environmental assessment (EA) for this action that describes the measures in Framework 38 and other considered alternatives and analyzes the impacts of the measures and alternatives. The Council submitted Framework 38 to NMFS that includes the draft EA, a description of the Council's preferred alternatives, the Council's rationale for selecting each alternative, and an Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA). Copies of the draft of Framework 38, the draft EA, the IRFA, and information on the economic impacts of this rulemaking are available upon request from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Newburyport, MA 01950 and accessible via the internet in documents available at: <E T="03">https://www.nefmc.org/library/scallop-framework-38.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Travis Ford, Fishery Policy Analyst, 978-281-9233, <E T="03">travis.ford@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The New England Fishery Management Council adopted Framework Adjustment 38 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop FMP on December 6, 2023. The Council submitted Framework 38, including a draft EA, for NMFS review and approval on February 26, 2024. NMFS published a proposed rule for Framework 38 on February 12, 2024 (89 FR 9819). To help ensure that the final rule would be implemented before the start of the fishing year on April 1, 2024, the proposed rule included a 15-day public comment period that closed on February 27, 2024. Except as explained below with respect to section 305(d), NMFS is issuing this rule pursuant to 304(b)(1)(A) rulemaking authority. NMFS has approved all of the measures in Framework 38 recommended by the Council. This final rule implements Framework 38, which sets scallop specifications and other measures for fishing years 2024 and 2025, including changes to the catch, effort, and quota allocations and adjustments to the rotational area management program for fishing year 2024, and default specifications for fishing year 2025. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) allows NMFS to approve, partially approve, or disapprove measures proposed by the Council based on whether the measures are consistent with the FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its National Standards, and other applicable law. Details concerning the development of these measures were contained in the preamble of the proposed rule and are not repeated here. This final rule also addresses regulatory text that is unnecessary, outdated, or unclear pursuant to section 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specification of Scallop Overfishing Limit (OFL), Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC), Annual Catch Limits (ACL), Annual Catch Targets (ACT), Annual Projected Landings (APL) and Set-Asides for the 2024 Fishing Year, and Default Specifications for Fishing Year 2025</HD> The Council set the OFL based on a fishing mortality rate (F) of 0.61, equivalent to the F threshold updated through the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's most recent scallop benchmark stock assessment that was completed in September 2020. The ABC and the equivalent total ACL for each fishing year are based on an F of 0.45, which is the F associated with a 25-percent probability of exceeding the OFL. The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) recommended scallop fishery ABCs of 47.4 million pounds (lb; 21,497 metric tons (mt)) for 2024 and 49.8 million lb (22,586 mt) for the 2025 fishing year, after accounting for discards and incidental mortality. The SSC will reevaluate and potentially adjust the ABC for 2025 when the Council develops the next framework adjustment. Table 1 outlines the scallop fishery catch limits. <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s100,12,12"> <TTITLE> Table 1—Scallop Catch Limits ( <E T="01">mt</E> ) for Fishing Years 2024 and 2025 for the Limited Access and Limited Access General Category (LAGC) Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) Fleets </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Catch limits</CHED> <ENT I="01">ABC/ACL (discards removed)</ENT> <ENT>21,497</ENT> <ENT>22,586</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Incidental Landings</ENT> <ENT I="01">Research Set-Aside (RSA)</ENT> <ENT>578</ENT> <ENT>578</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Observer Set-Aside</ENT> <ENT I="01">Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Set-Aside</ENT> <ENT>191</ENT> <ENT>143</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">ACL for fishery</ENT> <ENT>20,490</ENT> <ENT>21,616</ENT> <ENT I="01">LAGC IFQ ACL (5 percent of ACL)</ENT> <ENT>1,024</ENT> <ENT>1,081</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Limited Access with LAGC IFQ ACL (0.5 percent of ACL)</ENT> <ENT>103</ENT> <ENT>109</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Limited Access ACT</ENT> <ENT>16,781</ENT> <ENT>17,703</ENT> <ENT I="01">APL (after set-asides removed)</ENT> <ENT>11,609</ENT> <ENT I="01">Limited Access APL (94.5 percent of APL)</ENT> <ENT>10,971</ENT> Total IFQ Annual Allocation (5.5 percent of APL)  LAGC IFQ Annual Allocation (5 percent of APL)  Limited Access with LAGC IFQ Annual Allocation (0.5 percent of APL)   The catch limits for the 2025 fishing year are subject to change through a future specifications action or framework adjustment. This includes the setting of an APL for 2025 that will be based on the 2024 annual scallop surveys. </TNOTE> <TNOTE> <SU>b</SU>  As a precautionary measure, the 2025 IFQ and annual allocations are set at 75 percent of the 2024 IFQ Annual Allocations. </TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> This action deducts 1.275 million lb (578 mt) of scallops annually for 2024 and 2025 from the respective ABC for use as the Scallop RSA to fund scallop research. Vessels participating in the Scallop RSA are compensated through the sale of scallops harvested under RSA projects. Of the 1.275 million-lb (578-mt) allocation, NMFS has already allocated 125,941 lb (57,126 kg) to previously funded multi-year projects as part of the 2023 RSA awards process. NMFS reviewed proposals submitted for consideration of 2024 RSA awards and intends to announce project selections in late March. Details on the 2024 RSA awards will be posted on our website when announced. This action also deducts one percent of the ABC for the industry-funded observer program to help defray the cost to scallop vessels that carry an observer. The observer set-aside is 473,994 lb (215 mt) for 2024 and 498,245 lb (226 mt) for 2025. The Council may adjust the 2025 observer set-aside when it develops specific, non-default measures for 2025. In fishing year 2024, the compensation rates for limited access vessels in open areas fishing under days-at-sea (DAS) is 0.12 DAS per DAS fished. For access area trips, the compensation rate is 250 lb (113.4 kg), in addition to the vessel's possession limit for the trip for each day or part of a day an observer is onboard. For LAGC IFQ trips less than 24 hours, a vessel will be able to harvest the trip limit and the daily compensation rate on the observed trip, or the vessel could harvest any unfished compensation on a subsequent trip while adhering to the commercial possession limit. LAGC IFQ vessels may possess an additional 250 lb (113.4 kg) per trip on trips less than 24 hours when carrying an observer. For trips exceeding 24 hours, the daily compensation rate of 250 lb (113.4 kg) will be prorated at 12-hour increments. The amount of compensation a vessel can receive on one trip will be capped at 2 days (48 hours) and vessels fishing longer than 48 hours will not receive additional compensation allocation. For example, if the observer compensation rate is 250 lb/day (113.4 kg/day) and an LAGC IFQ vessel carrying an observer departs on July 1 at 2200 and lands on July 3 at 0100, the length of the trip would equal 27 hours, or 1 day and 3 hours. In this example, the LAGC IFQ vessel would be eligible for 1 day plus 12 hours of compensation allocation, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 375 lb (170.1 kg). For NGOM trips, a vessel will be able to harvest the trip limit and the daily compensation rate on the observed trip. NGOM vessels may possess an additional 125 lb (56.7 kg) per trip when carrying an observer. NMFS may adjust the compensation rate throughout the fishing year, depending on how quickly the fleets are using the set aside. <HD SOURCE="HD2" ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 82k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━