Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Updates Regarding Sea Turtle Careful Release Equipment and Techniques

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 635</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240329-0093]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BK89</RIN> <SUBJECT>Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Updates Regarding Sea Turtle Careful Release Equipment and Techniques</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> This proposed rule would update the Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS) regulations regarding the sea turtle safe handling and release requirements and equipment in the HMS pelagic and bottom longline fisheries. These proposed updates are based on two technical memoranda published by NMFS' Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC) in order to replace some of the more technical terms with those that are more commonly used, add more detail to make the regulations more understandable, and add additional tools or options for fishermen to use to safely handle and release sea turtles. In addition, this proposed rule would simplify the regulations by removing redundancies, making minor changes in formatting, and revising wording to clarify responsibility of implementation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by May 8, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A plain language summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NMFS-2024-0046.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0046, by electronic submission. 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-2024-0046 in the search box. 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). Documents related to HMS fisheries management, such as the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic HMS Fishery Management Plan (2006 Consolidated HMS FMP) and its amendments, and the referenced technical memoranda, are available from the HMS Management Division website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/resource/outreach-materials/atlantic-highly-migratory-species-safe-handling-release-and.</E> These documents are also available upon request from the HMS Management Division by phone at 301-427-8503. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Becky Curtis, <E T="03">becky.curtis@noaa.gov,</E> or Steve Durkee, <E T="03">steve.durkee@noaa.gov;</E> 301-427-8503. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Atlantic HMS fisheries are managed under the 2006 Consolidated HMS FMP and its amendments, pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act; 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and consistent with the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (ATCA; 16 U.S.C. 971 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). HMS implementing regulations are at 50 CFR part 635. The sea turtle handling and release requirements and equipment are located at § 635.21(b), (c), and (d). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The original safe handling and release gear requirements were implemented in an interim final rule on March 30, 2001 (66 FR 17370). New sea turtle bycatch and bycatch mortality mitigation measures for all Atlantic vessels that have pelagic longline gear on board were published in a final rule on July 6, 2004 (69 FR 40734). Two technical memoranda (TM) were published by the Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC) in 2019: NMFS-SEFSC TM735: “Careful Release Protocols for Sea Turtle Release with Minimal Injury,” and NMFS-SEFSC TM738: “Design Standards and Equipment for Careful Release of Sea Turtles Caught in Hook-and-Line Fisheries.” The SEFSC developed these memoranda based upon field-testing of equipment, user feedback, feedback from observers, and product design updates resulting from experiments and observations subsequent to experiments in the Northeast Distant (NED) statistical reporting area that informed the 2004 regulations. NMFS believes that it would be helpful to revise the existing regulations in light of the 2019 technical memoranda. Based on those memoranda, this proposed rule would modify the regulations at 50 CFR 635.21(c) by: (1) adding additional options for tools and procedures for fishermen to use to safely handle and release sea turtles; (2) replacing some of the more technical terms with those that are more commonly used; (3) adding more detail to make the regulations more understandable; and (4) simplifying the regulations by removing redundancies. Under the proposed rule, fishermen would be able to continue using existing, approved sea turtle bycatch mitigation equipment. The proposed rule would also provide alternative tools or approaches for safe handling and release of sea turtles. For example, § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(E) currently requires that a dipnet meeting minimum design standards be carried on board pelagic longline vessels. Proposed § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(E) provides that either the dipnet or a collapsible hoop net or turtle hoists can be used to meet the regulatory requirement and provides specifications for these devices. As another example, § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(L)( <E T="03">1</E> ) currently describes how fishermen can use a block of hard wood to keep a turtle's mouth open and provide an example of a wire shoe brush with the wires removed as something fishermen could use. Proposed § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(L)( <E T="03">1</E> ) explains that the block of wood could be a wooden hammer handle (without the head attached) as long as the wood does not splinter under pressure. Similarly, § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(L)( <E T="03">5</E> ) currently require using a hank of braided nylon rope to gag open a sea turtle's mouth. This rule would remove the requirement that the hank of rope be nylon and instead only requires the rope to be soft and braided. To clarify the relevant regulations, NMFS would replace or add descriptions for some of the technical terms throughout § 635.21(c). For example, at § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(B), the regulations currently use the words “ingested” and “barb” in regard to hooks. This proposed rule would replace those words with “internal” and “point.” NMFS believes this change would make the regulations more understandable and explain the intent more clearly. Specifically, the current paragraph is titled “Long-handled dehooker for ingested hooks.” The proposed modification would revise the title to be “Long-handled dehooker for internal hooks.” Similarly, further in the paragraph, the regulations state “. . . The design must shield the barb of the hook and prevent it from re-engaging during the removal process . . .” (50 CFR 635.21(c)(5)(i)(B)). With the change, that same sentence would read “. . . The design must shield the point of the hook and prevent it from re-engaging during the removal process . . .”. At § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(H), the heading of “external hooks” would be replaced with “Short-handled dehooker for external hooks” to fully describe what is referred to in that section. Similarly, at § 635.21(c)(5)(i)(K), the regulations describe how line cutters must be used to remove fishing line. This proposed rule would clarify that fishing line includes netting and entangling line. This proposed rule would simplify the regulations by removing redundancies. For example, paragraphs § 635.21(c)(2)(iv)(C) through (G) refer to and repeat many of the requirements that are in paragraph (c)(5). This rule would remove redundant language and instead refers directly to paragraph (c)(5). This rule would make minor changes to create consistency between paragraph headings by formatting paragraph headings to be italicized. Lastly, this rule would modify some instances of the word “operator” to the phrase “owner and operator” to clarify the responsibility of implementation. This proposed rule would amend a number of regulations at 50 CFR part 635.21 paragraphs (b), (c), and (d) regarding sea turtle safe handling and release requirements for HMS pelagic longline and bottom longline fisheries according to the technical memoranda. In summary, as described above, fishermen would be able to continue using existing, approved sea turtle bycatch mitigation equipment. This proposed rule replaces some of the more technical terms with those that are more commonly used, adds more detail to make the regulations more understandable, and adds additional tools or options for fishermen to use to safely handle and release sea turtles. This proposed rule would also simplify the regulations by removing redundancies, making minor changes in formatting, and revising wording to clarify responsibility of implementation. The needed regulatory changes are minor, and existing requirements would remain substantively unchanged. All previously authorized tools and gear removal protocols are still approved for use. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Comments</HD> NMFS is requesting comments on this proposed rule which may be submitted via <E T="03">https://www.regu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 48k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━