Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; Measures To Keep Fishery Impacts Within the Conservation Objective for the California Coastal Chinook Salmon

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240410-0104]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM68</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; Measures To Keep Fishery Impacts Within the Conservation Objective for the California Coastal Chinook Salmon</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 implement a set of management measures recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) to ensure fishery impacts on California Coastal (CC) Chinook salmon, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, remain within the conservation objective in the Council's Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan (Salmon FMP). Under the proposed rule, management tools ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> trip limits (also known as landing and possession limits) and inseason management) consistent with the provisions of the Salmon FMP would be used to provide greater certainty in avoiding exceedances of the conservation objectives for CC Chinook salmon. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before May 23, 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-2024-0009.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0009, by 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 type NOAA-NMFS-2024-0009 in the Search box (note: 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> Shannon Penna, Fishery Management Specialist, at 562-980-4239 or <E T="03">Shannon.Penna@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The ocean salmon fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (3-200 nautical miles; 5.6-370.4 kilometers) off Washington, Oregon, and California are managed under the Salmon FMP. The Salmon FMP and implementing regulations govern the development at the spring (March and April) Council meetings each year of annual management measures. Management measures for the salmon fisheries are developed annually because the abundance of the salmon stocks in the fishery can fluctuate significantly from one year to the next and information about annual stock abundance does not become available until early in each year (January-early March). The commercial and recreational salmon fisheries off northern California and southern Oregon target healthy or abundant stocks of Chinook and coho salmon, but may incidentally encounter Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed CC Chinook salmon and other ESA-listed species. The Salmon FMP includes harvest controls that are used to manage salmon stocks sustainably. The Salmon FMP also requires that the Council manage fisheries consistent with “consultation standards” for stocks listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA for which NMFS has issued biological opinions. NMFS has issued biological opinions for every ESA-listed salmon species impacted by the fisheries governed by the Salmon FMP and reminds the Council of requirements ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> consultation standards) to maintain consistency with those opinions in its annual guidance letter to the Council regarding development of the annual ocean salmon management measures. To limit the effects of CC Chinook salmon, ocean salmon fisheries are managed to avoid exceeding a conservation objective for that stock. The CC Chinook salmon Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU) has been listed as threatened under the ESA since 1999. The conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon is described in the Salmon FMP. Management of the fishery that avoids exceedance of the conservation objective has been analyzed in a series of biological opinions (most recently, an opinion issued in 2023), and has been determined to avoid jeopardizing the ESU (NMFS 2000; McInnis 2005; NMFS 2023; NMFS 2024). As described in these consultations, the data are insufficient for developing an ESU-specific conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. Thus, NMFS has relied on a surrogate, Klamath River fall-run Chinook Salmon (KRFC), to evaluate and limit impacts on CC Chinook salmon in ocean salmon fisheries. The conservation objective is an ocean harvest rate (HR) on age-4 KRFC of 0.16. In its 2024 biological opinion, NMFS confirmed that managing fisheries to avoid exceeding this conservation objective would avoid jeopardy to CC Chinook. From 2018 to 2022, the fishery HR on age-4 KRFC significantly exceeded 0.16 with an average of 0.28. Actions ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> adjustments to ocean management models to account for these high catch rates and managing to a lower rate than the conservation objective) proved insufficient to avoid exceedance and the fisheries continued to exceed the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon as well as impact limits on other California Chinook salmon stocks. The recent increases in the post-season KRFC age-4 ocean HR from 2018 through 2021 suggests that the level of impacts on CC Chinook salmon have likely increased. For 2023, the Council considered additional measures to avoid another exceedance of the CC Chinook conservation objective. However, in response to record low forecasts for KRFC and Sacramento fall-run Chinook salmon, the Council ultimately recommended the closure of commercial and recreational salmon fisheries off the coast of California for 2023, and NMFS approved this closure. The management measures for the 2023-2024 ocean salmon fishing season include the potential use of landing and possession limits in the commercial salmon troll fishery and bag limits in the recreational salmon fishery for the March and April 2024 fisheries, should salmon abundance forecasts for 2024 and Council discussion support use of those measures. The projected KRFC age-4 ocean HR of 0.003 for the 2023-24 management measures, with the fishery closures off California, resulted from a low number of encounters of KRFC salmon in fisheries north of California. The Council continued to explore measures that could be taken to manage the commercial salmon troll fishery to address the source of the high catch rates of KRFC and stay within the conservation objective, thereby not exceeding the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. At the November 2023 Council meeting, the Council adopted a set of management measures to ensure that the CC Chinook salmon conservation objective is not exceeded. The management measures are intended to ensure the fishery does not exceed the conservation objective for CC Chinook by implementing management tools ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> landing and possession limits, an overall allowable harvest level, inseason management) consistent with the provisions of the Salmon FMP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Measures To Achieve Conservation Objectives for California Stocks of Chinook Salmon</HD> The proposed fishery management measures are designed to ensure that the post-season ocean HR for age-4 KRFC does not exceed the conservation objective of 0.16. These measures would apply to the ocean salmon fisheries between the Oregon/California border and Pigeon Point, California. The management measures included in this rule are focused on the ocean salmon fisheries off the coast of California ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> California Klamath Management Zone, Fort Bragg, San Francisco, and Monterey management areas) for the following reasons: 1. The majority of the KRFC harvest (and assumed impacts on CC Chinook salmon) in the ocean occurs in this area; 2. The age-4 ocean HR for KRFC in this area has consistently exceeded pre-season projections in recent years; 3. Contact-rate-per-unit-effort in this area has exceeded projections in recent years; 4. The fisheries in this area have been managed primarily through season controls such as time and area restrictions (as opposed to use of landing and possession limits and/or quota management); 5. Time and area restrictions in this area have not been effective in controlling harvest of KRFC (and assumed impacts on CC Chinook salmon) in recent years; and, 6. Ocean fisheries in other areas that impact KRFC routinely implement the same or similar management measures as described in these measures for a similar purpose. The rule would require implementation of measures used in salmon fisheries elsewhere on the West Coast to ensure fisheries in the affected area do not exceed the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. Historically, fisheries in t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━