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

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240419-0114]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces Federal management measures for the 2024 and 2025 summer flounder fishery and the 2024 black sea bass recreational fishery. The implementing regulations for these fisheries require NMFS to publish recreational measures for each 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> This rule is effective April 26, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Copies of this final rule and the small entity compliance guide prepared for permit holders are available from: Michael Pentony, Regional Administrator, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930, and accessible via the internet at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/proposed-rule-implement-2024-and-2025-summer-flounder-and-scup-and-2024-black-sea-bass.</E> <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 once the Council and Commission's makes their recommendation. This action approves conservation equivalency for summer flounder and black sea bass in 2024 and for summer flounder in 2025. For scup, no changes to the Federal recreational management measures are being implemented. The 2024 and 2025 Federal recreational scup management measures are a 10-inch (25.4-centimeters (cm)) minimum fish size, a 50-fish per person possession limit, and a year-round open season. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conservation Equivalency</HD> In this final rule, NMFS is implementing conservation equivalency to manage the 2024 and 2025 summer flounder and 2024 black sea bass recreational fisheries, as proposed in the proposed rule published on February 23, 2024 (89 FR 13674). Under conservation equivalency, Federal recreational measures are waived 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 to constrain recreational harvest at a state or regional level that are likely to meet the needs of anglers in each area, as opposed 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 Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Board (Board) each year. States, through the Commission, are collectively implementing measures designed to constrain landings to the recreational harvest targets. Additional information on the development of these measures is provided in the proposed rule (see 89 FR 13674, February 23, 2024) and not repeated here. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Summer Flounder Recreational Management Measures</HD> On April 4, 2024, the Commission notified NMFS that it had certified that the 2024 and 2025 recreational fishing measures required to be implemented in state waters for summer flounder are, collectively, the conservation equivalent of the season, fish size, and possession limit prescribed in §§ 648.104(b), 648.105, and 648.106(a). Pursuant to § 648.102(d)(2), if conservation equivalency is adopted, vessels subject to the recreational fishing measures are not subject to Federal measures and instead are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. Section 648.107(a) is amended through this final rule to recognize state-implemented measures as the conservation equivalent of the Federal coastwide recreational management measures for 2024 and 2025. In addition, this action revises the default “non-preferred” summer flounder coastwide measures at §§ 648.104(b), 648.105, and 648.106(a). For 2024 and 2025, the non-preferred coastwide measures are: (1) an 18.5-inch (46.99-cm) minimum fish size; (2) a three-fish per person possession limit; and (3) an open season from May 8 to September 30. The coastwide measures become the default management measures the year after conservation equivalency expires (in this case 2026) until the joint process establishes either coastwide or conservation-equivalency measures for the next year. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Black Sea Bass Recreational Management Measures</HD> On April 4, 2024, the Commission notified NMFS that it had certified that the 2024 recreational fishing measures required to be implemented in state waters for black sea bass are, collectively, the conservation equivalent of the season, fish size, and possession limit prescribed in §§ 648.145(a), 648.146, and 648.147(b). According to § 648.142(d)(2), if conservation equivalency is adopted, vessels subject to the recreational fishing measures are not subject to Federal measures and instead are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. Section 648.151 is amended through this final rule to recognize state-implemented measures as the conservation equivalent of the Federal coastwide recreational management measures for 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Text Correction</HD> The definition of a recreational fishing vessel found at § 648.2 previously only referenced the recreational scup fishery. However, the definition applies to all recreational fisheries. This action corrects this definition, removing the reference to the scup fishery. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> There are no changes from the proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> NMFS received 18 comments on the proposed rule. Comments were received from 15 individuals, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Virginia Beach Charter Captains, and one comment was submitted anonymously. Ten comments focused, in whole or in part, on state measures or commercial management, which were not part of the proposed action and, therefore, are not addressed in the following responses. NMFS received a comment from the NRDC. Attached to NRDC's comment letter was a copy of the complaint they filed in ongoing litigation on Framework 17 ( <E T="03">NRDC</E> v. <E T="03">Raimondo,</E> No. 23-cv-982 (D.D.C. Aug. 29, 2023)). That legal challenge is fully briefed, and the parties await the court's decision. Given that this litigation is ongoing, NMFS will not address the complaint here. NRDC also incorporated, by reference, its comments on the 2023 summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass recreational measures. Our responses to those comments are provided in the final rule (88 FR 55411, August 15, 2023), and are not repeated here. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> A comment from NRDC stated that the proposed rule and Framework 17, on which this proposed rule is based, are inconsistent with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Management Act's (Magnuson-Stevens Act) annual catch limits (ACL) provisions because they allow the Council to manage recreational fishing to new recreational harvest target levels that are not consistent with the ACLs derived from the Science and Statistical Committee's (SSC) recommendations. <E T="03">Response:</E> The Percent Change Approach has been established by the rulemaking implementing Framework 17 and, as such, must be followed in setting the recreational management measures in this action. Deviating from this approach would require new rulemaking to modify Framework 17, which is beyond the scope of this action. However, as explained in detail in the final rule implementing Framework 17, the new Percent Change Approach is a harvest control rule designed by the Council and Commission for use in managing mid-Atlantic recreational fisheries and uses two factors to determine if management measures could remain status quo, could be liberalized, or must be restricted. These two factors are: (1) a comparison of the confidence interval (CI) around an estimate of expected harvest under status quo measures with 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 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a percentage change in expected harvest). The Percent Change Approach does not change the process for setting measurable and objective status determination criteria ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> overfishing limit (OFL), acceptable biological catch (ABC), ACL) as required by National Standard 1. The status determi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━