Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2024 Harvest Specifications for Pacific Whiting, and 2024 Pacific Whiting Tribal Allocation

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240423-0117]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM85</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2024 Harvest Specifications for Pacific Whiting, and 2024 Pacific Whiting Tribal Allocation</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 issues this proposed rule for the 2024 Pacific whiting fishery under the authority of the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Pacific Whiting Act of 2006 (Whiting Act), and other applicable laws. This proposed rule would establish the domestic 2024 harvest specifications for Pacific whiting including the 2024 tribal allocation for the Pacific whiting fishery, the non-tribal sector allocations, and set-asides for incidental mortality in research activities and non-groundfish fisheries. The proposed measures are intended to help prevent overfishing, achieve optimum yield, ensure that management measures are based on the best scientific information available, and provide for the implementation of tribal treaty fishing rights. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this proposed rule must be received no later than May 15, 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-2024-0044.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0044, by any of the following methods: <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and type “NOAA-NMFS-2024-0044” 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). Background information for this action and analytical documents for the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are available at the NMFS West Coast Region website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2024-harvest-specifications-pacific-whiting-and-2024-tribal-allocation.</E> NEPA documents for West Coast groundfish actions are also available at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-and-policies/groundfish-actions-nepa-documents.</E> Additional background information for the Pacific Hake/Whiting Treaty can be found at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-policies/pacific-hake-whiting-treaty.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Colin Sayre, phone: 206-526-4656, and email: <E T="03">Colin.Sayre@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This proposed rule announces the adjusted coastwide whiting Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 555,000 metric tons (mt), the adjusted U.S. TAC of 410,034 mt, and proposes domestic 2024 Pacific whiting harvest specifications, including the 2024 tribal allocation of 71,755.95 mt, announces the preliminary allocations for three non-tribal commercial whiting sectors, and proposes set-asides for incidental mortality in research activities and the state-managed pink shrimp (non-groundfish) fishery. The non-tribal Pacific whiting fishery opens on May 1 of each year. The tribal and non-tribal allocations for Pacific whiting, as well as set-asides, would be effective until December 31, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Pacific Whiting Agreement</HD> The transboundary stock of Pacific whiting is managed through the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Canada on Pacific Hake/Whiting of 2003 (Agreement). The Agreement establishes bilateral management bodies to implement the terms of the Agreement, including the Joint Management Committee (JMC), which recommends the annual catch level for Pacific whiting. In addition to the JMC, the Agreement establishes several other bilateral management bodies to set whiting catch levels: the Joint Technical Committee (JTC), which conducts the Pacific whiting stock assessment; the Scientific Review Group (SRG), which reviews the stock assessment; and the Advisory Panel (AP), which provides stakeholder input to the JMC. The Agreement establishes a default harvest policy of F-40 percent, which means a fishing mortality rate that would reduce the spawning biomass to 40 percent of the estimated unfished level. The Agreement also allocates 73.88 percent of the Pacific whiting TAC to the United States and 26.12 percent of the TAC to Canada. Based on recommendations from the JTC, SRG, and AP, the JMC determines the overall Pacific whiting TAC by March 25th of each year. NMFS, under the delegation of authority from the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of State, has the authority to accept or reject this recommendation. <HD SOURCE="HD2">2024 Stock Assessment and Scientific Review</HD> The JTC completed a stock assessment for Pacific whiting in February 2024. The assessment was reviewed by the SRG during a 4-day meeting held in person and online in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on February 6-9, 2024 (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> for the report; Status of the Pacific hake (whiting) stock in U.S. and Canadian waters in 2024). The SRG considered the 2024 assessment report and appendices to represent the best scientific information available for Pacific hake/whiting. The stock assessment model for 2024 has the same population dynamics structure as the 2023 model. The model is fit to an acoustic survey index of biomass (abundance), a relative index of 1-year aged fish, annual commercial catch data, and age-composition data from the survey and commercial fisheries. Acoustic surveys are conducted every two years. The most recent survey occurred in 2023 and yielded the third lowest index of Pacific whiting abundance in the time series of surveys from 1995 to 2023. Within the assessment model, the median estimate of female spawning biomass at the start of 2024 is 1,884,950 mt. This is an upward shift from the most recent estimate for the 2023 female spawning biomass of 1,335,485 mt. The median estimate of the 2024 relative spawning biomass (female spawning biomass at the start of 2024 divided by that at unfished equilibrium) is 99 percent, but is highly uncertain. After declining from 2018 to 2022, the median relative spawning biomass increased in 2023 and 2024, due to the estimated above average, but uncertain, size of the 2020 and 2021 age cohorts entering maturity. The estimated probability that the spawning biomass at the start of 2024 is below the Agreement's F-40 percent default harvest rate (40 percent of unfished levels), is 1.3 percent, and the probability that relative fishing intensity exceeded the spawning potential ratio at 40 percent unfished levels in 2023 is 0.4 percent. The joint probability that the relative spawning stock biomass is both below 40 percent of unfished levels, and that fishing mortality is above the relative fishing intensity of the Agreement's F-40 percent default harvest rate is 0.2 percent. The 2024 stock assessment indicated that despite estimates of a healthy Pacific whiting stock status, low abundance from the 2023 acoustic survey and low fishery catch in Canada (14.4 percent attainment) suggest a population structure not conducive to fully achieving harvest allocations in recent years. <HD SOURCE="HD2">2024 Pacific Whiting Coastwide and U.S. TAC Recommendation</HD> The AP and JMC met in Lynnwood, Washington February 27-29, 2024, to develop advice on a 2024 coastwide TAC. The AP provided its 2024 TAC recommendation to the JMC on February 29, 2024. The JMC reviewed the advice of the JTC, the SRG, and the AP, and agreed on a TAC recommendation for transmittal to the United States and Canadian Governments. The Agreement directs the JMC to base the catch limit recommendation on the default harvest rate unless scientific evidence demonstrates that a different rate is necessary to sustain the offshore Pacific whiting resource. After consideration of the 2024 stock assessment and other relevant scientific information, the JMC did not use the default harvest rate, and instead agreed on a more conservative approach. There were two primary reasons for choosing a TAC well below the level of F-40 percent: first, uncertainty regarding the size of the 2020 and 2021 year-classes led the JMC to conclude that using the default harvest rate could be too risky if these cohorts are smaller than estimated; and second, the fact that the survey biomass was the third-lowest in the survey time series. The JMC concluded that both of these factors warranted setting the coastwide TAC below the 2023 value of 625,000 mt, and lower than the level that would result from application of the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 64k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━