Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico; Amendment 56

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240506-0129]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM46</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico; Amendment 56</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 issues regulations to implement management measures described in Amendment 56 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico. This final rule revises catch levels for gag, accountability measures for its recreational harvest, and the recreational fishing season. In addition, Amendment 56 establishes a rebuilding plan for the overfished stock, and revises the stock status determination criteria and sector harvest allocations. The purpose of this action is to implement a rebuilding plan for gag and revised management measures to end overfishing and rebuild the stock. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on June 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> An electronic copy of Amendment 56 is available from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/amendment-56-modifications-catch-limits-sector-allocation-and-recreational-fishing-seasons.</E> Amendment 56 includes an environmental assessment, a fishery impact statement, a Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) analysis, and a regulatory impact review. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Luers, NMFS Southeast Regional Office, telephone: 727-824-5305, or email: <E T="03">daniel.luers@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS, with the advice of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council), manages the reef fish fishery, which includes gag, in Federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf), under the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico (FMP). The Council prepared the FMP, which the Secretary of Commerce approved, and NMFS implements the FMP through regulations at 50 CFR part 622 under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). On October 18, 2023, NMFS published a notice of availability for the review of Amendment 56 and requested public comment (88 FR 71812). On November 9, 2023, NMFS published a proposed rule for Amendment 56 and requested public comment (88 FR 77246). NMFS approved Amendment 56 on January 17, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Gag in Gulf Federal waters are found primarily in the eastern Gulf. Juvenile gag are estuarine dependent and often inhabit shallow seagrass beds. As gag mature, they move to deeper offshore waters to live and spawn. Gag is managed as a single stock with a stock annual catch limit (ACL) that is further divided or allocated into commercial and recreational sector ACLs. Currently, that allocation of the stock ACL is 39 percent to the commercial sector and 61 percent to the recreational sector. All weights in this final rule are given in gutted weight. Commercial fishing for gag is managed under the individual fishing quota (IFQ) program for groupers and tilefishes (GT-IFQ program), which began on January 1, 2010 (74 FR 44732, August 31, 2009; 75 FR 9116, March 1, 2010). Under the GT-IFQ program, the commercial quota for gag is set 23 percent below the gag commercial ACL, and NMFS distributes allocation (in pounds) of gag on January 1 each year to those who hold shares (in percent) of the gag total commercial quota. Both gag and red grouper, another grouper species managed under the GT-IFQ program, have a commercial multi-use provision that allows a portion of the gag quota to be harvested under the red grouper allocation, and vice versa. As explained further in Amendment 56, the multi-use provision is based on the difference between the respective gag and red grouper ACLs and quotas. However, if gag is under a rebuilding plan, as will occur under Amendment 56 and this final rule, the percentage of red grouper multi-use allocation is equal to zero. Commercial harvest of gag is also restricted by area closures and a minimum size limit. NMFS, with the advice of the Council, manages the recreational harvest of gag with an ACL, an annual catch target (ACT) set approximately 10 percent below the ACL, in-season and post-season accountability measures (AMs) to prevent and mitigate overfishing, seasonal and area closures, a minimum size limit, and daily bag and possession limits. The most recent stock assessment for gag was completed in 2021 through Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review 72 (SEDAR 72), and concluded that the gag stock is overfished and is undergoing overfishing as of 2019. Compared to the previous assessment for gag, SEDAR 72 used several improved data sources, including corrections for the potential misidentification between black grouper and gag, which are similar looking species, to better quantify estimates of commercial discards. SEDAR 72 also used updated recreational catch and effort data from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) Access Point Angler Intercept Survey and Fishing Effort Survey (FES) through 2019. Prior to SEDAR 72, the most recent stock assessment for gag was SEDAR 33 Update (2016), which indicated that gag was not subject to overfishing and was not overfished. The SEDAR 33 Update used recreational catch and effort data generated by the MRIP Coastal Household Telephone Survey (CHTS). SEDAR 72 also accounted for observations of red tide mortality directly within the stock assessment model. Gag is vulnerable to red tide events and was negatively affected by these disturbances in 2005, 2014, 2018, and projected for 2021. Modeling changes were also made in SEDAR 72 to improve size estimates of gag retained by commercial and for-hire (charter vessels and headboats) fishermen, and private anglers. The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) reviewed the results of SEDAR 72 in November 2021 and concluded that the assessment was consistent with the best scientific information available and suitable for informing fisheries management. On January 26, 2022, NMFS notified the Council that gag was overfished and undergoing overfishing, and the Council subsequently developed a rebuilding plan for gag through Amendment 56. At its January 2022 meeting, the Council requested that the NMFS Southeast Fisheries Science Center update the SEDAR 72 base model by replacing MRIP-FES landings estimates for the Florida private angling mode with landings estimates produced by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's State Reef Fish Survey (SRFS). Historically, SRFS estimates a slightly higher fishing effort, and therefore a larger harvest of gag, by private anglers and state charter vessels (in Florida) than MRIP-CHTS, but SRFS estimates a substantially smaller harvest of gag by private anglers and state charter vessels than MRIP-FES. This alternative model run of SEDAR 72 (“SRFS Run”) used MRIP-FES data for the federally permitted charter vessel and shore modes, and data from the Southeast Region Headboat Survey (SRHS) for federally permitted headboats. The results of the SRFS Run were presented to the Council's SSC at its July 2022 meeting. The SSC found the SEDAR 72 SRFS Run to be consistent with the best scientific information available. The SSC determined that SRFS is a comprehensive survey for the gag private angling component of the recreational sector given that greater than 95 percent of private angling landings of gag are captured by the SRFS sampling frame and the SRFS program's collection protocol has been certified by the NMFS Office of Science and Technology as scientifically rigorous. NMFS worked in conjunction with the State of Florida to develop a calibration model to rescale historic effort estimates so that they could be compared to new estimates from SRFS. This calibration model was peer-reviewed and approved through the NOAA Office of Science and Technology in May 2022. Information about the calibration and the SSC's review of the SEDAR 72 SRFS Run can be found here: <E T="03">https://gulfcouncil.org/meetings/scientific-and-statistical-meetings/july-2022/.</E> The results of the SEDAR 72 SRFS Run were consistent with the results of the SEDAR 72 base model in that both concluded that the gag stock is overfished and undergoing overfishing. At the time that NMFS and the Council developed Amendment 56, the Council recognized that NMFS could not likely implement a potential final rule until 2024. Further, the Council recognized that maintaining the previously implemented catch limits for gag in 2023 would continue to allow overfishing. Therefore, the Council sent a letter to NMFS, dated July 18, 2022 (Appendix A in Amendment 56), requesting that NMFS implement interim measures that would reduce overfishing by reducing the gag stock ACL from 3.120 million pounds (lb) or 1.415 million kilograms (kg) to 661,901 lb (300,233 kg). The Council determined, and NMFS agreed, that for this short-term reduction in harvest it was appropriate to maintain the current allocation of the stock ACL between the sectors of 39 percent commercial and 61 percent recreational, and the availability of red grouper multi-use and gag multi-use under the IFQ program. In addition to the reduction in the catch limits, the Council requested that the recreational fishing season for 2023 begin on September 1 and close on November 10, rather than the existing open season of June 1 through December 31. NMFS agreed and implemented these interim measures through a tempora ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 129k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━