Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Greater Amberjack and Red Snapper Management Measures

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240508-0131]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM82</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Greater Amberjack and Red Snapper 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> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes to implement management measures described in a framework action under the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico (FMP), as prepared by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council). If implemented, this proposed rule would modify the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) greater amberjack commercial trip limit and the recreational fixed closed season. Additionally, this proposed rule would clarify the Gulf red snapper charter vessel/headboat (for-hire) component quota and annual catch target (ACT) regulations. The purposes of this proposed rule are to extend the commercial and recreational fishing seasons for Gulf greater amberjack while continuing to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock; and clarify that a person on a vessel issued a Gulf for-hire permit at any time during the fishing year can only harvest red snapper if the vessel is operating as a for-hire vessel. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before June 14, 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-2024-0012].</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by [NOAA-NMFS-2024-0012], by either 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-2024-0012], in the Search box. Click the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Dan Luers, Southeast Regional Office, NMFS, 263 13th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. <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), 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). Electronic copies of the framework action, which includes an environmental assessment, a fishery impact statement, an Initial Regulatory Flexibility analysis (IRFA), and a regulatory impact review, may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/framework-action-modify-greater-amberjack-recreational-fixed-closed-season-and-commercial.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Luers, telephone: 727-824-5305, or email: <E T="03">daniel.luers@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Gulf reef fish fishery, which includes greater amberjack, is managed under the FMP. The FMP was prepared by the Council, approved by the Secretary of Commerce, and is implemented by NMFS through regulations at 50 CFR part 622 under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NMFS and the regional fishery management councils to prevent overfishing and achieve, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from federally managed fish stocks. These mandates are intended to ensure fishery resources are managed for the greatest overall benefit to the nation, particularly with respect to providing food production and recreational opportunities, and to protect marine ecosystems. The greater amberjack stock in the Gulf has been overfished since 2001. To help rebuild the stock, NMFS has implemented several modifications to the rebuilding plan, including changes to the commercial and recreational catch levels, and changes to management measures intended to constrain harvest and extend the commercial and recreational seasons. NMFS recently implemented Amendment 54 to the FMP, which modifies the Gulf greater amberjack rebuilding time period and substantially reduces the sector-specific annual catch limits (ACLs) and ACTs (88 FR 39193, June 15, 2023). Implementation of that final rule and Amendment 54 is expected to result in the stock rebuilding by 2027. In the Gulf, greater amberjack is not a common target species for the reef fish commercial sector, with the majority of trips landing less than 500 lb (227 kg), gutted weight (520 lb (236 kg), round weight) of the species. As described at 50 CFR 622.41(a)(1), when commercial landings for greater amberjack reach or are projected to reach the commercial ACT, which is codified as the commercial quota, NMFS closes the commercial sector for the remainder of the fishing year. Any overage of the commercial ACL results in both a reduction of the commercial ACT and the commercial ACL in the following fishing year by the amount of the commercial ACL overage. In 2012, the final rule for Amendment 35 to the FMP established a Gulf greater amberjack commercial trip limit of 2,000 lb (907 kg), round weight (77 FR 67574, November 13, 2012). In 2015, NMFS implemented a framework action under the FMP to reduce the Gulf greater amberjack commercial trip limit to 1,500 lb (680 kg), gutted weight (1,560 lb (708 kg), round weight) (80 FR 75432, December 2, 2015). In 2020, NMFS implemented a framework action that further reduced the Gulf greater amberjack commercial trip limit to 1,000 lb (454 kg), gutted weight (1,040 lb (472 kg), round weight) (85 FR 20611, April 14, 2020). That framework action and final rule also included a reduction in the trip limit to 250 lb (113 kg), gutted weight (260 lb (118 kg), round weight) when 75 percent of the commercial quota was reached. The current framework action projected that under the current trip limit, the trip limit reduction was projected to occur in February with a season closure occurring in June. In the current framework action, the Council is recommending that NMFS reduce the commercial trip limit further due to the substantial catch limit reductions implemented by Amendment 54 to lengthen the commercial fishing season. The framework action would reduce the commercial trip limit for Gulf greater amberjack to seven fish, which is approximately equal to 210 lb (95 kg), gutted weight (218 lb (99 kg), round weight). This reduction in the trip limit is expected to extend the commercial season until September unless an overage of the commercial ACL occurs in the prior fishing year, which would require a reduction in the commercial ACL and ACT and result in a reduction in the season length. NMFS notes that in the 2023 fishing year, the commercial ACL was exceeded by 35,280 lb (16,003 kg), round weight resulting in a reduction of the commercial ACL and ACT for the 2024 fishing year (see 88 FR 80995, November 21, 2023). NMFS is monitoring 2024 commercial landings and will prohibit commercial harvest and possession of Gulf greater amberjack when NMFS projects that the reduced ACT will be met. As described in the framework action, this reduction of the trip limit to seven fish would eliminate the remaining direct commercial harvest trips for greater amberjack. The Council recognized that the greater amberjack stock is overfished and has not rebuilt as expected. Thus, the Council determined that a more cautious approach was warranted and chose to recommend reducing the commercial trip limit. At its October 2023 meeting, the Council discussed the impact of the required reduction to the 2024 commercial catch limits as a result of landings exceeding the ACL in 2023. The Council expressed concern about constraining landings to the reduced catch limits under the current trip limit when the commercial season opens in January 2024, which could potentially result in another commercial overage in 2024 and further reduce the harvest for 2025. Since the reduced commercial trip limit in this proposed rule, if implemented, would not be effective until later in 2024, the Council requested that NMFS implement an emergency action to reduce the commercial trip limit to seven fish. NMFS and the Council expected this lower trip limit to benefit the greater amberjack stock by increasing the duration of the commercial open season, which is expected to result in fewer regulatory discards ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> discards required after the quota has been reached). On December 18, 2023, a final temporary rule for emergency action for Gulf greater amberjack was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and is effective through June 15, 2024 (88 FR 87365). For this action, the Council considered three other commercial trip limit alternatives which ranged from a five fish to an eight fish trip limit (approximately a range of 150 lb (68 kg), gutted weight to 257 lb (117 kg), gutted weight. They also considered a 250 lb (113 kg), gutted weight (260 lb (118 kg), round weight) trip limit. For the Council's preferred trip limit alternative action, the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━