Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Multispecies Fishery; Fishing Year 2024 Recreational Management Measures

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240513-0136]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM90</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Multispecies Fishery; Fishing Year 2024 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> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rulemaking proposes fishing year 2024 recreational management measures for Gulf of Maine (GOM) cod and GOM haddock. The measures are intended to ensure the recreational fishery achieves, but does not exceed, fishing year 2024 catch limits for GOM cod and GOM haddock. NMFS also announces that recreational measures for Georges Bank (GB) cod will remain unchanged in fishing year 2024. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by 5:00 p.m. EST on June 3, 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-2024-0047.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0047, by the following method: • <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 enter NOAA-NMFS-2024-0047 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, etc.), 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). To review <E T="04">Federal Register</E> documents referenced in this proposed rule, you can visit: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/management-plan/northeast-multispecies-management-plan.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mark Grant, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9145. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Measures for the Gulf of Maine</HD> The recreational fishery for GOM cod and GOM haddock is managed under the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The multispecies fishing year starts on May 1 and runs through April 30 of the following calendar year. The FMP sets sub-annual catch limits (sub-ACL) for the recreational fishery each fishing year for both stocks. These sub-ACLs are a fixed proportion of the overall catch limit for each stock. The FMP also includes proactive recreational accountability measures (AM) to prevent the recreational sub-ACLs from being exceeded and reactive AMs to correct the cause or mitigate the effects of an overage if one occurs. The proactive AM provision in the FMP provides a process for the Regional Administrator, in consultation with the New England Fishery Management Council (Council), to develop recreational management measures for the upcoming fishing year to ensure that the recreational sub-ACL is achieved, but not exceeded. The provisions governing this action can be found in the FMP's implementing regulations at 50 CFR 648.89(f)(3). The 2024 recreational sub-ACL for GOM cod, established by Framework Adjustment 63, is 192 metric tons (mt), remains the same as the 2023 recreational sub-ACL (87 FR 42375, July 15, 2022). For fishing year 2024, Framework Adjustment 66 proposes a recreational sub-ACL for GOM haddock of 759 mt, which is a 4-percent reduction from the 2023 sub-ACL of 793 mt (89 FR 20412, March 22, 2024). NMFS projected the 2024 recreational GOM cod and GOM haddock removals under several combinations of minimum sizes, slot limits, possession limits, and closed seasons using the 2024 GOM cod sub-ACL implemented by Framework Adjustment 63, the proposed 2024 GOM haddock sub-ACL in Framework Adjustment 66, and a peer-reviewed bio-economic model developed by NMFS's Northeast Fisheries Science Center. The bio-economic model considers measures for the two stocks in conjunction because cod are commonly caught while recreational participants are targeting haddock, linking the catch and effort for each stock to the other. The bio-economic model projected that status quo measures would adequately limit removals of GOM haddock in 2024, but the model also projected that the total GOM cod catch under status quo measures would exceed the 2024 sub-ACL. For each of the sets of management measures, 100 simulations of the bio-economic model were conducted, and the number of simulations which yielded recreational mortality estimates under the sub-ACL was used as an estimate of the probability that the simulated set of measures will not result in an overage of the sub-ACL. Measures that do not result in model-estimated removals under the sub-ACL greater than 50 percent of the time are generally considered unsatisfactory. The results of initial bio-economic model runs were shared with the Council and its Recreational Advisory Panel (RAP) and Groundfish Oversight Committee for review at their January meetings. The RAP, the Groundfish Committee, and the Council agreed on preferred measures and the Council formally recommended a suite of measures to NMFS on February 2, 2024. The Council recommended maintaining the GOM cod open season and 1-fish bag limit, while increasing the minimum fish size from 22 inches (55.9 centimeters (cm)) to 23 inches (58.4 cm); combined with maintaining the GOM haddock open season and increasing the minimum haddock fish size from 17 inches (43.2 cm) to 18 inches (45.7 cm) for private recreational vessels and increasing the GOM haddock bag limit from 10 fish to 15 fish for private recreational vessels. This change makes the recreational GOM haddock measures the same for all recreational vessels, rather than having different bag limits and minimum fish sizes for private vessels and for-hire vessels. The model projected that having different GOM haddock measures for private recreational vessels and for-hire vessels would not sufficiently constrain catch to the quota. The proposed measures are expected to adequately constrain recreational catch of GOM cod and GOM haddock based on the bio-economic model estimates. NMFS is proposing these Council-recommended measures for GOM cod and GOM haddock for fishing year 2024 (table 1). <GPOTABLE COLS="13" OPTS="L2,nj,p7,7/8,i1" CDEF="s25,9,9,8,8,r40,8,11,10,8,xs48,8,11"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Summary of Gulf of Maine Status Quo Measures and Proposed Measures, With Model Estimates of Catch and the Probability of Catch Remaining Below the Sub-ACLs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> </CHED> <CHED H="1">GOM haddock</CHED> <ENT>May 1-February 28/29 and April 1-April 30</ENT> <ENT>557.87</ENT> <ENT>100</ENT> <ENT>1</ENT> <ENT>22 (55.9)</ENT> <ENT>September 1-October 31</ENT> <ENT>200.21</ENT> <ENT>34</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Proposed Measures</ENT> <ENT A="01">15</ENT> <ENT A="01">18</ENT> <ENT>May 1-February 28/29 and April 1-April 30</ENT> <ENT>517.68</ENT> <ENT>100</ENT> <ENT>1</ENT> <ENT>23 (58.4)</ENT> <ENT>September 1-October 31</ENT> <ENT>181.69</ENT> <ENT>63</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Status Quo for Georges Bank</HD> This rule also announces that the current recreational measures for GB cod will remain in place for fishing year 2024. The Council reviewed the GB cod recreational catch and effort information provided by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. This information shows that maintaining the status quo measures for GB cod would likely keep recreational catches close to the catch target of 113 mt in fishing year 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Classification</HD> NMFS is issuing this proposed rule pursuant to section 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) to carry out the FMP consistent with measures implemented in regulations at 50 CFR 648.89(f)(3). The NMFS Assistant Administrator has determined that this proposed rule is consistent with the Northeast Multispecies FMP and other applicable law, subject to further consideration after public comment. Due to timing constraints resulting from the Council-recommend measures being finalized on January 31, 2024, NMFS is providing a 15-day comment period. This rulemaking proposes modifications to management measures for GOM cod and GOM haddock under existing NMFS authority to implement annual recreational fishing measures, in consultation with the Council. The Northeast multispecies fishing year begins on May 1 of each year and continues through April 30 of the following calendar year. Delaying final action on these proposed measures to allow for a longer comment period than the minimum 15-day amount allowed for by the Magnuson-Stevens Act would result in significant regulatory confusion for the industry and has the potential to negatively impact for-hire fishing business operations and bookings. Delayed implementation of measures may diminish the intended impact and increase the uncertainty of outcomes of measures and may potentially result in overages or overfishing. The changes to the GOM haddock measures are necessary to reduce bycatch of cod during the open seaso ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━