Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; 2024 Specifications and Management Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240514-0137]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM47</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; 2024 Specifications and 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> Through this final rule, NMFS establishes fishery management measures for the ocean salmon fisheries off Washington, Oregon, and California for the season beginning May 16, 2024, and ending May 15, 2025 (the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season), under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). The fishery management measures establish fishing areas, seasons, quotas, legal gear, recreational fishing days and catch limits, harvest guidelines, possession and landing restrictions, and minimum lengths for salmon taken in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off Washington, Oregon, and California. The management measures are intended to prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from the fishery, and to apportion the ocean harvest equitably among treaty Indian, and non-Indian commercial and recreational fisheries. The measures are also intended to allow a portion of the salmon runs to escape the ocean fisheries in order to provide for spawning escapement, comply with applicable law, and to provide fishing opportunity for fisheries occurring in State waters. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective from 0001 hours Pacific Daylight Time, May 16, 2024, until the effective date of the 2025 management measures, as published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , which we expect to be 0001 hours Pacific Daylight Time May 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The documents cited in this document are available on the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council's) website ( <E T="03">www.pcouncil.org</E> ). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shannon Penna at 562-980-4239, Email: <E T="03">Shannon.Penna@noaa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The ocean salmon fisheries in the EEZ (3-200 nautical miles (nmi); 5.6-370.4 kilometers (km)) off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California are managed under the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Regulations at 50 CFR part 660, subpart H, provide the mechanism for making preseason and inseason adjustments to the management measures within limits set by the FMP by notification in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Regulations at 50 CFR 660.408 govern the establishment of annual management measures. This rule implements the management measures for the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Process Used To Establish 2024 Management Measures</HD> Ocean salmon fishery management measures are established via a collaborative process with the Council, States, tribes, fishing industry participants, anglers, and the public. The Council announced its annual preseason management process for the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 13, 2024 (89 FR 10042). NMFS published an additional notice of opportunity to submit public comments on the 2024 ocean salmon fishery management measures in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 12, 2024 (89 FR 17834). These notices announced the availability of key documents, the dates and locations of meetings and public hearings regarding determining the annual proposed and final modifications to ocean salmon fishery management measures, and instructions on how to comment on those measures. The agendas for the March and April Council meetings were published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 12319, February 16, 2024, and 89 FR 19815, March 20, 2024), and posted on the Council's website prior to the meetings. In accordance with the FMP, the Council's Salmon Technical Team (STT) and economist prepared four reports for the Council, its advisors, and the public. All four reports were made available on the Council's website upon their completion. The first of the reports, “Review of 2023 Ocean Salmon Fisheries,” was prepared in February when the first increment of scientific information necessary for crafting management measures for the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season became available. The first report summarizes biological and socio-economic data from the 2023 ocean salmon fisheries and assesses the performance of the fisheries with respect to the 2023 management objectives for salmon stocks and stock complexes as well as provides historical information for comparison. The second report, “Preseason Report I Stock Abundance Analysis and Environmental Assessment Part 1 for 2024 Ocean Salmon Fishery Regulations” (PRE I), provides the 2024 salmon stock abundance projections and analyzes how the salmon stocks defined in the FMP and Council management goals would be affected if the 2023 management measures (the No-Action Alternative under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)) were continued for the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season. The completion of PRE I is the initial step in developing and evaluating the full suite of preseason alternatives. Following the completion of the first two reports, the Council met from March 5 to 11, 2024, to develop 2024 management alternatives for proposal to the public and consideration under NEPA. The Council proposed three alternatives for commercial and recreational fisheries management and three alternatives for treaty Indian fisheries management for analysis and public comment. These alternatives consisted of various combinations of management measures designed to ensure that stocks of coho and Chinook salmon meet conservation goals, to provide for ocean harvests of more abundant stocks, to provide equitable sharing of harvest among ports and gear sectors, and to provide for the exercise of Indian treaty fishing rights. After the March Council meeting, the Council's STT and economist prepared a third report, “Preseason Report II Proposed Alternatives and Environmental Assessment Part 2 for 2024 Ocean Salmon Fishery Regulations” (PRE II), which analyzes the effects of the proposed 2024 ocean salmon fishing season management alternatives. The Council sponsored public hearings in person to receive testimony on the proposed alternatives on March 25, 2024, for Washington and California, and on March 26, 2024, for Oregon. In addition, the States of Washington, Oregon, and California sponsored meetings in various forums that also collected public testimony. The Council also received public testimony at the March and April meetings and electronic submissions via the Council's electronic portal and via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Members of several federally recognized tribes including tribes with treaty rights for salmon harvest testified at the March and April Council meetings. Additional tribal comments were submitted in writing. Tribes emphasized the cultural importance of salmon to their communities, expressed concerns over the uncertainty of forecasts for some stocks in 2024, and urged the Council to be conservative in setting the salmon seasons. Some Tribes addressed several issues in the Columbia Basin such as habitat alteration and increase in avian predation. Tribes also expressed concerns that higher harvest levels could negatively impact hatchery brood collection and spawning escapement to local tributaries. Tribes are doing their part to improve habitat, raise hatchery fish, and expand the distribution of salmon to their historic production areas and want to ensure that the Council's actions are supporting those actions. The Council adopted proposed 2024 ocean salmon management recommendations at its April meeting. The Council's STT and economist then prepared a fourth report, “Preseason Report III Analysis of Council-Adopted Management Measures for 2024 Ocean Salmon Fisheries” (PRE III), which analyzes the environmental and socioeconomic effects of the Council's final recommendations (the Council's preferred alternative under NEPA). The Council transmitted the recommended management measures to NMFS on April 22, 2024, and published them on its website ( <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org</E> ). Under the FMP, the ocean salmon management cycle begins May 16 and continues through May 15 of the following year. This final rule is effective on May 16, 2024, consistent with the FMP, and governs most federally-managed ocean salmon fisheries. Fisheries that begin prior to May 16, 2024, are governed by the final rule implementing the salmon fishery management measures for the 2023 ocean salmon fishing season (88 FR 30235, May 11, 2023). Salmon fisheries scheduled to begin before May 16, 2024, under the 2023 rule, are: • Commercial ocean salmon fisheries from the U.S./Canada border to the U.S./Mexico border, • Recreational ocean salmon fisheries from Cape Falcon, OR, to Humbug Mountain, OR, • Recreational ocean salmon fisheries from the Oregon/California border to the U.S./Mexico border, and • Treaty Indian troll ocean salmon fisheries north of Cape Falcon. Several fisheries scheduled to open between March 15, 2024, and May 15, 2024, were modified through inseason action to close the fisheries in response to updated salmon stock forecast information for 2024. For purposes of analyzing the impacts of these fisheries on individual stocks relative to the applicable objectives in the FMP, Council analysts assumed fisheries between March 15 to May ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 100k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━