Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Lane Snapper Catch Limits

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240610-0154]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM98</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Lane Snapper Catch Limits</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 an abbreviated 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). This proposed rule would modify the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) lane snapper catch limits. The purpose of this proposed rule is to modify the Gulf lane snapper catch limits based on the best scientific information available. This proposed rule would also revise reporting and compliance requirements for Gulf reef fish commercial permit holders using vessel monitoring systems (VMS). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by July 17, 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-2024-0049</E> . You may submit comments on this document, identified by [NOAA-NMFS-2024-0049] 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-2024-0049, in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit all written comments to Dan Luers, NMFS Southeast Regional Office, 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 abbreviated framework action, which includes a Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) analysis and a regulatory impact review, may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/gulf-mexico-lane-snapper-catch-limits-abbreviated-framework</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Luers, NMFS Southeast Regional Office, telephone: 727-824-5305, email: <E T="03">daniel.luers@noaa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS and the Council manage the Gulf reef fish fishery, which includes lane snapper, 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 regional fishery management councils to prevent overfishing and achieve, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield (OY) 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 protecting marine ecosystems. Unless otherwise noted, all weights in this proposed rule are in round weight. Lane snapper occur in estuaries and shelf waters of the Gulf, and are particularly abundant off south and southwest Florida. Lane snapper in the Gulf exclusive economic zone are managed as a single stock, with a combined annual catch limit (ACL) for the commercial and recreational sectors that is set equal to the acceptable biological catch (ABC). The fishing season is open year-round, January 1 through December 31. Currently, the lane snapper overfishing limit (OFL) is 1,053,834 pounds (lb) (478,011 kilograms (kg)) and the ABC is 1,028,973 lb (466,734 kg). These catch limits are based on the results of an update to the Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review 49 (SEDAR 49) that was completed in 2019, and used recreational landings estimates generated by the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) Fishing Effort Survey (FES) instead of the previous MRIP-Coastal Household Telephone Survey. This abbreviated framework action and proposed rule would increase the lane snapper OFL, ABC, and ACL based on the results of the SEDAR 49 interim analysis (IA) and recommendations from the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee. The SEDAR 49 IA included updated landings and dead discards information as well as an updated catch-per-unit-effort index for the headboat fleet. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Management Measures Contained in the Abbreviated Framework Action and This Proposed Rule</HD> The abbreviated framework action and proposed rule would increase the lane snapper OFL from 1,053,834 lb (478,011 kg) to 1,116,331 lb (506,359 kg), the ABC from 1,028,973 lb (466,734 kg) to 1,088,873 lb (493,904 kg), and set the stock ACL equal to the ABC at 1,088,873 lb (493,904 kg). This would result in an increase in the allowable harvest of 59,900 lb (27,170 kg). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Changes to Regulations Not Associated With the Abbreviated Framework Action</HD> For fishermen with a valid Federal commercial permit to harvest Gulf reef fish, NMFS is proposing revisions to the process for requesting a power-down exemption to the VMS requirement. NMFS is also proposing to remove the requirement that the vessel owner or operator certify compliance with the proper installation and activation of a VMS unit. NMFS expects both of these changes to reduce the burden on individual fishermen and NMFS, and increase enforceability. Regulations at 50 CFR 622.28(a) require the owner or operator of a vessel that has been issued a commercial permit for Gulf reef fish to maintain an operational satellite-linked VMS unit on the vessel that transmits the location of the vessel on a regular and consistent basis. Regulations at 50 CFR 622.28(d) allow an owner or operator to power down the VMS unit if the vessel will be continuously out of the water or in port more than 72 consecutive hours. The regulations at 50 CFR 622.28(d) also specify the process for requesting this power-down exemption, which includes obtaining a letter of exemption from the NMFS Office of Law Enforcement (OLE), filing a report through the VMS terminal prior to each power down, and entering the power-down code in the VMS terminal prior to each prior down. When VMS was first required, the process to request a power-down exemption was not included in the regulations; instead, the regulations referred to the NOAA Enforcement Draft VMS Requirements that were included in Appendix E to Amendment 18A to the FMP (71 FR 45248, August 9, 2006). When NMFS revised the VMS regulations in 2007, NMFS added to the regulations the process for requesting a power-down exemption (72 FR 73270, December 27, 2007). Technology now allows for use of an online form and immediate authorization by NMFS. Therefore, NMFS is proposing to modify the process for submitting the power-down exemption, including how and what information is collected. The owner or operator of the permitted vessel would use an online form to request the VMS power-down exemption. The information requested on the online form would be similar to the current form. The only change to the data collected would be a field for an email address for the person making the request and their self-identification as the vessel owner or operator. NMFS expects the online form to allow for faster communication and approval for the requester, and to streamline the administrative process by eliminating the need for manual data entry. NMFS would use the self-identification to confirm that the submitter is authorized to submit the request as the vessel owner or operator. If all of the required information is provided, the authorization for the power-down exemption would be provided automatically as a visible display soon after the time of submission, and would also be sent to the email address provided by the requester and, if different from the requester, to the permit holder's email address if NMFS was provided that information as part of the permit holder's previous permit application. Vessel owners and operators would no longer send an email from the VMS unit on the vessel to NMFS OLE, or enter the power-down code using the VMS declaration form on the VMS terminal. A power-down exemption would be valid until the expiration date requested, which NMFS would limit to not more than 1 year from the authorization date. A new request for a power-down exemption would be required after the completion of the previous authorization for any subsequent time period. There would be no limit on the number of exemptions that can be requested. If a vessel owner or operator wants to end a power-down exemption before the expiration date, the authorization would end automatically when the vessel owner or operator submits a commercial trip declaration. Al ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 34k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━