Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2024 Harvest Specifications for Pacific Whiting and 2024 Pacific Whiting Tribal Allocation

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240613-0161]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM85</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2024 Harvest Specifications for Pacific Whiting and 2024 Pacific Whiting Tribal Allocation</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> This rule implements the domestic 2024 harvest specifications for Pacific whiting fisheries off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California (collectively, the West Coast), including the 2024 Tribal allocation for the Pacific whiting fishery, the non-Tribal sector allocations, and a set-aside for incidental mortality in research activities and non-groundfish fisheries. NMFS issues this final rule for the 2024 Pacific whiting fishery under the authority of the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Pacific Whiting Act of 2006, and other applicable laws. These measures are intended to help prevent overfishing, achieve optimum yield, ensure that management measures are based on the best scientific information available, and provide for the implementation of Tribal treaty fishing rights. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective June 24, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access</HD> This final rule is accessible via the internet at the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information for this action and analytical documents for the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are available at the NMFS West Coast Region website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2024-harvest-specifications-pacific-whiting-and-2024-tribal-allocation.</E> NEPA documents for West Coast groundfish actions are also available at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-and-policies/groundfish-actions-nepa-documents</E> and at the Pacific Fishery Management Council's website at <E T="03">http://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Additional background information for the Pacific Hake/Whiting Treaty can be found at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-policies/pacific-hake-whiting-treaty.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Colin Sayre, phone: 206-526-4656, and email: <E T="03">Colin.Sayre@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The transboundary stock of Pacific whiting is managed through the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Canada on Pacific Hake/Whiting of 2003 (Agreement). The Agreement establishes bilateral management bodies to implement the terms of the Agreement, including the Joint Management Committee (JMC), which recommends the annual catch limit for Pacific whiting. NMFS issued a proposed rule on April 30, 2024 (89 FR 34188) that describes the Agreement, including the establishment of F-40 percent default harvest rate, the explicit allocation of the Pacific whiting coastwide total allowable catch (TAC) to the United States (73.88 percent) and Canada (26.12 percent), the bilateral bodies to implement the terms of the Agreement, including the JMC, and the process used to determine the coastwide TAC under the Agreement, including adjusting the TAC for carryovers from the prior year. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2024 TAC Recommendation</HD> The Treaty's Advisory Panel (AP) and the JMC met in Lynnwood, Washington February 27-29, 2024, to develop advice on a 2024 coastwide TAC. The AP provided its 2024 TAC recommendation to the JMC on February 29, 2024. The JMC reviewed the advice of the JTC, the Scientific Review Group (SRG), and the AP, and agreed on a TAC recommendation for transmittal to the United States and Canadian Governments. As detailed in the proposed rule (89 FR 34188, April 30, 2024), the Agreement directs the JMC to base the catch limit recommendation on the F-40 default harvest rate, unless scientific evidence demonstrates that a different harvest rate is necessary to sustain the offshore Pacific whiting resource. The F-40 default harvest rate is a fishing mortality rate that would reduce the spawning biomass of Pacific whiting to 40 percent of the estimated unfished level. After consideration of the 2024 stock assessment and other relevant scientific information, the JMC did not use the default harvest rate, and instead agreed on a more conservative approach. There were two primary reasons for choosing a TAC below the default harvest rate: (1) uncertainty regarding the size of the 2020 and 2021 year-classes led the JMC to conclude that using the default harvest rate could be too risky if these cohorts are smaller than estimated; and (2) the fact that the 2023 acoustic survey biomass was the third-lowest in the survey time series. The JMC concluded that both of these factors warranted setting the coastwide TAC below the 2023 value of 625,000 metric tons (mt), and lower than the level that would result from application of the F-40 default harvest rate. This conservative approach was endorsed by the AP and is consistent with Article III(1) of the Agreement. The Agreement allows an adjusted TAC when either country's catch exceeds or is less than its TAC in the prior year. If the catch is in excess of the country's TAC, the amount of the overage is deducted from that country's TAC in the following year. If catch falls short of the country's TAC, a portion of the shortfall is carried over and added to the country's TAC for the following year. Under the Agreement, carryover adjustments cannot not exceed 15 percent of a party country's unadjusted TAC for the year in which the shortfall occurred. In 2023, neither country fully attained their respective TACs. The percentage of the U.S. TAC attained for 2023 is detailed in the Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA) (see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section), which is summarized in the Classification section below. For the 2024 Pacific whiting fishery, the JMC recommended a coastwide TAC of 473,513 mt prior to adjustment. Based on Article III(2) of the Agreement, the 73.88 percent U.S. share of the unadjusted coastwide TAC is 349,831 mt. Consistent with Article II(5)(b) of the Agreement, a carryover of 60,203 mt was added to the U.S. share for an adjusted U.S. TAC of 410,034 mt. The 26.12 percent Canadian share of the unadjusted coastwide TAC, consistent with Article III(2) of the Agreement, is 123,681 mt, and a carryover of 21,285 mt was added to the Canadian share for an adjusted Canadian TAC of 144,966 mt. The total adjusted coastwide TAC is 555,000 mt for 2024. This recommendation is consistent with the best available scientific information, and provisions of the Agreement and the Whiting Act of 2006 (Whiting Act). The recommendation was transmitted via letter to the United States and Canadian Governments on March 05, 2024. NMFS, under delegation of authority from the Secretary of Commerce, approved the TAC recommendation of 410,034 mt for U.S. fisheries on March 29, 2024. This final rule announces the adjusted coastwide TAC of 555,000 mt, an adjusted U.S. TAC of 410,034 mt, and establishes the domestic 2024 Pacific whiting harvest specifications, which constitutes the 2024 Tribal allocation, the 2024 season allocations for three non-Tribal commercial whiting sectors, and a set-aside for incidental mortality from research activities and in the non-groundfish trawl fisheries ( <E T="03">e.g.</E> pink shrimp fishery). The Tribal and non-Tribal allocations for Pacific whiting, as well as the set-aside, are effective until December 31, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Tribal Allocations</HD> This final rule establishes the Tribal allocations of Pacific whiting for 2024 as described in the proposed rule (89 FR 34188, April 30, 2024). Four Washington coastal treaty Indian Tribes—the Makah Indian Tribe, Quileute Indian Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, and the Hoh Indian Tribe—have treaty rights to harvest Pacific whiting in their usual and accustomed fishing areas in U.S. waters. Regulations at 50 CFR 660.50 set forth procedures to coordinate with the Tribes to exercise their treaty right in ocean fisheries with the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and NMFS. NMFS allocates a portion of the U.S. TAC of Pacific whiting to the Tribal fishery, following the process established in 50 CFR 660.50(d). Regulations for the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP) specify that the Tribal allocation is subtracted from the total U.S. Pacific whiting TAC. NMFS contacted the Tribes between September and December of 2023 to determine their plans for participation in the 2024 Tribal Pacific whiting fishery. Only the Makah Indian Tribe indicated its intent to continue to fish and requested 17.5 percent of the U.S. Pacific whiting allocation, which is identical to the percentage allotted in previous fishing years. In this final rule, NMFS will implement the 2024 Tribal allocation of 71,755.95 mt, which is 17.5 percent of the total U.S. TAC. As with prior Tribal allocations of Pacific whiting, this final rule is not intended to establish a precedent for future Pacific whiting seasons, or for the determination of the total amount of Pacific whiting to which the Tribes are entitled under their treaty right. In 2009, NMFS, the States of Washington and Oregon, and the coastal treaty Tribes started a process to determine the long-term Tribal ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 67k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━