Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Skate Complex; Framework Adjustment 12

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240711-0189]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM96</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Northeast Skate Complex; Framework Adjustment 12</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 action implements approved measures for Framework Adjustment 12 to the Northeast Skate Complex Fishery Management Plan (Northeast Skate Complex FMP), which was developed by the New England Fishery Management Council (Council). This action specifies skate catch limits for fishing years 2024 and 2025, increases seasonal trip limits for the wing fishery, removes possession restrictions for barndoor skate in the wing fishery, and removes possession restrictions for smooth skate in both the wing and bait fisheries. This action is necessary to establish skate specifications consistent with the most recent scientific information. The intent of this action is to establish appropriate catch limits for the skate fishery, while providing additional operational flexibility to fishery participants. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective on July 17, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The Council prepared an environmental assessment (EA) for Northeast Skate Complex Framework Adjustment 12 that describes the action and other considered alternatives. The EA provides an analysis of the biological, economic, and social impacts of the preferred measures and other considered alternatives; a Regulatory Impact Review; and an economic analysis. Copies of Framework 12, including the EA and other supporting documents are available upon request from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Newburyport, MA 01950 and accessible via the internet in documents available at: <E T="03">https://www.nefmc.org/library/skate-framework-12.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Laura Deighan, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9184. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Council manages a complex of seven skate species ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> barndoor, clearnose, little, rosette, smooth, thorny, and winter) off the New England and mid-Atlantic coasts through the Northeast Skate Complex FMP. Skates are harvested and managed through two different targeted fisheries: (1) food ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the wing fishery); and (2) bait in other fisheries ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the bait fishery). The Northeast Skate Complex FMP requires that annual catch and possession limits for the skate fishery be reviewed annually and specified through the specifications process for up to two fishing years at a time, with the second year subject to review and change during the specifications process. The specifications for fishing year 2023 (revised March 17, 2022, 87 FR 15146) have remained in effect through a rollover provision in the regulations but are now superseded through the implementation of this final rule. In the fall of 2023, the Northeast Skate Complex FMP underwent a level-3 management track assessment that re-estimated commercial fishery catch data, updated survey biomass indices, added recreational catch to total catch, and updated reference points. The assessment also included projections of total fishery catch of skates for 2024 and 2025. The Council took final action on this framework at its December 2023 meeting in Newport, RI. NMFS published a proposed rule for this action (89 FR 45621, May 23, 2024) that discussed the proposed measures in detail and included proposed implementing regulations deemed necessary by the Council. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) and the Skate Fishery Management Plan regulations, NMFS may approve, disapprove, or partially approve measures that the Council proposes, based on consistency with the Magnuson-Stevens Act and other applicable law. NMFS is partially approving Framework 12 and disapproving the Council's recommendation to remove barndoor skate possession restrictions for the bait skate fishery due to new discard information that needs further evaluation and consideration. Additional background information regarding the development of these specifications was provided in the proposed rule and is not repeated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Approved Measures</HD> Framework 12 sets management measures and specifications for the skate fishery for the 2024 fishing year and projected specifications for the 2025 fishing year. The measures in this action decrease the annual catch limit to 32,155 metric tons (mt) (from 37,236 mt in 2023) and the overall total allowable landings to 15,718 mt (from 21,142 mt in 2023). Table 1 summarizes the 2024-2025 specifications. Specifications for fishing year 2025 are projected to be the same as those for 2024. Framework 12 specifications result in a 26-percent decrease in both the bait and wing fisheries' total allowable landings. Although quotas are decreasing, they remain higher than landings in the bait and wing fisheries for at least the last three years; therefore, NMFS does not expect the quotas to be restrictive to the fishery or to result in reductions in overall revenue. The Council will review the projected 2025 specifications to determine if any changes need to be made prior to the 2025 fishing year. NMFS will publish a notice prior to the 2025 fishing year to confirm these limits as projected or publish a proposed rule for any necessary changes. <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s200,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—2024-2025 Skate Fishery Specifications</TTITLE> [In metric tons] <CHED H="1"> </CHED> <CHED H="1">2024-25</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) and Annual Catch Limit (ACL)</ENT> <ENT>32,155</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Annual Catch Target (ACT) (90% of ACL)</ENT> <ENT>28,940</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Overall Fishery Total Allowable Landings (TAL)</ENT> <ENT>15,718</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Wing TAL (66.5% of Overall TAL)</ENT> <ENT>10,453</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Wing Season 1 TAL (57% of Wing TAL)</ENT> <ENT>5,958</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Wing Season 2 TAL</ENT> <ENT>4,495</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Bait TAL (33.5% of Overall TAL)</ENT> <ENT>5,266</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Bait Season 1 TAL (30.8% of Bait TAL)</ENT> <ENT>1,622</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Bait Season 2 TAL (37.1% of Bait TAL)</ENT> <ENT>1,954</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Bait Season 3 TAL</ENT> <ENT>1,690</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> This action also increases the seasonal skate wing per-trip possession limits when fishing on a day-at-sea (DAS) by 1,000 pounds (lb) (453.6 kilograms (kg)). The wing fishery possession limit in Season 1 (May 1-August 31) increases from 3,000 lb to 4,000 lb (1,360.8 kg to 1,814.4 kg), and the Season 2 (September 1-April 30) wing fishery possession limit increases from 5,000 lb to 6,000 lb (2,268 kg to 2,721.6 kg). This action also increases the incidental skate wing possession limits by 25 percent. For trips fishing on a Northeast multispecies B-DAS, the possession limit increases from 220 lb to 275 lb (99.8 kg to 124.7 kg), and for trips not fishing on a DAS, the possession limit increases from 500 lb to 625 lb (226.8 kg to 283.5 kg). The intent behind increased possession limits is to reduce operational discards in the fishery and provide better economic flexibility and opportunity to vessels. This trip limit increase is not expected to result in overages or increased effort because the Regional Administrator has the authority to reduce the possession limits to an incidental catch limit level when 85 percent of the quota is projected to be landed. This action further reintegrates barndoor skate into the skate complex by removing the barndoor skate possession restrictions for the wing fishery. The possession restriction limited possession of barndoor skates to 25 percent, by weight, of the trip limit when fishing under a DAS and prohibited possession of barndoor skate for vessels fishing under a multispecies B-DAS or not on a DAS in the wing fishery. The possession limit was implemented to prevent high grading of catch in the wing fishery, which primarily lands winter and barndoor skates. NMFS declared barndoor skate rebuilt in 2016. There is not a known price difference between barndoor and winter skate, and the removal of the barndoor possession restriction in the wing fishery is not expected to result in high grading. Additionally, this action fully re-integrates smooth skates into the skate complex by removing smooth skate possession restrictions for both the wing and bait fisheries. NMFS declared smooth skates rebuilt in 2018. Accordingly, the need to manage smooth skates as an individual stock is no longer warranted. Smooth skate will be managed as a component of the skate complex, as intended when the Northeast Skate Complex FMP was developed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disapproved Measures</HD> After the publication of the proposed rule and receipt of the final EA, an error in the data regarding barndoor skate discards was identified. As a result, discard data for the bait fishery no longer supports a decision to approve the removal of the barndoor skate possession restriction in the bait fishery at this time. The bait fishery is allowed to land skates with maximum fish size of 23 inches (58.42 cm), which is well under the size at which barndoor skates are considered sexually matu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━