Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Greater Amberjack and Red Snapper Management Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240715-0194]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM82</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic; Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of Mexico; Greater Amberjack and Red Snapper 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> NMFS issues regulations to implement management measures described in a 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 final rule modifies the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) greater amberjack commercial trip limit and the recreational fixed closed season. Additionally, this final rule clarifies the Gulf red snapper charter vessel/headboat (for-hire) component quota and annual catch target (ACT) regulations. The purposes of this final rule are to extend the commercial and recreational fishing seasons for Gulf greater amberjack while continuing to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock; and clarify that a person on a vessel issued a Gulf for-hire permit at any time during the fishing year can only harvest red snapper if the vessel is operating as a for-hire vessel. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective August 21, 2024, except for amendatory instruction 2 (revising § 622.34(c)), which is effective August 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the framework action, which includes an environmental assessment, a fishery impact statement, an Initial Regulatory Flexibility analysis (IRFA), and a regulatory impact review, may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03"> https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/framework-action-modify-greater-amberjack-recreational-fixed-closed-season-and-commercial.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Luers, telephone: 727-824-5305, or email: <E T="03">daniel.luers@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Gulf reef fish fishery, which includes greater amberjack, is managed 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 the 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 to protect marine ecosystems. On May 15, 2024, NMFS published a proposed rule for the framework action and requested public comment (89 FR 42413). The greater amberjack stock in the Gulf has been overfished since 2001. To help rebuild the stock, NMFS has implemented several modifications to the rebuilding plan, including changes to the commercial and recreational catch levels, and changes to management measures intended to constrain harvest and extend the commercial and recreational seasons. NMFS recently implemented Amendment 54 to the FMP, which modified the Gulf greater amberjack rebuilding time period and substantially reduced the sector-specific annual catch limits (ACLs) and ACTs (88 FR 39193, June 15, 2023). Implementation of that final rule and Amendment 54 is expected to result in the stock rebuilding by 2027. In the Gulf, greater amberjack is not a common target species for the reef fish commercial sector, with the majority of trips landing less than 500 lb (227 kg), gutted weight (520 lb (236 kg), round weight) of the species. As described at 50 CFR 622.41(a)(1), when commercial landings for greater amberjack reach or are projected to reach the commercial ACT, which is codified as the commercial quota, NMFS closes the commercial sector for the remainder of the fishing year. Any overage of the commercial ACL results in both a reduction of the commercial ACT and the commercial ACL in the following fishing year by the amount of the commercial ACL overage. In 2020, NMFS implemented a framework action that set the current Gulf greater amberjack commercial trip limit to 1,000 lb (454 kg), gutted weight (1,040 lb (472 kg), round weight) (85 FR 20611, April 14, 2020). That framework action and final rule also included a reduction in the trip limit to 250 lb (113 kg), gutted weight (260 lb (118 kg), round weight) when 75 percent of the commercial quota was reached. As described in the current framework action, under the current trip limit, the trip limit reduction was projected to occur in February with a season closure occurring in June. In the current framework action, the Council is recommending that NMFS further reduce the commercial trip limit due to the substantial catch limit reductions implemented by Amendment 54 to lengthen the commercial fishing season. The framework action would reduce the commercial trip limit for Gulf greater amberjack to seven fish, which is approximately equal to 210 lb (95 kg), gutted weight (218 lb (99 kg), round weight). This reduction in the trip limit is expected to extend the commercial season until September unless an overage of the commercial ACL occurs in the prior fishing year, which then would require a reduction in the commercial ACL and ACT and result in a reduction in the season length. NMFS notes that in the 2023 fishing year, the commercial ACL was exceeded by 35,280 lb (16,003 kg), round weight, resulting in a reduction of the commercial ACL and ACT for the 2024 fishing year (see 88 FR 80995, November 21, 2023). For the 2024 fishing year, NMFS projected that the adjusted commercial ACT would be met on June 30, 2024, and so NMFS prohibited the commercial harvest and possession of Gulf greater amberjack on June 30, 2024 (89 FR 50529, June 14, 2024). As described in the framework action, this reduction of the trip limit to seven fish is expected to eliminate the remaining direct commercial harvest trips for greater amberjack. The Council recognized that the greater amberjack stock is overfished and has not rebuilt as expected. Thus, the Council determined that a more cautious approach was warranted and chose to recommend reducing the commercial trip limit. At its October 2023 meeting, the Council discussed the impact of the required reduction to the 2024 commercial catch limits as a result of landings exceeding the ACL in 2023. The Council expressed concern about constraining landings to the reduced catch limits under the current trip limit when the commercial season opened in January 2024, which could have potentially resulted in another commercial overage in 2024 and further reduced the catch limits for 2025. Since the reduced commercial trip limit in this final rule would not be effective until later in 2024, the Council requested that NMFS implement an emergency action to reduce the commercial trip limit to seven fish. NMFS and the Council expected this lower trip limit to benefit the greater amberjack stock by increasing the duration of the commercial open season, which is expected to result in fewer regulatory discards ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> discards required after the quota has been reached). On December 18, 2023, a final temporary rule for emergency action for Gulf greater amberjack was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and was effective through June 15, 2024 (88 FR 87365). The Council decided to specify the commercial trip limit in numbers of fish instead of pounds of fish based in part on recommendations from its Reef Fish Advisory Panel (AP) and the Law Enforcement Technical Committee on their preferred way to specify the trip limit. A trip limit in numbers of fish is more enforceable and reduces the chance of commercial fishermen exceeding the trip limit. The Council decided that the reduced trip limit, which would extend the commercial fishing season as long as practicable, was a more desirable solution. The new commercial trip limit is expected to allow for as many fishing days as practicable while reducing the chance of exceeding the reduced lower catch limits implemented under the final rule for Amendment 54, and addresses needs of the rebuilding plan. In the framework action, the Council also decided to recommend modifying the Gulf greater amberjack recreational fixed closed season in order to extend the recreational fishing season and to protect greater amberjack spawning. As described in the framework action, under the current recreational season structure which opens annually on August 1, projections indicate that the season would only last approximately 3 weeks. For the recreational sector, when recreational landings for greater amberjack reach or are projected to reach the recreational ACT, NMFS closes the sector for the remainder of the fishing year and any overage of the recreational ACL is reduced from the following fishing year's recreational ACT and ACL (50 CFR 622.41(a)(2)). NMFS notes that when the Gulf greater amberjack recreational sector is closed, the species remains a popular catch and release fish. In 2012, the final rule implementing Amendment 35 established a Gulf greater amberjack recreational fixed closed season of June 1 to July 31 to restrict harvest during times of peak recreational fishing. In 2017, NMFS implemented a framework action under ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━