Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; Essential Fish Habitat Amendments

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 679</CFR> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XD632]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; Essential Fish Habitat Amendments</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of agency decision. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces the approval of amendment 127 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI), amendment 115 to the FMP for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), amendment 56 to the FMP for BSAI King and Tanner Crabs, amendment 17 to the FMP for the Salmon Fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off Alaska, and amendment 3 to the FMP for Fish Resources of the Arctic Management Area (amendments). These amendments revise the FMPs by updating the description and identification of essential fish habitat (EFH) and updating information on adverse effects on EFH from fishing and non-fishing activities based on the best scientific information available. These amendments are intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the FMPs, and other applicable laws. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The amendments were approved on July 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the amendments, maps of the EFH areas, and the Environmental Assessment (the analysis) prepared for this action may be obtained from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under the docket number NOAA-NMFS-2023-0160. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Molly Zaleski, 907-586-7228. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that each regional fishery management council submit any FMP amendment it prepares to NMFS for review and approval, disapproval, or partial approval by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary). The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires that NMFS, upon receiving an FMP amendment, immediately publish a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing that the amendment is available for public review and comment. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC or Council) submitted these amendments to the Secretary for review. The notice of availability (NOA) for the amendments was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on April 23, 2024 (89 FR 30318) with a 60-day comment period that ended on June 24, 2024. NMFS received five comment letters during the public comment period on the NOA. NMFS summarized and responded to these comments under Comments and Responses, below. This notice of decision announces NMFS's approval of amendment 127 to the FMP for Groundfish of the BSAI (BSAI Groundfish FMP); amendment 115 to the FMP for Groundfish of the GOA (GOA Groundfish FMP); amendment 56 to the FMP for BSAI King and Tanner Crabs (Crab FMP); amendment 17 to the FMP for the Salmon Fisheries in the EEZ Off Alaska (Salmon FMP); and amendment 3 to the FMP for Fish Resources of the Arctic Management Area (Arctic FMP). The Council prepared the FMPs under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Regulations governing U.S. fisheries and implementing the FMPs appear at 50 CFR parts 600, 679, and 680. Section 303(a)(7) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that each FMP describe and identify EFH, minimize to the extent practicable the adverse effects of fishing on EFH, and identify other measures to encourage the conservation and enhancement of EFH. Section 3(10) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act defines EFH as “those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity.” Implementing regulations at 50 CFR 600.815 list the EFH contents required in each FMP and direct councils to conduct a complete review of all EFH information at least once every 5 years (referred to here as “the 5-year Review”). The Council developed the amendments as a result of new scientific information made available through the 5-year Review that began in 2019 (2023 5-year Review) and adopted the amendments in December 2023. The 2023 5-year Review is the Council's fourth review of EFH in the FMPs. Prior 5-year Reviews were completed in 2005, 2012, and 2018. The Council recommended amendments to the description of, information about, and identification of EFH in the FMPs based on the new information and improved mapping as described in the draft EFH 5-year Summary Report for the 2023 5-year Review. The Council recommended updates to EFH for all FMPs except for the Scallop FMP because no new information is available to update EFH descriptions for scallops. The amendments make the following changes to the FMPs: • <E T="03">BSAI Groundfish FMP, GOA Groundfish FMP, Crab FMP, and Arctic FMP:</E> update EFH descriptions and maps, including up to EFH Level 3 information on habitat-related vital rates (see 50 CFR 600.815(a)(1)(iii)(A)). Add or revise the EFH text descriptions and add or replace the maps for— ○ 41 species or complexes in the BSAI Groundfish FMP; ○ 46 species or complexes in the GOA Groundfish FMP; ○ all five species in the Crab FMP; and ○ all three species in the Arctic FMP. • <E T="03">Salmon FMP:</E> replace the distribution maps for all five species with the EFH maps. • <E T="03">BSAI Groundfish FMP, GOA Groundfish FMP, and Crab FMP:</E> update information for fishing effects (FE) to reflect updates to the FE model, analysis, and evaluation. • <E T="03">BSAI Groundfish FMP, GOA Groundfish FMP, Crab FMP, and Arctic FMP:</E> revise the EFH appendices where conservation recommendations for non-fishing activities are described. • <E T="03">BSAI Groundfish FMP, GOA Groundfish FMP, and Crab FMP:</E> revise prey species descriptions for two species of BSAI sharks, BSAI pollock, GOA Pacific cod, and BSAI red king crab. • <E T="03">BSAI Groundfish FMP, GOA Groundfish FMP, Crab FMP, and Arctic FMP:</E> revise EFH appendices with updated research and information needs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> During the public comment period for the NOA for the amendments, NMFS received five comment letters from three individuals, one industry group, and one environmental nongovernmental organization with eight unique comments. NMFS' responses to these comments are presented below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> One commenter expressed general support for this action. <E T="03">Response:</E> NMFS acknowledges support for this action. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> One commenter expressed concerns over salmon bycatch in Federal fisheries and FE to salmon EFH during their marine life history stage. <E T="03">Response:</E> Comments concerning salmon bycatch are outside the scope of this action. Amendments to the Salmon FMP were corrections to replace the salmon distribution maps with the EFH maps, both originating from the 2017 EFH 5-year Review. NMFS notes that the Council's 2023 EFH 5-year Review Roadmap did not include updates to the FE analysis for Pacific salmon EFH during their marine life history stage because no new information was available. <E T="03">Comment 3:</E> There was a general concern of FE on benthic habitat. <E T="03">Response:</E> The 5-year Review evaluated the impacts of all fishing gears on benthic habitat. None of the stock assessment authors concluded that habitat disturbance within the core EFH area for their species was affecting their stocks in ways that were more than minimal or not temporary. None of the authors recommended any change in management with regards to fishing within EFH at this time. <E T="03">Comment 4:</E> One commenter expressed concerns over pelagic trawl gear contacting benthic habitats in the Bering Sea. <E T="03">Response:</E> The FE evaluation is a comprehensive evaluation of all gear types on species' core EFH areas. The FE model uses bottom contact adjustments when estimating the impacts of different gear types on benthic habitat. The list of gear types and adjustments is in appendix 2 of the 2022 Evaluation of Fishing Effects on Essential Fish Habitat discussion paper (available on the NPFMC eAgenda for the February 2023 meeting). Pelagic trawl gear was included in the gear types evaluated. The overall conclusion of the FE evaluation was that the impacts to species' core EFH areas were not more than minimal or temporary. Gear-specific impacts are slated for future analyses. <E T="03">Comment 5:</E> NMFS did not use the best available science when assessing fishing impacts on EFH: they did not account for uncertainty and error; the model was not independently reviewed; impacts to juvenile and subadult EFH; NMFS did not evaluate fishing effects to habitats for non-FMP species, and NMFS also did not address impacts of pelagic trawl fishing in conservation areas closed to bottom trawling. <E T="03">Response:</E> The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) found that the current EFH fishing FE evaluation methodology is appropriate for the 2023 5-year Review when they reviewed the FE evaluations completed by the stock assessment authors in October 2022. An SSC subcommittee provided guidance in 2016 for the stock assessment authors to evaluate FE model results for their species using three thresholds (if the stock was below minimum stock size threshold, if the estimated disturbance within the core EFH area was greater than or equal to 10 percent, and/or if data limitation concerns would better suit a qualitative, rather than quantitative, evaluation). The subcommittee also noted that the 10 percent threshold does not p ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━