Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2024 Catch Sharing Plan; Inseason Action

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240327-0090; RTID 0648-XE116]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2024 Catch Sharing Plan; Inseason Action</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary rule; inseason adjustment; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces inseason action for the Washington and Oregon subareas in the Pacific halibut recreational fishery in the International Pacific Halibut Commission's (IPHC) regulatory Area 2A. Specifically, this action announces additional fishing dates in August and September for the Washington subareas and in August through October for the Oregon Central Coast subarea. This action is intended to provide opportunity for anglers to achieve the catch limit in the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council) 2024 Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> August 1, 2024 through September 30, 2024 for Washington and through October 31, 2024 for Oregon. <E T="03">Comment date:</E> Comments due on or before August 7, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit your comments, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0014, by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2024-0014 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 written comments to Jennifer Quan, Regional Administrator, c/o Melissa Mandrup, West Coast Region, NMFS, 501 W Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> NMFS may not consider comments if they are sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the comment period ends. All comments received are a part of the public record and NMFS will post them 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, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender is publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). <E T="03">Docket:</E> This 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 and documents are available at the NOAA Fisheries website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2024-pacific-halibut-recreational-fishery</E> and at the Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Other comments received may be accessed through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Melissa Mandrup, phone: 562-980-3231 or email: <E T="03">melissa.mandrup@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On April 3, 2024, NMFS published a final rule approving changes to the Pacific halibut Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan (CSP) and implementing recreational (sport) management measures for the 2024 Area 2A recreational fisheries (89 FR 22966), as authorized by the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 U.S.C. 773-773(k)). The Council's 2024 Catch Sharing Plan provides a recommended framework for NMFS' annual management measures and subarea allocations based on the 2024 Area 2A Pacific halibut catch limit, also known as the fishery constant exploitation yield (FCEY), of 1.47 million pounds (lb; 666.8 metric tons [mt]) set by the IPHC. The Area 2A FCEY and recreational fishery allocations were adopted by the IPHC and were published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 18, 2024 (89 FR 19275), after acceptance by the Secretary of State, with concurrence from the Secretary of Commerce, in accordance with 50 CFR 300.62. The Area 2A Pacific halibut management measures include recreational fishery season dates, bag limits, and subarea allocations. Federal regulations at 50 CFR 300.63(c)(6), “Inseason Management for Recreational (Sport) Halibut Fisheries in Area 2A,” allow the NMFS Regional Administrator to modify annual regulations during the season. These inseason provisions allow the Regional Administrator to modify recreational (sport) fishing periods, bag limits, size limits, days per calendar week, and subarea allocations, if it is determined it is necessary to meet the allocation objectives and the action will not result in exceeding the catch limit. NMFS has determined that, due to lower than expected landings in all Washington subareas, the Columbia River subarea, and the Oregon Central Coast subarea, inseason action to modify the 2024 Washington and Oregon recreational fishery seasons, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> days per calendar week, is warranted at this time to provide additional opportunity for fishery participants to achieve the Area 2A subarea allocations. As stated above, inseason modification of fishing season dates is authorized by Federal regulations at 50 CFR 300.63(c)(6) and the final rule (89 FR 22966, April 3, 3024). After consulting with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and other appropriate entities, NMFS determined that the following inseason action is necessary to meet the management objective of attaining the subarea allocations and is consistent with the inseason management provisions allowing for the modification of recreational fishing days per calendar week. The final rule published on April 3, 2024 (89 FR 22966), approving the 2024 CSP and implementing recreational management measures for the 2024 Area 2A Pacific halibut fisheries, stated that, if sufficient Washington subarea allocation remains for at least another full day of fishing after June 30, NMFS may take inseason action to reopen the fishery in August, up to 7 days per week, through September. The re-opened area will close when there is not sufficient subarea allocation for another full day of fishing. Any inseason action, including closures, will be announced in accordance with Federal regulations at 50 CFR 300.63(c) and on the NMFS hotline at (206) 526-6667 or (800) 662-9825. Additionally, the 2024 CSP states that if an allocation is designated for the Oregon Central Coast subarea summer all-depth fishery, then it is to open the first Friday in August and continue until there is insufficient allocation for an additional day of fishing or October 31, whichever is earlier. The 2024 CSP also states that, if the entire remaining allocation for the Central Oregon Coast subarea is 60,000 lb or more after the first scheduled open period ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> August 1-3), and if determined to be appropriate through joint consultation between IPHC, NMFS, PFMC, and ODFW, the summer all-depth fishery will re-open every week on Friday and Saturday (and Thursday if there is enough allocation) and/or may open up to 7 days a week beginning September 1. Notice of these additional dates are announced in accordance with Federal regulations at 50 CFR 300.63(c) and also on the NMFS hotline at (206) 526-6667 or (800) 662-9825. Weekly catch monitoring reports for the recreational fisheries in Washington and Oregon are available on their respective state Fish and Wildlife agency websites. NMFS will continue to monitor recreational catch obtained via state sampling procedures until NMFS has determined there is not sufficient allocation for another full day of fishing in the subareas off Washington and Oregon, and an area is closed by NMFS, or until the season closes on September 30 in Washington and the Columbia River subarea or October 31 in Oregon, whichever is earlier. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Inseason Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Washington Puget Sound, North Coast, and South Coast Subareas</HD> <E T="03">Description of the action:</E> This inseason action implements additional fishing dates for the Washington Puget Sound, North Coast, and South Coast subareas during the 2024 recreational fishery. The Puget Sound and North Coast subarea will open 7 days per week, August 16 through September 30, or until there is not sufficient subarea allocation for another full day of fishing and the area is closed. The South Coast subarea will open August 22 through September 3 and September 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26, 29, or until there is not sufficient subarea allocation for another full day of fishing and the area is closed. <E T="03">Reason for the action:</E> The purpose of this inseason action is to provide additional opportunity for anglers in the Washington Puget Sound, North Coast, and South Coast subareas to achieve their remaining subarea allocations. Due to lower than expected landings from reduced angler effort, low initial catch rates, poor weather and ocean conditions, and smaller than anticipated halibut being caught (likely as a result of relatively young year-classes supporting the fishery), enough subarea allocation remains to add the additional dates. Using daily catch estimates through June 30, inseason projections for August and September suggest that much of the Washington subarea allocations would go unharvested without additional fishing dates. The Washington Puget Sound subarea recreational fishery opened on April 4, 2024. Through June 30, anglers in the Puget Sound subarea have harvested 54,497 lb (24.7 mt) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━