Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 16 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240726-0205]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN02</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 16 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes regulations to implement Framework Adjustment 16 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan. Framework 16 was developed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to establish a volumetric hold baseline for limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid vessels, clarify <E T="03">Illex</E> squid reporting requirements, and allow NMFS to collect information on the vessel processing type for <E T="03">Illex</E> and longfin squid vessels. This action is necessary to restrict future increases in the capacity of the <E T="03">Illex</E> squid fishery and to gain more accurate catch information to inform stock assessments. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before Tuesday, August 20, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0060, by the following method: <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-2024-0060 in the Search box ( <E T="03">note:</E> copying and pasting the FDMS Docket Number directly from this document may not yield search results). Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered by NMFS. All comments received are part of the public record and will generally be posted 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, etc.), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council prepared a Framework 16 document that describes the proposed action and other alternatives considered. Copies of this document including the preliminary Regulatory Impact Review, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis, are available from: Dr. Christopher M. Moore, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Suite 201, 800 North State Street, Dover, DE 19901. The document is also accessible via the internet at <E T="03">https://www.mafmc.org/supporting-documents.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Maria Fenton, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9196, or <E T="03">maria.fenton@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">General Background</HD> In 2019, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) initiated Amendment 22 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The intent of this action was to revise the number and type of <E T="03">Illex</E> squid permits to address the negative effects from a perceived race to fish after the fishery closed in August or September from 2017 to 2021 when the annual quota had been caught. However, NMFS ultimately disapproved Amendment 22 on September 7, 2022, because the agency concluded that the record supporting the Council's proposal was not adequate or sufficient to support a decision to further restrict the number and types of permits in the <E T="03">Illex</E> squid fishery in light of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act's (Magnuson-Stevens Act) National Standards, Amendment 22's stated purpose and need, and the goals and objectives of the FMP. Following the disapproval of Amendment 22, the Council decided to move forward with Framework 16 in order to address potential latent effort in the <E T="03">Illex</E> squid fishery. The Council adopted proposed Framework 16 measures at its October 2023 meeting with the goal of capping fishing power in the <E T="03">Illex</E> squid fishery. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Measures</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NMFS to approve, partially approve, or disapprove measures proposed by the Council. The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires NMFS to publish proposed rules for public comment after preliminarily determining whether the measures are consistent with applicable law. NMFS is proposing and seeking comment on the measures in Framework Adjustment 16, as recommended by the Council. <HD SOURCE="HD2">1. Volumetric Hold Baseline for Limited Access Illex Squid Vessels</HD> This action proposes establishing a volumetric hold baseline for limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid vessels in order to restrict future increases in capacity in this fishery. This would be a vessel baseline measurement in addition to the standard horsepower and length baseline measures required for all federally permitted vessels in the Greater Atlantic Region. If NMFS implements the proposed volumetric hold baseline requirement for limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid permit holders through a subsequent final rule, a vessel's fish hold capacity measurement would need be certified by a qualified individual or entity as specified in the proposed regulation text. The fish hold capacity measurement would need to be submitted to NMFS and must include a signed certification by the qualified individual or entity within 12 months of the implementation of the final rule for this action. A similar volumetric hold baseline requirement was implemented for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Atlantic mackerel permit holders through Amendment 11 to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish FMP in 2011 (76 FR 86842). If a vessel already possesses a volumetric hold baseline related to its Tier 1or Tier 2 Atlantic mackerel permit, that hold baseline could be incorporated for its limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid permit as well. If a limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid permit is in Confirmation of Permit History (CPH) when fish hold capacity measurements are due, the default volumetric hold baseline for that CPH permit would be established based on the fish hold capacity measurement of the first replacement vessel greater than 20 ft (6.09 m) after the permit is removed from CPH (at which point the vessel's fish hold would have to be measured under the certification requirements before fishing under the permit). If a permit in CPH already had an existing fish hold capacity measurement for the vessel immediately preceding the permit's placement into CPH which met the measurement certification requirements, that fish hold capacity measurement could be used to establish a volumetric hold baseline for the <E T="03">Illex</E> squid permit within the implementation period. Replacement or upgraded vessels' re-certified fish hold capacity measurements could not exceed 110 percent of the permit's volumetric hold baseline ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> there could only be an increase of 10 percent beyond the volumetric hold baseline). The modified fish hold, or the fish hold of the replacement vessel, would have to be surveyed by a qualified surveyor as described in the proposed regulation text, unless the replacement vessel already had an appropriate fish hold capacity measurement on file with NMFS. <HD SOURCE="HD2">2. Illex and Longfin Squid Processing Type</HD> This action also proposes to allow NMFS to collect information on the vessel processing type for <E T="03">Illex</E> squid moratorium permits and Tier 1 longfin squid permits to help analyze the catch per unit effort for these fisheries. This information would be collected annually through the permit renewal application process. When these vessels submit their permit renewal application, they would need to indicate the vessel processing type ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> freezing at-sea, refrigerated sea water, or fresh/iced) that they primarily intend to use for the coming fishing year. <HD SOURCE="HD2">3. Illex Squid Vessel Reporting Clarifications</HD> Finally, this action proposes to clarify that limited access <E T="03">Illex</E> squid vessels are required to report daily via the vessel monitoring system (VMS) while on a declared <E T="03">Illex</E> squid trip. This clarification was requested by the Council during the development of Amendment 22, but due to the disapproval of that action (for reasons that had nothing to do with this reporting adjustment), NMFS committed to address this clarification in this action instead. These daily catch reports would include the amount of retained and discarded <E T="03">Illex</E> squid and total pounds of all fish retained. These reports need to be submitted in 24-hr intervals for each day and must be submitted by 0900 hr on the following day. Reports are required even if <E T="03">Illex</E> squid caught that day have not yet been landed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Classification</HD> Pursuant to section 304(b)(1)(A) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the NMFS Assistant Administrator has determined that this proposed rule is consistent with the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish FMP, other provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and other applicable law, subject to further consideration after public comment. In m ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━