Fisheries off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; Measures to Keep Fishery Impacts Within the Conservation Objective for the California Coastal Chinook Salmon

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240807-0215]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM68</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; Measures to Keep Fishery Impacts Within the Conservation Objective for the California Coastal Chinook Salmon</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 final rule will implement a set of management measures to ensure fishery impacts on California Coastal (CC) Chinook salmon, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, remain within the conservation objective in the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan (Salmon FMP). Under the final rule, management tools ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> trip limits (also known as landing and possession limits) and inseason management) consistent with the provisions of the Salmon FMP will be used to provide greater certainty in avoiding exceedances of the conservation objectives for CC Chinook salmon. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective September 13, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments regarding the burden-hour estimates or other aspects of the collection-of-information requirements contained in this final rule may be submitted to <E T="03">https://www.reginfor.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shannon Penna, Fishery Management Specialist, at 562-980-4239 or <E T="03">Shannon.Penna@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The ocean salmon fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) (3-200 nautical miles; 5.6-370.4 kilometers) off Washington, Oregon, and California are managed under the Salmon FMP. The Salmon FMP and implementing regulations govern the development of annual management measures at the spring (March and April) Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) meetings each year. Management measures for the salmon fisheries are developed annually because the abundance of the salmon stocks in the fishery can fluctuate significantly from one year to the next and information about annual stock abundance does not become available until early in each year (January-early March). The commercial and recreational salmon fisheries off northern California and southern Oregon target healthy or abundant stocks of Chinook and coho salmon, but may incidentally encounter Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed CC Chinook salmon. The CC Chinook salmon Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU) has been listed as threatened under the ESA since 1999. The Salmon FMP includes harvest controls that are used to manage salmon stocks sustainablyand requires that the fisheries be managed consistent with “consultation standards” for stocks listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA for which NMFS has issued biological opinions. NMFS has issued biological opinions for every ESA-listed salmon species impacted by the fisheries governed by the Salmon FMP. A series of biological opinions on the CC Chinook salmon ESU (NMFS 2000; McInnis 2005; NMFS 2023; NMFS 2024) have concluded that management of the salmon fishery that avoids exceedance of the conservation objective will avoid jeopardizing the ESU. As described in these biological opinions, the available data are insufficient for developing an ESU-specific conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. Thus, NMFS has relied on a surrogate, Klamath River fall-run Chinook Salmon (KRFC), to evaluate and limit impacts on CC Chinook salmon in ocean salmon fisheries. The conservation objective is an ocean harvest rate (HR) on age-4 KRFC of 0.16. In its 2024 biological opinion, NMFS confirmed that managing fisheries to avoid exceeding this conservation objective would avoid jeopardy to CC Chinook salmon. From 2018 to 2022, the fishery HR on age-4 KRFC significantly exceeded 0.16 with an average of 0.28. Adjustments to ocean management models were made to account for these high catch rates, and fisheries were managed to stay within a lower rate than the conservation objective, but the fisheries continued to exceed the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon The recent increases in the post-season KRFC age-4 ocean HR from 2018 through 2021 suggest that the level of impacts on CC Chinook salmon have likely increased. For 2023, in response to record low forecasts for KRFC and Sacramento fall-run Chinook (SRFC) salmon, the Council ultimately recommended the closure of commercial and recreational salmon fisheries off the coast of California for 2023, and NMFS approved this closure. In the fall of 2023, the Council considered recommending additional measures to address the high catch rates of KRFC and stay within the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. At the November 2023 Council meeting, the Council voted to recommend a set of management measures to ensure that the CC Chinook salmon conservation objective is not exceeded, including landing and possession limits, an overall allowable harvest level, and inseason management consistent with the provisions of the Salmon FMP. In 2024, the Council again recommended the closure of commercial and recreational salmon fisheries off the coast of California through calendar year 2024, and NMFS approved the closure. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Measures To Achieve Conservation Objectives for California Stocks of Chinook Salmon </HD> The management measures included in this rule will apply to the ocean salmon fisheries between the Oregon/California border and the U.S./Mexico border ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> California Klamath Management Zone, Fort Bragg, San Francisco, and Monterey management areas) for the following reasons: 1. The majority of the KRFC harvest (and assumed impacts on CC Chinook salmon) in the ocean occurs in this area; 2. The age-4 ocean HR for KRFC in this area has consistently exceeded pre-season projections in recent years; 3. Contact-rate-per-unit-effort in this area has exceeded projections in recent years; 4. The fisheries in this area have been managed primarily through season controls such as time and area restrictions (as opposed to use of landing and possession limits and/or quota management); 5. Time and area restrictions in this area have not been effective in controlling harvest of KRFC (and assumed impacts on CC Chinook salmon) in recent years; and 6. Ocean fisheries in other areas that impact KRFC routinely implement the same or similar management measures as described in these measures for a similar purpose. The rule requires implementation of measures used in salmon fisheries elsewhere on the West Coast to ensure fisheries off the coast of California do not exceed the conservation objective for CC Chinook salmon. The Salmon FMP contemplates that a range of management tools will be used to ensure the fisheries are managed to avoid exceeding all limits for stocks caught in the various management areas along the West Coast (FMP chapter 6). These management tools ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> management boundaries, seasons, quotas, minimum harvest lengths, fishing gear restrictions, and recreational day bag limits) are available to manage ocean fisheries each season, once the allowable ocean harvests and the basis for allocation among user groups have been determined. New information on the fisheries and salmon stocks also may require other adjustments to the management measures. Consistent with the proposed rule, 89 FR 30314 (April 23, 2024), this final rule adds new 50 CFR 660.410(d), which requires fishery managers to set an allowable harvest level of a number of Chinook salmon for each year, consistent with the conservation objective (including the buffer described as follows). In setting the annual harvest level, the Council may recommend and NMFS may applya buffer to the conservation objective to account for management error and reduce the potential for exceeding the conservation objective. The default buffer would be the percent error (defined as the difference between the preseason projected HR and the post-season estimated HR, divided by the post-season estimated HR, and expressed as a percentage) averaged over the most recent 5 years. Other relevant factors such as revisions to the fishery management models used to estimate the preseason Chinook catch, environmental indicators relevant to the status of KRFC, constraints on fisheries under consideration for the areas and months with greatest impacts to KRFC Chinook, may be considered to further refine the buffer. Using the allowable harvest level and projected effort, managers will determine landing and possession limits pre-season to ensure that the fishery does not exceed the allowable harvest level. The fishery will be monitored inseason and actions will be taken as needed to prevent the fisheries from exceeding the annual harvest level. We expect that this multilayered conservative approach ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a buffer, fishery output control, and inseason actions) will ensure that the fisheries remain within the pre-season projection and adhere to the CC Chinook salmon conservation objective. This final rule also updates regulations at 50 CFR 660.405 and 660.410. In § 660.405, the term “possess” was added to provide consistency with other prohibitions throughout the regulations. The addition of the term “possess” will ensure that fishers are not confused about the requirements related to the timing of take, retention, possession, or landings, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━