Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025 Specifications for the Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass, and Bluefish Fisheries

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241009-0267]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RTID 0648-XE226</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025 Specifications for the Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass, and Bluefish Fisheries</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 2025 specifications for the summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish fisheries. The implementing regulations for the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan and the Bluefish Fishery Management Plan require us to publish specifications for the upcoming fishing year for each of these species and to provide an opportunity for public comment. The proposed specifications establish allowable harvest levels for these species that will prevent overfishing, consistent with the most recent scientific information. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before October 31, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A plain language summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NMFS-2024-0117.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0117, by the following method: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and type NOAA-NMFS-2024-0117 in the Search box. 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 a 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, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), 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). A Supplemental Information Report (SIR) was prepared for the 2025 black sea bass specifications. Environmental Assessments (EA) were prepared for the 2024 and projected 2025 summer flounder and scup specifications and 2024 and projected 2025 bluefish specifications. Copies of the EAs are available on request from Dr. Christopher M. Moore, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Suite 201, 800 North State Street, Dover, DE 19901. The EAs are 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> Emily Keiley, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9116, or <E T="03">emily.keiley@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">General Background</HD> The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) cooperatively develop management measures for the summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish fisheries. The Council, pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) develops recommendations regarding fisheries in Federal waters seaward of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. The Commission, pursuant to the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, addresses fisheries in state waters from Florida to Maine. These bodies work together in the development of complementary fishery management plans (FMP) for species like summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish that are harvested in both Federal and state waters, and each year these bodies work together to develop specifications for these fisheries. The Council provides its recommendations to NMFS, and NMFS engages in a Federal rulemaking process by which the agency adopts specifications that become binding on the Federal fisheries. Specifications in these fisheries include various catch and landing subdivisions, such as the commercial and recreational sector annual catch limits (ACL), annual catch targets (ACT), and sector-specific landing limits ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the commercial fishery quota and recreational harvest limit (RHL)) established for 1 to 3 years at a time. Adjustments to commercial management measures are also considered in the specifications process. The process for measures used to manage the recreational fisheries ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> minimum fish sizes, seasonal closures, and possession restrictions) for these four species occurs separately and is not discussed further in this proposed rule. The Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP and the Bluefish FMP and their implementing regulations establish the process for establishing specifications for each of those four species. All requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, including the 10 national standards, also apply to specifications. The FMPs also contain formulas to divide the catch limits into commercial and recreational fishery allocations, state-by-state quotas, and quota periods, depending on the species in question. This proposed rule outlines the application of the existing allocation provisions for each species and provides the resulting allocations by state and sector, as appropriate, for each species. The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) met on July 23-25, 2024, to recommend acceptable biological catches (ABC) for the summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish fisheries. The FMPs' implementing regulations require the involvement of a monitoring committee in the specification process for each species. The Monitoring Committees recommend any reduction in catch limits from the SSC-recommended ABCs to offset management uncertainty and other commercial management measures ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> mesh requirements, minimum commercial fish sizes, gear restrictions, possession restrictions, and area restrictions) needed for these four fisheries. The Monitoring Committees met on August 1 and 2, 2024, to develop specification-related recommendations for each fishery. Following the SSC and Monitoring Committee meetings, the Council and the Commission's Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass, and Bluefish Management Boards considered the recommendations of the SSC, the Monitoring Committees, and public comments and made their specification recommendations at a meeting held on August 12-15, 2024. While the Boards' actions were finalized at the August meeting, the Council's recommendations must be reviewed by NMFS to ensure that they comply with the FMPs, implementing regulations, and applicable law. NMFS also must conduct notice-and-comment rulemaking to propose and implement the final specifications. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed 2025 Specifications</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Summer Flounder Specifications</HD> Consistent with the statutory scheme described above, NMFS is proposing the Council and Board-recommended 2025 summer flounder catch and landings limits shown in table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s100,14,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Summary of 2025 Summer Flounder Fishery Specifications</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Specifications</CHED> <ENT I="01">Overfishing Limit (OFL)</ENT> <ENT>24.97</ENT> <ENT>11,325</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">ABC</ENT> <ENT>19.32</ENT> <ENT>8,761</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Commercial ACL = ACT</ENT> <ENT>10.62</ENT> <ENT>4,819</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Commercial Quota</ENT> <ENT>8.79</ENT> <ENT>3,987</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Recreational ACL = ACT</ENT> <ENT>8.69</ENT> <ENT>3,942</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Recreational Harvest Limit</ENT> <ENT>6.35</ENT> <ENT>2,879</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The proposed initial 2025 state-by-state summer flounder quotas are provided in table 2. As required in Amendment 21 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP (85 FR 80661), if the commercial quota in any year is higher than 9.55 million lb (4,332 mt), the first 9.55 million lb (4,322 mt) is distributed according to the baseline formula, and any additional quota beyond this threshold will be distributed in equal shares to all states except Maine, Delaware, and New Hampshire, which would split 1 percent of the additional quota. Because this year's quota is below the threshold, the state-by-state allocations below are based on the baseline allocations that were established through Amendment 2 (57 FR 57358) and modified by Amendment 4 (58 FR 49937) to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP. Any long-standing overages or potential 2024 overages may result in adjustments to these proposed quotas in the final rule. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12,12,12"> <TTITLE>Table 2—Initial 2025 Summer Flounder State-by-State Quotas</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">State</CHED> <CHED H="1">Percent share</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Initial 2025 Quotas * (lb) </CHED> <CHED H="1"> Initial 2025 Quotas * <ENT>0.04756</ENT> <ENT>4,180</ENT> <ENT>1.90</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">NH</ENT> <ENT>0.00046</ENT> <ENT>40</ENT> <ENT>0.02</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">MA</ENT> <ENT>6.82046</ENT> <ENT>599,507</ENT> <ENT>271.93</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">RI</ENT> <ENT>15.68298</ENT> <ENT>1,378,507</ENT> <ENT>625.28</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━