Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 34; Groundfish Exclusion Area for Coral Research and Restoration

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241018-0275]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN15</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 34; Groundfish Exclusion Area for Coral Research and Restoration</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 issues these proposed regulations to implement amendment 34 to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (Groundfish FMP). The proposed regulations include a closure to commercial groundfish bottom contact gear in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS). Specifically, NMFS proposes to implement a new groundfish exclusion area (GEA) for the purposes of coral research and restoration within MBNMS at the site of Sur Ridge. The purpose of this proposed action is to close the Sur Ridge site within the MBNMS off California to commercial groundfish bottom contact gear in order to protect future deep-sea coral research and restoration projects from the impact of fishing gear. The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) conducts scientific research in National Marine Sanctuaries, including on deep sea coral survival, growth and reproduction, under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA) and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before November 22, 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-2024-0081.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0081, 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 type NOAA-NMFS-2024-0081 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). Electronic copies of proposed amendment 34 and the draft analysis that addresses Presidential Executive Order 12866, the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), and the statutory requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the Analysis), may be obtained from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and the NMFS West Coast Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/west-coast.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Megan Mackey, 206-526-6140, <E T="03">megan.mackey@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Pacific Coast groundfish fishery in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) seaward of Washington, Oregon, and California is managed under the Groundfish FMP. The Council developed the Groundfish FMP pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> The Secretary of Commerce approved the Groundfish FMP and implemented the provisions of the plan at 50 CFR part 660, subparts C through G. Species managed under the Groundfish FMP include more than 90 species of groundfish, flatfish, rockfish, sharks, and skates. This proposed rule (also referred to interchangeably as “this proposed action”) would implement regulations for amendment 34 to the Groundfish FMP. Consistent with Magnuson-Stevens Act section 303(c)(1), the Council deemed the proposed regulations consistent with and necessary to implement amendment 34 in an October 1, 2024 letter from Council Chairman, Merrick Burden, to Regional Administrator, Jennifer Quan. The Notice of Availability for amendment 34 that published on October 9, 2024 (89 FR 81878) describes the details of the Groundfish FMP changes established through this proposed action. NMFS is concurrently seeking comment on the Council's proposed measures in amendment 34. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Council met over 2023 and 2024 to consider developing fisheries closures for deep-sea coral restoration and research in response to a request from the ONMS. ONMS conducts scientific research in National Marine Sanctuaries, including within MBNMS, under the NMSA and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. In September 2023, ONMS presented a scoping paper that posed 5 locations with 10 sites within Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and MBNMS, for deep seas coral restoration and research (section 1.2 of the Analysis). At that meeting, the Council chose to continue to scope closures in MBNMS only, at the locations of Año Nuevo and Ascension Canyons (two sites) and Sur Ridge (one site), for areas to conduct coral research and restoration. The Council proposed that these areas could be closed to bottom contact gears as GEAs. GEAs were established by amendment 32 to the Groundfish FMP (88 FR 83830, December 1, 2023) and are a management tool intended to mitigate the impacts to sensitive environments from certain groundfish fishing activity. At the March 2024 meeting, the Council adopted a range of alternatives for this proposed action that included modified versions of the Año Nuevo and Ascension Canyon sites to address concerns raised by the public regarding closing off key fishing grounds shallower than 400 fathoms (fm) and enforcement concerns (section 1.2 of the Analysis). The Council also confirmed that the potential sites would only be proposed to be closed to commercial groundfish bottom contact gears and that no other gear types or fisheries would be proposed in the closures. At the June 2024 meeting, the Council adopted its final preferred alternative to develop a GEA for commercial groundfish bottom contact gear at Sur Ridge in MBNMS. If the GEA is established, it is expected that ONMS would begin deep-sea coral outplanting at Sur Ridge in 2025. The proposed GEA at Sur Ridge would apply to commercial groundfish vessels using bottom contact gear. Currently, the GEA area is within a bottom trawl essential fish habitat conservation area (EFHCA), and therefore no bottom trawling is permitted. If the EFHCA were to be removed in the future, the GEA would continue to prohibit bottom trawl. The GEA would create new restrictions for non-trawl commercial groundfish vessels using bottom contact gears in the limited entry fixed gear, directed open access, and shore-based individual fishing quota sectors. Vessels using non-bottom contact gear would still be permitted to operate in the area. The proposed GEA would close 36.64 square nautical miles of area, with depths ranging from 2,690 to 5,118 feet (448 to 853 fm). Overall, this proposed GEA would allow ONMS to perform deep-sea coral research and restoration while having limited impact on the groundfish fisheries. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Amendment 34</HD> NMFS is proposing amendment 34 to the Groundfish FMP in alignment with the Council's recommendation in June 2024. Amendment 34 would revise the description of GEAs in the FMP to remove references to specific GEAs, consistent with how other closed area types are included in the FMP. Active GEAs would instead be noted in the Federal groundfish regulations at proposed § 660.70, and the history of a specific GEA would likely be provided in the groundfish Stock Assessment Fishery Evaluation document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Rule</HD> In addition to revising the description of GEAs under amendment 34, in alignment with the Council's recommendation, NMFS proposes regulations to modify the use of GEAs as a management tool in the following ways. This proposed rule would: • Add GEAs to the general groundfish prohibitions found at § 660.12; • Revise the descriptions of GEAs found in §§ 660.230, 660.330, and 660.360 to remove the specific references to the Southern California Bight; and, • Establish a new GEA at Sur Ridge in MBNMS. To add GEAs to the general groundfish prohibitions found in the regulations, this proposed rule would add proposed § 660.12(a)(22) to the list of prohibitions in § 660.12(a) to clarify that it is unlawful for fishermen to violate any regulations that apply to activity in GEAs. To revise the descriptions of GEAs in regulations, this proposed rule would update §§ 660.230, 660.330, and 660.360 to remove specific references to the Southern California Bight and generalize the GEA descriptions to allow for GEAs to be located more broadly. This proposed rule would also update the GEA description at § 660.70(t) to note that there would be a total of nine GEAs and to remove the specific reference to GEAs being areas south of Point Conception, California. And, finally, this proposed rule would add § 660.70(t)(9) to the list of GEAs found in that section and would include the latitude and longitude coordinates and other information relevant to establishing the proposed Sur Ridge GEA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Classification</HD> Pursuant to sections 303(C) and ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━