Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Updates Regarding Sea Turtle Careful Release Equipment and Techniques

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 635</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241010-0271]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BK89</RIN> <SUBJECT>Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Updates Regarding Sea Turtle Careful Release Equipment and Techniques</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> In this final rule, NMFS updates the Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS) regulations regarding the sea turtle safe handling and release requirements and equipment in the HMS pelagic and bottom longline fisheries. This action is based in part on two technical memoranda published by NMFS' Southeast Fisheries Science Center (SEFSC). The regulatory updates replace some of the more technical terms with those that are more commonly used, add more detail to make the regulations more understandable, and add additional tools or options for fishermen to use to safely handle and release sea turtles. In addition, this final rule simplifies the regulations by removing redundancies, making minor changes in formatting, and revising wording to clarify responsibility of implementation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective November 29, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Additional information related to this final rule, including electronic copies of the supporting documents are available from the HMS Management Division website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/atlantic-highly-migratory-species,</E> at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (enter “NOAA-NMFS-2024-0046” in the Search box), or by contacting Becky Curtis at <E T="03">becky.curtis@noaa.gov.</E> The referenced technical memoranda are available from the HMS Management Division website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/resource/outreach-materials/atlantic-highly-migratory-species-safe-handling-release-and.</E> These documents are also available upon request from the HMS Management Division by phone at 301-427-8503. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Becky Curtis, <E T="03">becky.curtis@noaa.gov,</E> Steve Durkee, <E T="03">steve.durkee@noaa.gov</E> or Karyl Brewster-Geisz, <E T="03">karyl.brewster-geisz@noaa.gov;</E> 301-427-8503. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Atlantic HMS fisheries are managed under the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan (FMP) and its amendments, pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and consistent with the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (ATCA) (16 U.S.C. 971 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). HMS implementing regulations are at 50 CFR part 635. The sea turtle handling and release requirements and equipment are located at § 635.21(b) through (d). This final rule is issued pursuant to, and subject to requirements of, the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Specifically in regard to the sea turtle safe handling and release measures implemented in this rule, 16 U.S.C. 1851(a)(9) requires NMFS to implement fishery management measures that minimize bycatch, and to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of bycatch. The Magnuson-Stevens Act defines bycatch as fish which are harvested but which are not sold or kept for personal use at 16 U.S.C. 1802(2) (see also 16 U.S.C. 1802(12) (defining “fish”)). Sea turtles are listed and protected under the Endangered Species Act and cannot be sold or kept for personal use (see 16 U.S.C. 1538(a)(1) and 16 U.S.C. 1533(d)). Background information about the need for regulatory updates to modify the sea turtle handling and release requirements and equipment and specific examples of updates made under this action were provided in the preamble to the proposed rule (89 FR 24416, April 8, 2024) and are not repeated here. In summary, two technical memoranda were published by the SEFSC in 2019: NMFS-SEFSC TM735: “Careful Release Protocols for Sea Turtle Release with Minimal Injury,” and NMFS-SEFSC TM738: “Design Standards and Equipment for Careful Release of Sea Turtles Caught in Hook-and-Line Fisheries.” NMFS decided that it would be helpful to revise the existing regulations in light of the 2019 technical memoranda. Based in part on those memoranda, this final rule modifies the regulations by: (1) adding additional options for tools and procedures for fishermen to use to safely handle and release sea turtles; (2) replacing some of the more technical terms with those that are more commonly used; (3) adding more detail to make the regulations more understandable; and (4) simplifying the regulations by removing redundancies. NMFS received five written comments during the public comment period for the proposed rule, which closed on May 8, 2024. The comments received, and responses to those comments, are summarized in the Response to Comments section. No changes to the final rule are planned in response to the comments received. However, one minor change from the proposed rule is outlined in the Changes from Proposed Rule section. Under this final rule, fishermen are able to continue using existing, approved sea turtle bycatch mitigation equipment. The final rule also provides additional tool and procedural options that fishermen may use to meet the sea turtle safe handling and release requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Response to Comments</HD> Written comments can be found at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> type “NOAA-NMFS-2024-0046” in the Search box. Below, NMFS summarizes and responds to the comments made on the proposed rule during the comment period. Comments covering the same topics were consolidated. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> NMFS received multiple comments expressing support for the proposed update of sea turtle careful handling and release regulations. Commenters noted that the updates would improve outcomes for incidentally-caught sea turtles released by fishermen and improve clarity of the sea turtle safe handling and release regulations, improve awareness of and confidence in sea turtle release techniques, and, due to the additional approved tools, reduce instances where the required tools are forgotten or not on hand. <E T="03">Response:</E> NMFS agrees that the proposed changes would provide clarity regarding sea turtle safe handling and release requirements. Additionally, the proposed changes will increase flexibility for complying with these requirements. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> NMFS received one comment expressing concerns about the cost of the new, optional tools that would be authorized for sea turtle safe handling techniques, and whether that cost might hinder adoption of the new equipment. <E T="03">Response:</E> The additional tools that would be authorized are strictly optional and not necessary for regulatory compliance. Instead, the additional tools provide fishermen additional flexibility to comply with the handling and release requirements in a manner that maximizes the efficacy of the operations on their vessel. If fishery participants decide not to purchase the additional tools due to their cost, they can remain in compliance by carrying the tools that are already approved under the current regulations. <E T="03">Comment 3:</E> NMFS received multiple comments on topics that reach beyond the minor regulatory updates and sea turtle bycatch issues in the proposed rule. One commenter mentioned that additional actions should be taken to prevent bycatch of sea turtles, including restricting fishing activities based on water temperature, reducing soak times, and changing fishing techniques and equipment. Another commenter suggested that all longline fishing for HMS be banned. Finally, another commenter focused on wind energy production and its potential threats to birds and turtles. <E T="03">Response:</E> NMFS considers these comments to be outside the scope of the current rulemaking. The focus of this rule is to update current sea turtle safe handling and release requirements to more clearly describe safe handling techniques, update the names of some required tools, approve additional tools for safe handling and release procedures, and to simplify regulations by removing redundancies, and making minor changes to clarify responsibility of implementation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> No changes were made from the proposed rule in response to public comments. However, in this final rule, the term “comatose” has been replaced with “unresponsive” when referring to turtles that must be brought on board for gear removal. This change more accurately describes the state of the turtle and matches other agency resuscitation guidance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Classification</HD> As described in the statutory information in the Background section above, NMFS is issuing this rule pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, including sections 301(a)(9) and 304(g). The NMFS Assistant Administrator has determined that the final rule is consistent with the 2006 Consolidated HMS FMP and its amendments, other provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, ATCA, and other applicable law. This final rule has been determined to be not significant for purposes of Executive Order 12866. The Chief Council for Regulation of the Department of Commerce certified to the Chief Council for Advocacy of the Small Business Administration that the proposed rule, if adopted, would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. No comments were received regarding this certification. As a result, a regulatory flexibility analysis was no ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 47k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━