Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Annual Specifications; 2024-2025 Annual Specifications and Management Measures for Pacific Sardine

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241120-0297]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RTID 0648-XD848</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Annual Specifications; 2024-2025 Annual Specifications and Management Measures for Pacific Sardine</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> NMFS is implementing annual harvest specifications and management measures for the northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine (hereafter, Pacific sardine), for the fishing year from July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. This rule prohibits most directed commercial fishing for Pacific sardine off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. Pacific sardine harvest is allowed only for use as live bait, in minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as authorized under exempted fishing permits. The incidental harvest of Pacific sardine will be limited to 30 percent by weight of all fish per trip when caught with other stocks managed under the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP), or up to 2 metric tons (mt) per trip when caught with non-coastal pelagic species stocks. The harvest specifications for 2024-2025 include an overfishing limit (OFL) of 8,312 mt, an acceptable biological catch (ABC) and annual catch limit (ACL) of 6,005 mt, and an annual catch target (ACT) of 5,500 mt. This final rule is intended to conserve, manage, and rebuild the Pacific sardine stock off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective December 27, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katie Davis, West Coast Region, NMFS, (323) 372-2126, <E T="03">Katie.Davis@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS manages the Pacific sardine fishery in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Pacific coast ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> off the U.S. West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington) in accordance with the CPS FMP. The CPS FMP and its implementing regulations require NMFS to set annual reference points and management measures for the Pacific sardine fishery based on the annual specification framework and control rules in the FMP. These control rules include the harvest guideline (HG) control rule, which, in conjunction with the OFL and ABC control rules in the FMP, are used to set required reference points, in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Additionally, the CPS FMP requires additional management measures, intended to restrict harvest, for the Pacific sardine fishery, such as catch restrictions. NMFS publishes annual specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to establish these annual reference points ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the OFL, ABC, and ACL) and management measures for each Pacific sardine fishing year. NMFS published proposed specifications and management measures on June 21, 2024 (89 FR 52005). Additionally, in response to a court order, and to avoid a lapse in regulations, NMFS published an interim final rule (89 FR 62668; August 1, 2024) that was effective July 29, 2024, and is in place until replaced by these 2024-2025 final specifications. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Reference Points and Management Measures</HD> Based on the 2024 benchmark stock assessment for Pacific sardine, the associated estimated age 1+ biomass of 58,614 mt, the control rule formulas in the FMP, and recent related Court orders, NMFS is implementing, as proposed, an OFL of 8,312 mt, an ABC of 6,005 mt, an ACL of 6,005 mt, and an ACT of 5,500 mt. The CPS FMP includes a prohibition of the primary directed fishery when the biomass is at or below 150,000 mt. The Pacific sardine primary directed fishery is therefore closed, and Pacific sardine catch during the 2024-2025 fishing season is prohibited unless it is harvested as part of the live bait, tribal, or minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as part of exempted fishing permit (EFP) activities. The 2024-2025 fishing year specifications can be found in table 1, and management measures are listed after table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="6" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12C,12C,12C,12C,12C"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Harvest Specifications for the 2024-2025 Sardine Fishing Year, in Metric Tons</TTITLE> [mt] <CHED H="1">Biomass estimate</CHED> <CHED H="1">OFL</CHED> <CHED H="1">ABC</CHED> <CHED H="1">HG</CHED> <CHED H="1">ACL</CHED> <CHED H="1">ACT</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">58,614</ENT> <ENT>8,312</ENT> <ENT>6,005</ENT> <ENT>0</ENT> <ENT>6,005</ENT> <ENT>5,500</ENT> The following are the additional management measures and in-season accountability measures for the 2024-2025 Pacific sardine fishing year: (1) If landings in the live bait fishery reach 3,000 mt of Pacific sardine, then a per-trip limit of 1 mt of Pacific sardine applies to the live bait fishery; (2) An incidental per-landing limit of 30 percent (by weight) of Pacific sardine applies to other CPS primary directed fisheries ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Pacific mackerel); (3) If the ACT of 5,500 mt is attained, then a per-trip limit of 1 mt of Pacific sardine applies to all CPS fisheries ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> (1) and (2) will no longer apply); and (4) An incidental per-landing allowance of 2 mt of Pacific sardine applies to non-CPS fisheries until the ACL is reached. In addition to the management measures and in-season accountability measures listed in the previous paragraphs, Pacific sardine catch in the minor directed fishery for finfish remains limited to 1 mt per trip per day, and 1 trip per day by any vessel, per regulations at 50 CFR 660.511(d)(2). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> At the April 2024 Pacific Fisheries Management Council (Council) meeting, the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) reviewed a Stock Assessment Review (STAR) panel report on the Southwest Fisheries Science Center's 2024 benchmark stock assessment, and also reviewed the benchmark stock assessment itself, titled “Assessment of the Pacific sardine resource ( <E T="03">Sardinops sagax</E> ) in 2024 for U.S. management in 2024-2025.” The SSC concluded that the 2024 benchmark assessment for Pacific sardine is the best scientific information available for the management of Pacific sardine. During their review, the SSC noted major improvements in methodology from the 2020 benchmark assessment, including an updated habitat model for assigning fishery catch and survey biomass to the northern and southern subpopulations of Pacific sardine. However, the SSC applied a category 2d sigma uncertainty buffer which, compared to a category 1, equates to a larger allowance for scientific uncertainty, and therefore a lower ABC and a decreased risk of overfishing. During the discussion of the appropriate category, the SSC discussed potential uncertainty in the relationship between sardine productivity and ocean temperatures recently used to calculate the E <E T="52">MSY</E> parameter of the OFL and ABC control rules, as well as uncertainty in the strength of the 2023 year-class represented in the stock assessment, along with other uncertainties in the data used in the assessment. The CPS FMP control rules, as they apply to annual reference points, use the following formulas: <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> OFL = Biomass * E <E T="52">MSY</E> * DISTRIBUTION </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2"> ABC = Biomass * BUFFER * E <E T="52">MSY</E> * DISTRIBUTION </FP> <E T="03">Biomass.</E> The estimated stock biomass of Pacific sardine ages 1 and older, in metric tons. <E T="03">E</E> <E T="54">MSY</E> . The exploitation rate for deterministic equilibrium maximum sustainable yield. Since 2014, based on annual recommendations by the Pacific Fishery Management Council's SSC, the E <E T="52">MSY</E> for Pacific sardine has most recently been based on a temperature-recruitment relationship based on a running 3-year average of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) temperature index. <E T="03">DISTRIBUTION.</E> The average portion of the Pacific sardine biomass estimated to be in the U.S. EEZ off the Pacific coast. DISTRIBUTION is currently defined in the CPS FMP as 87 percent and is based on the average historical larval distribution obtained from scientific cruises and the distribution of the resource according to the logbooks of aerial fish-spotters. <E T="03">BUFFER.</E> The percentage reduction of the OFL as determined by the SSC's evaluation of scientific uncertainty (sigma) and the Council's risk policy (P*). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Rebuilding Plan and Oceana, Inc., v. Raimondo, et al.</HD> During the 2019-2020 fishing year, the estimated biomass of sardine dropped below its minimum stock size threshold of 50,000 mt, which triggered an overfished determination process. NMFS accordingly declared the stock overfished on June 26, 2019 and notified the Council on July 9, 2019. NMFS worked with the Council to develop a rebuilding plan for Pacific sardine to implement within two years and finalized it on June 24, 2021 (86 FR 33142). The rebuilding plan maintained the status quo management for Pacific sardine, which includes a complete closure of the primary sardine fishery. Oceana, an environmental non-governmental organization, challenged this rebuilding plan and later included a challenge to the 2023-2024 annual specifications (“2023 Final Rule”; 88 FR 41040), in an action filed in the United States District Court for the Northern Distric ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━