Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2025 Catch Sharing Plan and Recreational Fishery Management Measures

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241216-0328]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN41</RIN> <SUBJECT>Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; 2025 Catch Sharing Plan and Recreational Fishery Management Measures</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 to approve changes to the Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan for the International Pacific Halibut Commission's regulatory Area 2A off Washington, Oregon, and California. In addition, NMFS proposes to implement new management measures for the 2025 recreational fisheries in Area 2A that are not implemented through the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC). These measures include the recreational fishery seasons and subarea allocations for Area 2A. This action would also add a new inseason management provision to transfer anticipated uncaught recreational fishery allocation from the Northern California subarea to the South of Point Arena subarea. These actions are intended to conserve Pacific halibut and provide angler opportunity where available. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the proposed rule must be received on or before January 27, 2025. </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/NMFS-2024-0139.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0139, by either of the following methods: • <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-2024-0139 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Jennifer Quan, Regional Administrator, c/o Melissa Mandrup, West Coast Region, NMFS, 501 W Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802. <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). <E T="03">Docket:</E> This rule is accessible via the internet at the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information and documents are available at the NMFS West Coast Region Pacific Halibut Recreational Fishery website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2024-pacific-halibut-recreational-fishery</E> and at the Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Other comments received may be accessed through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Melissa Mandrup, phone: 562-980-3231 or email: <E T="03">melissa.mandrup@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (Halibut Act), 16 U.S.C. 773-773k, gives the Secretary of Commerce responsibility for implementing the provisions of the Convention between Canada and the United States for the Preservation of the Halibut Fishery of the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea (Halibut Convention, signed at Ottawa, Ontario, on March 2, 1953), as amended by a Protocol Amending the Convention,(signed at Washington, DC, on March 29, 1979), including adopting regulations to carry it out (16 U.S.C. 773c). Additionally, the regional fishery management councils having authority for the geographic area concerned may develop, and the Secretary of Commerce may implement, regulations governing Pacific halibut fishing in in U.S. waters that are in addition to, and not in conflict with, approved IPHC regulations ( <E T="03">id.</E> 773c(c)). As provided in the Halibut Act at 16 U.S.C. 773b, the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce, may accept or reject, on behalf of the United States, regulations recommended by the IPHC in accordance with the Convention. Following acceptance by the Secretary of State, the annual management measures promulgated by the IPHC are published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to provide notice of their immediate regulatory effectiveness and to inform persons subject to the regulations of their restrictions and requirements (50 CFR 300.62). The IPHC will hold its annual meeting January 27-31, 2025, where it is anticipated that they will recommend the Area 2A catch limit, also known as the Fishery Constant Exploitation Yield (FCEY). This FCEY is derived from the total constant exploitation yield (TCEY) for Pacific halibut, which includes commercial discards and bycatch estimates calculated using a formula developed by the IPHC. The 2025 TCEY and FCEY for Area 2A, as well as other applicable Area 2A allocations that are established by the IPHC in accordance with the Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan (CSP), will be published as part of a separate rulemaking. These allocations, in net weight, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> will be based on IPHC's recommended 2025 Area 2A FCEY and will be subject to acceptance by the Secretary of State with concurrence by the Secretary of Commerce. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  “Net weight” of a Pacific halibut means the weight of Pacific halibut that is without gills and entrails, head-off, washed, and without ice and slime. If a Pacific halibut is weighed with the head on or with ice and slime, the required conversion factors for calculating net weight are a 2 percent deduction for ice and slime and a 10 percent deduction for the head (IPHC Fisheries Regulations, 2024). </FTNT> Since 1988, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) has developed a CSP that allocates the IPHC regulatory Area 2A Pacific halibut FCEY between treaty Tribal and non-Tribal harvesters and among non-Tribal commercial and recreational (sport) fisheries. NMFS has implemented at 50 CFR 300.63 <E T="03">et seq.</E> certain provisions of the CSP and implemented annual rules containing annual management measures consistent with the CSP. In 1995, the Council recommended and NMFS approved a long-term Area 2A CSP (60 FR 14651, March 20, 1995). NMFS has been approving adjustments to the Area 2A CSP based on Council recommendations each year to address the changing needs of these fisheries. While the full CSP is not published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , it is made available on the Council website. This rule proposes to approve the changes the Council recommended at its November 2024 meeting to the 2025 Area 2A CSP. The recommended changes to the 2025 CSP were developed through the Council's public process over multiple meetings. This rule also proposes to implement recreational Pacific halibut fishery management measures for 2025, which include season opening and closing dates consistent with 2025 CSP as modified by the Council's November 2024 recommendations. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Proposed Changes to the 2025 Area 2A Catch Sharing Plan</HD> Each year at the Council's September meeting, members of the public have an opportunity to propose changes to the CSP for consideration by the Council. At the September 2024 Council meeting, per the typical annual process, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) proposed changes to the CSP for the fisheries that occur off of their respective coasts. At its November 2024 meeting, the Council considered the results of State-sponsored workshops on the proposed changes to the CSP, along with public input provided at the September and November 2024 Council meetings, and made its recommendations for modifications to the CSP. NMFS proposes to approve all the Council's recommended changes to the CSP, which are discussed below. 1. The Council recommended changes to Section 5.6.4 of the Catch Sharing Plan regarding the notice and timing of non-tribal directed commercial fishery sequential season openings. Specifically, the Council recommended that NMFS notice the dates for the first three openers in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> prior to the start of the season for the non-Tribal directed commercial fishery, with two weeks between first and second opener and no more than 3 weeks between any following openers. 2. In section 6.9.2(d) of the CSP, the Council recommended that NMFS revise the season structure in the Washington North Coast subarea to allow for fishing on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend if the 2A FCEY is at least 1.3 million pounds (lb) or 589.7 metric tons (mt) and up to 3 days per week in June if the Area 2A FCEY is less than 1.3 million lb (589.7 mt). 2. In section 6.9.3(d) of the CSP, the Council recommended that NMFS revise the season structure in the Washington South Coast subarea to include the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. 3. In section 6.10(d) of the CSP, the Council recommended that NMFS revise the season structure in the Columbia River subarea to allow for 2 additional days be added to the 3- ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━