Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 35; Notice of Availability

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Parts 600 and 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE525]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 35; Notice of Availability</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability of proposed fishery management plan amendment; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces that the Pacific Fishery Management Council (referred to as “the Council”) has submitted amendment 35 to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (PCGFMP) to the Secretary of Commerce for review. If approved, amendment 35 would define stocks that are in need of conservation and management, consistent with the provisions and guidelines of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). Amendment 35 would define stocks for eight species within the fishery management unit. These species were prioritized because they are scheduled for stock assessments in 2025 or in 2027. Amendment 35 is necessary for NMFS to make stock status determinations, which in turn will help prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, and achieve optimum yield. Amendment 35 is administrative in nature and does not change harvest levels or timing and location of fishing, nor does it revise the goals and objectives or the management frameworks of the PCGFMP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on amendment 35 must be received no later than May 4, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA- NMFS-2025-0012, 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 enter NOAA-NMFS-2025-0012 in the Search box. Click the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments must be submitted by the above method to ensure that the comments are received, documented, and considered by NMFS. 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. All comments received are a part of the public record and NMFS will post 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 is publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access</HD> This rulemaking 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 including an analysis for this action (referred to as “Analysis”), which addresses the statutory requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act are available from the Pacific Fishery Management Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Abbie Moyer, Fishery Management Specialist, at 206-305-9601 or <E T="03">abbie.moyer@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS manages the groundfish fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) seaward of Washington, Oregon, and California under the PCGFMP. The Council prepared and NMFS implemented the PCGFMP under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> and by regulations at 50 CFR parts 600 and 660. The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that each regional fishery management council submit any fishery management plan (FMP) or plan amendment it prepares to NMFS for review and approval, disapproval, or partial approval by the Secretary of Commerce. The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires that NMFS, upon receiving an FMP or amendment, immediately publish notification that the FMP or amendment is available for public review and comment. This notification announces that the proposed amendment 35 to the PCGFMP is available for public review and comment. NMFS will consider the public comments received during the comment period described above in determining whether to approve, partially approve, or disapprove amendment 35 to the PCGFMP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> In 2021, NMFS was unable to make stock status determinations for stocks that were assessed in 2021, because the “stocks” for which the Council was expecting status determinations did not exist in the PCGFMP. At that time, the PCGFMP contained a list of over 80 species and did not describe whether each species is a single stock within the fishery management unit or if it is multiple ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> regional) stocks. NMFS requested that the Council undertake amendment 31 to define stocks for 14 of those species listed in the PCGFMP at its March 8-14, 2022 meeting in San Jose, California. The Council prioritized a sub-set of species, because they were subject to stock assessments in 2021 or were subject to stock assessments in 2023, and were therefore the most likely candidates to be the subject of NMFS' forthcoming status determinations, which are often based on new assessments. Amendment 31 was published on November 16, 2023 (88 FR 78677). At its November 13-18, 2024 meeting in Costa Mesa, California, the Council recommended stock definitions for eight species of Pacific Coast groundfish (chilipepper rockfish, English sole, redbanded rockfish, rougheye/blackspotted rockfish (a cryptic pair), widow rockfish, yellowtail rockfish, and yelloweye rockfish) that will have stock assessments in 2025 or in 2027 (priority species) so that NMFS may be able to make stock status determinations. Amendment 35 would define stocks for eight species within the fishery management unit (FMU; the jurisdiction of the FMP from 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore between the United States border with Canada and the United States border with Mexico, which may also be referred to as “coastwide”) that require conservation and management. The goal of this process is to create stock definitions for all Pacific coast groundfish species in need of conservation and management. Given time constraints, this process to develop stock definitions for all managed Pacific coast groundfish species is a multi-phase process. The Council is pursuing a process for stock definitions for the remaining species in the PCGFMP under another action. The current proposed amendment 35 overlaps with that action but will allow NMFS to make stock status determinations and allow the Council to initiate the 2027-2028 biennial harvest specifications and management measure process based upon new stock definitions for those species assessed in 2025. This amendment is administrative in nature, and the economic impacts, if any, will come when stock assessments are completed, the status of the stocks are determined by NMFS, and appropriate fishery management actions are taken by the Council. During the development of amendment 31, the Council was advised by the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) that indications of population structure within a species should be an indicator of whether stock status should be determined at a finer scale than coastwide. Therefore, the Council evaluated a literature review of the best scientific and biological information available for each species, which is appended to the Analysis developed for amendment 35, available on the Council website (see Electronic Access section). The Analysis considered a single stock definition alternative for most of the priority species except yelloweye rockfish and yellowtail rockfish, as explained below. Generally, species with no known population structure, based on the literature review, or with known single-population structure based on genetic information, were considered under a single stock definition alternative. Based on best scientific information available along with past and recent fishery management and policy decisions, yellowtail rockfish was only considered under one alternative defining it as two stocks, one stock north of latitude (lat.) 40°10′ N and one stock south of lat. 40°10′ N. Yelloweye rockfish had no known indicators of population structure, but was noted by the SSC at the June 2024 Council meeting for having uncertainty in movement rates. Therefore, yelloweye rockfish was initially considered under two alternatives: one as a single stock definition and a second alternative defining it as two stocks (one as a Washington and Oregon stock and one as a California stock). The second alternative for yelloweye rockfish was later removed from further consideration due to insufficient scientific support to warrant stock structure finer than coastwide at the time. The Analysis assumed each alternative stock definition was adopted, then applied the PCGFMP's harvest specifications framework to each stock to assess some of the biological, socioeconomic, and fishery management trade-offs that might be expected from implementation of future management actions based on the alternative stock definitions. Impacts of these stock definitions are expected to flow from future, subsequent action(s) to set harvest specifications and management measures for the stock(s), but the Analysis provided information for the Council to consider in making its decision. The Council considered these t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━