Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Gulf of Alaska; Final 2025 and 2026 Harvest Specifications for Groundfish

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 679</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250312-0037]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RTID 0648-XE336</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Gulf of Alaska; Final 2025 and 2026 Harvest Specifications for Groundfish</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; harvest specifications and closures. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications, apportionments, and Pacific halibut prohibited species catch limits for the groundfish fishery of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). This action is necessary to establish harvest limits for groundfish during the remainder of the 2025 and the start of the 2026 fishing years and to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska (FMP). The intended effect of this action is to conserve and manage the groundfish resources in the GOA in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Harvest specifications and closures are effective from 1200 hours, Alaska local time (A.l.t.), March 18, 2025, through 1200 hours, A.l.t., March 17, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the Final Alaska Groundfish Harvest Specifications Environmental Impact Statement (Final EIS), Record of Decision (ROD), and the annual Supplementary Information Reports (SIRs) to the EIS prepared for this action are available at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> The 2024 Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) report for the groundfish resources of the GOA, dated November 2024, and SAFE reports for previous years are available from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) at 1007 West Third Avenue, Suite 400, Anchorage, AK 99501, phone 907-271-2809, or from the NMFS website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/population-assessments/north-pacific-groundfish-stock-assessments-and-fishery-evaluation.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Abby Jahn, 907-586-7228. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS manages the GOA groundfish fisheries in the exclusive economic zone of the GOA under the FMP. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) prepared and recommended the FMP under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Regulations governing U.S. fisheries and implementing the FMP appear at 50 CFR parts 600, 679, and 680. The FMP and its implementing regulations require that NMFS, after consultation with the Council, specify the total allowable catch (TAC) for each target species, the sum of which must be within the optimum yield (OY) range of 116,000 to 800,000 metric tons (mt) (§§ 679.20(a)(1)(i)(B) and 679.20(a)(2)). Section 679.20(c)(1) further requires that NMFS publish and solicit public comment on proposed annual TACs and apportionments thereof, Pacific halibut prohibited species catch (PSC) limits, and seasonal allowances of pollock and Pacific cod. Upon consideration of those public comments, NMFS must publish a notification of final harvest specifications for up to 2 fishing years as annual TACs and apportionments, Pacific halibut PSC limits, and seasonal allowances of pollock and Pacific cod, per § 679.20(c)(3)(ii). The final harvest specifications set forth in tables 1 through 27 of this rule reflect the outcome of this process, as required at § 679.20(c). The proposed 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications for groundfish of the GOA and Pacific halibut PSC limits were published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 29, 2024 (89 FR 94680). Comments were invited and accepted through December 30, 2024. NMFS received one letter raising one distinct comment during the public comment period for the proposed GOA groundfish harvest specifications. No changes were made in this rule in response to the comment. NMFS's response to the comment is included in the <E T="03">Comments and Responses</E> section of this rule. In December 2024, NMFS consulted with the Council regarding the 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications. After considering public comment at public meetings and comments received for the proposed rule, as well as current biological, ecosystem, socioeconomic, and harvest data, NMFS is implementing the final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications, as recommended by the Council but with reductions to account for a new directed octopus fishery established by the State of Alaska (“State”) in December 2024. This results in a 16 mt reduction from the Council recommended TACs. For 2025, the sum of the TAC amounts is 514,619 mt. For 2026, the sum of the TAC amounts is 464,741 mt. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Other Actions Affecting the 2025 and 2026 Harvest Specifications</HD> In December 2024, the Alaska Board of Fisheries considered several proposals for management of fishing in State waters that could have affected the GOA groundfish harvest specifications. The BOF ultimately adopted one proposal, Proposal 43, for implementation starting in the 2025 fishing year. Proposal 43 establishes a directed octopus fishery in State waters in Prince William Sound (PWS). NMFS is setting the TAC to account for this State fishery by subtracting the maximum guideline harvest range (GHR) of 16 mt (35,000 pounds (lbs) rounded) from the acceptable biological catch (ABC) recommended by the SSC. This is to ensure that the sum of octopus removals from Federal and State waters do not exceed the GOA-wide ABC recommendation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">ABC and TAC Specifications</HD> In December 2024, the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), its Advisory Panel (AP), and the Council reviewed the most recent biological, ecosystem, socioeconomic, and harvest information about the condition of the GOA groundfish stocks. The Council's GOA Groundfish Plan Team (Plan Team) compiled and presented this information in the 2024 SAFE report for the GOA groundfish fisheries, dated November 2024 (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ). The SAFE report contains a review of the latest scientific analyses and estimates of each species' biomass and past, present, and possible future condition of the stocks and groundfish fisheries off Alaska. The SAFE report also contains an economic summary informed by the Economic SAFE and ecosystem information summarized from the Ecosystem Status Report (ESR). The ESRs compile and summarize information about the status of the Alaska marine ecosystems for the Plan Team, SSC, AP, Council, NMFS, and the public, and they are updated annually. The ESRs include ecosystem report cards, ecosystem assessments, and ecosystem status indicators ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> climate indices, sea surface temperature), which together provide context for ecosystem-based fisheries management in Alaska. The ESRs inform stock assessments and are integrated into the annual harvest recommendations through inclusion in stock assessments, including stock-specific risk tables. The ESRs provide context for the SSC's recommendations for overfishing limits (OFLs) and ABCs, as well as for the Council's TAC recommendations. The SAFE reports and the ESRs are presented to the Plan Team and at the October and December Council meetings before the SSC, AP, and Council make groundfish harvest recommendations and aid NMFS in implementing these annual groundfish harvest specifications. An ESR is prepared for the GOA ecosystem, the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem, and Aleutian Islands ecosystem. The SAFE report also includes information on the economic condition of the groundfish fisheries off Alaska through the Economic Status Report. The SAFE report provides information to the Council and NMFS for recommending and setting, respectively, annual harvest levels for each stock, and for documenting significant trends or changes in the resource, marine ecosystems, and fisheries over time. From these data and analyses, the Plan Team recommends, and the SSC sets, an OFL and ABC for each species and species group. The 2024 SAFE report was made available for public review during the public comment period for the proposed harvest specifications. In previous years, the greatest changes from the proposed to the final harvest specifications were based on recent NMFS stock surveys, which provide updated estimates of stock biomass and spatial distribution, and changes to the models used for producing stock assessments. At the November 2024 Plan Team meeting, NMFS scientists presented updated and new survey results, changes to stock assessment models, and accompanying stock assessment estimates for groundfish species and species groups that are included in the 2024 SAFE report per the stock assessment schedule found in the 2024 SAFE report introduction. The SSC reviewed this information at the December 2024 Council meeting. Changes from the proposed to the final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications are discussed below. The final 2025 and 2026 OFLs and ABCs are based on the 2024 SAFE report. The AP and the Council also review the data and analyses, including the 2024 SAFE report, as well as the Plan Team and SSC recommendations for OFLs and ABCs to develop their TAC recommendations. The FMP specifies the formulas, or tiers, for computing OFLs and ABCs. The formulas applicable to a particular stock or stock complex are determined by the level of reliable information available to fisheries scientists. This information is categorized into a successive series of six tiers to define OFL and ABC amounts, with Tier 1 representing the highest level of info ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 155k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━