Pacific Halibut Fisheries; Catch Sharing Plan; 2025 Annual Management Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250314-0038; RTID 0648-XE602]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pacific Halibut Fisheries; Catch Sharing Plan; 2025 Annual 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, NOAA, on behalf of the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), publishes as regulations the 2025 annual management measures governing the Pacific halibut fishery that have been recommended by the IPHC and accepted by the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce. These measures are intended to enhance the conservation of Pacific halibut and further the goals and objectives of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The IPHC's 2025 annual management measures became effective March 14, 2025. The 2025 management measures are effective until superseded. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Additional requests for information regarding this action may be obtained by contacting the International Pacific Halibut Commission, 2320 W. Commodore Way, Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98199-1287; or Sustainable Fisheries Division, NMFS Alaska Region, P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802; or Sustainable Fisheries Division, NMFS West Coast Region, 501 West Ocean Blvd., Suite 4200, Long Beach, CA 90802. This final rule also is accessible via the internet at the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> identified by docket number NOAA-NMFS-2025-0021. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For Convention waters off Alaska, Kurt Iverson, 907-586-7210; or, for Convention waters off the U.S. West Coast, Heather Fitch, 360-867-8608. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The IPHC has recommended regulations that would govern the Pacific halibut fishery in 2025, pursuant to the Convention between Canada and the United States for the Preservation of the Halibut Fishery of the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea (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). As provided by the Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (Halibut Act), 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. 16 U.S.C. 773b. The Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce, accepted the 2025 IPHC Fishery Regulations on March 14, 2025 thereby making them effective. The Halibut Act provides the Secretary of Commerce with the authority and general responsibility to carry out the requirements of the Convention and the Halibut Act. The PFMC and NPFMC may develop, and the Secretary of Commerce may implement, regulations governing harvesting privileges among U.S. fishermen in U.S. waters that are in addition to, and not in conflict with, approved IPHC regulations. The NPFMC has exercised this authority in developing halibut management programs for three fisheries that harvest halibut off Alaska: the subsistence, sport, and commercial fisheries. The PFMC has exercised this authority by developing a catch sharing plan governing the allocation of halibut and management of sport (recreational) and commercial halibut fisheries on the U.S. West Coast. The IPHC apportions catch limits for the Pacific halibut fishery among regulatory areas (Figure 1): Area 2A (Oregon, Washington, and California), Area 2B (British Columbia), Area 2C (Southeast Alaska), Area 3A (Central Gulf of Alaska), Area 3B (Western Gulf of Alaska), and Area 4 (which is further divided into 5 areas, 4A through 4E, in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands of Western Alaska). Subsistence and sport halibut fishery regulations for Alaska, and Tribal, sport, and non-Tribal directed commercial halibut fishery regulations for Area 2A, are codified at 50 CFR part 300. Commercial halibut fisheries off Alaska are subject to regulations resulting from the Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) Program, the Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program (50 CFR part 679), and the area-specific catch sharing plans for Areas 2C, 3A, and Areas 4C, 4D, and 4E, respectively. The NPFMC implemented a catch sharing plan among commercial IFQ and CDQ halibut fisheries in IPHC Regulatory Areas 4C, 4D, and 4E (Area 4, Western Alaska) through rulemaking, and the Secretary of Commerce approved the plan on March 20, 1996 (61 FR 11337). The Area 4 catch sharing plan regulations are codified at 50 CFR 300.65. New annual regulations pertaining to the Area 4 catch sharing plan also may be implemented through IPHC action, subject to acceptance by the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce. The NPFMC recommended and NMFS implemented through rulemaking a catch sharing plan for commercial IFQ and guided sport (charter) halibut fisheries in IPHC Regulatory Areas 2C and 3A on January 13, 2014 (78 FR 75844, December 12, 2013). The Area 2C and 3A catch sharing plan regulations are codified at 50 CFR 300.65. The catch sharing plan defines an annual process for allocating halibut between the commercial and charter fisheries so that each sector's allocation varies in proportion to halibut abundance, specifies a public process for setting annual management measures, and authorizes limited annual leases of commercial IFQ for use in the charter fishery as guided angler fish (GAF). The IPHC held its annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, from January 27 through 31, 2025, and recommended a number of changes to the previous IPHC regulations (89 FR 19275, March 18, 2024). On March 14, 2025, the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce, accepted the annual management measures, including the following changes to section 5, section 9, and section 28 of the 2025 IPHC Fishery Regulations: 1. New halibut catch limits in all regulatory areas. The catch limits are presented in two tables in section 5. They distinguish between limits resulting from Commission decisions and limits that result from domestic catch sharing plans that have been developed by the respective United States and Canada Governments; 2. New commercial fishery season dates and start time in section 9; and 3. New management measures for Area 2C and Area 3A guided sport fisheries in section 28. Pursuant to regulations at 50 CFR 300.62, the 2025 annual management measures are published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> in this action to provide notice of their regulatory effectiveness and to inform persons subject to the regulations of their restrictions and requirements. Because NMFS publishes the IPHC's annual management measures in this action, and those measures are applicable to the entire Convention area, this action includes some provisions relating to Canadian fishing and fisheries. In separate actions, NMFS may implement more restrictive regulations for the U.S. halibut fishery or components of it; therefore, anglers are advised to check the current Federal and IPHC regulations prior to fishing. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Catch Limits</HD> The IPHC recommended to the governments of Canada and the United States a 2025 coastwide mortality limit, also called the Total Constant Exploitation Yield (TCEY), of 29,720,000 pounds (lb) (13,480 metric tons (mt)). The IPHC refers to catch limits as Fishery Constant Exploitation Yield (FCEY), which are derived from the TCEY by directed fisheries that are specified in the IPHC regulations and are subject to area-specific catch agreements among the domestic parties. Coastwide, the 2025 TCEY decreased 15.8 percent from the FCEY implemented in 2024. Except for Area 2A, which remained at the same level as has been in place since 2019, the FCEY in each regulatory area decreased relative to the 2024 mortality limit. A description of the process the IPHC used to set these mortality limits and catch limits follows. For the upcoming 2025 halibut fishing year, the IPHC conducted its annual stock assessment using a range of updated data sources as described in detail in the IPHC overview of data sources for the Pacific halibut stock assessment, harvest policy, and related analyses (IPHC-2025-AM101-R; available at <E T="03">https://www.iphc.int</E> ). To evaluate the Pacific halibut stock, the IPHC uses an “ensemble” of 4 equally weighted models: 2 long time-series models incorporating data from 1888 to the present and 2 short time-series models incorporating data from 1992 to the present. For each time-series, the two models include data that are either divided by four geographical regions or aggregated into coastwide summaries. These models incorporate data through 2024 from the IPHC Fishery Independent Setline Survey (FISS); the commercial halibut fishery; the NMFS Eastern Bering Sea trawl survey; length and weight-at-age and male/female sex ratio estimates by region in the directed commercial fisheries and in the FISS; and age distribution information for bycatch, sport, and sublegal discard removals. The results of the ensemble models are integrated and incorporate uncertainty in natural mortality rates, environmental effects on recruitment, and other structural and parameter categories, consistent with practices in place since 2012. The data and assessment models used by the IPHC are reviewed by the IPHC's Scientific Review Board, comprised of non-IPHC ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 104k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━