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

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250327-0056]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule approves changes to the Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan (CSP) for the International Pacific Halibut Commission's (IPHC) regulatory Area 2A off Washington, Oregon, and California. In addition, the rule implements new management measures for the 2025 recreational fisheries in Area 2A, including the recreational fishery season open dates and subarea allocations for Area 2A. This action also adds a new inseason management provision that explicitly allows for the inseason transfer of 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, while providing additional angler opportunity to achieve the Area 2A allocation set by the IPHC. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective April 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This rule is accessible via the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov/.</E> Background information is available at the NMFS West Coast Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/west-coast</E> and the Catch Sharing Plan and other related documents at the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council) website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</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 Halibut Act gives relevant regional fishery management councils the authority to develop regulations governing Pacific halibut fishing in U.S. waters that are in addition to, and not in conflict with, approved IPHC regulations, which “shall only be implemented with the approval of the Secretary.” ( <E T="03">Id.</E> 773c(c)). The statute also provides that 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. ( <E T="03">Id.</E> 773b). The annual management measures are then published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (50 CFR 300.62). At its annual meeting held January 27-31, 2025, the IPHC adopted an Area 2A catch limit, also known as the fishery constant exploitation yield (FCEY), of 1.53 million pounds (lb) or 694.0 metric tons (mt) of Pacific halibut. The FCEY was derived from the total constant exploitation yield (TCEY) of 1.65 million lb (748.4 mt) for Area 2A, which includes commercial discards and bycatch estimates calculated using a formula developed by the IPHC. The Area 2A TECY, FCEY and commercial and recreational fishery allocations (in net weight  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> ) were adopted by the IPHC and were accepted by the Secretary of State, with concurrence from the Secretary of Commerce on March 14, 2025. This final rule implements the 2025 recreational fishery subarea allocations ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Washington North Coast subarea, Oregon Central Coast subarea, Northern California Coast subarea) for Area 2A based on the 2025 Area 2A FCEY, which was adopted by the IPHC and published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 21, 2025 (90 FR 13293). Additionally, the March 21, 2025, final rule (90 FR 13293) contains annual domestic management measures ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> logbook requirements) and IPHC regulations that are published each year under NMFS's authority to implement the Halibut Convention (50 CFR 300.62). <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” ( <E T="03">https://www.iphc.int/uploads/2025/02/IPHC-Fishery-Regulations-2025-5-Feb-2025.pdf</E> ). </FTNT> Since 1988, the CSP has allocated the IPHC regulatory Area 2A Pacific halibut FCEY between treaty Tribal and non-Tribal harvesters and among non-Tribal commercial and recreational (sport) fisheries. At 50 CFR 300.63 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> NMFS has implemented certain provisions of the CSP. NMFS also issues rules containing annual management measures consistent with the CSP. In 1995, a long-term Area 2A CSP took effect (60 FR 14651, March 20, 1995). NMFS has been promulgating 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: <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org/managed_fishery/pacific-halibut/.</E> This rule finalizes changes to the 2025 Area 2A CSP, which were developed through the Council's public process over multiple meetings. The changes to the CSP were detailed in the proposed rule and are not repeated here (89 FR 104959, 104960-104961 (December 26, 2024)). This rule also implements the 2025 recreational Pacific halibut fishery management measures, which include season opening and closing dates, bag limits, and a new inseason provision for the California recreational subareas that allows for the transfer of any projected unused Northern California subarea allocation to the South of Point Arena subarea, prior to or by the end of the Northern California fishing season (November 15). These management measures are consistent with the recommendations made by the Council for the 2025 CSP and the season dates recommended by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) during the proposed rule's public comment period. <HD SOURCE="HD2">2025 Annual Recreational Management Measures</HD> This rule finalizes recreational fishery management measures consistent with the revisions to the 2025 CSP. If there is any discrepancy between the CSP and regulations, the regulations take precedence. These provisions may be modified through inseason action consistent with 50 CFR 300.63(c). All recreational fishing in Area 2A is managed on a “port of landing” basis, whereby any halibut landed into a port counts toward the allocation for the area in which that port is located, and the regulations governing the area of landing apply, regardless of the specific area of catch. The 2025 recreational fishing subareas, allocations (in net weight), fishing dates, and daily bag limits are described below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Washington Puget Sound and the U.S. Convention Waters in the Strait of Juan de Fuca</HD> The Pacific halibut recreational fishing allocation for landings into ports in Puget Sound and the U.S. waters in the Strait of Juan de Fuca subarea is 79,772 lb (36.2 mt). (a) The Puget Sound subarea is open 7 days a week from April 3 through June 30. If the subarea allocation remains for at least another full day of fishing after June 30, NMFS may take inseason action to reopen the fishery in August, up to 7 days per week, through September. The subarea will close when there is not sufficient subarea allocation for another full day of fishing. If the Puget Sound subarea season is closed prior to September 30 and there is insufficient allocation for an additional fishing day, then any remaining Puget Sound subarea allocation may be transferred inseason to another Washington coastal subarea by NMFS. Any inseason action, including closures and intrastate subarea allocation transfers, will be published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> in accordance with 50 CFR 300.63(c)(6)(iii) and provided/announced on the NMFS hotline at (206 526-6667 or (800) 662-9825. (b) The daily bag limit is one Pacific halibut of any size per person. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Washington North Coast Subarea</HD> The allocation for landings into ports in the Washington North Coast subarea is 130,409 lb (59.2 mt). (a) The Washington North Coast fishery is open: • May 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday); • May 23, 24, 25 (Friday, Saturday, Sunday—Memorial Day weekend); • May 29, 30, 31 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday); and • June 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday). If the subarea allocation remains for at least another full day of fishing after June 30, NMFS may take inseason action to reopen the fishery in August, up to 7 days per week, through September. The area will be closed when there is not sufficient subarea allocation for another full day of fishing. If the fishery is closed prior to September 30 and there is insufficient allocation remaining to reop ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━