Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; Cook Inlet; Proposed 2025 Harvest Specifications for Salmon

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 679</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250331-0057; RTID 0648-XE507]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska; Cook Inlet; Proposed 2025 Harvest Specifications for Salmon</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; harvest specifications and request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes 2025 harvest specifications for the salmon fishery of the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone (EEZ) Area. This action is necessary to establish harvest limits for salmon during the 2025 fishing year and to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Fishery Management Plan for Salmon Fisheries in the EEZ off Alaska (Salmon FMP). The intended effect of this action is to conserve and manage the salmon resources in Cook Inlet EEZ Area in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by May 5, 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/NOAA-NMFS-2025-0017.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-0017, by any 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-2025-0017 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 Gretchen Harrington, Assistant Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region, NMFS. Mail comments to P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802-1668. <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). Electronic copies of the draft Environmental Assessment for the Harvest Specifications of the Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries in the EEZ Off Alaska (EA); and the draft Finding of No Significant Impact prepared for this action are available from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> The Environmental Assessment (EA)/Regulatory Impact Review for amendment 16 (A16 EA/RIR) to the Salmon FMP are available from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/amendment-16-fmp-salmon-fisheries-alaska.</E> A preliminary version of the Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) was presented at the February 2025 North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and NMFS incorporated the recommendations of the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and posted the final SAFE at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/population-assessments/alaska-stock-assessments.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Adam Zaleski, 907-206-5802, <E T="03">adam.zaleski@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS prepared the Salmon 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 Salmon FMP appear at 50 CFR parts 600 and 679. The proposed harvest specifications include catch limits that NMFS could implement—subject to further consideration after public comment. Regulations at 50 CFR 679.118(b) require that NMFS consider public comment on the proposed harvest specifications and publish the final harvest specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The final harvest specifications will take effect only after publication of a final rule for the instant action. NMFS would publish the final 2025 harvest specifications after: (1) considering comments received within the comment period (see <E T="02">DATES</E> ); (2) considering information presented in the draft EA (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ); and (3) considering information presented in the final 2025 SAFE report prepared for the 2025 Cook Inlet EEZ Area salmon fisheries. See 50 CFR 679.118(b)(2) for additional considerations regarding the final harvest specifications. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed 2025 Overfishing Limit (OFL), Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC), and Total Allowable Catch (TAC) Specifications</HD> NMFS compiled and presented the preliminary 2025 SAFE report for the Cook Inlet EEZ Area salmon stocks and stock complexes, dated January 2025 (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) at the February Council meeting. The SAFE report contains a review of the latest scientific analyses and estimates of biological parameters for seven stocks of Pacific salmon and provides recommendations to the SSC regarding the appropriate tiers for each stock, the status determination criteria (SDC) that will be used to evaluate overfishing (including OFL), and the appropriate ABC, which acts as a ceiling when NMFS specifies TACs. The Salmon FMP specifies methods to calculate OFLs and ABCs for each stock's tier in the Cook Inlet EEZ salmon fishery, with annual tier recommendations provided in the SAFE report. The tiers applicable to a particular stock or stock complex are determined by the level of reliable information available. Tier 1 stocks have the highest level of information quality available, while Tier 3 stocks have the lowest level of information quality available. NMFS uses this tier structure to calculate OFLs and ABCs for each salmon stock or stock complex (a stock complex is an aggregate of multiple stocks of a species) according to the methods specified in the Salmon FMP. For Tier 1 stocks, as defined in the Salmon FMP, the SAFE report relies on forecasts of the coming year's salmon runs as the basis for the recommended OFLs and ABCs, which are included in the 2025 SAFE report. For Tier 1 stocks, SDC and harvest specifications are calculated in terms of potential yield for the Cook Inlet EEZ Area. The potential yield is the total forecasted run size minus the number of salmon required to achieve spawning escapement targets and the estimated mortality from other sources including in other fisheries. For 2025, no stocks were recommended to be Tier 2. For Tier 3 stocks, as defined in the Salmon FMP, NMFS used fishery catch estimates from prior years to inform the 2025 harvest specifications. The SSC and Council reviewed NMFS's preliminary 2025 SAFE report for the Cook Inlet EEZ Area salmon fishery in February 2025. From these data and analyses, the SSC recommended an OFL and ABC for each salmon stock and stock complex. After considering the SSC's recommendations, the Council unanimously took action to recommend TACs for the Cook Inlet EEZ Area salmon fishery. Through this action, NMFS is proposing to implement the OFLs and ABCs recommended by the SSC and TACs consistent with the Council's recommendations. Following the February Council meeting, NMFS updated the 2025 SAFE report to incorporate SSC recommendations (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ). The proposed specifications are based on SSC recommendations contained in the final 2025 SAFE report, which represents the best scientific information available on the biological condition of salmon stocks in Cook Inlet and other social and economic considerations. NMFS is required to publish and solicit public comment on proposed annual specifications as soon as practicable after consultation with the Council (see 50 CFR 679.118(b)(1)) and the proposed harvest specifications in table 1 of this rulemaking satisfy these requirements. The recommended specifications of OFL, ABC, and TAC are consistent with the harvest strategy outlined in the Salmon FMP, the biological condition of salmon as described in the 2025 SAFE report, SSC and Council recommendations, and the Magnuson-Stevens Act, including the National Standards. The recommended ABCs would be less than the OFLs for each stock or stock complex and the TACs would be set equal to the aggregate ABCs for each species (table 1). Because it is not practicable to differentiate among stocks of the same species during the fishing season, NMFS will rely on its experience managing the fishery in 2024 and its inseason management tools to ensure ABC is not exceeded for any stock or stock complex. The proposed 2025 OFLs, ABCs, and TACs are based on the best scientific information available—primarily the 2025 SAFE report. The SAFE report was subject to peer review by the SSC, which recommended the ABCs that NMFS proposes in table 1, consistent with 50 CFR 600.310(f)(3) and 600.315(c) through (d). The proposed TACs are set equal to the proposed ABCs and are less than the OFLs for all salmon stocks or stock complexes. These proposed OFLs, ABCs, and TACs are subject to change pending consideration of public comment. <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,12,12,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Proposed 2025 Cook Inlet EEZ Area Salmon OFLs, ABCs, and TACs in Numbers of Fish</TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> Stock or stock complex  <SU>1</SU> </CHED> <CHED H="1">OFL</CHED> <CHED H="1">ABC</CH ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━