Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; Management Measures for the Area 2A Pacific Halibut Directed Commercial Fishery

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250402-0060; RTID 0648-BN54]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pacific Halibut Fisheries of the West Coast; Management Measures for the Area 2A Pacific Halibut Directed Commercial Fishery</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; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS is proposing annual management measures for the 2025 non-Tribal directed commercial Pacific halibut fishery that operates south of Point Chehalis, WA, (lat. 46°53.30′ N) in the International Pacific Halibut Commission's (IPHC) regulatory Area 2A off Washington, Oregon, and California. Annual management measures include fishing periods and fishing period limits. NMFS is also proposing to modify permit deadlines for all Area 2A non-Tribal commercial fisheries and modify inseason action announcement procedures for the Area 2A non-Tribal directed commercial fishery. These actions are intended to conserve Pacific halibut and provide fishing opportunity where available. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by May 8, 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-2025-0014.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-0014, by any of the following methods: • <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 type NOAA-NMFS-2025-0014 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method 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). <E T="03">Docket:</E> This proposed rule is accessible at the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information and documents are available at the NMFS West Coast Region Pacific Halibut Directed Commercial Fishery website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2025-pacific-halibut-directed-commercial-fishery</E> and at the Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Other comments received may be accessed through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Heather Fitch, West Coast Region, NMFS, (360) 867-8608, <E T="03">heather.fitch@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED"> SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: </HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Northern Pacific Halibut Act of 1982 (16 U.S.C. 773-773k) (Halibut Act) gives the Secretary of Commerce the responsibility of 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 (Convention), signed at Ottawa, Ontario, on March 2, 1953, as amended by a Protocol Amending the Convention (March 29, 1979). As provided in the Halibut Act at 16 U.S.C. 773b, 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. Following acceptance by the Secretary of State, the annual management measures promulgated by the IPHC are published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to provide notice of their immediate regulatory effectiveness and to inform persons subject to the regulations of their restrictions and requirements (50 CFR 300.62). The Halibut Act also provides that Regional Fishery Management Councils may develop, and the Secretary of Commerce may implement, regulations governing Pacific halibut fishing in U.S. waters that are in addition to, and not in conflict with, approved IPHC regulations (16 U.S.C. 773c(c)). The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) developed a catch sharing plan guiding the allocation of halibut across the various sectors for the IPHC's regulatory Area 2A. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Fishery Allocation</HD> At its annual meeting held January 27-31, 2024, the IPHC adopted an Area 2A catch limit, called a fishery constant exploitation yield (FCEY), of 1.53 million pounds (694 metric tons (mt)), net weight ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the weight of Pacific halibut that is without gills and entrails, head-off, washed, and without ice and slime) of Pacific halibut. Upon acceptance by the Secretary of State, with concurrence from the Secretary of Commerce, the fishery allocations adopted by the IPHC will be published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , in accordance with 50 CFR 300.62. The FCEY was derived from the total constant exploitation yield (TCEY) of 1.65 million pounds (748 mt), net weight, for Area 2A, which includes commercial discards and bycatch projections calculated using a formula developed by the IPHC. Based on the FCEY for Area 2A and the allocation framework in the Council's catch sharing plan the non-Tribal directed commercial fishing allocation would be 259,515 pounds (118 mt), net weight for the 2025 fishing season. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Fishing Periods</HD> Fishing periods, often referred to as fishery openers, are the time during the annual commercial halibut season when fishing for non-Tribal directed commercial Pacific halibut in Area 2A is allowed. At its November 2024 meeting, the Council discussed the 2025 directed commercial season structure and recommended that NMFS establish fishing periods similar to those in the previous year. Specifically, the Council recommended that the directed commercial fishery operate as a series of 3-day (58-hour) openings, with the first fishing period beginning at 8 a.m. (0800) Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) on the fourth Tuesday in June and ending at 6 p.m. (1800) PDT on Thursday of that week, and the second fishing period occurring 2 weeks later. The Council also recommended that, if there is a third fishing period, it would aim to be 2 weeks later, but no more than 3 weeks after the second fishing, and that any subsequent fishing periods would occur as soon as possible. In addition, the Council requested that all potential season opening dates be specified at the outset of the fishing season. Based on the Council's recommendations, NMFS is proposing the first 2025 directed commercial fishery fishing period to begin on June 24, 2025, at 8 a.m. PDT and closing on June 26, 2025, at 6 p.m. PDT. The second fishing period would occur 2 weeks later, beginning on July 8, 2025, at 8 a.m. PDT and closing on July 10, 2025, at 6 p.m. PDT. If another fishing period is necessary to reach attainment of the allocation, NMFS is proposing that it would open, by inseason action, a third fishing period occurring 2 weeks after the second fishing period, beginning on July 22, 2025 at 8 a.m. PDT and closing on July 24, 2025 at 6 p.m. PDT. If subsequent fishing periods would be necessary to reach the allocation, they would follow the same pattern, occurring 2 weeks after the previous fishing period, beginning on August 5, August 12, et cetera, as announced by inseason action. If for any reason a fishing period is not opened as scheduled, NMFS would skip a fishing period in order to follow the prescribed schedule. After each fishing period, NMFS will assess the fishery harvest to date and determine if the fishery has attained the allocation. If harvest estimates indicate the allocation has not been reached, NMFS may determine that subsequent fishing period(s) are necessary to attain the allocation. The third and subsequent fishing periods would be added through inseason action. Fishing periods may be adjusted inseason consistent with 50 CFR 300.63. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Fishing Period Limits</HD> A fishing period limit, also called a vessel catch limit, is the maximum amount of Pacific halibut that may be retained and landed by a vessel during one fishing period. Each vessel may retain no more than the current fishing period limit of Pacific halibut for its vessel class, which is determined by vessel length. NMFS is proposing directed commercial fishing period limits, shown in table 1 below, for the first two fishing periods, based on the 2025 directed fishery allocation, the number of permits issued by vessel size class, and participation and catch rates from prior years, in accordance with 50 CFR 300.63(e)(1)(ii). For the 2025 fishing season, NMFS received 171 applications across 8 vessel size classes (A-H). Based on this number of permits and past fishery participation, NMFS anticipates similar vessel participation as has occurred in previous years. Therefore, NMFS is proposing that fishing period limits be grouped the same way as was done in previous years. The directed commercial fishery allocation for 2025 is similar to the allocations adopted for the previous 4 years. The average catch per vessel in 2024 was similar to those in 2021 and 2022, but lower than in 2023. Therefore, given the similar allocations and given that expected participation levels are similar to those in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━