Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; 2025 Atlantic Shark Commercial Fishing Year

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 635</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250410-0063; RTID 0648-XE484]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; 2025 Atlantic Shark Commercial Fishing Year</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this action, NMFS adjusts the base annual commercial quotas for the 2025 Atlantic shark commercial fishing year as allowable based on underharvests from the 2024 fishing year. The 2025 Atlantic shark commercial fishing year opened on January 1, 2025 under the base annual commercial quotas and default commercial retention limits. This action is necessary to provide additional fishing opportunities for commercial shark fishermen to harvest optimum yield from the Atlantic shark fisheries. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This temporary final rule is effective April 16, 2025 through December 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of this temporary final rule and supporting documents (including the annual Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report) are available from the HMS Management Division website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/atlantic-highly-migratory-species</E> or by contacting Ann Williamson at <E T="03">ann.williamson@noaa.gov</E> or 301-427-8503. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ann Williamson ( <E T="03">ann.williamson@noaa.gov</E> ), Guy DuBeck ( <E T="03">guy.dubeck@noaa.gov</E> ), or Karyl Brewster-Geisz ( <E T="03">karyl.brewster-geisz@noaa.gov</E> ) at 301-427-8503. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NMFS, on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce, is responsible for managing Federal HMS fisheries ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> tunas, swordfish, sharks, and billfish) pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and consistent with the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (16 U.S.C. 971 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). HMS are defined at 16 U.S.C. 1802 and the provisions for their management are at 16 U.S.C. 1854. The Atlantic Tunas Convention Act is the implementing statute for binding recommendations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. NMFS manages HMS fisheries under the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan (FMP) and its amendments. HMS implementing regulations are at 50 CFR part 635. For the Atlantic shark commercial fisheries, the HMS FMP and its amendments established commercial quotas for shark species and management groups (§ 635.27(b)) and adjustment procedures for underharvests and overharvests (§ 635.27(b)(2)). The Atlantic shark commercial fishing year automatically opens on January 1 of each year under base quotas (§ 635.27(b)(2)). Previously, NMFS adjusted quotas and retention limits and established the opening date for the upcoming fishing year for the Atlantic shark commercial fisheries (80 FR 50074, August 18, 2015). Under the process established in 2015, NMFS proposed and finalized adjustments to quota levels for the various shark stocks and management groups, along with proposing and finalizing the fishery opening dates and retention limits for directed shark permit holders. These measures were set prior to the start of the upcoming fishing year, based on incomplete data available from the previous fishing year. In 2023, NMFS changed the management measures for the 2024 and future fishing years to automatically open the commercial fishing year on January 1 of each year under the base quotas and default retention limits (88 FR 77039, November 8, 2023). Now with the Atlantic shark commercial fishery automatically opening on January 1, NMFS can then make an in-season adjustment to the base quotas, as required or allowable per existing regulations on underharvest/overharvest carryover at § 635.27(b)(2), based on complete data from the previous fishing year. NMFS would continue to propose and finalize any changes to the base quotas and/or changes to the formula used to calculate any annual quota adjustments as it did in Amendment 9 to the HMS FMP (80 FR 73128, November 24, 2015). The Atlantic shark fishery in-season quota adjustment process is consistent with the in-season quota adjustment process for other HMS fisheries with set opening dates, including those for Atlantic bluefin tuna, North Atlantic albacore tuna, and South Atlantic swordfish (see 89 FR 77029, September 20, 2024 and 88 FR 64831, September 20, 2023). The 2025 Atlantic shark commercial fishing year opened on January 1, 2025 under the base annual commercial quotas. In this action, NMFS adjusts those base annual commercial quotas based on commercial landings estimates from 2024. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14172 (Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness). As part of the order, the Gulf of Mexico is renamed as the Gulf of America. Consistent with the order, this action uses Gulf of America for all references to the area known as the Gulf of Mexico in the specific regulations at 50 CFR part 635. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Statutory Authority</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act provides NMFS the authority to take this regulatory action as 16 U.S.C. 1855(d) provides for the promulgation of such regulations as may be necessary to implement a fishery management plan and its amendments such as the HMS FMP. The Magnuson-Stevens Act among other things, requires FMP and FMP implementing measures necessary for the conservation and management of the fishery to be consistent with the ten National Standards set forth in 16 U.S.C. 1851(a). While all of the National Standards are relevant, specific to the objectives of this action, the National Standards state that measures must: prevent overfishing while achieving optimum yield from the fishery (National Standard 1); be based on the best scientific information available (National Standard 2); and take into account and allow for variations among fisheries, fishery resources, and catches (National Standard 6). Furthermore, the Magnuson-Stevens Act allows NMFS to implement annual specifications at a level such that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability (16 U.S.C. 1853(a)(15)). The Magnuson-Stevens Act also allows management actions to establish specified limitations which are necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery on the catch of fish (based on area, species, size, number, weight, sex, bycatch, total biomass, or other factors) (16 U.S.C. 1853(b)(3)(A)). This action is necessary to implement HMS FMP measures responsive to these Magnuson-Stevens Act requirements and provisions in relation to commercial shark quota adjustments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2025 Commercial Atlantic Shark Quotas</HD> In this action, NMFS adjusts the quotas for the various shark stocks and management groups for the 2025 Atlantic shark commercial fishing year ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> January 1 through December 31, 2025) based on underharvests that occurred during the 2024 fishing year, consistent with existing regulations at § 635.27(b). NMFS generally accounts for over- and underharvests in the same region, sub-region, or fishery in which they occurred the following year. NMFS may only carryover unharvested quota to the next fishing year for shark species and management groups comprised of stocks that NMFS has determined are not overfished and not experiencing overfishing (§ 635.27(b)(2)(ii)). NMFS may not carry more than 50 percent of a base annual quota over from a previous fishing year. NMFS may further adjust these adjusted quotas in a future action by transferring quotas between regions or sub-regions throughout the year after considering the certain criteria (§ 635.27(b)(2)(iii)) Based on 2024 harvests (January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024), and after considering catch rates and landings from previous years, NMFS adjusts the 2025 quotas for certain management groups as shown in Table 1. As described above, NMFS can carry over 2024 underharvests to the 2025 fishing year for the following management groups because the stocks or management groups are not overfished and overfishing is not occurring: Gulf of America blacktip shark, Atlantic smoothhound sharks, and Gulf of America smoothhound sharks. There were no overharvests to account for in these management groups in 2024. Thus, available underharvest (up to 50 percent of the base quota) from the 2024 fishing year for these management groups may be added to their respective 2025 base quotas. NMFS accounts for any underharvest of Gulf of America blacktip sharks by dividing underharvest between the eastern and western Gulf of America sub-regional quotas based on the sub-regional quota split percentage (§ 635.27(b)(1)(ii)(C)). NMFS cannot carry over 2024 underharvests to the 2025 fishing year for the following management groups because the stocks or management groups are overfished, are experiencing overfishing, or have an unknown status: • Aggregated large coastal sharks (LCS), given the unknown status of some species in the aggregated LCS complex; • Hammerhead sharks, given the overfished status of the scalloped hammerhead shark; • Non-blacknose small coastal sharks (SCS), given the unknown status of bonnethead sharks within Atlantic and Gulf of America non-blacknose SCS management groups; • Blacknose shark, given the overfished status of the blacknose shark; • Blue, porbeagle, and pelagic sharks (other than porbeagle or blue ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━