Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 39 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250416-0069]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN45</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 39 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan</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> NMFS approves and implements Framework Adjustment 39 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan that establishes specifications and other management measures for fishing years 2025 and 2026, including fishing effort allocation into access areas, modifying when areas open to optimize yield and minimize bycatch, and closures to protect juvenile scallops. Vessels with a limited access general category B permit may transit outside of the Northern Gulf of Maine with scallops onboard. Research set-aside program regulations are clarified. This action is necessary to prevent overfishing and improve resource yield-per-recruit and management of the fishery. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective on April 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The New England Fishery Management Council (Council) has prepared an environmental assessment (EA) for this action that describes the approved measures in Framework 39 and other considered alternatives and analyzes the impacts of the approved measures and alternatives. Copies of Framework 39, the EA, the initial regulatory flexibility analysis (IRFA), and information on the economic impacts of this rulemaking are available upon request from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Newburyport, MA 01950 and accessible via the internet in documents available at: <E T="03">https://www.nefmc.org/library/scallop-framework-39.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emily Keiley, Fishery Policy Analyst, 978-281-9116, email: <E T="03">emily.keiley@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Council adopted Framework Adjustment 39 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan (FMP) at its December 2024 meeting. NMFS published a proposed rule for Framework 39 on March 18, 2025 (90 FR 12510). The proposed rule included a 15-day public comment period that closed on April 2, 2025. Except as explained below with respect to section 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), NMFS is issuing this rule pursuant to the rulemaking authority at section 304(b)(1)(A) of the Act. NMFS has approved all of the measures in Framework 39 recommended by the Council. This final rule implements Framework 39, which sets scallop specifications and other measures for fishing years 2025 and 2026, including changes to the catch, effort, and quota allocations and adjustments to the rotational area management program for fishing year 2025, and default specifications for fishing year 2026. The Magnuson-Stevens Act authorizes NMFS to approve, partially approve, or disapprove measures proposed by the Council based on whether the measures are consistent with the Atlantic Sea Scallop FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its National Standards, and other applicable law. Details concerning the development of these measures were contained in the preamble of the proposed rule and are not repeated here. This final rule also addresses regulatory text that is unclear pursuant to section 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Specification of Scallop Overfishing Limit (OFL), Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC), Annual Catch Limits (ACL), Annual Catch Targets (ACT), Annual Projected Landings (APL) and Set-Asides for the 2025 Fishing Year, and Default Specifications for Fishing Year 2026</HD> The OFL is based on a fishing mortality rate (F) of 0.61, equivalent to the F threshold updated through the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's most recent scallop benchmark stock assessment that was completed in September 2020 (NEFSC, 2020). The ABC and the equivalent total ACL for each fishing year are based on an F of 0.45, which is the F associated with a 75-percent probability of not exceeding the OFL. The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) recommended scallop fishery ABCs of 39.5 million pounds (lb; 17,901 metric tons (mt)) for 2025 and 39.1 million lb (17,745 mt) for the 2026 fishing year, after accounting for discards and incidental mortality. In support of the Council's development of the next framework adjustment, the SSC will reevaluate the best available scientific information and, if warranted by the science at that time, the SSC may recommend modifications to the ABC for the 2026 fishing year. Table 1 outlines the scallop fishery catch limits. After deducting the incidental target total allowable catch (TAC), the research set-aside (RSA), and the observer set-aside, the remaining ACL available to the fishery is allocated according to the following fleet proportions established in Amendment 11 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop FMP (72 FR 20090, April 14, 2008): 94.5 percent is allocated to the limited access scallop fleet ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the larger “trip boat” fleet); 5 percent is allocated to the limited access general category (LAGC) individual fishing quota (IFQ) fleet ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the smaller “day boat” fleet); and the remaining 0.5 percent is allocated to limited access scallop vessels that also have LAGC IFQ permits. Amendment 15 (76 FR 43746, July 21, 2011) specified that buffers to account for management uncertainty are not necessary in setting the LAGC ACLs ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the LAGC ACL is equal to the LAGC ACT). For the limited access fleet, the management uncertainty buffer is based on the F associated with a 75-percent probability of remaining below the F associated with ABC/ACL, which, using the updated Fs applied to the ABC/ACL, now results in an F of 0.39. Amendment 21 (87 FR 1688, January 12, 2023) modified the ACL flowchart to account for the scallop biomass in the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) as part of the limits in the fishery by adding biomass from the area into calculations of the OFL and ABC. That action moved the accounting of the NGOM ACL from only within the OFL into the OFL and ABC/ACL for the entire fishery. In addition, Amendment 21 created the NGOM Set-Aside to support a directed LAGC fishery (including NGOM and LAGC IFQ permitted vessels) in the NGOM Management Area. <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s100,12,12"> <TTITLE> Table 1—Scallop Catch Limits ( <E T="01">mt</E> ) for Fishing Years 2025 and 2026 for the Limited Access and LAGC IFQ Fleets </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Catch limits</CHED> <ENT I="01">ABC/ACL (discards removed)</ENT> <ENT>17,901</ENT> <ENT>17,745</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Incidental Landings</ENT> <ENT I="01">LAGC IFQ ACL (5 percent of ACL)</ENT> <ENT>841</ENT> <ENT>837</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Limited Access with LAGC IFQ ACL (0.5 percent of ACL)</ENT> <ENT>84</ENT> <ENT>84</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Limited Access ACT</ENT> <ENT>13,771</ENT> <ENT>13,707</ENT> <ENT I="01">APL (after set-asides removed)</ENT> <ENT>8,180</ENT> <ENT I="01">Limited Access APL (94.5 percent of APL)</ENT> <ENT>7,730</ENT> Total IFQ Annual Allocation (5.5 percent of APL)  LAGC IFQ Annual Allocation (5 percent of APL)  Limited Access with LAGC IFQ Annual Allocation (0.5 percent of APL)   The catch limits for the 2026 fishing year are subject to change through a future specifications action or framework adjustment. This includes the setting of an APL for 2026 that will be based on the 2025 annual scallop surveys. </TNOTE> <TNOTE> <SU>2</SU>  As a precautionary measure, the 2026 IFQ and annual allocations are set at 75 percent of the 2025 IFQ Annual Allocations. </TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Research Set-Aside</HD> This action deducts 1.275 million lb (578 mt) of scallops annually for 2025 and 2026 from the ABC for use as the Scallop RSA to fund scallop research. Vessels participating in Scallop RSA are compensated through the sale of scallops harvested under RSA projects. Of the 1.275 million-lb (578-mt) allocation, NMFS has already allocated 275,181 lb (124.820 mt) to previously funded multi-year projects as part of the 2024 RSA awards process. Of the 1.275 million lb (578-mt) of scallops set aside for 2025 RSA, up to half (625,000 lb, 283.5 mt) can be harvested from the access areas (Areas I and II). No limit is set on the amount that can be harvested from open areas. The cap on access area RSA harvest is intended to spread out compensation fishing between access and open areas to prevent depletion of the access areas while allowing some access to ensure the viability of the RSA program. This action allows vessels participating in RSA projects to harvest RSA compensation from the open area and the Area I and II Scallop Rotational Areas. All vessels are prohibited from harvesting RSA compensation pounds in all other access areas. Vessels are prohibited from fishing for RSA compensation in the NGOM, unless the vessel is fishing on an RSA compensation trip using NGOM RSA allocation that was awarded to an RSA project. Lastly, Framework 39 prohibits the harvest of RSA from any rotational area under default 2026 measures. At the start of the 2026 fishing year, RSA compensation may only be harvested from open areas. The Council will re-evaluate this default prohibition measure in the action that would set final 2026 specifications. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Observer Set-Aside</HD> This action deducts one percent of the ABC for the industry-fu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 69k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━