Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Fisheries; General Category and Harpoon Category Retention Limit Adjustments

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 635</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 220919-0193; RTID 0648-XE816]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Atlantic Highly Migratory Species; Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Fisheries; General Category and Harpoon Category Retention Limit Adjustments</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary rule; retention limit adjustments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS is adjusting the daily retention limits for the bluefin tuna (BFT) General and Harpoon categories. Specific to the General category, NMFS is adjusting the daily retention limit for the month of June from the default of three large medium or giant BFT to one large medium or giant BFT. This daily retention limit applies to Atlantic Tunas General category (commercial) permitted vessels and Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Charter/Headboat permitted vessels with a commercial sale endorsement when fishing commercially for BFT. This daily retention limit will be effective for the month of June or until further modified. Specific to the Harpoon category, NMFS is modifying the daily retention limit from the default of no more than 10 large medium and giant BFT to 5 large medium or giant BFT. The incidental catch limit of two large medium BFT per vessel per day/trip remains unchanged. These retention limits apply to Atlantic Tunas Harpoon category permitted vessels for the remainder of the 2025 Harpoon category fishing season, which concludes on November 15, 2025, or until further modified. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The adjusted retention limit for the General category will be effective June 1, 2025, through June 30, 2025 or until NMFS announces via a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> another adjustment to the retention limit. The adjusted retention limit for the Harpoon category will be effective from June 1, 2025, through November 15, 2025, or until NMFS announces via a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> another adjustment to the retention limit. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Larry Redd, Jr., <E T="03">larry.redd@noaa.gov,</E> or Ann Williamson, <E T="03">ann.williamson@noaa.gov,</E> by email or by phone at 301-427-8503. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Atlantic BFT fisheries are managed under the 2006 Consolidated Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan (HMS FMP) and its amendments, 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 (ATCA; 16 U.S.C. 971 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). ATCA is the implementing statute for binding recommendations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). The HMS FMP and its amendments are implemented by regulations are at 50 CFR part 635. Section 635.27(a) divides the U.S. BFT quota, established by ICCAT and as implemented by the United States among the various domestic fishing categories, per the allocations established in the HMS FMP and its amendments. NMFS is required under the Magnuson-Stevens Act at 16 U.S.C. 1854(g)(1)(D) to provide U.S. fishing vessels with a reasonable opportunity to harvest quotas under relevant international fishery agreements such as the ICCAT Convention, which is implemented domestically pursuant to ATCA. 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. As described in § 635.27(a), the current baseline U.S. BFT quota is 1,316.14 metric tons (mt) (not including the 25 mt ICCAT allocated to the United States to account for bycatch of BFT in pelagic longline fisheries in the Northeast Distant Gear Restricted Area). The baseline quota for the General category is 710.7 mt. The General category baseline quota is suballocated to different time periods. Relevant to this action, the baseline subquota for the June through August time period is 355.4 mt. As described at § 635.23(a)(2), the month of June has a default General category daily retention limit of three large medium or giant BFT (measuring 73 inches (185 cm) curved fork length (CFL) or greater) per vessel per day/trip while all other open months ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> January through March and July through December) have a retention limit of one large medium or giant BFT. The General category daily retention limit applies to General category permitted vessels and to HMS Charter/Headboat permitted vessels (when fishing commercially for BFT) (§ 635.23(a)(2)). The Harpoon category baseline quota is 59.2 mt. As described in § 635.23(d)(1), the overall default Harpoon category daily retention limit is no more than 10 large medium or giant BFT, combined, per vessel per day/trip. As described in § 635.23(d)(2), the incidental daily catch limit is no more than two large medium BFT ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> measuring 73 inches (185 cm) to less than 81 inches (206 cm) CFL) per vessel per day/trip. As an example, if the vessel owner/operator retains two large medium BFT during a day/trip under these default retention limits, they may retain a maximum of 8 giant BFT on that same day/trip. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Adjustment of General and Harpoon Category Daily Retention Limits</HD> NMFS may increase or decrease the General or Harpoon category daily retention limits after considering the regulatory determination criteria under § 635.27(a)(7). For the General category, NMFS may adjust the daily retention limit of large medium and giant BFT over a range of zero to five BFT per vessel (see § 635.23(a)(3)). For the Harpoon category, NMFS may adjust the overall daily retention limit of large medium and giant BFT, combined, per vessel per day over a range of 5 to 10 BFT per vessel per day (see § 635.23(d)(1)). NMFS may also adjust the incidental daily catch limit for the Harpoon category over a range of two to four large medium BFT per vessel per day (see § 635.23(d)(2)). As described below, NMFS has considered all relevant determination criteria for adjusting the BFT retention limits in both the General and Harpoon categories. For the General category, after evaluating these criteria, NMFS has decided to decrease the daily retention limit from three to one large medium or giant BFT per vessel per day/trip for the month of June. Because the default retention limit for the months of July and August is already one large medium or giant BFT per vessel per day/trip, this adjustment to the June retention limit means that the retention limit for the entire June through August time period will be one large medium or giant BFT per vessel per day/trip until NMFS announces via a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> another adjustment to the retention limit. For the Harpoon category, NMFS has decided to decrease the overall daily retention limit to no more than five large medium and giant BFT, combined, per vessel per day/trip ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> BFT measuring 73 inches (185 cm) CFL or greater). This action maintains the incidental daily catch limit of two large medium BFT ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> measuring 73 inches (185 cm) to less than 81 inches (206 cm) CFL) per vessel per day/trip. As such, if two large medium BFT are retained during a day/trip, no more than three giant BFT may be retained on the same day/trip. Similarly, if no large medium BFT are retained, then all five BFT could be giant BFT. This adjustment would apply from June 1 through the remainder of the 2025 Harpoon category fishing season, which concludes on November 15, 2025, or until NMFS announces via a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> another adjustment to the retention limit. Regardless of the duration of a fishing trip, no more than a single day's daily retention limit may be possessed or retained at the end of the trip for both the General and Harpoon category vessels (see § 635.23(a)(4) for General category and § 635.23(d)(3) for Harpoon category). For example, whether a General category vessel takes a 2-day trip or makes two trips in 1 day during the June through August time period, the daily limit of one fish may not be exceeded upon landing. Similarly, a Harpoon category vessel cannot exceed the daily limit of five combined large medium and giant BFT, regardless of the trip's length or number of trips in a day. These retention limits are effective in all areas, except for the Gulf of America, where NMFS prohibits targeting fishing for BFT. The General category retention limit applies to vessels permitted in the General category and to those HMS Charter/Headboat permitted vessels with a commercial sale endorsement when fishing commercially for BFT, while the Harpoon category retention limit applies to those vessels permitted in the Harpoon category. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Consideration of the Determination Criteria</HD> As described above, under § 635.23(a)(4) and (d)(1), NMFS may adjust the daily retention limit of large medium and giant BFT in the General and Harpoon categories after considering the regulatory determination criteria under § 635.27(a)(7). Regarding the usefulness of information obtained from catches in the particular category for biological sampling and monitoring of the status of the stock (§ 635.27(a)(7)(i)), biological samples collected from BFT landed by General or Harpoon category fishermen and provided by BFT dealers continue to provide ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━