Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; 2025 Specifications and Management Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250512-0084]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN19</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries Off West Coast States; West Coast Salmon Fisheries; 2025 Specifications and Management Measures</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> Through this final rule, NMFS establishes fishery management measures for the ocean salmon fisheries off Washington, Oregon, and California for the season beginning May 16, 2025, and ending May 15, 2026 (the 2025 ocean salmon fishing season), under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). The fishery management measures include fishing areas, seasons, quotas, legal gear, recreational fishing days and catch limits, harvest guidelines, possession and landing restrictions, and minimum lengths for salmon taken in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off Washington, Oregon, and California. These measures are intended to prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from the fishery, to provide for the exercise of federally recognized fishing rights by West Coast Indian Tribes, to allow a portion of the salmon runs to escape the ocean fisheries in order to provide for spawning escapement, and to apportion the ocean harvest equitably among non-Indian commercial and recreational fisheries. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective from 0001 hours Pacific Daylight Time, May 16, 2025, until the effective date of the 2026 management measures, as published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , which we expect to be 0001 hours Pacific Daylight Time, May 16, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The documents cited in this document are available on the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council or PFMC) website ( <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org</E> ) and the NMFS West Coast Region (WCR) website ( <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/fisheries-west-coast-states-west-coast-salmon-fisheries-2025-management-measures</E> ). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shannon Penna at 562-980-4239, Email: <E T="03">Shannon.Penna@noaa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The ocean salmon fisheries in the EEZ (3-200 nautical miles (nmi); 5.6-370.4 kilometers (km)) off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California are managed under the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Regulations at 50 CFR part 660, subpart H, provide the mechanism for developing and promulgating preseason specifications and management measures and making inseason adjustments to the management measures within limits set by the FMP by notification in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Regulations at 50 CFR 660.408 govern the establishment of annual management measures, and regulations at 50 CFR 660.409 govern the implementation of inseason adjustments. This rule implements the management measures for the 2025 ocean salmon fishing season. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Process Used To Establish 2025 Management Measures</HD> Ocean salmon fishery management measures are established via a collaborative process with the Council, States, Tribes, fishing industry participants, anglers, and the public. The Council announced its annual preseason management process for the 2025 ocean salmon fishing season in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 11, 2024 (89 FR 99841). NMFS published an additional notice of opportunity to submit public comments on the 2025 ocean salmon fishery management measures in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 19, 2025 (90 FR 9896). These notices announced the availability of key documents, the dates and locations of meetings and public hearings regarding determining the annual proposed and final modifications to ocean salmon fishery management measures, and instructions on how to comment on those measures. The agendas for the March and April Council meetings were published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (90 FR 9618, February 14, 2025, and 90 FR 12706, March 19, 2025) and posted on the Council's website prior to the meetings. In accordance with the FMP, the Council's Salmon Technical Team (STT) and economist prepared four reports, which were made available on the Council's website upon their completion. The first of the reports, “Review of 2024 Ocean Salmon Fisheries,” was prepared in February when the first increment of scientific information necessary for crafting management measures for the 2025 ocean salmon fishing season became available. The first report summarizes biological and socio-economic data from the 2024 ocean salmon fisheries and assesses the performance of the fisheries with respect to the 2024 management objectives for salmon stocks and stock complexes, as well as provides historical information for comparison. The second report, “Preseason Report I Stock Abundance Analysis and Environmental Assessment Part 1 for 2025 Ocean Salmon Fishery Regulations” (PRE I), provides the 2025 salmon stock abundance projections and analyzes how the salmon stocks defined in the FMP and Council management goals would be affected if the 2024 management measures (the no-action alternative under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)) were continued for the 2025 ocean salmon fishing season. The completion of PRE I is the initial step in developing and evaluating the full suite of preseason alternatives for the 2025 fishing season. Following the completion of the first two reports, the Council met from March 4 to 11, 2025, to develop 2025 management alternatives for proposal to the public and consideration under NEPA. The Council proposed three alternatives for commercial and recreational fisheries management and three alternatives for treaty Indian fisheries management for analysis and public comment. These alternatives consisted of various combinations of management measures designed to ensure that stocks of coho salmon and Chinook salmon meet conservation goals, to provide for ocean harvests of more abundant stocks, to provide equitable sharing of harvest among ports and sectors, and to provide for the exercise of Indian treaty fishing rights. After the March Council meeting, the Council's STT and economist prepared a third report, “Preseason Report II Proposed Alternatives and Environmental Assessment Part 2 for 2025 Ocean Salmon Fishery Regulations” (PRE II), which analyzes the effects of the proposed 2025 ocean salmon fishing season management alternatives. In addition, a meeting between the U.S. and Canadian salmon managers provided additional forecast and harvest information related to southern U.S. stocks, including those that are part of the fisheries managed under the FMP. The Council sponsored public hearings in person to receive testimony on the proposed alternatives on March 24, 2025, for Washington and Oregon, and on March 25, 2025, for California. In addition, the States of Washington, Oregon, and California sponsored meetings in various forums that also collected public testimony. The public also provided testimony at the March and April Council meetings and electronic submissions via the Council's electronic portal and <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Members of several federally recognized Tribes, including Tribes with treaty rights for salmon harvest, testified at the March and April Council meetings. Additional Tribal comments were submitted in writing. Tribes emphasized the cultural importance of salmon to their communities, expressed concerns over the uncertainty of forecasts for some stocks in 2025, and urged the Council to be conservative in setting the salmon seasons. Some Tribes addressed several issues in the Columbia Basin, such as habitat alteration and the need to address increased avian and pinniped predation on smolts. Columbia River treaty Tribes also expressed concerns that higher harvest levels could negatively impact hatchery brood collection and spawning escapement to local tributaries. Tribes are doing their part to improve habitat, raise hatchery fish, and expand the distribution of salmon to their historic production areas and want to ensure that the management of the fisheries in the EEZ is supporting those actions. The Council adopted its recommendations for the 2025 ocean salmon management measures at its April meeting. The Council's STT and economist then prepared a fourth report, “Preseason Report III Analysis of Council-Adopted Management Measures for 2025 Ocean Salmon Fisheries” (PRE III), which analyzes the environmental and socioeconomic effects of the Council's final recommendations (the Council's preferred alternative under NEPA). The Council transmitted the recommended management measures to NMFS on April 24, 2025, and published them on its website ( <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org</E> ). Under the FMP, the ocean salmon management cycle begins May 16 and continues through May 15 of the following year. This final rule is effective on May 16, 2025, consistent with the FMP, and governs the federally managed ocean salmon fisheries from that date until the effective date of the 2026 management measures, which we expect to be published before May 16, 2026. Fisheries in 2025 that were open prior to May 16, 2025, were governed by the final rule implementing the salmon fishery management measures for the 2024 ocean salmon fishing season (89 FR 44553, May 21, 2024; 89 FR 53529, June 27, 2024). Salmon fisheries that were scheduled to open before May 16, 2025, under the 2024 rule are: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 102k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━