International Fisheries; Pacific Tuna Fisheries; Fishing Restrictions for Tropical Tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean for 2025 and Beyond

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 300</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250506-0081]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN28</RIN> <SUBJECT>International Fisheries; Pacific Tuna Fisheries; Fishing Restrictions for Tropical Tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean for 2025 and Beyond</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 is issuing regulations under the Tuna Conventions Act (TCA) of 1950, as amended, to implement Resolution C-24-01 ( <E T="03">Conservation Measures For Tropical Tunas In The Eastern Pacific Ocean During 2025-2026</E> ) adopted at the 102nd Meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) in September 2024. This final rule maintains and extends management measures for fishing vessels targeting tropical tuna ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> bigeye tuna ( <E T="03">Thunnus obesus</E> ), yellowfin tuna ( <E T="03">Thunnus albacares</E> ), and skipjack tuna ( <E T="03">Katsuwonus pelamis</E> )) in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). The fishing restrictions will apply to large purse seine vessels of class sizes 4-6 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> vessels with a carrying capacity of 182 metric tons (mt) or greater) and longline vessels greater than 24 meters in overall length that fish for tropical tuna in the EPO. This rule is necessary for the conservation of tropical tuna stocks in the EPO and for the United States to satisfy its obligations as a member of the IATTC. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 23, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A plain language summary of this rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NMFS-2024-0119.</E> Copies of supporting documents that were prepared for this rule, including the regulatory impact review (RIR) are available via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> docket NOAA-NMFS-2024-0119, or contact Tyler Lawson, NMFS West Coast Region Portland Office, 1201 NE Lloyd Blvd., Suite 1100, Portland, OR 97205, or <E T="03">tyler.lawson@noaa.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tyler Lawson, NMFS WCR, at (503) 230-5421, <E T="03">tyler.lawson@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background on the IATTC</HD> The United States is a member of the IATTC, which was established under the 1949 Convention for the Establishment of an Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (1949 Convention). In 2003, the IATTC updated the 1949 Convention through the adoption of the Convention for the Strengthening of the IATTC Established by the 1949 Convention between the United States of America and the Republic of Costa Rica (Antigua Convention). The Antigua Convention entered into force in 2010. The United States acceded to the Antigua Convention on February 24, 2016. The full text of the Antigua Convention is available at: <E T="03">https://www.iattc.org/PDFFiles2/Antigua_Convention_Jun_2003.pdf.</E> The IATTC consists of 21 member nations and 5 cooperating non-member nations. The IATTC is responsible for the conservation and management of tuna and tuna-like species in the IATTC Convention Area. The IATTC Convention Area is defined as waters of the EPO within the area bounded by the west coast of the Americas and by 50° N latitude, 150° W longitude, and 50° S latitude. The IATTC maintains a scientific research and fishery monitoring program and regularly assesses the status of tuna, sharks, and billfish stocks in the IATTC Convention Area to determine appropriate catch limits and other measures deemed necessary to promote sustainable fisheries and prevent the overexploitation of these stocks. <HD SOURCE="HD1">International Obligations of the United States Under the Antigua Convention</HD> As a Party to the Antigua Convention and a member of the IATTC, the United States is legally bound to implement decisions of the IATTC under the TCA of 1950, as amended, 16 U.S.C. 951 <E T="03">et seq.</E> (Pub. L. 114-81). The TCA directs the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of State and, with respect to enforcement measures, the U.S. Coast Guard, to promulgate such regulations as may be necessary to carry out the United States' obligations under the Antigua Convention, including recommendations and decisions adopted by the IATTC. The authority of the Secretary of Commerce to promulgate such regulations has been delegated to NMFS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IATTC Resolution on Tropical Tuna Conservation</HD> The 102nd Meeting of the IATTC was held in Panama City, Panama, in September 2024. At this meeting, the IATTC adopted Resolution C-24-01 ( <E T="03">Conservation Measures for Tropical Tunas In The Eastern Pacific Ocean During 2025-2026</E> ). Many of the provisions in Resolution C-24-01 are identical in content to those contained in the previous tropical tuna Resolution (C-21-04; <E T="03">Conservation Measures for Tropical Tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean During 2022-2024</E> ), which NMFS implemented in a July 8, 2022 rulemaking (87 FR 40731), and are in effect until they are amended or replaced. Resolution C-24-01 continues to include provisions for a 72-day EPO fishing closure period for purse seine vessels, exemptions from that closure period due to force majeure, catch limits of bigeye tuna caught in the EPO for longline vessels greater than 24 m in overall length, catch limit transfer requirements for bigeye tuna, a requirement that all tropical tuna be retained and landed (with some exceptions), and restrictions on the use and design of fish aggregating devices (FADs). In addition to continuing the existing measures, Resolution C-24-01 requires the IATTC to reexamine the Resolution at the annual IATTC meeting in 2025 or 2026 based on a yellowfin tuna benchmark assessment or, if a benchmark assessment is not available, the current stock assessment, as long as it is deemed reliable by IATTC scientific staff at that time. Based on that review, if necessary, the Resolution provides that the IATTC will take actions to reduce fishing pressure on yellowfin tuna to a level that allows for sustainable fishing. Alternatively, if the benchmark assessment or stock assessment shows that the yellowfin tuna stock is not overfished nor subject to overfishing, the IATTC will consider options for new measures that reduce the number of days of closure or the elimination of the “corralito” closure area, which NMFS currently has implemented in 50 CFR 300.25(e)(1) and 300.25(e)(6). If action is taken by the IATTC in 2025 and a new Resolution is adopted, NMFS will consider additional action as appropriate. The implementation of this Resolution by all IATTC members is intended to prevent overfishing of tropical tuna stocks in the EPO. Based on 2024 IATTC benchmark stock assessments and applying the stock status criteria NMFS identified in the Highly Migratory Species Fisheries Management Plan (HMS FMP), the bigeye and skipjack tuna stocks in the EPO are not subject to overfishing and are not overfished. Based on the most recent IATTC benchmark assessment (2020) for yellowfin tuna in the EPO, NMFS determined the stock is neither overfished nor subject to overfishing. Efforts to complete a new benchmark assessment for yellowfin tuna are underway, and results are anticipated within the next 2 years. For the 2024 meeting of the IATTC, the IATTC scientific staff recommended that conservation measures from tropical tuna Resolution C-21-04 be extended to prevent overfishing of these stocks. Those measures are already codified and will continue under this rule, as discussed in the following section. NMFS published a proposed rule on December 5, 2024 (89 FR 96631), for public review and comment. The comment period closed on January 6, 2025. The preamble to the proposed rule contains additional background information that is not repeated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Regulations</HD> This rule is implemented under the TCA (16 U.S.C. 951 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and includes minor changes to 50 CFR part 300, subpart C. The rule will apply to U.S. commercial fishing vessels using purse seine and longline gear to catch tropical tuna in the IATTC Convention Area. As noted in the preamble to the proposed rule, most of the measures in Resolution C-24-01 do not need to be implemented through this rule because the Resolution continues existing measures that are already codified and do not expire (see 87 FR 40731, July 8, 2022). A full list of those codified measures is included in the preamble of the proposed rule and is not repeated here. This rule extends the applicability of the system of additional closure days for class size 4-6 purse seine vessels that exceed specified annual catch levels for bigeye tuna that was in place for calendar years 2023 and 2024 (50 CFR 300.25(e)(2)). Under this rule, those regulations remain in effect for 2025 and future calendar years. The catch levels continue to begin at 1,200 mt of bigeye tuna with 10 additional closure days and increase incrementally by 300 mt and 3 additional closure days beyond that level. U.S. purse seine vessels that exceed a certain annual catch level of bigeye tuna are required to increase the number of closure days they observe in the following year, as specified in table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Bigeye Tuna Catch Levels and Corresponding Additional Closure Days</TTITLE> As was true for 2023 and 2024, the additional days of closure must be added to one of the two closure periods indicated in 50 CFR 300.25(e)(1), which requires purse s ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━