Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Amendment 23 to the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XE531]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Amendment 23 to the Coastal Pelagic Species 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> Notification of agency decision. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> On May 30, 2025, the Regional Administrator of the West Coast Region, NMFS, with the concurrence of the Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, approved Amendment 23 to the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Amendment 23 implements a revised rebuilding plan for the northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine in response to a court order. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The amendment was approved on May 29, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Copies of the CPS FMP as amended through Amendment 23 are available at the Pacific Fishery Management Council, 7700 NE Ambassador Place, Suite 101, Portland, OR 97220-1384, or at this URL; <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org/coastal-pelagic-species/fishery-management-plan-and-amendments/.</E> The final Environmental Assessment (EA) prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for Amendment 23 is available on NMFS' website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-and-policies/west-coast-region-national-environmental-policy-act-documents.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katie Davis, Sustainable Fisheries Division, NMFS, at <E T="03">katie.davis@noaa.gov</E> or (323) 372-2126; or Katrina Bernaus, Pacific Fishery Management Council, at <E T="03">katrina.bernaus@pcouncil.org</E> or (503) 820-2420. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Amendment 23 revises section 4.5 of the CPS FMP, the rebuilding plan for Pacific sardine, in response to an order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ( <E T="03">Oceana, Inc.,</E> v. <E T="03">Raimondo, et al.,</E> No. 5:21-cv-05407-VKD (N.D. Cal., filed July 14, 2021)). There are no implementing regulations associated with Amendment 23. NMFS published a Notice of Availability (NOA) for Amendment 23 on March 12, 2025 (90 FR 11817), and solicited public comments through May 12, 2025. NMFS summarizes and responds to the public comments below in the Comments and Responses section. We considered all public comments received on the NOA and EA. Now, on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce, we are announcing the approval of Amendment 23. As discussed in greater detail in the NOA, Amendment 23 revises the Pacific sardine rebuilding plan in section 4.5 of the CPS FMP to update the T <E T="52">TARGET</E> (the specified time period for rebuilding the stock) to 17 years and to include annual catch limits (ACLs) for Pacific sardine as follows: • <E T="03">Overfished status—</E> If the age 1+ biomass is 50,000 metric tons (mt) or less in a given fishing year, the ACL for that year will be set at 2,200 mt or the calculated acceptable biological catch (ABC), whichever is less. • <E T="03">Rebuilding status—</E> If the age 1+ biomass is greater than 50,000 mt but less than 150,000 (rebuilding target) in a given fishing year, the ACL will be set at 5 percent of the age 1+ biomass for that year or the calculated ABC, whichever is less. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> NMFS received two public comments supporting Amendment 23, one from a prominent fishing industry group, the California Wetfish Producers Association, and one from a private citizen. Additionally, NMFS received one comment from a private citizen stating support for the overall objective of the rebuilding plan but providing a variety of suggestions they think should be made to the plan or that NMFS could do in the future. Although some of those suggestions are outside the scope of this action, NMFS nevertheless provides responses to them for additional clarity. NMFS received two public comments opposing Amendment 23, one from the environmental non-governmental organization Oceana and one from an anonymous commenter who opposed commercial fishing of any kind. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> Oceana claimed that Alternative 6 does not meet NMFS's legal obligations, and that to be compliant with the law, the ACL must be set at no greater than 5 percent of the estimated biomass for the year (or the calculated ABC, whichever is less). Oceana states that the revised rebuilding plan would increase the relative harvest rate as the stock declines below 44,000 mt. They argued that the modeling analysis indicates that the stock could rebuild within a reasonable timeframe under a fixed 2,200 mt ACL, assuming the stock began at 29,598 mt and grew each year (vs. declined), but that NMFS does not provide any analysis indicating that a 2,200 mt fixed ACL will rebuild the stock when biomass is below 29,598 mt. They further state that without an analysis incorporating the recent stock status or a new analysis of the rebuilding alternatives when the stock is below 2020 levels [29,598 mt], there is no clear evidence that Alternative 6 will rebuild the population. To account for this, Oceana recommends the rebuilding plan include additional restrictions on the fishery when the biomass falls below a specified threshold biomass level, such as 25,000 mt. <E T="03">Response:</E> When determining whether the revisions to this rebuilding plan comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA; 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et. seq.</E> ) and other applicable law, NMFS took into account the impacts to the status and potential rebuilding timelines of the stock, as well as the environment and the fisheries (“Councils should consider the management objectives of their FMPs and their management framework to determine the relevant social, economic, and ecological factors used to determine optimum yield. There will be inherent trade-offs when determining the objectives of the fishery.” (50 CFR 600.310(e)(3)(iii)(B))). The modeling analysis conducted to support the development of Amendment 18 (the original rebuilding plan) reported a difference of one year between the rebuilding timelines of a 5 percent and fixed 2,200 mt annual harvest scenario. Considering the environmentally-linked population swings of sardines are on the order of decades, a one-year difference is negligible. The potential economic impact of further constraining the fisheries that catch sardines, however, could be significant. The rebuilding plan does not increase the harvest rate at low biomass levels, but instead implements ACLs that ensure the fisheries are harvesting at sustainable levels (allowing the stock to rebuild in the shortest amount of time while the fisheries maintain average harvest levels). In addition to the ACL implemented by Amendment 23, if the stock were to approach lower biomass levels (less than approximately 18,000 mt age 1+ biomass, based on recent harvest control rule parameters), the CPS FMP dictates that the ABC would supersede the ACL, resulting in further reductions in catch as the stock declines. Oceana also does not provide a scientific rationale explaining why the catch limit should be reduced below 5 percent at certain biomass levels when the modeling shows the stock can rebuild with a static 2,200 mt ACL. In modeling rebuilding scenarios for a stock, it is standard practice to project the biomass using the current biomass as the starting point. The 2020 modeling analysis projected the estimated 2020 spawning stock biomass (SSB; 29,598 mt from the 2020 benchmark stock assessment) under different fishing rates and recruitment scenarios. Uncertainty in the rebuilding analysis and therefore how the “model stock” would potentially rebuild was accounted for in a variety of ways. For example, the spawner-recruit relationship used a high <E T="8153">s</E> <E T="03">R</E> (total recruitment variability) value, allowing for large fluctuations in recruitment in all rebuilding projections. For scenarios that rebuilt the stock, although the probability of rebuilding increased over time, the projected median spawning stock biomass did not always increase from each year to the next. Considering the 2024 benchmark assessment reported that the SSB has not, in any year since 2020, decreased below the amount analyzed in 2020 (for reference, the most recent estimate of SSB for 2024 was 36,190 mt)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> , NMFS has determined that additional modeling of the rebuilding alternatives below 2020 levels was not warranted and that the catch limits implemented by this revised rebuilding plan will prevent overfishing and support rebuilding of the stock under varied biomass levels. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Allen Akselrud CA, Jensen AJ, Kuriyama PT, Hill KT, Zwolinski JP. 2025. Update assessment of the Pacific sardine resource in 2025 for U.S. management in 2025-2026. U.S. Department of Commerce. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-SWFSC-719. <E T="03">https://doi.org/10.25923/z1xh-b932.</E> </FTNT> <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> Oceana claimed that the revised rebuilding plan does not address what they state are fundamental flaws with overfishing limit (OFL) and ABC. They state that Amendment 23 continues to rely on the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation (CalCOFI)-based E <E T="52">MSY</E> as a central parameter for calculating catch limits, that it violates the MSA's requirements to base management measures on the best available science, prevent overfishing, and rebuild the population, and cite the April 22, 2024 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━