Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025 Black Sea Bass Recreational Management Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250623-0105]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN51</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025 Black Sea Bass Recreational 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> NMFS announces Federal management measures are waived for the 2025 black sea bass recreational fishery. The implementing regulations for this fishery require NMFS to publish recreational measures for the fishing year and to provide an opportunity for public comment. The intent of this action is to approve conservation equivalency and set management measures that allow this recreational fishery to achieve, but not exceed, the recreational harvest target and thereby prevent overfishing. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 25, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Copies of this final rule are available from: Michael Pentony, Regional Administrator, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930, and accessible via the internet at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/final-rule-implement-2025-black-sea-bass.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Savannah Lewis, Fishery Management Specialist, (978) 281-9348, or <E T="03">Savannah.Lewis@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) cooperatively manage the summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass commercial and recreational fisheries. The Council and the Commission's Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Board) meet together each year to recommend recreational management measures for all three species, generally set for two years, so that recreational harvest achieves, but does not exceed, the recreational harvest targets specified by the Percent Change Approach adopted in the Harvest Control Rule Framework (Framework 17) (88 FR 14499, March 9, 2023). Pursuant to the regulations at 50 CFR 648.142(d), NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must implement coastwide measures or approve conservation-equivalent measures for black sea bass as soon as possible following the Council and Board's recommendation. This action approves conservation equivalency for black sea bass in 2025. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Black Sea Bass Conservation Equivalency</HD> In this final rule, NMFS is implementing conservation equivalency to manage the 2025 black sea bass recreational fishery, as described in the proposed rule published on April 3, 2025 (90 FR 14595). Under conservation equivalency, Federal regulations that apply to the recreational black sea bass fishery are waived and federally permitted party/charter vessels and all recreational vessels fishing in Federal waters are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. This approach allows for more customized measures at a state or regional level that are likely to better meet the needs of anglers in each area, compared to coastwide measures that may be advantageous to anglers in some areas and unnecessarily restrictive in others. The combination of state/regional measures must be “equivalent,” in terms of conservation, to a set of “non-preferred coastwide measures” that are recommended by the Council and the Board each year. States, through the Commission, are collectively implementing measures designed to constrain landings to the recreational harvest targets. Additional information on the development of these measures is provided in the proposed rule (90 FR 14595; April 3, 2025) and not repeated here. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2025 Black Sea Bass Recreational Management Measures</HD> On April 23, 2025, the Commission notified NMFS that it had certified that the 2025 recreational fishing measures to be implemented in state waters for black sea bass are, collectively, the conservation equivalent of the season, fish size, and possession limit prescribed in §§ 648.145(a), 648.146, and 648.147(b). According to § 648.142(d)(2), if conservation equivalency is adopted, vessels subject to the recreational fishing measures are not subject to Federal measures and instead are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. Section 648.151 is amended through this final rule to recognize state-implemented measures as the conservation equivalent of the Federal coastwide recreational management measures for 2025. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> There are no changes from the proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> NMFS received 16 unique comments on the proposed rule (90 FR 14595, April 3, 2025). Comments were received from 12 individuals, the Huntington Angler's Club, the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association, and two comments were submitted anonymously. Several comments included discussion on changes and recommendations for state management measures, which were not part of the proposed action, and therefore, are not addressed in the following responses. The majority of comments were in support of the proposed action. Comments are grouped and summarized by topic. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> Five comments referenced the high biomass of black sea bass and commented on the need for higher catch limits. Three commenters noted that the stock is in good shape, increasing, and has been saved, and that no reductions were needed, but that higher catch limits were needed, with one adding an additional comment that many fish may die from post-release mortality because of the higher biomass. One comment also expressed these views and asked for better use of for-hire vessel trip report (VTR) data for the black sea bass fishery. Finally, one commenter asked for more favorable regulations for just black sea bass, and that there should not be a season for black sea bass. <E T="03">Response:</E> NMFS agrees that the biomass of black sea bass is high, with the 2024 management track assessment indicating that the stock is 2.19 times the biomass target. No additional reductions are being implemented. The 2025 black sea bass measures are the same as those implemented in 2024. The overall catch limit (OFL) and corresponding catch limits are based on projections from the 2024 management track stock assessment. The Council and the Commission cooperatively manage summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass. The OFL, ABC, and commercial and recreational quotas for 2025 fishing year for black sea bass have been finalized already through a prior, separate action (89 FR 99138; December 10, 2024). The Council and the Commission's Management Boards meet jointly each year to recommend recreational management measures. The Percent Change Approach, which was used to determine what, if any, changes to previously implemented measures may be necessary for 2025, was designed by the Council and Commission for managing Mid-Atlantic recreational fisheries. The Percent Change Approach uses two factors to determine if management measures could remain status quo, could be liberalized, or must be restricted. These two factors are: (1) a comparison of the confidence interval (CI) around an estimate of expected harvest under status quo measures with the average recreational harvest limit for the upcoming 2 years; and (2) biomass compared to the target level, as defined by the most recent stock assessment. These two factors also determine the appropriate degree of change ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a percentage change in expected harvest). This approach attempts to constrain harvest to prevent overfishing while also acknowledging that recreational catch estimates are uncertain and often highly variable (more so than commercial catch estimates). The Percent Change Approach makes incremental adjustments, thus reducing the tendency of management measures to chase after the highs and lows by either liberalizing or restricting measures too much in any given year in reaction to potentially large year-to-year variations in recreational catch estimates. This year, the process concluded that no changes were required for 2025. This rule does not implement state-specific measures for black sea bass, but rather waives the Federal recreational measures for black sea bass through a process called conservation equivalency. Under conservation equivalency, Federal recreational measures are waived and federally permitted for-hire vessels and all recreational vessels fishing in Federal waters are subject to the recreational fishing measures implemented by the state in which they land. States and regions set their own management measures, which are approved through the Commission process. The combination of state or regional measures must achieve equivalent conservation as the non-preferred coastwide measures, which are intended to maintain a status quo recreational harvest. A response on post-release mortality can be found in Comment 3. Expanded use of recreational for-hire VTRs may be considered in the future. The Council has initiated an action to consider additional changes to recreational fisheries management, which may include the consideration of enhanced VTR requirements. Please see the following comment, Comment 2, for more information on future Council actions. <E T="03">Comment 2:</E> Two comments were supportive of the rule while also highlighting the need for future actions. Specifically, both requested additional review of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━