Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025-2027 Atlantic Herring Fishery Specifications

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250623-0104]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN40</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025-2027 Atlantic Herring Fishery Specifications</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed specifications, request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes new 2025 harvest specifications and river herring and shad catch caps for the Atlantic herring fishery, and projects specifications and catch caps for 2026 and 2027, as recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council. This action also proposes to update the target rebuilding date for Atlantic herring. This action is necessary to respond to updated scientific information from a 2024 management track assessment and to achieve the goals and objectives of the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan, including preventing overfishing, helping rebuild an overfished stock, and achieving optimum yield on a continuing basis. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Public comments must be received by July 10, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A plain language summary of this proposed rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NMFS-2025-0049.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-0049 by the following method: <E T="03">• Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and type NOAA-NMFS-2025-0049 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered by NMFS. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted for public viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). Copies of the 2025-2027 herring specifications action, including the Supplemental Information Report (SIR) and the Regulatory Impact Review (RIR) prepared by the New England Fishery Management Council in support of this action, are available from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Mill 2, Newburyport, MA 01950. These documents are also accessible via the internet at <E T="03">https://www.nefmc.org/management-plans/herring</E> or <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Carrie Nordeen, Fishery Policy Analyst, 978-281-9272. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NMFS and the New England Fishery Management Council manage the Atlantic herring fishery pursuant to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan (FMP). This action proposes to relieve a restriction by increasing herring harvest limits for 2025-2027 up to almost 240 percent compared to the current 2025 herring harvest limits. In 2023, the most recent year for which complete revenue data are available, the herring fishery generated $5.61 million in revenue. This action projects up to an additional $5.25 million in revenue available for 2026 and 2027 compared to revenue associated with the current 2025 harvest limits. Regulations implementing the FMP appear at 50 CFR part 648, subpart K. The regulations at § 648.200 require the Council to recommend herring specifications for NMFS' review and proposal in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , including: The overfishing limit (OFL); acceptable biological catch (ABC); annual catch limit (ACL); optimum yield (OY); domestic annual harvest (DAH); domestic annual processing (DAP); U.S. at-sea processing (USAP); border transfer (BT); the sub-ACL for each management area, including seasonal periods as allowed by § 648.201(d) and modifications to sub-ACLs as allowed by § 648.201(f); and the amount to be set aside for the research set aside (RSA) (3 percent of the sub-ACL from any management area) for up to 3 years. These regulations also provide the Council with the discretion to recommend river herring and shad catch caps as part of the specifications. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), NMFS is required to publish proposed rules for comment after preliminarily determining whether they are consistent with applicable law. Consistent with herring regulations guiding the specifications process, NMFS reviews the Council's recommended specifications and develops proposed specifications based on its evaluation of the Council's recommendations. If the proposed specifications differ from those recommended by the Council, NMFS specifies the reasons for any differences. At this time, NMFS has reviewed and concurs with the Council's recommended 2025-2027 specifications for the herring fishery. Therefore, this action proposes and seeks comment on the Council's recommended herring specifications and river herring and shad catch caps and whether they are consistent with the FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its National Standards, and other applicable law. NMFS will make a final determination on specifications after considering public comment on the proposed specifications and will publish its responses to public comment and describe any differences from the Council's recommendations in its announcement of final specifications. Amendment 8 to the FMP (86 FR 1810; January 11, 2021) implemented an ABC control rule for the herring fishery. The ABC control rule is a formulaic approach for setting a harvest limit and is designed to balance the goals and objectives of the FMP, including managing the fishery at long-term sustainable levels and accounting for herring's role as forage in the ecosystem. The ABC control rule states that when biomass is at or above 50 percent of the biomass associated with maximum sustainable yield (B <E T="52">MSY</E> ) or its proxy, ABC is the catch associated with a maximum fishing mortality (F) of 80 percent of F associated maximum sustainable yield (F <E T="52">MSY</E> ) or its proxy. When biomass falls below 50 percent of B <E T="52">MSY</E> or its proxy, the allowable F declines linearly to zero at 10 percent of B <E T="52">MSY</E> or its proxy. On October 2, 2020, NMFS determined the Atlantic herring stock was overfished, but overfishing was not occurring. Framework 9 to the FMP (87 FR 42962; July 19, 2022) established a 5-year rebuilding plan for herring with an F consistent with the ABC control rule implemented in Amendment 8. The rebuilding plan was expected to rebuild the stock by 2026; however, the rebuilding target date was extended from 5 years (2026) to 7 years (2028) with implementation of the 2023-2025 herring specifications (88 FR 17397; March 23, 2023). A 2024 herring management track stock assessment (2024 stock assessment) was completed in June 2024. According to the results of the 2024 stock assessment, the stock continues to be overfished with overfishing not occurring. Retrospective pattern adjustments were necessary because the model overestimated biomass and underestimated mortality. The adjusted spawning stock biomass was estimated to be 26 percent (47,955 metric tons (mt)) of B <E T="52">MSY</E> (186,367 mt) and the adjusted F was estimated to be 58 percent (0.263) of the overfishing threshold (F <E T="52">MSY</E> equals 0.45). Compared to the prior 2022 herring management track stock assessment, F <E T="52">MSY</E> is lower in the 2024 assessment than it was in the previous 2022 assessment (0.45 and 0.50, respectively) and projected biomass is much lower in the 2024 assessment than it was in the 2022 assessment (47,955 mt and 79,231 mt, respectively). The 2024 stock assessment was unable to explain a cause for the stock's historic and continued low recruitment and projected that continued poor recruitment of herring will likely result in a substantial decline in biomass. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Initial Specifications and 2025 In-Season Adjustment</HD> At its September 2024 meeting, the Council reviewed the 2024 stock assessment and OFL and ABC recommendations from its Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC). Short-term catch projections from the 2024 stock assessment indicated the need for an almost 90-percent reduction from the previously projected 2025 ACL (23,961 mt) (88 FR 17397; March 23, 2023) to the new 2025 ACL (2,710 mt). The Council acknowledged that herring harvest needed to be reduced to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock and, accordingly, recommended new, reduced specifications for 2025 and projected specifications for 2026-2027. Because river herring and shad management is under consideration in Amendment 10 to the FMP, the Council recommended maintaining the current river herring and shad catch caps for 2025 and projected the current catch caps for 2026-2027. Additionally, the Council requested NMFS use its in-season adjustment authority described in the herring regulations at § 648.200(e) to reduce the 2025 specifications before the start of the fishing year on January 1 to prevent catch from exceeding new, lower ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━