Fishery Management Plans of Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John; Amendment 3

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250623-0109]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN06</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fishery Management Plans of Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John; Amendment 3</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 issues regulations to implement management measures described in Amendment 3 to the Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) for Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John (Amendment 3), as prepared by the Caribbean Fishery Management Council (Council). This final rule establishes new management measures for dolphinfish ( <E T="03">Coryphaena hippurus</E> ) and wahoo ( <E T="03">Acanthocybium solandri</E> ) in U.S. Caribbean Federal waters, including commercial and recreational minimum size limits and recreational bag and possession limits. The purpose of the management measures contained in this final rule and Amendment 3 is to ensure dolphinfish and wahoo have adequate time to mature and reproduce and to help protect against overfishing. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective July 25, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of Amendment 3, which includes a fishery impact statement, an environmental assessment, a regulatory impact review, and a Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) analysis, may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/amendment-3-puerto-rico-st-croix-and-st-thomas-and-st-john-fishery-management-plans.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sarah Stephenson, 727-824-5305, <E T="03">sarah.stephenson@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS, with the advice of the Council, manages the Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John fisheries in U.S. Caribbean Federal waters under the Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John FMPs. NMFS implements the FMPs through regulations at 50 CFR part 622 under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). On September 6, 2024, NMFS published a notice of availability for Amendment 3 and requested public comment (89 FR 72794). On September 27, 2024, NMFS published a proposed rule for Amendment 3 and requested public comment (89 FR 79220). NMFS approved Amendment 3 on November 27, 2024. The proposed rule and Amendment 3 outline the rationale for the actions contained in this final rule. The management measures described in Amendment 3 and implemented by this final rule are described below. Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness” (January 20, 2025), directs that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. Consistent with the order, NMFS uses Gulf of America to refer to the geographical area previously known as the Gulf of Mexico, except when a statute or existing regulations explicitly refer to the “Gulf of Mexico.” Relevant to this rulemaking, existing regulations contained in 50 CFR part 622, including the heading for that part, refer to the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the South Atlantic and Caribbean. Amending the heading of 50 CFR part 622 is beyond the scope of this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NMFS to prevent overfishing and achieve, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from federally managed fish stocks to ensure that fishery resources are managed for the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to providing food production and recreational opportunities, and protecting marine ecosystems. This action is taken under the statutory authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act section 303(a)(1) as necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery to prevent overfishing and to promote the long-term health and stability of the fishery. On September 22, 2020, the Secretary of Commerce approved the Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John FMPs under section 304(a)(3) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The FMPs took effect on October 13, 2022, after NMFS published the final rule to implement the FMPs (87 FR 56204, September 13, 2022). Each FMP contains management measures applicable for Federal waters off the respective island management area. Federal regulations at 50 CFR part 622 subparts S, T, and U describe management measures for Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John, respectively. Federal waters around Puerto Rico extend seaward from 9 nautical miles (nmi) or 16.7 kilometers (km) from shore to the offshore boundary of the U.S. Caribbean exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Federal waters around St. Croix and St. Thomas and St. John extend seaward from 3 nmi (5.6 km) from shore to the offshore boundary of the U.S. Caribbean EEZ. Prior to implementation of the Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John FMPs, dolphinfish and wahoo were not federally managed in Federal waters in the U.S Caribbean. Because of the economic importance to the region of these fast-growing, short-lived pelagic species, they were included for management under each of the Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John FMPs, even though they are exposed to harvest pressure across a wide area of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of America, and the Caribbean Sea due to their migratory nature. While each FMP established annual catch limits (ACLs), annual catch targets (ACTs), and accountability measures (AMs) for dolphinfish and wahoo, the FMPs did not establish other management measures often used to limit harvest or effort, such as minimum size limits, recreational bag and possession limits, or commercial trip limits. Two species of dolphinfish occur and are federally managed in the U.S. Caribbean. The dolphinfish species affected by Amendment 3 and this final rule is <E T="03">Coryphaena hippurus,</E> also known as dolphinfish, dolphin, dorado, or mahi mahi. At its December 2021 meeting, the Council began discussing management measures that could address the increasing risk of overharvest of juvenile dolphinfish as a result of the increasing influx and presence of <E T="03">Sargassum</E> in the region. <E T="03">Sargassum</E> is a type of floating brown algae that provides food, protection, and habitat for many marine species. The <E T="03">Sargassum</E> mats are natural fish aggregating devices for dolphinfish and wahoo, including juveniles of each species, making them easier to locate and catch. In addition, the lack of information available on the recreational harvest of dolphinfish and wahoo and the potential for excess harvest of these species to occur during recreational fishing trips is a source of uncertainty for the management of these species. The Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John FMPs and the final rule implementing those FMPs did not include minimum size limits for dolphinfish or wahoo because these species were new to Federal management in the U.S. Caribbean. This final rule establishes minimum size limits for dolphinfish and wahoo for all fishing in U.S. Caribbean Federal waters (commercial and recreational sectors) to address the potential for small-sized ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> juvenile) individuals of these species to be caught year-round. Dolphinfish and wahoo are usually seasonally-caught species, but the annual influx of <E T="03">Sargassum</E> to the region increases the likelihood that smaller fish could easily be harvested. Although there currently is not a large market for smaller-sized dolphinfish or wahoo, such a fishery could develop in the future and the Council recommended being proactive in the management of these species. Protecting smaller-sized dolphinfish and wahoo increases the potential that they have enough time to reproduce before being harvested. Before this rulemaking, there were no recreational bag or possession limits for dolphinfish or wahoo for the same reasons noted above. This final rule establishes recreational bag and possession limits for dolphinfish and wahoo to help regulate recreational harvest in U.S. Caribbean Federal waters. While the Puerto Rico FMP established recreational ACLs and ACTs for dolphinfish and wahoo, the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) that collected recreational data for Puerto Rico was suspended in 2017 and has not resumed to date. Recreational data were not collected for St. Croix or St. Thomas and St. John. As a result, neither the St. Croix FMP nor the St. Thomas and St. John FMP established sector-specific ACLs and ACTs for dolphinfish and wahoo. Though some catch information is available from recreational fishing tournaments that occur in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), that information likely underrepresents the total number of dolphinfish or wahoo caught each year by the recreational sector. Thus, the number of recreational fishermen and the amount of dolphinfish or wahoo removed by the sector are largely unknown for the region. Setting recreational bag and possession limits for the recreational sector in Federal waters around Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas and St. John could reduce the risk of overfishing the resource, while allowing fishermen access to the species. Because the commercial landings of dolphinfish and wahoo in each island management area have been less than the corresponding ACLs, additional harvest constraints for the commercial sector are not needed at this time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Management Measures Contained in This Final Rule</HD> For dolphinfish and wahoo, this final rule estab ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 50k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━