Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2025 Pacific Whiting U.S. Total Allowable Catch, 2025 Tribal Allocation, 2025 Incidental Set-Aside, and Annual Specifications for 2025 Non-Tribal Fisheries

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250623-0103]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN47</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2025 Pacific Whiting U.S. Total Allowable Catch, 2025 Tribal Allocation, 2025 Incidental Set-Aside, and Annual Specifications for 2025 Non-Tribal Fisheries</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> This final rule announces the 2025 U.S. Total Allowable Catch of Pacific whiting and implements the domestic 2025 harvest specifications for Pacific whiting fisheries off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California (collectively, the West Coast), including the 2025 Tribal allocation for the Pacific whiting fishery, the non-Tribal fishery Harvest Guideline and sector allocations, and a set-aside for research activities and incidental mortality in non-groundfish fisheries. These measures are intended to help prevent overfishing, achieve optimum yield, ensure that management measures are based on the best scientific information available, and provide for the implementation of Tribal treaty fishing rights. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective June 26, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access</HD> This final rule is accessible via the internet at the Office of the Federal Register website at: <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information for this action and analytical documents for the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are available at the NMFS West Coast region website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2025-pacific-whiting-us-total-allowable-catch-2025-tribal-allocation-2025-incidental-set.</E> NEPA documents for West Coast groundfish actions are also available at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-and-policies/groundfish-actions-nepa-documents</E> and at the Pacific Fishery Management Council's (Council) website at: <E T="03">http://www.pcouncil.org.</E> Additional background information for the Pacific Hake/Whiting Treaty can be found at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-policies/pacific-hake-whiting-treaty.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Colin Sayre, phone: 206-526-4656, and email: <E T="03">Colin.Sayre@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The final rule announces the U.S. total allowable catch (TAC) for Pacific whiting, which was determined under the terms of the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Canada on Pacific Hake/Whiting of 2003 (Agreement). This final rule also establishes a Tribal Pacific whiting allocation based on a percentage of the recommended U.S. TAC of Pacific whiting, a 2025 set-aside for research and incidental mortality in non-groundfish fisheries, and the 2025 Harvest Guideline (HG) and sector allocations for the non-Tribal commercial Pacific whiting fishery. NMFS implements these actions under the authority of the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP), sections 304(b) and 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the Pacific Whiting Act of 2006 (Whiting Act), and other applicable laws. The Tribal and non-Tribal commercial Pacific whiting fisheries open on May 1 of each year. The Tribal and non-Tribal commercial sector allocations for Pacific whiting, as well as set-asides, are effective until December 31, 2025. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Pacific Whiting Agreement</HD> The transboundary stock of Pacific whiting is managed through the Agreement. The Agreement establishes bilateral management bodies to implement the terms of the Agreement. The bilateral bodies include: the Joint Management Committee (JMC), which recommends the annual catch limit for Pacific whiting; the Joint Technical Committee (JTC), which conducts the Pacific whiting stock assessment; the Scientific Review Group (SRG), which reviews the stock assessment; and the Advisory Panel (AP), which provides stakeholder input to the JMC. NMFS issued a proposed rule on April 15, 2025 (90 FR 15675) that further describes the Agreement, the distribution of the Pacific whiting coastwide TAC between the United States (73.88 percent) and Canada (26.12 percent), the bilateral bodies to implement the terms of the Agreement, including the JMC, and the process used to determine the coastwide TAC under the Agreement. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2025 TAC Recommendation and Approval</HD> The Treaty's AP and the JMC met in Victoria, British Columbia on March 11-13, 2025, to develop advice on a 2025 coastwide TAC. The AP provided its 2025 TAC recommendation to the JMC on March 12, 2025. The JMC reviewed the advice of the JTC, the SRG, and the AP, and agreed on a TAC recommendation for transmittal to the United States and Canadian Governments. The Agreement directs the JMC to base the catch limit recommendation on the F-40 default harvest rate, unless scientific evidence demonstrates that a different harvest rate is necessary to sustain the offshore Pacific whiting resource. The F-40 default harvest rate is a fishing mortality rate that would reduce the spawning biomass of Pacific whiting to 40 percent of the estimated unfished level. After consideration of the 2025 stock assessment and other relevant scientific information, the JMC did not use the default harvest rate, and instead agreed on a more conservative approach. There were 4 primary reasons for choosing a TAC below the default harvest rate: (1) the last available survey biomass estimate (from 2023) was the third lowest in the time series; (2) the proportion of fish in Canadian waters was at an all-time low; (3) catch attainment for both countries declined in the last two years reaching all-time lows relative to their respective TAC levels in 2024; and (4) the biomass of whiting has shifted south in both 2023 and 2024 resulting in lower observed biomass off Washington and Oregon, and higher biomass off of California waters. Further, long-term trends in acoustic survey biomass show lower proportions of whiting migrating into Canadian waters. The JMC concluded that these factors warranted setting the coastwide TAC below the 2024 value of 555,000 metric tons (mt), and lower than the level that would result from application of the F-40 default harvest rate. This conservative approach was endorsed by the AP and is consistent with Article III.1. of the Agreement. The Agreement allows an adjusted TAC when either country's catch exceeds or is less than its TAC in the prior year. If the catch is in excess of the country's TAC, the amount of the overage is deducted from that country's TAC in the following year. If catch falls short of the country's TAC, a portion of the shortfall is carried over and added to the country's TAC for the following year. Under the Agreement, carryover adjustments cannot not exceed 15 percent of a party country's unadjusted TAC for the year in which the shortfall occurred. In 2024, neither country fully attained their respective TACs. The percentage of the U.S. TAC attained for 2024 is detailed in the Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA) (see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section), which is summarized in the Classification section below. For the 2025 Pacific whiting fishery, the JMC recommended an unadjusted coastwide TAC of 328,973 mt. Based on Article III.2 of the Agreement, the Canadian share of the unadjusted coastwide TAC is 26.12 percent (85,928 mt) and the U.S. share is 73.88 percent (243,045 mt). Consistent with Article II.5(b) of the Agreement, an adjustment (carryover from 2024) of 18,552 mt is added to the Canadian share, for an adjusted Canadian TAC of 104,480 mt. In the same manner, an adjustment of 52,475 mt is added to the United States share, for an adjusted United States TAC of 295,520 mt. This results in a coastwide adjusted TAC of 400,000 mt for 2025. This recommendation is consistent with the best available scientific information and provisions of the Agreement. The recommendation was transmitted via letter to the United States and Canadian Governments on March 13, 2025. NMFS, under delegation of authority from the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), approved the TAC recommendation of 243,045 mt for U.S. fisheries on April 17, 2025. This final rule announces the adjusted coastwide TAC of 400,000 mt and an adjusted U.S. TAC of 295,520 mt. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Tribal Allocations</HD> This final rule establishes the Tribal allocation of Pacific whiting for 2025. Four Washington coastal treaty Indian Tribes—the Makah Indian Tribe, the Quileute Indian Tribe, the Quinault Indian Nation, and the Hoh Indian Tribe (collectively, the Treaty Tribes)—can participate in the Tribal Pacific whiting fishery. The regulations at 50 CFR 660.50(d) identify the procedures for implementing the treaty rights that Pacific Coast Treaty Tribes have to harvest groundfish in their usual and accustomed fishing areas in U.S. waters, including the process by which Tribes with treaty fishing rights in the area covered by the FMP request allocations, set-asides, or regulations specific to the Treaty Tribes. 50 CFR 660.50(d) provides that the Secretary will develop Tribal allocations and regulations in consultation with the affected Treaty Tribes and, insofar as possible, with Tribal agreement. NMFS allocates a portion of the U.S. TAC of Pacific whiting to the Tribal fishery following ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 43k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━