Fisheries off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Annual Specifications; 2025-2026 Annual Specifications and Management Measures for Pacific Sardine

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250618-0101; RTID 0648-XE809]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Fisheries off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species Fisheries; Annual Specifications; 2025-2026 Annual Specifications and Management Measures for Pacific Sardine</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes to implement annual harvest specifications and management measures for the northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine (hereafter, Pacific sardine), for the fishing year from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. This proposed rule would prohibit most directed commercial fishing for Pacific sardine off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. Pacific sardine harvest would be allowed only for use as live bait, in minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as authorized under exempted fishing permits. The proposed harvest specifications for 2025-2026 include an overfishing limit of 4,645 metric tons (mt), an acceptable biological catch of 3,957 mt, an annual catch limit of 2,200 mt, and an annual catch target of 2,100 mt. This proposed rule is intended to conserve, manage, and rebuild the Pacific sardine stock off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by July 11, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A plain language summary of this rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NOAA-NMFS-2024-0040.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0040, by the following method: • <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit all public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2024-0040 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 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). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katie Davis, West Coast Region, NMFS, (323) 372-2126, <E T="03">Katie.Davis@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS manages the Pacific sardine fishery in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Pacific coast ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> off the U.S. West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington) in accordance with the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The CPS FMP and its implementing regulations require NMFS to set annual reference points and management measures for the Pacific sardine fishery based on the annual specification framework and control rules in the FMP. These control rules include the harvest guideline (HG) control rule, which, in conjunction with the overfishing limit (OFL) and acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rules in the FMP, are used to set required reference points, in accordance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). The NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) conducts annual stock assessments for Pacific sardine, typically alternating between benchmark assessments in one year and update assessments the following two years. During public meetings each year, the Council and its advisory bodies, including the CPS Management Team, CPS Advisory Subpanel, and Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), review the estimated biomass and the status of the fishery in these stock assessments, and recommend applicable reference points, catch limits, and management measures. Following Council review and public comment, the Council recommends these harvest specifications and management measures and any in-season accountability measures to NMFS, who then reviews the Council's recommendations to ensure they are consistent with the CPS FMP and all applicable laws. Following that review, NMFS publishes annual specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to establish annual reference points ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the OFL, ABC, and annual catch limit (ACL)) and management measures for each Pacific sardine fishing year. In 2019, the estimated stock biomass of Pacific sardine dropped below its 50,000-metric-ton minimum stock size threshold (MSST), and NMFS declared the stock overfished. A rebuilding plan for Pacific sardine was finalized as Amendment 18 to the CPS FMP on June 24, 2021 (86 FR 33142), which was challenged in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Court). In 2024, the Court partially vacated Amendment 18 and ordered NMFS to implement a revised Pacific sardine rebuilding plan by June 1, 2025. The Council submitted their recommendations for a revised Pacific sardine rebuilding plan to NMFS as Amendment 23 to the CPS FMP for review by the Secretary of Commerce. NMFS published an announcement of the availability of Amendment 23 to the CPS FMP on March 12, 2025 (90 FR 11817). If approved, Amendment 23 would set ACLs based on tiered biomass levels: when the estimated biomass is 50,000 mt or less, the ACL would be the lesser of the calculated ABC or 2,200 mt; when the biomass is greater than 50,000 mt, the ACL would be the lesser of the calculated ABC or 5 percent of the biomass. This rule proposes the Council's recommended catch limits for the July 1, 2025-June 30, 2026 fishing year consistent with their November 2024 recommendations on a revised Pacific sardine rebuilding plan, management measures to ensure that harvest does not exceed those limits, an OFL, and an ABC that takes into consideration uncertainty surrounding the OFL. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Recommended Catch Limits</HD> At the Council's April 2025 meeting, the Council and its advisory bodies reviewed the 2025 stock assessment update for Pacific sardine. Based on this assessment, the associated estimated age 1+ biomass of 30,158 mt, and the control rule formulas in the FMP, NMFS is proposing, as the Council recommended, an OFL of 4,645 mt, an ABC of 3,957 mt, and an ACL of 2,200 mt. The proposed OFL and ABC were based on the control rules in the FMP and on recommendations from the Council's SSC and their determination of best scientific information available for calculating the OFL and recommended precautionary buffer for the ABC. Since 2014, the SSC has recommended the use of a temperature-recruitment relationship based on a running 3-year average of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) temperature index to calculate the E <E T="52">MSY</E> for Pacific sardine. E <E T="52">MSY</E> is a parameter of the OFL and ABC harvest control rules (see table 1). During recent annual specification discussions, the SSC has recommended that the analysis and assumptions surrounding a CalCOFI-based E <E T="52">MSY</E> be revisited. To help inform the SSC's recommendation for this year's proposed reference points, NMFS conducted a correlation analysis of the CalCOFI-based temperature with sardine productivity (recruits-per-spawner) for the years 1983-2023; an update from the last analysis in 2013 that examined data from 1984 to 2008. In February 2025, NMFS presented the analysis to the SSC's CPS Subcommittee, which reported that “the analysis demonstrates there is still valid statistical evidence for a relationship between CalCOFI [sea surface temperature] and recruits-per-spawner.” At the April 2025 Council meeting, the full SSC reviewed the analysis and reported that it “provides the first of many steps toward potentially updating E <E T="52">MSY</E> for Pacific sardine, but does not compel a change at this time.” The SSC recommended the 2025-2026 OFL and ABC be calculated using the “status quo approach to E <E T="52">MSY</E> ,” which uses the CalCOFI temperature index. According to the CPS FMP, the catch limit for the primary directed fishery is determined using the FMP-specified HG formula. This Pacific sardine HG control rule, the primary mechanism for setting the primary directed fishery catch limit, includes a CUTOFF parameter, the lowest level of estimated biomass at which directed harvest is allowed (a biomass level of 150,000 mt). This amount is subtracted from the annual biomass estimate before calculating the applicable HG for the fishing year. Because the biomass estimate used this year (30,158 mt) is below that value, the formula results in an HG of zero, and no Pacific sardine are available for the primary directed fishery during the 2025-2026 fishing season. Pacific sardine catch during the 2025-2026 fishing season is therefore prohibited unless it is harvested as part of the live bait, tribal, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> or minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as part of exempted fishing permit (EFP) activities. For these small types of harvests, NMFS is proposing, as the Council recommended, an annual catch target (ACT) of 2,100 mt for the 2025-2026 fishing year. The recommended reference point calculations ( <E T="03">i.e.,</ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━