Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of America; Red Grouper Catch Limits

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 622</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250729-0132]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN85</RIN> <SUBJECT>Reef Fish Fishery of the Gulf of America; Red Grouper Catch Limits</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final temporary rule; emergency action. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS issues this final temporary rule to promulgate emergency measures, due to recently discovered circumstances to mitigate harmful economic conditions to red grouper fishermen in the Gulf of America (Gulf). As requested by the Gulf Council (Council), NMFS issues this final temporary rule to increase the Gulf red grouper catch limits for the remainder of the 2025 fishing year. The purpose of this emergency action is to allow for increased harvest opportunities in the commercial and recreational sectors, particularly by extending the recreational fishing season and increasing the revenue potential for commercial and charter vessel/headboat (for-hire) fishermen targeting red grouper. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final temporary rule is effective August 6, 2025 through December 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the documents in support of this final temporary rule for emergency action, which includes the Council's letter to NMFS requesting the emergency action may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/emergency-rule-increase-catch-limits-gulf-america-red-grouper.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Luers, telephone: 727-824-5305, or email: <E T="03">Daniel.Luers@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The reef fish fishery of the Gulf is managed under the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf (FMP). The FMP was prepared by the Council, approved by the Secretary of Commerce, and is implemented by NMFS through regulations at 50 CFR part 622 under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). Section 305(c) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act provides the legal authority for the promulgation of emergency regulations (16 U.S.C. 1855(c)). 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. Amending the existing regulations in 50 CFR part 622 to reflect the change to Gulf of America is beyond the scope of this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires NMFS and regional fishery management councils to prevent overfishing and achieve, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield (OY) from federally managed fish stocks. These mandates are intended to ensure 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. Unless otherwise noted, all weights in this final temporary rule are in gutted weight. For red grouper, the Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review (SEDAR) 61 stock assessment was completed in 2019. SEDAR 61 used recreational catch and effort data from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP)-Fishing Effort Survey (FES), which estimates much greater recreational harvest than its predecessors, the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey and the MRIP-Coastal Household Telephone Survey. These prior surveys were used in previous stock assessments and to specify the initial allocation of the total allowable harvest between the commercial and recreational sectors. SEDAR 61 determined that the stock was not overfished or undergoing overfishing, but was below the target spawning stock biomass. Therefore, the Council developed, and NMFS implemented, Amendment 53 to the FMP to reduce the red grouper annual catch limits (ACLs) and annual catch targets (ACTs) consistent with the assessment results, and adjust the commercial and recreational allocations of the stock ACL to reflect the change in the recreational catch estimates produced by MRIP-FES. Amendment 53 allocated 59.3 percent of the stock ACL to the commercial sector and 40.7 percent of the stock ACL to the recreational sector. Amendment 53 also modified the buffers between the ACLs and ACTs, setting the recreational ACT 9 percent below the recreational ACL and the commercial ACT (quota) 5 percent below the commercial ACL (87 FR 25573, May 22, 2022). After Amendment 53 was implemented, NMFS implemented a framework action that set the current catch limits, which are slightly higher than those specified in Amendment 53 (87 FR 40742, July 8, 2022). The framework action used the sector allocations and ACL-ACT buffers established in Amendment 53. Based on that framework action, the current total ACL is 4.96 million pounds (lb) (2.25 million kilograms (kg)), the commercial ACL and ACT (quota) are 2.94 million lb (1.33 million kg) and 2.79 million lb (1.27 million kg), respectively, and the recreational ACL and ACT are 2.02 million lb (0.92 million kg) and 1.84 million lb (0.83 million kg), respectively. The most recent red grouper stock assessment, SEDAR 88, was completed in 2025. SEDAR 88 replaced the MRIP-FES estimates of Florida private recreational landings with estimates produced by Florida's State Reef Fish Survey (SRFS). The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) determined that this change was appropriate because greater than 95 percent of all red grouper are landed in Florida. The results of SEDAR 88 showed an increase in the red grouper stock size. Based on these results and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center projections, the SSC recommended an increase in the red grouper overfishing limit (OFL) from 5.99 million lb (2.72 million kg) to 10.64 million lb (4.83 million kg) and an increase in the acceptable biological catch (ABC) from 4.96 million lb (2.25 million kg) to 8.28 million lb (3.76 million kg). Because the recommended catch levels are based on an assessment that used SRFS data they are not directly comparable to the current catch levels, which are based on an assessment that used MRIP-FES data. The increase in the allowable harvest is larger than it appears because SRFS produces estimates that are lower than the MRIP estimates. The red grouper recreational accountability measures (AM) require the closure of the recreational sector when recreational landings reach or are projected to reach the recreational ACL (50 CFR 622.41(e)(2)(i)). In addition, if recreational landings exceed the recreational ACL, NMFS must reduce the length of the recreational fishing season in that following fishing year by the amount necessary to ensure red grouper recreational landings do not exceed the recreational ACT (50 CFR 622.41(e)(2)(ii)). The red grouper commercial sector is managed through the individual fishing quota (IFQ) program for groupers and tilefishes in the Gulf. The IFQ program is the commercial AM, constraining landings to the commercial ACT (quota). The fishing year for red grouper is January 1 through December 31 (50 CFR 622.7). Recreational harvest exceeded the red grouper recreational ACL by approximately 72 percent in 2021, by 35 percent in 2022, and by 25 percent in 2023 even though NMFS implemented progressively shorter seasons. In 2024, NMFS closed the red grouper recreational sector on July 1 based on projections of when the 2024 recreational ACT would be reached (89 FR 35011, May 1, 2024). This resulted in the shortest recreational red grouper season since the recreational ACL was put in place in 2009. Despite this early closure, preliminary 2024 landings estimates indicate that 123 percent of the recreational ACT and 112 percent of the recreational ACL were harvested in 2024. NMFS projects that the 2025 recreational fishing season would need to close in June or July to avoid exceeding the 2025 recreational ACT. These shortened red grouper recreational seasons, combined with significant reductions to sector catch limits for other species in the FMP (including gag and greater amberjack), have resulted in reduced recreational fishing opportunities. The reductions to the commercial catch limits for other reef fish species and particularly red grouper, have also reduced revenue opportunities for the commercial sector. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Council Emergency Action Request</HD> In a letter to NMFS dated April 29, 2025, and based on discussion at its April 2025 meeting, the Council requested that NMFS promulgate an emergency action as quickly as possible in 2025 to increase the catch limits for red grouper. The Council's request noted public testimony from for-hire operators, who described economic hardship caused by the progressively shorter red grouper seasons and the need to allow for an increase in the number of trips this year. The Council also heard from commercial fishermen, who noted that the availability of additional red grouper allocation would make that allocation more affordable to those who need to buy additional pounds of fish under the IFQ system. Consistent with the Council's request, this final temporary rule will set the stock ACL at 90 percent of the SSC's recommended ABC and revise corresponding sector ACLs ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━