Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Amendment 125 to the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Fishery Management Plan; Pacific Cod Small Boat Access

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 679</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250730-0133]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Amendment 125 to the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Fishery Management Plan; Pacific Cod Small Boat Access</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 a rule to implement amendment 125 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (BSAI FMP). Amendment 125 would add a small vessel provision to the current BSAI Pacific cod jig sector in the A season, January 1 to April 30. Under this small vessel provision, catch from catcher vessels (CV) using hook-and-line or pot gear that are less than or equal to 55 feet (ft) (16.8 meters (m)) length overall (LOA) harvesting Pacific cod in the BSAI during the jig gear A season would accrue to the jig sector allocation. This action would provide stability and additional opportunities for some fishery participants and potential new entrants. It also advances the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the BSAI FMP, and other applicable laws. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on or before September 5, 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-2025-0003.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-0003, by any of the following methods: • <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-2025-0003 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Gretchen Harrington, Assistant Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region NMFS. Mail comments to P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802-1668. <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). Electronic copies of the draft Regulatory Impact Review for proposed amendment 125 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area (referred to as the Analysis), and the draft Categorical Exclusion prepared for this action are available from <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lis Henderson, 907-586-7228, <E T="03">lis.henderson@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for Action</HD> NMFS manages the groundfish fisheries in the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska under the BSAI FMP. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) prepares and recommends FMPS under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq</E> ). In order to promote the long-term health and stability of the BSAI Pacific cod fishery, NMFS is proposing this action under the rulemaking authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 302(h)(1) and 303(a)(1) (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) in alignment with the Council's recommendation. Regulations implementing the BSAI FMP appear at 50 CFR part 679. General regulations governing U.S. fisheries also appear at 50 CFR part 600. The Council transmitted amendment 125 for review by the Secretary of Commerce, and a notice of availability (NOA) of amendment 125 was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 4, 2025, with comments invited through August 4, 2025 (90 FR 23664). Comments submitted on this proposed rule by the end of the comment period (See <E T="02">DATES</E> ) will be considered by NMFS and addressed in the response to comments in the final rule. All comments addressing amendment 125 must be received by August 4, 2025, to be considered in the approval/disapproval decision on amendment 125. Commenters do not need to submit the same comments on both the NOA and this proposed rule. All relevant written comments received by August 4, 2025, whether specifically directed to amendment 125, this proposed rule, or both will be considered by NMFS in the approval/disapproval decision for amendment 125 and addressed in the response to comments in the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Pacific Cod Allocations</HD> Pacific cod ( <E T="03">Gadus macrocephalus</E> ) is one of the most abundant and valuable groundfish species harvested in the BSAI. Vessels harvest Pacific cod using trawl gear and other types of authorized fishing gear, including hook-and-line gear, jig gear, and pot gear. Vessels harvesting BSAI Pacific cod operate as CVs that harvest and deliver the fish for processing or as catcher/processors (C/Ps) that harvest and process the fish on board. The BSAI FMP and implementing regulations require that, after consultation with the Council, NMFS specify an overfishing limit (OFL), an acceptable biological catch (ABC), and a total allowable catch (TAC) amount for each target species or species group of groundfish, including Pacific cod, on an annual basis. An OFL is the catch level above which overfishing would occur for a species or species group. An ABC is the level of a species or species group annual catch that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of OFL and any other scientific uncertainty. The TAC is the annual catch target for a species or species group, derived from the ABC by considering social and economic factors and management uncertainty. Under the BSAI FMP, an ABC is set below its respective OFL and the TAC must be set lower than or equal to the ABC. The OFLs, ABCs, and TACs for BSAI groundfish are specified through the annual harvest specifications process. A detailed description of the annual harvest specifications process is provided in the final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications for groundfish of the BSAI (90 FR 12640, March 18, 2025). The annual harvest specifications process for BSAI Pacific cod is briefly summarized here. Specific examples of Pacific cod OFLs, ABCs, TACs, and other apportionments of Pacific cod used in this preamble are based on the 2025 specifications from the final 2025 and 2026 harvest specifications for groundfish of the BSAI, unless otherwise noted. Pacific cod is assessed as two distinct stocks with separate OFLs, ABCs, and TACs: (1) the eastern Bering Sea (BS) stock; and (2) the Aleutian Islands (AI) stock. Before the Pacific cod TACs are established, the Council and NMFS consider social and economic factors and management uncertainty, as well as two factors that are particularly relevant to BSAI Pacific cod: (1) the Pacific cod state waters Guideline Harvest Level fisheries; and (2) an overall limit on the maximum amount of TAC that can be specified for all BSAI groundfish species combined. Once the groundfish TACs are established, regulations at § 679.20(a)(7)(i) allocate 10.7 percent of the BS Pacific cod TAC and 10.7 percent of the AI Pacific cod TAC to the Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program for the exclusive harvest by Western Alaska CDQ groups. Section 305(i) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act authorizes six CDQ groups representing 65 communities to receive exclusive harvest privileges of groundfish, including Pacific cod, and specifies the methods for allocating these harvest privileges. After subtraction of the CDQ allocation from each TAC, NMFS combines the remaining BS and AI TACs into one BSAI non-CDQ Pacific cod TAC, which is available for harvest by nine non-CDQ fishery sectors. BSAI Pacific cod has been fully allocated to these sectors since 2008 with the implementation of amendment 85 to the BSAI FMP (72 FR 50788, September 4, 2007). Regulations at § 679.20(a)(7)(ii)(A) define the nine Pacific cod non-CDQ fishery sectors in the BSAI and specify the percentage allocated to each. The non-CDQ fishery sectors are defined by a combination of gear type ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> trawl gear or hook-and-line gear), operation type ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> CV or C/P), and vessel size, or LOA, categories ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> vessels greater than or equal to 60 ft (18.3 m) LOA). Through the annual harvest specifications process, NMFS allocates an amount of the combined BSAI non-CDQ TAC to each of these nine non-CDQ fishery sectors. Regulations at § 679.20(a)(7)(ii)(A) allocate 1.4 percent of the BSAI non-CDQ Pacific cod TAC to the jig sector and 2 percent to the less than 60 ft (18.3 m) LOA hook-and-line and pot CV sector. Under regulations at § 679.20(a)(7), allocations of Pacific cod to most of the CDQ Program and non-CDQ fishery sectors are further apportioned by seasons. Season dates for the CDQ and non-CDQ fisher ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 53k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━