Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 18 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250908-0149]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Framework Adjustment 18 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan</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 regulations to implement Framework Adjustment 18 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan. This framework would modify exemptions to the minimum mesh size requirements in the commercial summer flounder fishery. The purpose of this action is to increase flexibility for the commercial fishing industry. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by October 16, 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-2025-0026.</E> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-0026, 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-2025-0026 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, 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), 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). Copies of the draft Framework Adjustment 18 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, including the Environmental Assessment and the Regulatory Impact Review (EA/RIR) prepared in support of this action are available from Dr. Christopher M. Moore, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Suite 201, 800 North State Street, Dover, DE 19901. The supporting documents are also accessible via the internet at: <E T="03">https://www.mafmc.org/actions/summer-flounder-commercial-mesh-exemptions.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Laura Deighan, Fishery Policy Analyst, (978) 281-9184, or <E T="03">laura.deighan@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) cooperatively develop management measures for the summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries in state and Federal waters. Pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) and Administrative Procedure Act, NMFS reviews and, after taking public comment, approves appropriate fishery management actions that apply in Federal waters. The Council submitted draft Framework Adjustment 18 to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan (FMP) (Summer Flounder Commercial Mesh Exemption Framework Action) to NMFS for consideration of approval. The Summer Flounder Commercial Mesh Exemption Framework Action proposes changes to the two exemptions from the minimum mesh size requirements in the commercial summer flounder fishery. The goal of this framework is to modernize the exemptions to be consistent with current gear use and fishing practices, providing the industry with better access to the exemptions and greater flexibility. The proposed changes are consistent with the primary original objective of the minimum mesh size exemptions, which was to reduce summer flounder discards in other fisheries without increasing the catch of smaller summer flounder. The implementing regulations for the FMP are found at 50 CFR part 648 subpart G. Pursuant to Magnuson-Stevens Act section 303(b)(4), the summer flounder regulations at § 648.108(a) specify the minimum allowable mesh size when using an otter trawl in the commercial summer flounder fishery. To protect smaller summer flounder, summer flounder permit holders may retain no more than 100 pounds (lb; 45 kilograms (kg)) of summer flounder from May to October and 200 lb (91 kg) from November to April when using otter trawls with mesh below the minimum size. The regulations at § 648.108(b) provide two exemptions from the minimum mesh size requirements: (1) The Small-Mesh Exemption Program (SMEP), which provides exemptions within a defined geographical area from November through April for vessels holding a Letter of Authorization (LOA); and (2) the flynet exemption, which allows exemptions for vessels using a specific net configuration. These two exemptions were originally implemented in 1993 to allow summer flounder permit holders to retain some bycatch of summer flounder while operating in other small-mesh fisheries. The original SMEP was implemented based on data indicating that catch of smaller summer flounder was low in the SMEP area during the winter months. Under the SMEP, summer flounder permit holders may obtain an LOA that allows them to land more than 200 lb (91 kg) of summer flounder when fishing with mesh smaller than the minimum size east of 72°30′ W longitude between November 1 and April 30. Vessels must hold the LOA for a minimum of 7 days and may not fish west of 72°30′ W longitude while the LOA is active. The regulations authorize the Regional Administrator to terminate the SMEP for the remainder of a season if observer data indicate SMEP participants are discarding more than an average of 10 percent of their entire summer flounder catch per trip (by weight). The flynet exemption allows vessels to retain more than the incidental limits of summer flounder when using a two-seam otter trawl flynet with: (1) Large mesh in the wings that measures 8 inches (20 centimeters (cm)) to 64 inches (163 cm), (2) a first body section (belly) of the net with 35 or more meshes that are at least 8 inches (20 cm), and (3) mesh that decreases in size throughout the body of the net to 2 inches (5 cm) or smaller towards the terminus of the net. The flynet definition was based on nets being used primarily to target bluefish and sciaenids between September and April from North Carolina to Cape Henlopen, Delaware. State data indicated summer flounder comprised only 1 to 3 percent of the total flynet trip catch, supporting the exemption. The regulations at § 648.110 authorize the Council to recommend actions to adjust management measures, including gear restrictions and gear requirements, to meet or be consistent with the goals and objectives of the FMP through a framework action. Under the rulemaking authority of Magnuson-Stevens Act sections 303(c) and 304(b), this action proposes three modifications to the existing summer flounder minimum mesh size exemptions: (1) expand the geographical area of the SMEP, (2) revise the annual evaluation process for the SMEP, and (3) revise the definition of a flynet within the summer flounder regulations. These changes were recommended by the Council, and adopted by the Commission, in October 2024. Under the Secretarial rulemaking authority of Magnuson-Stevens Act section 305(d), which authorizes NMFS to promulgate regulations necessary to carry out an FMP, this action also proposes three administrative changes related to the minimum mesh size exemptions: (1) allow for a minimum LOA period of less than 7 days to provide added flexibility to the industry, (2) implement the use of a flynet vessel trip reporting (VTR) code for ease of tracking fishing activity under the flynet exemption, and (3) revise the criterion used to evaluate termination of the flynet exemption to align with the original FMP amendment and the original objective of the action. These administrative changes support the implementation of the proposed framework, alleviate an administrative constraint that is no longer necessary, and correct an error in the regulations. While these changes were not part of the framework action, the Council expressed support for NMFS to make them. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Measures</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">SMEP: Area Expansion</HD> This action proposes moving the western boundary of the SMEP area approximately 5 miles (8 kilometers (km)) west for the portion of the area south of Long Island Sound. The use of bottom-tending gear is prohibited in the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-Sea Coral Protection Area, and this action would not modify the portion of the SMEP south of that area nor allow SMEP trips in the Coral Protection Area. The proposed western boundary would follow the existing boundary at 72°30′ W longitude from the southern coast of Connecticut to Long Island, New York. South of Long Island, it would follow 72°37′ W longitude south until it intersects with the northeast corner of the current scup Southern Gear Restricted Area (GRA) at 39°20′ N latitude and 72°37′ W longitude. It would then follow the eastern border of the scup Southern GRA to 37° N latitude, which would form the southern boundary of the SMEP until it intersects with the current SMEP boundary at 72°30 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━