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

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 250910-0150; 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS is implementing 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 rule prohibits most directed commercial fishing for Pacific sardine off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. Pacific sardine harvest is allowed for use only as live bait, in minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as authorized under exempted fishing permits. The incidental harvest of Pacific sardine will be limited to 20 percent by weight of all fish per trip when caught with other stocks managed under the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP), or up to 2 metric tons (mt) per trip when caught with non-coastal pelagic species stocks. The harvest specifications for 2025-2026 include an overfishing limit (OFL) of 4,645 mt, an acceptable biological catch (ABC) of 3,957, an annual catch limit (ACL) of 2,200 mt, and an annual catch target (ACT) of 2,100 mt. This final 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> Effective September 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <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 CPS 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 OFL and 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 ACL for Pacific sardine is set according to the framework established in the Pacific sardine rebuilding plan, approved on May 29, 2025, as amendment 23 to the CPS FMP (90 FR 23461). Additionally, the CPS FMP requires additional management measures, intended to restrict harvest, for the Pacific sardine fishery, such as incidental catch restrictions. NMFS publishes annual specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to establish these annual reference points ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> the OFL, ABC, and ACL) and management measures for each Pacific sardine fishing year. NMFS published proposed specifications and management measures on June 26, 2025 (90 FR 27273). The proposed rule for this action included additional background on the specifications and details of how they were derived and the basis for which the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) recommended them to NMFS for potential approval. Those details are not repeated here. For additional information on this action, please refer to the proposed rule. This final rule adopts, without changes, the annual reference points and management measures as proposed for the 2025-2026 fishing year. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Reference Points and Management Measures</HD> Based on the 2025 stock assessment for Pacific sardine, the associated estimated age 1+ biomass of 30,158 mt, the control rule formulas in the FMP, and the Pacific sardine rebuilding plan (90 FR 23461, June 3, 2025), NMFS is implementing, as proposed, an OFL of 4,645 mt, an ABC of 3,957 mt, an ACL of 2,200 mt, and an ACT of 2,100 mt. The CPS FMP includes a prohibition of the primary directed fishery when the biomass is at or below 150,000 mt. The Pacific sardine primary directed fishery is therefore closed, and Pacific sardine catch during the 2025-2026 fishing season is prohibited unless it is harvested as part of the live bait or minor directed fisheries, as incidental catch in other fisheries, or as part of exempted fishing permit (EFP) activities. The 2025-2026 fishing year specifications can be found in table 1, and management measures are listed after table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="6" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,12C,12C,12C,12C,12C"> <TTITLE> Table 1—Harvest Specifications for the 2025-2026 Sardine Fishing Year, in Metric Tons ( <E T="01">mt</E> ) </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Biomass estimate</CHED> <CHED H="1">OFL</CHED> <CHED H="1">ABC</CHED> <CHED H="1">HG</CHED> <CHED H="1">ACL</CHED> <CHED H="1">ACT</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">30,158</ENT> <ENT>4,645</ENT> <ENT>3,957</ENT> <ENT>0</ENT> <ENT>2,200</ENT> <ENT>2,100</ENT> The following are the additional management measures and in-season accountability measures for the 2025-2026 Pacific sardine fishing year: (1) An incidental per-landing limit of 20 percent (by weight) of Pacific sardine applies to other CPS primary directed fisheries ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Pacific mackerel); (2) If the ACT of 2,100 mt is attained, then a per-trip limit of 1 mt of Pacific sardine applies to all CPS fisheries ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> (1) will no longer apply); and (3) An incidental per-landing allowance of 2 mt of Pacific sardine applies to non-CPS fisheries until the ACL is reached. In addition to the management measures and in-season accountability measures listed in the previous paragraphs, Pacific sardine catch in the minor directed fishery remains limited to 1 mt per trip per day, and 1 trip per day by any vessel, per regulations at 50 CFR 660.511(d)(2). All sources of catch, including any EFP set-asides, the live bait fishery, and other minimal sources of harvest, such as incidental catch in CPS and non-CPS fisheries and minor directed fishing, will be accounted for against the ACT and ACL. Any Pacific sardine harvested between July 1, 2025, and the effective date of this final rule will count toward the 2025-2026 ACT and ACL. At the April 2025 Council meeting, the Council recommended apportioning 520 mt of the ACL for an EFP proposal to support stock assessments for Pacific sardine. NMFS will publish a notice of receipt of application in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and request public comment. After the comment period closes, NMFS will determine the issuance of the EFP. The NMFS West Coast Regional Administrator will publish a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> to announce when catch reaches the incidental limits, as well as any changes to allowable incidental catch percentages or trip limits. Additionally, to ensure that the regulated community is informed of any closure, NMFS will make announcements through other means available, including emails to fishermen, processors, and state fishery management agencies. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments and Responses</HD> On June 26, 2025, NMFS published a proposed rule for this action and solicited public comments through July 11, 2025 (90 FR 27273). NMFS received two public comment letters relevant to this action, one from the non-governmental conservation organization Oceana and one from a private citizen. After considering the public comments, NMFS made no changes from the proposed rule. Both comment letters included multiple comments, some of which are beyond the scope of this action. NMFS summarizes and responds to those comments below. <E T="03">Comment 1:</E> Oceana states that the E <E T="52">MSY</E> used to set the ABC is too high given the low sardine productivity and biomass indicated in the stock assessment, resulting in an ABC that fails to prevent overfishing, rebuild the stock, or adequately constrain U.S. fishery catches and is inconsistent with the best available science on sardine productivity. Oceana states that the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) has repeatedly raised concerns with the E <E T="52">MSY</E> parameter. Oceana also cites a court order in <E T="03">Oceana, Inc.</E> v. <E T="03">Raimondo,</E> quoting the court's conclusion about the scientific record presented to the court in that matter. Oceana states that NMFS has not made any attempt to correct or update its E <E T="52">MSY</E> formula since 2014, and states that NMFS' updated “correlation analysis” reduced the correlation, but NMFS did not provide the SSC with any alternatives, leaving the SSC little choice but to approve the “status quo approach to E <E T="52">MSY</E> .” Oceana requested that NMFS immediately develop and evaluate a range of alternatives for calculating E <E T="52">MSY</E> that do not rely on the CalCOFI index, specifically including alternatives that base E <E T="52">MSY</E> on direct measures of recent productivity reported in stock assessments. <E T="03">Response:</E> NMFS has determined that the OFL and ABC implemented through this action will prevent overfishing and are supported by the best scientific information available. E <E T="52">MSY</E> is a parameter in the OFL and ABC harvest control rules. As described in the proposed rule for these harvest specifications, the SSC has recommended in past years that the analysis and assump ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━