Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2025-2026 Biennial Specifications and Management Measures; Inseason Adjustments

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241022-0278]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BO00</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; 2025-2026 Biennial Specifications and Management Measures; Inseason Adjustments</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; inseason adjustments to biennial groundfish management measures. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule announces routine inseason adjustments to management measures in commercial and recreational groundfish fisheries. These inseason adjustments will change depth restrictions and trip limits for some stocks in recreational and commercial groundfish fisheries off the California coast to allow more attainment of healthy stocks that co-occur with California quillback rockfish. This action is intended to allow commercial and recreational fishing vessels to access more abundant groundfish stocks while protecting overfished and depleted stocks. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective September 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gretchen Hanshew, 206-526-6147, <E T="03">gretchen.hanshew@noaa.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access</HD> This rule is accessible via the internet at the Office of the Federal Register website at <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov.</E> Background information and documents are available at the Pacific Fishery Management Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org/.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (PCGFMP) and its implementing regulations at title 50 in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), part 660, subparts C through G, regulate fishing for groundfish off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. Pacific Coast groundfish fisheries are managed using harvest specifications or limits ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> overfishing limits [OFL], acceptable biological catch [ABC], annual catch limits [ACL], and harvest guidelines [HG]) recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and based on the best scientific information available (BSIA) at that time (50 CFR 660.60(b)). During development of the harvest specifications, the Council also recommends management measures ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> trip limits, area closures, and bag limits) that are meant to control catch so as not to exceed the harvest specifications. Based on recommendations from the Council, NMFS develops and implements groundfish harvest specifications and management measures for 2-year periods ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a biennium). NMFS published the final rule to implement harvest specifications and management measures for the 2025-2026 biennium for most species managed under the PCGFMP on December 16, 2024 (89 FR 101514). That final rule was effective January 1, 2025. In general, the management measures set at the start of the biennial harvest specifications cycle help the various sectors of the fishery attain, but not exceed, the annual allocations for each stock. During the fishing year, the Council recommends adjustments to the biennial management measures to achieve this goal. At its June 13-16, 2025 meeting, the Council recommended two inseason actions for the Pacific Coast groundfish fishery. The first involves commercial sablefish trip limits and was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and effective on July 21, 2025 (90 FR 34186). The second inseason action involves changes in management measures for the recreational and commercial groundfish fisheries off the coast of northern and central California, and is discussed below. The harvest specifications and mitigation measures developed for the 2025-2026 biennium used data through the 2023 fishing year. California quillback rockfish ( <E T="03">Sebastes maliger</E> ) was determined by NMFS, in December 2023, to be overfished. Thus, in an effort to take precautionary steps prior to the implementation of a rebuilding plan, the Council recommended and NMFS implemented restrictive commercial and recreational measures, as inseason changes, in autumn 2023 (88 FR 67656, October 2, 2023), to use all means available to conserve California quillback rockfish. These restrictive measures were retained in the 2025-2026 harvest specifications and management measures. The adjustments provided in this inseason action are based on updated information that was unavailable when the analysis for the current harvest specifications, management measures, and the rebuilding plan was completed. As new fisheries data becomes available, adjustments to management measures are appropriate in order to help harvesters achieve but not exceed the catch limits. Accordingly, at its June 2025 meeting, the Council considered input from its advisory bodies on a draft 2025 benchmark stock assessment for California quillback rockfish (hereafter quillback rockfish), which showed preliminary results that the estimated harvestable surplus for 2027 would be approximately 6 times higher than the 2025 ACL, and that the stock is not overfished and may never have been in an overfished condition. Contingent upon the outcome of the stock assessment review process producing a final stock assessment substantially similar to the draft available in June, the Council recommended inseason changes to the 2025-2026 groundfish management measures with the intent of relieving restrictions on stocks that co-occur with quillback rockfish. The benchmark assessment was accepted by a peer review in July 2025 and, on September 3, 2025, the final benchmark stock assessment was endorsed by the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC). On September 4, 2025, NMFS determined that the 2025 stock assessment represents new best scientific information available (BSIA) and the stock status for quillback rockfish is expected to be not overfished and rebuilt. The final stock assessment estimates that the quillback rockfish stock is above its proxy for maximum sustainable yield (MSY); at 43.5 percent depletion estimated in 2025. Also, the stocks' harvestable surplus is estimated in the 2025 assessment to be over six times higher than the 2021 assessment estimate, with a projected OFL of 12.83 metric tons (mt) for 2027 compared to an OFL estimate of 2.11 mt in 2023. Based on this new information, the Council recommended changes to relieve restrictions for the remainder of the biennial period for stocks that co-occur with quillback rockfish and are affecting boat operators, fish processors, and coastal communities. The Council did not recommend changes to routine management measures that directly affect quillback rockfish. Retention of quillback rockfish will therefore still be prohibited off much of the coast of California, and the use of descending devices will still be required to resubmerge incidentally caught quillback rockfish in commercial and recreational hook and line fisheries. For these reasons, the recommended changes are expected to help the various sectors of the fishery attain, but not exceed, the catch limits for each stock, including quillback rockfish. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Recreational Fishery</HD> During the 2025-2026 biennial process, the Council considered a range of routine recreational fishery management measure configurations off the coast of California, ranging from open all-depths year-round (essentially unrestricted) to year-round depth-restrictions with shortened open seasons (highly restricted). The wide range of restrictions was analyzed with the intent of encompassing the uncertainty in how catches in the fishery could accrue compared to expectations and catch limits, and to allow the Council to consider adaptive management based on new information. Since the implementation of fishery restrictions on quillback rockfish and species that co-occur with quillback rockfish in late 2023, the Council and NMFS staff have received continuous comments from commercial and recreational fishery participants on the adverse economic impacts of such restrictions to California coastal communities. Most recently, at its June 2025 meeting, the Council received public comments from recreational fishery representatives describing the hardships created by the current depth restrictions and current fishery restrictions, including how offshore fishing increased fuel costs and transit time and how regulatory discards of commonly encountered stocks were negatively affecting charter passengers perceived quality and value of trips. Based on new scientific information regarding the improved status of the quillback rockfish stock, and in light of the hardships that recreational fishery participants are experiencing, in June 2025, the Council recommended all-depth recreational fishing for rockfish, cabezon, and greenling (referred to as the “RCG Complex” in California recreational regulations) and lingcod, during the open season for the Northern, Mendocino, San Francisco, and Central groundfish management areas from April 1 through December 31, for the remainder of the biennial period (2025-26). For the same reasons, and to reduce regulatory complexity, the Council also recommended removal of the management line at Point Lopez (36° North latitude (N lat.)) to recombine the two sub-areas that were created within the Central groundfish management area in 2023. Consistent with Council recommendations, NMFS is modifying regulatory text at 50 CFR 660.360(c)(3)(i)(A), sub-paragraphs ( <E T="03">1</E> ) through ( <E ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 48k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━