Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025-2027 Atlantic Herring Fishery Specifications

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 648</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 251208-0181]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN40</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; Fisheries of the Northeastern United States; 2025-2027 Atlantic Herring Fishery Specifications</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final specifications. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS approves and implements 2025-2027 specifications and river herring and shad catch caps for the Atlantic herring fishery, as recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council. This action also updates the target rebuilding date for Atlantic herring. This action is necessary to respond to updated scientific information from a 2024 Atlantic herring management track assessment and to achieve the objectives of the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan, including preventing overfishing, helping rebuild an overfished stock, and achieving optimum yield on a continuing basis. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective December 11, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Copies of the 2025-2027 herring specifications action, including the Supplemental Information Report (SIR) and the Regulatory Impact Review (RIR) prepared by the New England Fishery Management Council in support of this action, are available from Dr. Cate O'Keefe, Executive Director, New England Fishery Management Council, 50 Water Street, Mill 2, Newburyport, MA 01950. These documents are also accessible via the internet at <E T="03">https://www.nefmc.org/management-plans/herring.</E> Copies of the small entity compliance guide are available from Michael Pentony, Regional Administrator, NMFS, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930-2298, or available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.greateratlantic.fisheries.noaa.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Carrie Nordeen, Fishery Policy Analyst, 978-281-9272. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NMFS and the New England Fishery Management Council (Council) manage the Atlantic herring fishery pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan (FMP), and regulations implementing the FMP located at 50 CFR part 648, subpart K. This action relieves a restriction by increasing herring annual catch limits (ACL) by 68 percent for 2025 and by 237 percent for 2026 and 2027, compared to the current 2025 ACL. In 2023, the most recent year for which complete data are available, the herring fishery generated $5.61 million in revenue. This action projects up to an additional $1.56 million in revenue available for 2025 and an additional $5.25 million in revenue available for both 2026 and 2027, compared to revenue associated with the current 2025 herring ACL. The regulatory process to propose, approve, and implement herring specifications is described at § 648.200. First, the Council recommends herring specifications to NMFS for its review, including: The overfishing limit (OFL); acceptable biological catch (ABC); ACL; optimum yield (OY); domestic annual harvest; domestic annual processing; U.S. at-sea processing; border transfer; management area sub-ACLs, including seasonal periods as allowed by § 648.201(d) and modifications to sub-ACLs as allowed by § 648.201(f); the amount of research and fixed gear set aside; and river herring and shad catch caps. Next, NMFS reviews the Council's recommended specifications and publishes proposed specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , describing its evaluation of the specifications and whether or not the proposed specifications are consistent with the Council's recommendations. During this time, NMFS seeks public comment on the proposed herring specifications and whether they are consistent with the FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its National Standards, and other applicable law. Following the close of the comment period on the proposed specifications, NMFS evaluates the public comments and determines whether to approve the proposed specifications. Lastly, NMFS implements the approved specifications, as well as any changes to the proposed specifications, by publishing them in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . A 2024 herring management track stock assessment (2024 stock assessment) was completed in June 2024. According to the results of the 2024 stock assessment, the stock continues to be overfished with overfishing not occurring. Retrospective pattern adjustments were necessary because the model overestimated biomass and underestimated mortality. The adjusted spawning stock biomass was estimated to be 26 percent (47,955 metric tons (mt)) of the biomass (B) to support maximum sustainable yield (B <E T="52">MSY</E> ) (186,367 mt) and the adjusted fishing mortality rate (F) was estimated to be 58 percent (0.263) of the overfishing threshold (F <E T="52">MSY</E> equals 0.45). The 2024 stock assessment was unable to explain a cause for the stock's historic and continued low recruitment and projected that continued poor recruitment of herring would likely result in a substantial decline in biomass. Original catch projections from the 2024 stock assessment indicated the need for an almost 90-percent reduction from the previously projected 2025 ACL (23,961 mt) (88 FR 17397; March 23, 2023) to an updated 2025 ACL (2,710 mt). The Council acknowledged that herring harvest needed to be reduced to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock and, at its September 2024 meeting, requested NMFS use its in-season adjustment authority described in the herring regulations at § 648.200(e) to reduce the 2025 specifications before the start of the fishing year on January 1 to prevent catch from exceeding new, lower limits. NMFS concurred with the Council's request to reduce herring harvest to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock and, therefore, published 2025 in-season changes on December 19, 2024 (89 FR 103695), that implemented the reduced 2025 specifications. Original catch projections from the 2024 stock assessment were based on the assumption that the 2024 ABC (23,409 mt) would be fully harvested. However, in January 2025, preliminary 2024 herring catch data became available indicating that the amount of herring harvested in 2024 was much lower than what was assumed in the original projections. Based on preliminary herring catch, NMFS estimated only 51 percent of the 2024 herring ACL (10,315 mt of 20,141 mt) was harvested. Updated catch projections from the 2024 stock assessment indicated that less catch in 2024 allows for higher catch limits in 2025 and beyond, while still achieving the FMP's goals of preventing overfishing and rebuilding the stock. At its April 2025 meeting, the Council reviewed and adopted its Scientific and Statistical Committee's (SSC's) OFL and ABC recommendations for 2025-2027 based on the updated catch projections from the 2024 stock assessment, with one exception. In response to the uncertainty around catch projection increases, especially in 2027, the Council recommended that the projected 2027 OFL remain consistent with catch projections, but that all other projected specification values for 2027 be held constant at 2026 levels. The Council also noted that the 2027 specifications would likely be replaced following the next management track stock assessment currently scheduled for 2026. The Council's approach uses the most recent and best scientific information available, while acknowledging the uncertainty around catch projection increases. After carefully considering the Council's recommendations for 2025-2027 specifications for the herring fishery, NMFS preliminary determined it concurred with the Council's recommendations pending public comment. NMFS published the proposed specifications in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 25, 2025 (90 FR 26955), and solicited public input on whether the proposed specifications were consistent with the FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its National Standards, and other applicable law. Following the close of the public comment period on July 10, 2025, NMFS reviewed all public comments and concluded that the proposed herring specifications are consistent with the FMP and all applicable law. Through this final rule, NMFS approves and implements the Council's recommended new 2025 herring specifications and projected specifications for 2026-2027 pursuant to section 305(d) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to implement management measures necessary to carry out an approved FMP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Approved Specifications</HD> This action sets new 2025 herring specifications and projects herring specifications for 2026-2027 based on the ABC control rule developed in Amendment 8 to the FMP (86 FR 1810; January 11, 2021). These specifications are consistent with recommendations by the Council, based on the best scientific information available, and intended to achieve the objectives of the FMP, including preventing overfishing, helping rebuild an overfished stock, and achieving OY on a continuing basis. As specified at § 648.200(a)(2), the Council may annually review these specifications and recommend adjustments if necessary. The current, new, and projected specifications are shown in table 1. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,12,12,12,12"> <TTITLE>Table 1—Current, New, and Projected Atlantic Herring Specifications</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Specifications</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Curre ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 47k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━