Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 34; Groundfish Exclusion Area for Coral Research and Restoration

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 251118-0171]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN15</RIN> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 34; Groundfish Exclusion Area for Coral Research and Restoration</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> This final rule implements regulations for amendment 34 to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (Groundfish FMP). The regulations include a closure to commercial groundfish bottom contact gear in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS). Specifically, NMFS is implementing a new groundfish exclusion area (GEA) for the purposes of coral research and restoration within MBNMS at the site of Sur Ridge. This action closes the Sur Ridge site within the MBNMS off California to commercial groundfish bottom contact gear in order to protect future deep-sea coral research and restoration projects from the impact of fishing gear. The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) conducts scientific research in National Marine Sanctuaries, including on deep sea coral survival, growth and reproduction, under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA) and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 12, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Information relevant to amendment 34, which includes an analysis that addresses Presidential Executive Order 12866, the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), and the statutory requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (the Analysis), may be obtained from the NMFS West Coast Region website at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/west-coast.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Megan Mackey, 206-526-6140, <E T="03">megan.mackey@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Pacific Coast groundfish fishery in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) seaward of Washington, Oregon, and California is managed under the Groundfish FMP. The Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) developed the Groundfish FMP pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). The Secretary of Commerce approved the Groundfish FMP and implemented the provisions of the plan at 50 CFR part 660, subparts C through G. Species managed under the Groundfish FMP include more than 90 species of groundfish, flatfish, rockfish, sharks, and skates. This final rule implements regulations for amendment 34 to the Groundfish FMP. Consistent with section 303(c)(1) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Council deemed the regulations consistent with and necessary to implement amendment 34 in an October 1, 2024 letter from the Council Executive Director to the Regional Administrator. The notice of availability for amendment 34, which describes the specific changes being made to the Groundfish FMP, was published on October 9, 2024 (89 FR 81878) and was open for public comment through December 8, 2024. The proposed rule for amendment 34, which includes the regulations necessary for implementing amendment 34, was published on October 23, 2024 (89 FR 84511), and was open for public comment through November 22, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Council met throughout 2023 and 2024 to consider developing fisheries closures for deep-sea coral restoration and research in response to a request from the ONMS. ONMS conducts scientific research in National Marine Sanctuaries, including within MBNMS, under the NMSA and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. In September 2023, ONMS presented a scoping paper that posed 5 locations with 10 sites within Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS) and MBNMS for deep sea coral restoration and research (section 1.2 of the Analysis). At that meeting, the Council chose to continue to scope closures in MBNMS only, at the locations of Año Nuevo and Ascension Canyons (two sites) and Sur Ridge (one site), for areas to conduct coral research and restoration. The Council proposed that these areas could be closed to bottom contact gears as GEAs. GEAs were established by amendment 32 to the Groundfish FMP (88 FR 83830, December 1, 2023) and are a management tool intended to mitigate the impacts to sensitive environments from certain groundfish fishing activity. At the June 2024 meeting, the Council adopted its final preferred alternative to develop one GEA for commercial groundfish bottom contact gear at Sur Ridge in MBNMS. It is anticipated that ONMS may begin deep-sea coral outplanting at Sur Ridge in 2026. The GEA at Sur Ridge applies to commercial groundfish vessels using bottom contact gear. Currently, the GEA area is within a bottom trawl essential fish habitat conservation area (EFHCA), and therefore no bottom trawling is permitted. If the EFHCA were to be removed in the future, the GEA will continue to prohibit bottom trawl. The GEA creates new restrictions for non-trawl commercial groundfish vessels using bottom contact gears in the limited entry fixed gear, directed open access, and shore-based individual fishing quota sectors. Vessels using non-bottom contact gear will still be permitted to operate in the area. The GEA will close 36.64 square nautical miles of area, with depths ranging from 2,690 to 5,118 feet (448 to 853 fathoms (fm) (4,919 meters (m)). Overall, this GEA allows ONMS to perform deep-sea coral research and restoration while having limited impact on the groundfish fisheries. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Amendment 34</HD> NMFS is implementing amendment 34 to the Groundfish FMP in alignment with the Council's recommendation in June 2024. Amendment 34 revises the description of GEAs in the Groundfish FMP to remove references to specific GEAs, consistent with how other closed area types are included in the Groundfish FMP. Active GEAs are currently listed in the FMP. With this amendment, active GEAs will instead be noted in the Federal groundfish regulations at § 660.70, and the history of a specific GEA will likely be provided in the groundfish Stock Assessment Fishery Evaluation document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Revisions to GEAs</HD> In addition to revising the description of GEAs under amendment 34, in alignment with the Council's recommendation, NMFS is revising regulations to modify the use of GEAs as a management tool in the following ways. This final rule will: • Add GEAs to the general groundfish prohibitions found at § 660.12; • Revise the descriptions of GEAs found in §§ 660.230, 660.330, and 660.360 to remove the specific references to the Southern California Bight; and, • Establish a new GEA at Sur Ridge in MBNMS. This final rule will add GEAs to the general groundfish prohibitions found in regulations by adding § 660.12(a)(23) to the list of prohibitions in § 660.12(a). This will clarify that it is unlawful for fishermen to violate any regulations that apply to activity in GEAs. This final rule will also revise the descriptions of GEAs in the regulations by updating §§ 660.230, 660.330, and 660.360 to remove specific references to the Southern California Bight and to generalize the GEA descriptions to allow for GEAs to be located more broadly. This final rule will also update the GEA description at § 660.70(t) to note that there will be a total of nine GEAs and to remove the specific reference to GEAs being areas south of Point Conception, California. Finally, this final rule will add § 660.70(t)(9) to the list of GEAs found in that section and will include the latitude and longitude coordinates and other information relevant to establishing the Sur Ridge GEA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Expected Effects of This Action</HD> The Council prepared a detailed Analysis (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) that analyzed the effects of amendment 34 on various resources. A brief summary of expected effects from the Analysis is provided below and is also included in the proposed rule (89 FR 84511, October 23, 2024). All commercial groundfish participants that use bottom contact gear for fisheries in the EEZ off Washington, Oregon, and California, which are managed under the Groundfish FMP, may be affected by this final rule. Bottom contact gear is defined at 50 CFR 660.11: “fishing gear designed or modified to make contact with the bottom. This includes, but is not limited to, beam trawl, bottom trawl, dredge, fixed gear, set net, demersal seine, dinglebar gear, and other gear (including experimental gear) designed or modified to make contact with the bottom. Gear used to harvest bottom dwelling organisms ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> by hand, rakes, and knives) are also considered bottom contact gear for purposes of this subpart.” This list is non-exhaustive. The coral research and restoration area is within existing bottom trawl EFHCAs, which prohibit all bottom trawl gears from operating within those EFHCA boundaries. Given that these areas are currently closed to bottom trawl vessels, this action will establish no new impact to those vessels. Therefore, the action will impact only fishing with non-trawl bottom contact gear types within the GEA at Sur Ridge. The commercial gears that will be permitted to operate within the newly closed area are midwater trawl and select non-trawl gear types (troll gear and commercial vertical hook-and-line gear not anchored to the bottom, such as vertical jig gear or rod-and-reel gear with weights suspended off the bottom). From 2019 to 2023, there were 429 distinct vessels that utilized non-trawl botto ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 43k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━