Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 37; Stock Definitions

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Parts 600 and 660</CFR> <DEPDOC>[RTID 0648-XF363]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Magnuson-Stevens Act Provisions; Fisheries Off West Coast States; Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan; Amendment 37; Stock Definitions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability of proposed fishery management plan amendment; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS announces that the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) has submitted amendment 37 to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (Groundfish FMP) to the Secretary of Commerce for review. If approved, amendment 37 would define stocks that are in need of conservation and management in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), consistent with the provisions and guidelines of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act). Amendment 37 would define stocks for 27 species within the fishery management unit. Amendment 37 is necessary for NMFS to make stock status determinations, which in turn will help prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, and achieve optimum yield. Amendment 37 is administrative in nature and does not change harvest levels or timing and location of fishing, nor does it revise the goals and objectives or the management frameworks of the Groundfish FMP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on amendment 37 must be received no later than April 6, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2025-1428, by the following method: • <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2025-1428 in the Search box. Click the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments must be submitted by the above method to ensure that the comments are received, documented, and considered by NMFS. 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. All comments received are a part of the public record and NMFS will post 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, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender is publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). Electronic copies of proposed amendment 37 and the draft analysis (the Analysis) prepared for this action may be obtained from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> from the NMFS West Coast Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/west-coast,</E> and from the Council's website at <E T="03">https://www.pcouncil.org.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Megan Mackey, Fishery Management Specialist, at 206-526-6140, or <E T="03">megan.mackey@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS manages the groundfish fisheries in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) seaward of Washington, Oregon, and California under the Groundfish FMP. The Council prepared and NMFS implemented the Groundfish FMP under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> and by regulations at 50 CFR parts 600 and 660. The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that each regional fishery management council submit any fishery management plan (FMP) or plan amendment it prepares to NMFS for review and approval, disapproval, or partial approval by the Secretary of Commerce. The Magnuson-Stevens Act also requires that NMFS, upon receiving an FMP or amendment, immediately publish notification that the FMP or amendment is available for public review and comment. This notification announces that the proposed amendment 37 to the Groundfish FMP is available for public review and comment. NMFS will consider the public comments received during the comment period described above in determining whether to approve, partially approve, or disapprove amendment 37 to the Groundfish FMP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> In 2021, NMFS was unable to make stock status determinations for stocks that were assessed in 2021, because the “stocks” for which the Council was expecting status determinations did not exist in the Groundfish FMP. At that time, the Groundfish FMP contained a list of over 80 species and did not describe whether each species is a single stock within the fishery management unit (FMU) ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the jurisdiction of the Groundfish FMP from 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore between the United States border with Canada and the United States border with Mexico) or if it is multiple ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> regional) stocks. NMFS advised the Council that steps must be taken to draw the Groundfish FMP into compliance with the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the National Standards by defining the groundfish species in need of conservation and management in the EEZ as stocks. The Council initiated a process, called phase 1, to correct this issue. Phase 1 developed a process to define stocks of managed species and, over the course of amendment 31 (88 FR 78677, November 16, 2023) and amendment 35 (approved on June 2, 2025), defined 28 stocks of 21 species managed in the Groundfish FMP. Phase 1 was used to define stocks of species that were undergoing stock assessments, and were therefore the most likely candidates to be the subject of NMFS' forthcoming status determinations, which are often based on new assessments. A second Phase, or Phase 2, was planned to complete the process of identifying and defining those stocks of species currently managed in the Groundfish FMP that are found to be in need of conservation and management in the EEZ. Phase 2 was initiated by the Council at the November 2023 Council meeting, and at the June 2025 and September 2025 Council meetings, the Council recommended stock definitions for 27 species of Pacific Coast groundfish managed under the Groundfish FMP that were determined to be in need of conservation and management in the EEZ. Amendment 37 is administrative in nature, and the economic impacts, if any, will come when stock assessments are completed, the status of the stocks are determined by NMFS, and appropriate fishery management actions are taken by the Council. During the development of amendment 31, the Council was advised by the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) that indications of population structure within a species should be an indicator of whether stock status should be determined at a finer scale than coastwide. Therefore, the Council evaluated a literature review of the best scientific and biological information available for each species, which is appended to the analyses developed for amendment 35 and amendment 37, available on the Council website (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section). The analysis pertaining to the amendment 37 species considered a single stock definition alternative for all but four of the species (darkblotched and greenspotted rockfishes, boccacio, and cowcod, as explained below). Generally, species with no known population structure, based on the literature review, or with known single-population structure based on genetic information, were considered under a single stock definition alternative. The analysis assumed each alternative stock definition considered by the Council was adopted, then applied the Groundfish FMP's harvest specifications framework to each stock to assess some of the biological and fishery management trade-offs that might be expected from implementation of future management actions based on the alternative stock definition. Impacts of these stock definitions are expected to flow from future, subsequent action(s) to set harvest specifications and management measures for the stock(s), but the analysis provided information for the Council to consider in making its decision. The Council considered these tradeoffs when making its final stock definition recommendations for the amendment 37 species at its June and September 2025 meetings. The Council considered 23 of the 27 amendment 37 species under a single stock definition (arrowtooth flounder, aurora rockfish, bank rockfish, big skate, blackgill rockfish, California scorpionfish, flathead sole, greenstriped rockfish, longnose skate, longspine thornyhead, Pacific cod, Pacific hake, Pacific Ocean perch, Pacific sanddab, redstripe rockfish, rosethorn rockfish, sharpchin rockfish, shortraker rockfish, silvergray rockfish, splitnose rockfish, starry rockfish, stripetail rockfish, and yellowmouth rockfish). Specifically, California scorpionfish and starry rockfish were considered under a California-only stock, due to their known geographic range, whereas the others were considered under a single coastwide stock definition. Except for blackgill rockfish (as discussed below), all of these species have been consistently considered a single population, assessed as a single geographic unit, and have historically had a single overfishing limit (OFL) established under the FMP. At present, genetics, larval dispersal, and/or adult movement data do not support delineating these 23 species on a finer geographic scale than coastwide, or as less than a single California stock for starry rockfish and California scorpionfish, which can be ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━