[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 119 (Thursday, June 24, 2021)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Pages 33142-33146]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-13349]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

50 CFR Part 660

[RTID 0648-XA797]


Fisheries Off West Coast States; Coastal Pelagic Species 
Fisheries; Amendment 18 to the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery 
Management Plan

AGENCY: National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.

ACTION: Notification of agency decision.

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SUMMARY: On June 14, 2021, the Regional Administrator of the West Coast 
Region, NMFS, with the concurrence of the Assistant Administrator for 
Fisheries, approved Amendment 18 to the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery 
Management Plan. Amendment 18 implements a rebuilding plan for the 
northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine, which NMFS declared 
overfished in June 2019.

DATES: The amendment was approved on June 14, 2021.

ADDRESSES: Copies of the Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Fishery 
Management Plan (FMP) as amended through Amendment 18, are available at 
the Pacific Fishery Management Council, 7700 NE Ambassador Place, Suite 
101, Portland, OR 97220-1384, or at this URL; https://www.pcouncil.org/coastal-pelagic-species/fishery-management-plan-and-amendments/. The 
final Environmental Assessment (EA) prepared pursuant to the National 
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for Amendment 18 is available on NMFS' 
website at https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/laws-and-policies/west-coast-region-national-environmental-policy-act-documents.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Lynn Massey, Sustainable Fisheries 
Division, NMFS, at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#036f7a6d6d2d6e627070667a436d6c62622d646c75"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="d9b5a0b7b7f7b4b8aaaabca099b7b6b8b8f7beb6af">[email protected]</span></a> or 562-436-2462; or Kerry 
Griffin, Pacific Fishery Management Council, at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#3e555b4c4c4710594c57585857507e50515f5f10595148"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="a9c2ccdbdbd087cedbc0cfcfc0c7e9c7c6c8c887cec6df">[email protected]</span></a> 
or 503-820-2409.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Amendment 18 expands Section 4.5 of the CPS 
FMP to include the rebuilding plan for Pacific sardine. There are no 
implementing regulations associated with Amendment 18, therefore NMFS 
did not promulgate proposed and final rules to implement this 
amendment.
    NMFS published a Notice of Availability for Amendment 18 on March 
16, 2021 (86 FR 14401), and solicited public comments through May 17, 
2021. NMFS received five public comments in support of Amendment 18, 
one from a student and four from prominent fishing industry groups. The 
industry groups included the California Wetfish Producers Association, 
the West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group, the Sportfishing Association 
of California, and the West Coast Seafood Processors Association. NMFS 
received three public comments opposing Amendment 18, one from a 
private citizen and two from the environmental non-governmental 
organization Oceana. Oceana submitted two letters, one containing its 
public comment and the other containing a list of names that signed a 
petition campaigning against Amendment 18. NMFS summarizes and responds 
to the public comments below. NMFS responded to comments related to 
NEPA compliance in the final EA prepared for Amendment 18 (see 
ADDRESSES).
    Comment 1: Oceana argues that by adopting the recommended 
management strategy for the rebuilding plan (Alternative 1 Status Quo 
Management) considered in the supporting EA for Amendment 18 (see 
ADDRESSES), NMFS is continuing failed policies that led to the 
overfished determination.
    Response: This comment misunderstands the biology of Pacific 
sardine, the structure of the CPS FMP, and the extraordinary and 
precautionary measures that the Council has built into the framework 
for managing CPS. Pacific sardines are well known to experience 
dramatic swings in abundance in response to environmental conditions, 
even in the absence of fishing pressure. The recent population decline 
of Pacific sardine appears to be due to poor recruitment. Specifically, 
the Southwest Fisheries Science Center's (SWFSC) 2020 stock assessment 
states that recruitment has declined since 2005-2006 except for a brief 
period of modest recruitment success in 2009-2010, with the 2011-

[[Page 33143]]

2018 year-classes being among the weakest in recent history. Such 
declines in population are by no means unprecedented. The Pacific 
sardine has undergone large population fluctuations for centuries even 
in the absence of industrial fishing as evidenced by historical records 
of scale deposits. Although this decrease in biomass triggered the 
requirement to declare the stock overfished, overfishing has never 
occurred for this stock, as Pacific sardine catch has been well below 
both the acceptable biological catch (ABC) and the overfishing limit 
(OFL) in every year.
    Most stocks managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation 
and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act) are managed with the goal of 
maintaining a fixed biomass level and use a constant exploitation rate 
to achieve that management goal. This is not the case for Pacific 
sardines, which as stated above, are well known to experience dramatic 
swings in abundance in response to environmental conditions and in the 
absence of fishing pressure. In addition, Pacific sardine are important 
forage species and play a critical role in the marine ecosystem. 
Accordingly, management for Pacific sardine does not rely on a fixed 
exploitation rate or a single set of management measures. Instead, the 
Council has crafted a management framework that does two critical 
things: (1) The harvest control rule incorporates the stock's current 
levels of productivity to adjust the exploitation rate based on whether 
the stock is experiencing high or low recruitment, and (2) implements 
stringent management measures as soon as the stock exhibits signs that 
it is entering a significant downswing in biomass. With respect to this 
latter element, the FMP takes the very precautionary step of mandating 
a closure of the primary directed fishery, when the stock reaches 
150,000 metric tons (mt), a level three times higher than the 
overfished threshold. The primary directed fishery is the main driver 
of fishing mortality for Pacific sardines and its closure creates an 
automatic reduction in removals, even in the absence of changes to the 
annual catch limit (ACL). This FMP provision has kept the primary 
directed fishery closed since 2015 (7 years so far), which was 4 years 
before the stock was even declared overfished. In addition, when the 
stock reached its overfished level of 50,000 mt in 2019, the FMP 
automatically required a reduction on incidental catch limits of 
Pacific sardines in other CPS fisheries from 40 percent to 20 percent, 
which also has major impacts on fishing mortality. The FMP explicitly 
acknowledges that this framework could constitute a rebuilding plan 
without further adjustment. The Magnuson-Stevens Act provides Councils 
with 2 years to develop a rebuilding plan once a stock is declared 
overfished (a process which itself takes several months). Sometimes, if 
a Council fails to develop a rebuilding plan and NMFS must develop and 
implement its own plan, it can take more than 2 years to implement a 
plan. The Council took the extraordinary step to anticipate population 
fluctuations for this cyclical stock and not wait to respond to low 
productivity and decreasing stock size. Instead, the Council 
automatically implemented provisions that would be found in a 
rebuilding plan as soon as the stock passed certain biomass thresholds. 
This represents an extremely precautionary approach to management.
    Comment 2: Oceana claimed that Amendment 18 violates the Magnuson-
Stevens Act because the recommended management strategy for the 
rebuilding plan (Alternative 1 Status Quo Management) considered in the 
supporting EA for Amendment 18 (see ADDRESSES) does not provide at 
least a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the stock within the 
modeled rebuilding timeframe (through 2050). Relevant to this, Oceana 
also claims that NMFS did not use the best scientific information 
available for evaluating the effects Alternative 1 Status Quo 
Management in the EA. Furthermore, Oceana claims that NMFS 
mischaracterizes Alternative 1 Status Quo Management to achieve a 
particular conclusion.
    Response: NMFS has determined that the information and analysis 
used to determine a rebuilding timeline based on status quo management 
is supported by the best scientific information available and that 
status quo management has not been mischaracterized for a specific 
outcome. To support their claim, Oceana highlights the results of the 
preliminary model run for Alternative 1 Status Quo Management provided 
in the SWFSC's Pacific Sardine Rebuilding Analysis (Appendix A of the 
EA), which had an output that the stock would not rebuild before 2050. 
However, NMFS does not rely on these initial modeling results because 
they do not realistically reflect the biological impacts that would 
result from management under Alternative 1 Status Quo Management. 
Instead, NMFS relied on several sources of information when selecting 
T<INF>target</INF> (i.e., the target rebuilding time frame). First, 
additional modeling results using a 2,200 mt constant catch level 
predict that the stock has at least a 50 percent chance of rebuilding 
in 17 years, only one year later than the 16 years predicted under 
Alternative 3 (Five Percent Fixed U.S. Harvest Rate). Second, both 
rebuilding timelines under Alternative 1 and Alternative 3 are likely 
overestimated by the modeling results since both alternatives do not 
account for the fact that in recent years only a small portion of the 
already-small U.S. Pacific sardine landings are from the northern 
subpopulation of Pacific sardine (i.e., the population managed under 
the CPS FMP), with a greater proportion coming from the southern 
subpopulation. Third, NMFS took into account the biology of the sardine 
stock and its changing productivity based on ocean conditions. In 
addition, Alternative 1 Status Quo management allows the stock to 
rebuild on a similar timeline as Alternative 3, but also prevents 
further economic harm to the fishing industry, which has already been 
declared a Federal disaster since 2015 when NMFS closed the primary 
directed fishery. NMFS believes that the stock has at least a 50 
percent chance of rebuilding by the Council's recommended 
T<INF>target</INF> of 14 years (reduced from the modeled 17 years for 
2,200 mt constant catch to account for the fact that only a small 
portion of the 2,200 mt is from the northern subpopulation, discussed 
more further below).
    When analyzing the effects of Alternative 1 Status Quo Management, 
NMFS relied on several sources of information to support its 
conclusion. These are not separate characterizations of the 
alternative, as the comment suggests. Instead, NMFS recognized that the 
model available was not capable of capturing all aspects of the Pacific 
sardine stock and that other sources of information should be used to 
evaluate the alternatives and select rebuilding criteria, including the 
additional model results for a constant catch of 2,200 mt (intended to 
represent expected average catch by fishery during the rebuilding 
period), the mixed stock composition of Pacific sardine landings, and 
the biology of the sardine stock and its changing productivity based on 
ocean conditions. The initial model run calculated rebuilding 
probabilities as though the full ABC is harvested, which has never been 
the case due the non-discretionary harvest restrictions already in 
place pursuant to the CPS FMP that purposefully restrict the fishery 
from catching the full ABC. These include the continued closure of the 
primary directed fishery (i.e., the largest fishery that takes the 
majority of Pacific sardine

[[Page 33144]]

catch) and restrictions on incidental harvest of Pacific sardine in 
other CPS fisheries (which are currently less than half of typical 
incidental limits). Therefore, although NMFS is required to set an OFL 
and ABC every year for Pacific sardine, those reference points have not 
been the drivers for annual catch levels. Instead, removals of Pacific 
sardine are driven by the management measures required by the FMP and 
included in this rebuilding plan. Therefore the Council and NMFS 
determined that analyzing removals at the level of the ABC would be 
inaccurate and fail to realistically evaluate the effectiveness of the 
rebuilding plan management strategies and their effects on fishing 
communities. The results of the final model run (i.e., 2,200 mt 
constant catch) that the Council and NMFS find more representative of 
Alternative 1 Status Quo Management projects that the stock has at 
least a 50 percent chance of rebuilding in 17 years, which is in 
between the Council's recommended T<INF>min</INF> of 12 years and 
T<INF>max</INF> of 24 years.
    NMFS' determination that 14 years is the time period that is as 
short as possible while taking into account the factors set forth by 
the Magnuson-Stevens Act, including the biology of the stock and the 
needs of fishing communities, was further informed by the stock 
composition of the removals counted against the ACL and included in the 
2,200-mt average. There are two stocks of Pacific sardine that can 
occur off the U.S. West Coast, known as the northern subpopulation and 
the southern subpopulation. The northern subpopulation is the dominate 
stock off the U.S. West Coast, is the stock managed in the CPS FMP, and 
is the stock that is overfished and will be managed under this 
rebuilding plan. The southern subpopulation usually resides off the 
coast of Mexico, however in the summer months it usually migrates north 
into waters off southern California. Although the southern 
subpopulation prefers warmer water than the northern subpopulation, 
meaning the two subpopulations generally inhabit different geographic 
ranges, they do typically mix in the summertime and it is impossible to 
distinguish between the subpopulations at the time of landing. 
Therefore, in an abundance of caution, NMFS counts all landed Pacific 
sardine against the ACL (which is set based on the biomass of the 
northern subpopulation only), regardless of which subpopulation they 
might belong to. Since the closure of the primary Pacific sardine 
fishery, the remaining small levels of catch of Pacific sardine have 
occurred in the summertime when the southern subpopulation is mixing 
with the northern subpopulation in the Southern California Bight. Post-
season reconstruction, for purposes of assigning landings in stock 
assessments, has demonstrated that in recent years, only 472 mt on 
average of the 2,200-mt average catch are assumed to be from northern 
subpopulation. The Council recognized, therefore, that the modeled 
2,200 mt was significantly overestimating the impact of the fishery on 
the northern subpopulation and adjusted the T<INF>target</INF> 
accordingly. NMFS notes that the rebuilding timeline under Alternative 
3 is also likely overestimated for the same reasons, however this does 
not change the fact that the modeling shows Alternative 3 only 
rebuilding slightly faster than Alternative 1.
    Comment 3: Oceana claims that harvest levels allowed under 
Alternative 1 Status Quo Management will not allow the stock to rebuild 
because the sea surface temperature index used to calculate the 
E<INF>MSY</INF> parameter (i.e., the exploitation rate at maximum 
sustainable yield) in the OFL harvest control rule causes the OFL, and 
hence other harvest specifications, to be inflated. Oceana supports 
this claim by citing recent Council documents and a 2019 scientific 
paper from NMFS' SWFSC that indicates that the Pacific Decadal 
Oscillation is a better predictor of sea surface temperature than the 
currently used 3-year average of California Cooperative Fisheries 
Investigation (CalCOFI) sea surface temperature measurements. Relevant 
to this, Oceana claims that NMFS should calculate E<INF>MSY</INF> based 
on the mean E<INF>MSY</INF> from recent stock assessments rather than 
the 3-year average of CalCOFI sea surface temperature measurements.
    Response: Changing how E<INF>MSY</INF> is calculated is outside the 
scope of this action, however NMFS would still like to provide a 
response to this comment. NMFS is aware of the scientific publications 
and ongoing Council discussions related to E<INF>MSY</INF>, and is 
committed to participating in these ongoing discussions about new 
science and whether that new science justifies a change for how 
E<INF>MSY</INF> is calculated for management purposes. Regarding recent 
Council discussion: The Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee 
(SSC), which is the scientific advisory body responsible for 
recommending changes to E<INF>MSY</INF>, has the ability to recommend 
changes to E<INF>MSY</INF> at any time. The Council's SSC has not done 
this since 2014 when they recommended that NMFS switch from using the 
3-year average of Scripps Institution of Oceanography sea surface 
temperature measurements to using the 3-year average of CalCOFI sea 
surface temperature measurements to inform E<INF>MSY</INF>. During this 
time, NMFS used a static E<INF>MSY</INF> of 18 percent that was 
produced by a management strategy evaluation. The implementation of 
Status Quo Management during the rebuilding period for Pacific sardine 
will not supersede the ability to change E<INF>MSY</INF> if and when a 
recommendation from the Council is made. Regarding the recent 2019 
paper from the SWFSC: Research regarding the appropriate temperature 
index to inform E<INF>MSY</INF> is ongoing, and the SWFSC has not yet 
determined whether a change in how E<INF>MSY</INF> is calculated is 
necessary for management purposes based on this publication. The best 
predictor of sea surface temperature will likely change with time as 
equilibrium ocean conditions shift with climate change. The recent 2019 
paper highlights new sea surface temperature-sardine recruitment 
relationships, however it does not actually provide a new method to 
calculate E<INF>MSY</INF> for management purposes. NMFS and the SWFSC 
will continue to collaborate on whether this new publication warrants a 
change in management. If a change is determined to be necessary, NMFS 
will promulgate a new action that will go through the proper Council 
process and will include public input during the Council process and 
during NMFS' subsequent rulemaking process.
    Comment 3: Oceana stated that NMFS must base its analysis on a 
productivity scenario representing the best known long-term boom and 
bust dynamics of the sardine population. Oceana points out several 
shortcomings of the Rebuilder tool that was used to analyze rebuilding 
timelines under certain management alternatives, including the fact 
that it analyzes a limited range of years for recruitment scenarios.
    Response: NMFS acknowledges and agrees that the boom and bust 
dynamics of Pacific sardines are critical to analyzing rebuilding for 
this stock. Consideration of this biological characteristic of the 
stock was an important part of NMFS' analysis. The Council analyzed two 
productivity scenarios for each management alternative. The model used 
data inputs from the 2020 benchmark stock assessment that covers the 
time period 2005-2020. The two modeled time periods, 2005-2018 and 
2010-2018, were chosen to represent different levels of potential 
future productivity (i.e., recruitment scenarios) for this stock. Each 
of these productivity scenarios was

[[Page 33145]]

also analyzed with two Mexican harvest scenarios including a fixed 
tonnage (6,044 mt) and a fixed rate (9.9 percent of Pacific sardine 
biomass). The Council's CPS Management Team chose to include only the 
modeling results for the 2005-2018 productivity scenario as part of its 
rationale for its recommendations because this time period represents a 
broader range of recruitment observed for this stock than the modeled 
subset of years 2010 to 2018, which include only years with low Pacific 
sardine productivity. The modeling results for 2010-2018 also provided 
a relatively low spawning stock biomass target (i.e., the model's 
estimated rebuilding target under this productivity scenario) of only 
38,122 mt, which is less than the overfished threshold of 50,000 mt in 
the CPS FMP. As a result, the CPS Management Team determined that the 
model results from the low productivity scenario do not adequately 
represent the fluctuating Pacific sardine population, and therefore 
relied on analysis of the model results for the moderate productivity 
scenario when developing management alternatives. The decision was also 
made to consider the modeling runs based on the fixed rate assumption 
for Mexico versus a fixed catch level on the presumption that it is 
reasonable to assume Mexican catch might go up and down based on stock 
size. Despite the model's limitations (discussed above in the response 
to Comment #2), it is the best model available to project Pacific 
sardine biomass forward in time, taking into account recruitment, 
fishing mortality, etc. and was an appropriate source of information 
for NMFS to rely on when reaching its decision. Furthermore, the 
Council's SSC endorsed the use of the model for this purpose.
    However, NMFS acknowledges the limitations of the model and took 
that into account in reaching its decision by relying on other sources 
of information to inform its decision. When evaluating the Council's 
recommendation, NMFS took several other aspects into consideration, 
including the basic biology and life history of Pacific sardine 
estimates of its large population fluctuations over thousands of years, 
and the history of the Pacific sardine fishery on the west coast of 
North America. One of the primary drivers of Pacific sardine biology 
that the model cannot take into account is the wider-scale 
oceanographic conditions that drive Pacific sardine recruitment. There 
is no model that exists that can accurately predict when ocean 
conditions will ultimately allow for more favorable Pacific sardine 
recruitment. NMFS understands these limitations and explained the 
caveats of the modeling results and analyzed them holistically with 
other non-model based considerations. NMFS notes that the shortcomings 
of the Rebuilder Tool and the SWFSC's resulting Pacific Sardine 
Rebuilding Analysis highlighted by Oceana apply to all of the 
alternatives analyzed.
    Comment 4: Oceana claims that NMFS must establish a rebuilding 
biomass level target consistent with the long-term B<INF>MSY</INF> 
(i.e., the biomass at maximum sustainable yield) from previous 
management strategy evaluations. In addition to a 2014 management 
strategy evaluation, Oceana also cites a value from a 2012 SWFSC 
scientific paper for consideration of a B<INF>MSY</INF>. Relevant to 
this, Oceana also claims that the proposed B<INF>MSY</INF> of 150,000 
mt age 1+ biomass in Amendment 18 is too low because below that 
threshold, the primary directed fishery for Pacific sardine is 
prohibited from operating.
    Response: NMFs has determined that the established rebuilding 
target is supported by the best scientific information available and 
represents a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable 
yield under prevailing environmental conditions. Because Pacific 
sardine biomass fluctuates drastically with prevailing oceanographic 
conditions, B<INF>MSY</INF> also fluctuates with the stock's 
productivity. This is why so many values that could potentially be used 
for B<INF>MSY</INF> exist in relevant literature, and also why the 
Council and NMFS have never explicitly defined a single B<INF>MSY</INF> 
reference point for Pacific sardine. The two values that Oceana implies 
NMFS should consider using for B<INF>MSY</INF> are based on older stock 
assessment data. In recommending a rebuilt level of 150,000 mt age 1+ 
biomass, the Council and NMFS used the most recent data from the 2020 
Pacific sardine stock assessment which includes the recent decline in 
the population and recent low recruitments. The Council's SSC endorsed 
using the 2020 stock assessment and the model for this purpose.
    Regarding Oceana's claim that 150,000 mt age 1+ biomass is too low 
because it represents a level where ``the population is too low to 
support a commercial fishery,'' the comment misunderstands the 
structure of the CPS FMP and the precaution built into its framework. 
The Council chose a ``CUTOFF'' threshold at which it would 
automatically close the primary directed fishery not because the stock 
could not support a fishery at that level, but in order to provide 
additional protections to the stock as biomass began decreasing in 
response to environmental conditions. This CUTOFF threshold is part of 
the optimum yield considerations built into the Pacific sardine harvest 
guideline control rule. A stock on an upward trend does not require the 
same safeguards. In addition, NMFS notes that the CUTOFF value is three 
times the overfished biomass level, demonstrating both how 
precautionary the automatic closure level is and that it represents the 
level at which the stock will produce maximum sustainable yield. 
Additionally, when developing a rebuilding plan it is important to 
consider the current environmental and/or reproductive conditions the 
stock is experiencing, which is why the model used to project 
rebuilding timelines used the most recent stock assessment. Although 
history and science have shown that the Pacific sardine population can 
recover quickly when conditions are favorable, as previously stated it 
is unknown when those conditions will change. If the modeling analysis 
to determine an appropriate rebuilt level or the rebuilding plan 
included high biomass levels and high recruitment levels witnessed in 
the past as suggested by Oceana, then the model could potentially over 
assume the level of catches that could occur for rebuilding.
    Comment 5: Oceana claims that NMFS fails to use the best scientific 
information available on international catch levels in its 
consideration of Amendment 18. Specifically, Oceana claims that the 
Distribution parameter in the Pacific sardine harvest control is 
inconsistent with recent high catch levels by Mexico published in the 
2020 Pacific sardine stock assessment.
    Response: NMFS notes that changes to the management framework of 
Pacific sardine and to the Pacific sardine harvest control rules are 
set in the CPS FMP and are beyond the scope of this rulemaking. 
However, NMFS would like to respond to this comment.
    The value for the Distribution parameter in the Pacific sardine 
harvest control rules has recently been reviewed. In 2015, a 3-day 
meeting was held that included agency and non-agency scientists to 
review the Distribution parameter. The results of this workshop were 
then presented to the Council and its advisory bodies, including the 
SSC. The Council subsequently concluded that there was no superior data 
to inform this parameter. Additionally, NMFS notes that the 
Distribution parameter in the

[[Page 33146]]

various Pacific sardine control rules is not a required element 
dictated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act or National Standard 1. Instead, 
it is an additional precautionary policy adopted and used by the 
Council to further reduce the harvest of Pacific sardine beyond what is 
required. Amendment 18 does not supersede the Council's ability to 
recommend a change to the Distribution parameter if and when they deem 
it necessary.
    Comment 6: Oceana claims that NMFS has not, and therefore must 
analyze the effects of each alternative on essential fish habitat (EFH) 
for salmon, groundfish, and highly migratory species.
    Response: NMFS notes that this action is a rebuilding plan intended 
only to continue limiting fishing mortality in order to allow the 
Pacific sardine population to rebuild. The closure of the primary 
directed fishery is maintained through this action. There are no 
anticipated impacts to EFH that have not already been considered in 
prior EFH consultations on the Pacific sardine fishery, even when the 
primary directed fishery was open. Only the smaller sectors of the 
fishery with very limited take of Pacific sardine (e.g., the live bait 
fishery) would occur under Amendment 18, as the primary directed 
fishery will remain closed until the stock reaches its rebuilding 
target.
    Comment 7: Oceana claimed that NMFS has not adequately consulted on 
the potential effects from Amendment 18 on Endangered Species Act 
(ESA)-listed predators, and that NMFS must reinitiate an ESA 
consultation for this action.
    Response: Oceana did not introduce any new scientific information 
that would require NMFS to reinitiate consultation under the ESA. Prior 
ESA consultations on the Pacific sardine fishery concluded that there 
would be no significant impact to ESA-listed species, and those 
consultations analyzed effects when the primary directed fishery was 
open. Amendment 18 maintains the closure of the primary directed 
fishery and only allows a very limited amount of take for the remaining 
small sectors of the fishery. As it relates to this action, potential 
impacts to species listed under the ESA would be if this action somehow 
changed the type of gear used by the fishery, or the timing or location 
of fishing. This action does not do any of those things.

    Authority: 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.

    Dated: June 14, 2021.
Samuel D. Rauch III,
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, National Marine 
Fisheries Service.
[FR Doc. 2021-13349 Filed 6-23-21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-22-P


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