Source: http://thefederalregister.com/2012/11/13/2012-27540.html
Timestamp: 2018-03-18 19:40:13
Document Index: 66206173

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 622', '§ 622', '§ 622', '§ 622', '§ 622', '§ 622', '§ 622']

RIN 0648-BB97
SUMMARY: NMFS issues this final rule to implement management measures described in Amendment 35 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico (FMP) prepared by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council). This final rule establishes sector annual catch limits (ACLs) and sector annual catch targets (ACTs) for greater amberjack; revises the sector accountability measures (AMs) for greater amberjack; and establishes a commercial trip limit for greater amberjack. Additionally, Amendment 35 modifies the greater amberjack rebuilding plan. The intent of Amendment 35 is to end overfishing of greater amberjack, modify the greater amberjack rebuilding plan and help achieve optimum yield (OY) for the greater amberjack resource in accordance with the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act).
ADDRESSES: Electronic copies of Amendment 35, which includes an environmental assessment, an initial regulatory flexibility analysis (IRFA), and a regulatory impact review, may be obtained from the Southeast Regional Office Web site athttp://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sf/GrouperSnapperandReefFish.htm.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Rich Malinowski, Southeast Regional Office, telephone 727-824-5305, emailrich.malinowski@noaa.gov.
Management Measures Contained in This Final Rule ACLs and ACTs
The current in-season AM for the greater amberjack recreational sector closes the sector when recreational landings reach or are projected to reach the recreational quota (currently equal to the recreational ACL). In addition, if despite such closure the recreational landings exceed the recreational quota, the following year's recreational quota is reduced by the amount of the recreational quota overage in the prior fishing year, and the recreational fishing season is reduced by the amount necessary to recover the overage from the prior fishing year (post-season AMs). This final rule implements a recreational ACT, which will now be equivalent to the recreational quota, and requires that the recreational sector close when the recreational ACT is reached or projected to be reached. In addition to this revision of the in-season AM, this final rule revises the post-season AMs as follows: If recreational landings exceed the recreational ACL, then during the following fishing year,both the recreational ACT (recreational quota) and the recreational ACL will be reduced by the amount of the prior year's recreational ACL overage.
Comment 1:All species should have a closed season during their respective spawning seasons, including greater amberjack. If spawning season closures were implemented for all fisheries, then these species would not be targeted, bycatch would be reduced, and species would not become overfished.
Response:Amendment 35 does not address closed seasons for all species. The intent of Amendment 35 is to end overfishing of greater amberjack, modify the greater amberjack rebuilding plan and help achieve OY. The commercial harvest of greater amberjack is closed during the months of March, April, and May for the greater amberjack spawning season. On April 29, 2011, NMFS published a final rule to implement a recreational seasonal closure during June and July (76 FR 23904). In Amendment 35, the Council considered alternatives that would modify the recreational season closure, including a recreational season closure mirroring the commercial season closure. However, the Council decided to leave the current recreational season closure in place to determine if this will adequately restrain harvest. In addition, the Council determined that a recreational season closure during peak harvest (June-July) reduced harvest and mortality to a greater extent than a closure during the spawning season (March-May) because there is less recreational fishing effort early in the year compared to mid-summer.
Comment 2:The lack of a trip limit has resulted in a derby fishery, where the quota is harvested early in the year. However, a 1,500-lb (680 kg) or 1,000-lb (453 kg) commercial trip limit is more appropriate than what has been selected, and would be less likely to result in the quota being exceeded during the fishing year.
Response:In addition to preferred 2000-lb (907 kg) trip limit, the Council considered a 1,500-lb (680 kg), 1,000-lb (453 kg), and 500-lb (227 kg) trip limit. The trip limit is intended to extend the fishing season, not ensure that the quota is not exceeded during the fishing year. The Council decided that the current commercial sector seasonal closure (March 1-May 31) and establishment of a commercial 2,000-lb (907 kg) trip limit would provide the best balance between a longer commercial fishing season and revenue reductions per trip, and is not anticipated to shift any commercial fishing effort or methods because less than 5 percent of commercial trips exclusively target greater amberjack.
Comment 3:Amendment 35 and the proposed rule should establish a 4,000-lb (1,814 kg) commercial trip limit because of costs associated with maintaining the profitability of a small fishing business.
Response:The Council considered several commercial trip limit alternatives in Amendment 35 that would keep the commercial fishing season open as long as possible without exceeding the ACL. Landings data indicate that on average approximately 8 percent of vessels that landed greater amberjack landed more than 2,000 lb (907 kg) in a single trip. Thus, of the reasonable alternatives considered, a 2,000-lb (907 kg) trip limit was the largest trip limit considered. All commercial trip limit alternatives were estimated to result in revenue reductions, but a 2,000-lb (907 kg) trip limit was considered to achieve the best balance between a longer commercial season and reduced economic impacts on commercial fishermen. With the 2,000-lb trip limit, the commercial sector is expected to remain open until mid-September or October. A 4,000-lb (1,814 kg) trip limit would likely result in a more abbreviated commercial fishing season that would cause additional negative economic impacts to the entire greater amberjack commercial sector.
Comment 4:NMFS should approve and implement the management measures in Amendment 35. However, the lack of rebuilding analyses on which to base the management decisions causes concern. Hopefully, the benchmark stock assessment scheduled for 2013 will produce stock projections deemed sufficient for management advice, and the Council will be able, at that time, to revise the ACLs and set new target rebuilding dates. Until the assessment is completed in 2013, the measures proposed by the Council in Amendment 35 are consistent with the management advice the Council received from its Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) and the ABC Control Rule previously approved by NMFS.
Response:NMFS agrees that the management measures contained in Amendment 35 should be implemented. The reliability of the yield/stock projections in the SEDAR 9 Update was questioned by the Council's SSC because of the large sensitivity to small changes in the assessment model initial conditions, fishing mortality rates, and catch. The Council's SSC determined the initial conditions of sample sizes from the observer studies were low, the spatial representation of the observer trips to the entire fishery was not complete, the observer study did not span a long time series, and there was uncertainty in the ability of the observers to accurately differentiate greater amberjack from other commonly caught jacks (Almaco jack, banded rudderfish, lesser amberjack).
Therefore, the SSC did not use the stock assessment to set the overfishing limit (OFL) or the acceptable biological catch (ABC) but instead used the ABC control rule that the Council was developing in the Generic Annual Catch Limit/Accountability Measure Amendment (Generic ACL Amendment) and was subsequently approved by NMFS. NMFS believes that the SSC's ABC recommendation (i.e., 75 percent of the OFL) and the management measures implemented by the Council (setting the ACT approximately 15 percent below the ACL) will, more likely than not, provide the reduction ingreater amberjack fishing mortality necessary to end overfishing and rebuild the greater amberjack stock.
Comment 5:Greater amberjack are overfished in the Gulf and both the recreational and commercials sectors should have more restrictions implemented than those proposed through Amendment 35. Recent landings by both the recreational and commercial sectors have exceeded the existing ACL by more than the reductions implemented through this rule. Restrictions in this rule may not restrict either sector to their quotas.
Response:In Amendment 35, the Council analyzed and reviewed ACLs and ACTs, minimum size limits, recreational bag limits, seasonal closures, and commercial trip limits. The Council's SSC recommended that the ABC be set at 1,780,000 lb (807,394 kg), which is a decrease from the previously established ACL. The Council then set the ACL equal to the ABC, and set the ACT approximately 15 percent below the ACL. NMFS and the Council expect that the management measures implemented in this final rule will lengthen the fishing season, restrain catch to the ACT, and end overfishing of greater amberjack. Both the commercial and recreational sector AMs require that the sectors close for the remainder of the fishing year when landings reach or are projected to reach the applicable ACT (quota). This in-season closure authority is intended to restrict each sector to its ACT to the extent possible. The buffer between the ACL and the ACT (quota) is intended to ensure that the ACL is not exceeded due to management uncertainty in determining when the sector should close.
Comment 6:The management measures in Amendment 35 are not sufficient to successfully rebuild the greater amberjack population. Specifically, Amendment 35 maintains the status quo for the recreational minimum size limit of 30 inches (76 cm). Without other management actions to significantly reduce overall mortality, not enough of the population will reach the size at which they become reproductively mature. This inhibits the ability of this population to rebuild to a healthy level. The commenters strongly recommend raising the minimum allowable size from the current 30 inches (76 cm) fork length (FL) to 34 or 36 inches (86 or 91 cm) FL. This would increase the number of mature females capable of spawning that are left in the water and make it far more likely that the rebuilding plan will successfully restore this population.
Response:The Council considered increasing the minimum size limit to as much as 36 inches (91 cm), FL. Based on a theoretical analysis comparing yield-per-recruit and spawning potential ratio, Amendment 35 estimated that increasing the minimum size limit would provide greater spawning potential but maintaining the 30 inch (76 cm) FL minimum size limit would result in a higher yield. Although larger size limit alternatives are estimated to provide greater biological benefits to greater amberjack than the preferred alternative of maintaining the current minimum size limit of 30 inches (76 cm), public testimony at Council meetings indicated that release mortality likely increases as fish size increases, because larger greater amberjack fight harder, it takes longer amounts of time to reel in the fish, and the fish take longer to recover after release. Thus, the benefits of increasing the minimum size limit would be lower than estimated because more fish would die from release mortality and not contribute to the fishery yield or spawning potential. The preferred alternative would provide the greatest benefits to the resource by reducing the number of dead discards when compared to having a larger size limit.
Comment 7:The use of overage deductions that adjust both the ACL and the ACT as part of the AMs is appropriate. However, overage adjustments for any given fishing year will be subtracted from the ACL and ACT for the following year. A more appropriate method would be to set the adjusted ACT using the ACT control rule adopted in the Generic ACL Amendment so that adjustments to the ACT correspond to changes in the amount of management uncertainty associated with this fishery.
Response:In Amendment 35, the Council revised both the ACT and ACL based on the ACL/ACT control rule developed in the Generic ACL Amendment (76 FR 82044, December 29, 2011). The Council established the procedure for an overage adjustment when it established the rebuilding plan through Amendment 30A to the Reef Fish FMP, and did not consider alternative ACT and ACL calculation methods in Amendment 35. However, in the future the Council may consider alternative methods of adjusting the ACT when the ACL is exceeded, such as that suggested in the comment.
NMFS agrees that the Council's choice of preferred alternatives would best achieve the Council's objectives while minimizing, to the extent practicable, the adverse effects onfishers, support industries, and associated communities. The preamble to the final rule provides a statement and need for, and the objectives of this rule, and is not repeated here.
Like the preferred alternative, the second alternative would set a stock ACL equal to the ABC, which is about 5 percent lower than the current stock ACL. However, this alternative would not set an ACT below the level of the ACL. Among the alternatives, this would provide the best scenario for short-term profitability of small entities. Without an ACT, however, this ACL level may be exceeded, particularly since the stock ACL has been exceeded in the last 3 years (2009, 2010, and 2011). Exceeding this ACL would lower the probability of protecting andrebuilding the overfished stock. The sub-option that was not selected would set the stock ACL 18 percent less than the current ACL. This would have the same impacts on profits as the preferred option for a current fishing year, but it would potentially result in a worse profit condition in a following fishing year because it would require post-season overage adjustments if the ACTs were exceeded and AMs were enacted. The third alternative, which would establish a stock ACL of zero, would result in the largest profit reductions to both the commercial sector and for-hire component of the recreational sector.
Dated: November 7, 2012. Samuel D. Rauch, III, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, performing the functions and duties of the Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, National Marine Fisheries Service.
2. In § 622.42, paragraphs (a)(1)(v) and (a)(2)(ii) are revised to read as follows:
(ii)Recreational quota for greater amberjack.The recreational quota for greater amberjack is 1,130,000 lb (512,559 kg), round weight.
3. In § 622.44, paragraph (d) is added to read as follows:
(d)Gulf greater amberjack.Until the quota specified in § 622.42 (a)(1)(v) is reached, 2,000 lb (907 kg), round weight. See § 622.43 (a)(1)(i) for the limitations regarding greater amberjack after the quota is reached.
4. In § 622.49, paragraph (a)(1) is revised to read as follows:
(1)Greater amberjack.(i)Commercial sector—(A) If commercial landings, as estimated by the SRD, reach or are projected to reach the annual catch target (ACT) specified in § 622.42(a)(1)(v) (commercial quota), the AA will file a notification with the Office of the Federal Register to close the commercial sector for the remainder of the fishing year.
(ii)Recreational sector—(A) If recreational landings, as estimated by the SRD, reach or are projected to reach the ACT specified in § 622.42 (a)(2)(ii) (recreational quota), the AA will file a notification with the Office of the Federal Register to close the recreational sector for the remainder of the fishing year.