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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 174 / Monday, September 13, 2021 / Proposed Rules is to implement a rebuilding plan for bluefish, as required by the MagnusonStevens Act, and to update the FMP
using the best scientific information available; responding to changes in the overall fishery over time.

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FMP Goals and Objectives The FMPs existing goals and objectives were adopted in 1991 with the original FMP, and have remained unchanged since that time. Amendment 7 would revise these goals and objectives to better reflect the current fishery. While the FMP currently only has one overarching goal and a few general objectives, the proposed revisions contain multiple goals linked to more specific objectives to better guide management. The following proposed revisions were developed with extensive input from the public.
Goal 1: Conserve the bluefish resource through stakeholder engagement to maintain sustainable recreational fishing and commercial harvest.
Objective 1.1: Achieve and maintain a sustainable spawning stock biomass and rate of fishing mortality.
Objective 1.2: Promote practices that reduce release mortality within the recreational and commercial fishery.
Objective 1.3: Maintain effective coordination between the National Marine Fisheries Service, Council, Commission, and member states by promoting compliance and to support the development and implementation of management measures.
Objective 1.4: Promote compliance and effective enforcement of regulations.
Objective 1.5: Promote science, monitoring, and data collection that support and enhance effective ecosystem-based management of the bluefish resource.
Goal 2: Provide fair and equitable access to the fishery across all user groups throughout the management unit.
Objective 2.1: Ensure the implementation of management measures provides fair and equitable access to the resource across all user groups within the management unit.
Objective 2.2: Consider the economic and social needs and priorities of all groups that access the bluefish resource in the development of new management measures.
Objective 2.3: Maintain effective coordination with stakeholder groups to ensure optimization of economic and social benefits.

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Quota Reallocation Between the Commercial and Recreational Fishery Sectors The existing FMP allocated quota between the commercial and recreational fishery sectors based on landings data from 19811989. This action proposes to re-allocate quota between the sectors to better represent recent trends in the fishery. Amendment 7 would allocate 14 percent of the annual catch limit ACL to the commercial fishery, and 86 percent to the recreational fishery, representing a 3-percentage point shift from the existing 17/83 split. These revised sector allocations are based on updated catch data from 19812018, and landings data from 20142018 and 20092018, as all three time series resulted in the same allocation.
Commercial Quota Reallocation Among the States The coastwide commercial quota for bluefish is allocated annually to each state within the management unit from Maine to Florida based on a percentage determined in the FMP. As with the sector allocation percentages, the existing state-by-state commercial quota allocations have not been updated since their implementation as a part of Amendment 1 65 FR 45844; July 26, 2000, and are based on landings data from 19811989. Amendment 7 would revise the state-by-state quota allocations based on a recent, representative 10 years of landings data 20092018 for the commercial fishery to better capture how the stock and fishing activity have shifted over the years. The proposed allocations also include a 0.1-percent minimum default allocation to ensure that no state in the management unit is excluded from the commercial fishery entirely. To allow industry and state managers to adjust more easily to these changes in commercial quota allocation, this action proposes to phase in the changes over a period of seven years. The percent shift in allocation for each state would be divided evenly over the phase-in period, so each state would only experience 1/7th of the change in allocation each year through 2028.
Rebuilding Plan The 2019 operational stock assessment determined that bluefish is overfished but not subject to overfishing. Amendment 7 would implement a rebuilding plan that uses a constant fishing mortality model F =
0.154 to rebuild the stock in seven years. This rebuilding plan was selected because it allows for least disruption to
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industry and minimizes negative socioeconomic impacts while still rebuilding within the 10-year period required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. However, because this model projects acceptable biological catch ABC values during rebuilding that are higher than those generated by the Councils risk policy 5-year rebuilding alternative, an exemption to the FMPs most restrictive ABC requirement needs to be included with this amendment. This would allow the Councils Scientific and Statistical Committee to recommend higher ABCs than the risk policy would typically generate during a rebuilding plan as long as they are consistent with the rebuilding plan, and the plan is projected to rebuild within the necessary time period. This proposed rebuilding plan has been developed to begin in 2022, and would be reviewed and revised as necessary every two years, as required by section 304e7 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Sector Quota Transfer Currently, the FMP allows a quota transfer from the recreational sector to the commercial sector up to a maximum final commercial quota of 10.5 million lb 4,763 mt per year if the recreational fishery is not expected to attain the full recreational harvest limit in that given year. This action proposes to revise the measures regarding this sector transfer to allow quota to be transferred in either direction from commercial to recreational or vice versa. This amendment would also revise the maximum transfer to be up to 10
percent of the acceptable biological catch, allowing the size of the transfer to scale with the current biomass of the stock. A restriction would also be added to disallow sector transfers when the bluefish stock is overfished or subject to overfishing.
Management Uncertainty in the Specifications Process This amendment would revise how management uncertainty can be accounted for during the specifications process. In the current FMP, the fisherylevel ACL may be reduced by a buffer to account for sources of management uncertainty before quota is allocated to the commercial and recreational fishery sectors. This action proposes to revise the specifications process so that the management uncertainty buffer is applied separately within each sector.
This targeted approach would provide more management flexibility, and allow for the identification of sources of management uncertainty that are specific to one sector and are not present in the other.

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