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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 119 / Thursday, June 24, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
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 Councils recommended Tmin of 12 years and Tmax 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 MagnusonStevens 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
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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 Ttarget 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 EMSY 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 EMSY based on the mean EMSY
from recent stock assessments rather than the 3-year average of CalCOFI sea surface temperature measurements.
Response: Changing how EMSY 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 EMSY, and is committed to participating in these ongoing discussions about new science and whether that new science justifies a change for how EMSY is calculated for management purposes. Regarding recent Council discussion: The Councils Scientific and Statistical Committee SSC, which is the scientific advisory body responsible for recommending changes to EMSY, has the ability to recommend changes to EMSY at any time. The Councils SSC has not done this since 2014 when they recommended that NMFS switch from
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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 EMSY. During this time, NMFS used a static EMSY 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 EMSY 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 EMSY is ongoing, and the SWFSC has not yet determined whether a change in how EMSY 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 EMSY 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 20052020. The two modeled time periods, 20052018 and 20102018, were chosen to represent different levels of potential future productivity i.e., recruitment scenarios for this stock.
Each of these productivity scenarios was
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