Department of Commerce January 20, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The SEDAR 39 assessment of the HMS Smoothhound Sharks: a Data Workshop; a series of Assessment webinars; and a Review Workshop.

NMFS proposes revisions to the guidelines for National Standards (NS) 1, 3, and 7 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) and to the General section of the NS guidelines. This action is necessary to improve and clarify the guidance within the NS guidelines. The purpose of this action is to facilitate compliance with requirements of the MSA to end and prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks and achieve optimum yield (OY).

This proposed rule would implement Draft Amendment 6 to the 2006 Consolidated Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Management measures in this proposed rulemaking are designed to respond to the problems facing Atlantic commercial shark fisheries, such as commercial landings that exceed the quotas, declining numbers of fishing permits since limited access was implemented, complex regulations, derby fishing conditions due to small quotas and short seasons, increasing numbers of regulatory discards, and declining market prices. The primary goal of Amendment 6 to the 2006 Consolidated HMS FMP (Amendment 6) is to implement management measures for the Atlantic shark fisheries that will achieve the objectives of increasing management flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of the Atlantic shark fisheries, and achieve optimum yield while rebuilding overfished shark stocks and ending overfishing. Specifically, this action proposes: Adjusting the large coastal sharks (LCS) retention limit for shark directed Limited Access Permit (LAP) holders; creating sub-regional quotas in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico regions for LCS and small coastal sharks (SCS); modifying the LCS and SCS quota linkages; establishing total allowable catches (TACs) and adjusting quotas for non-blacknose SCS in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico regions based on the results of the 2013 stock assessments for Atlantic sharpnose and bonnethead sharks; and modifying upgrading restrictions for shark permit holders. The proposed measures could affect commercial shark fishermen fishing in the Atlantic Ocean including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.