National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration December 24, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) has submitted Amendment 16 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region (Amendment 16) for review, approval, and implementation by NMFS. Amendment 16 was developed to address overfishing and other management issues in the snapper-grouper fishery. Amendment 16 would establish management reference points and specify interim allocations for the commercial and recreational sectors for gag and vermilion snapper, as well as implement management measures which would be applied to the commercial and recreational sectors of the snapper-grouper fishery. These management measures include: a four-month spawning season closure of the recreational and commercial shallow water grouper fisheries; a five-month closure of the recreational vermilion snapper fishery; commercial quotas for gag and vermilion snapper; a reduced recreational grouper aggregate bag limit (including tilefish) and vermilion snapper bag limit; and a requirement to use dehooking and venting tools to reduce bycatch mortality of snapper-grouper species.

This final rule establishes the annual quotas for the 2009 fishing season for sandbar sharks, non-sandbar large coastal sharks (LCS), small coastal sharks (SCS), and pelagic sharks managed under Amendment 2 to the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). This final rule also establishes the opening date for the commercial Atlantic shark fisheries. This action is expected to have minimal negative impacts on commercial fishermen in the Atlantic commercial shark fishery as only a small overharvest occurred in the porbeagle shark fishery in 2008.