Western Pacific Pelagic Fisheries; U.S. Territorial Catch and Fishing Effort Limits

This final rule implements a management framework for specifying catch and effort limits and accountability measures for pelagic fisheries in the U.S. Pacific territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Using the established framework, NMFS is also specifying a catch limit of 2,000 metric tons (mt) of longline-caught bigeye tuna for each territory for 2014. A territory may allocate up to 1,000 mt of that limit to eligible U.S. longline fishing vessels. This final rule also makes several technical administrative changes to the regulations and announces the effectiveness of collection-of-information requirements. This action is consistent with international objectives of ending overfishing of bigeye tuna, while allowing for the limited transfer of available catch limits between U.S participating territories and eligible U.S. fisheries, consistent with the conservation requirements of the bigeye tuna stock.