Amendment 2 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Queen Conch Fishery of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and Amendment 5 to the Reef Fish Fishery Management Plan of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Download or read book Amendment 2 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Queen Conch Fishery of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and Amendment 5 to the Reef Fish Fishery Management Plan of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The purpose of this amendment is to revise management reference points and status determination criteria for the Caribbean queen conch, snapper, grouper, and parrotfish; specify Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) and Accountability Measures (AMs) for those species or units classified as undergoing overfishing to prevent overfishing of these species or units; establish framework measures to facilitate regulatory modifications; adjust management measures as needed to constrain harvest to specified annual catch limits; and minimize, to the extent practicable, negative socioeconomic impacts that may result from the amendment actions. To achieve these goals, six actions are included in the amendment. Action 1 amends the unit composition in the Reef Fish Fishery Management Unit. Action 2 revises management reference points to transition U.S. Caribbean reef fish and queen conch management from that established in the Comprehensive Sustainable Fisheries Amendment (Caribbean SFA Amendment) of 2005 (CFMC 2005) to that mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act as Amended through January 12, 2007 (MSRA). Action 3 works in concert with Action 2 and provides the specific details regarding the distribution and numerical value of ACLs for the various U.S. Caribbean island groups, including Puerto Rico (PR), St. Croix (STX) in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), and the island group of St. Thomas and St. John (STT/STJ) in the USVI. Action 4 proposes management measures with specific emphasis on harvest prohibitions for three parrotfish species (midnight, blue, rainbow) that serve an essential ecological function and which are relatively large and long-lived. Action 4 also proposes recreational bag limits for reef fish. Action 5 provides alternative guidelines for triggering AMs and for applying those AMs. Finally, Action 6 establishes framework provisions separately for reef fish and queen conch. In concert, these actions serve to provide a basic foundation for reef fish and queen conch fisheries management in the U.S. Caribbean"--Executive summary (page 23).