Comment from Corey Niles, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife

Barry Thom Acting Regional Administrator National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Region Dear Mr. Thom: As you know, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is a member of the Pacific Fishery Management Council and was actively involved in the development of Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery 2009–2010 Biennial Specifications and Management Measures. The 2009-2010 biennial cycle presented the Pacific Council with one of its most difficult challenges to date in managing the Pacific Coast groundfish fisheries. The multi-species nature of the Pacific Coast groundfish fisheries, combined with the diverse and extraordinary life histories of Pacific rockfish, makes the Pacific Council’s task perhaps one of the most challenging in the United States, if not the entire world. Above all, WDFW remains supportive of the Pacific Council’s 2009-2010 Biennial Specifications and Management Measures recommendations and appreciates the efforts of you and your staff to translate the Pacific Council’s recommendations into federal regulation. However, WDFW did noticed two possible oversights of interest to Washington state during our review of the proposed rule. First, as mentioned in the preamble to the proposed rule, the Council approved an incidental allowance of lingcod to salmon trollers at a ratio of 1 lingcod per 15 Chinook, plus 1 lingcod up to a trip limit of 10 lingcod, up to a maximum limit of 400 lbs per month (73 Fed. Reg. 80538). This incidental allowance does not appear to be included in the proposed trip limit tables. The appropriate place to include this incidental allowance would seemingly be the “salmon troll” section of Table 5 (73 Fed. Reg. 80575). Second, and this could just be WDFW’s misreading of the proposed rule, but it might be possible that the Pacific Council’s approved modifications to the Rockfish Conservation Area 100 fathom line was not completely incorporated into section 660.393 of the proposed rule (73 Fed. Reg. 80555). WDFW would appreciate it if you and your staff could compare the coordinates of the proposed rule’s 100 fathom line to those identified in section 2.2.3.2 of the proposed rule’s Final Economic Impact Statement. Thank you for your attention to these two small matters. Sincerely, Corey Niles