Amendment 17 to the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan: Essential Fish Habitat

NOAA Fisheries conducted a 5-year review of Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS) essential fish habitat (EFH) and determined that updates to HMS EFH are warranted. Consequently, NOAA Fisheries announced its intent to initiate Amendment 17 to the 2006 Consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to modify HMS EFH descriptions and designations.

Amendment 17 would consider all new information (e.g., published scientific literature, unpublished scientific reports) that has become available since the last update of HMS EFH in Amendment 10 to the HMS FMP to update the 10 components of EFH.

Status

This action is on hold. Current EFH designations from Amendment 10 to the HMS FMP still apply. HMS EFH shapefiles can be viewed in Amendment 10 or through the EFH Mapper, and are available for download through the EFH Data Inventory.