The purpose of this rule amendment is to incorporate the qualification requirements currently found in Florida Statutes for the Restricted Species endorsement (RS) associated with Florida’s Saltwater Products License into the Florida Administrative Code (FAC) so that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) can more readily respond to agency and stakeholder-identified needs for change and clarification. The RS program helps ensure the sustainability of the state’s most important commercially harvested species. It was created in coordination with the commercial fishing industry as a means to professionalize their fishery and ensure that fish harvested under Florida’s commercial licenses are indeed being harvested for commercial purposes and are ultimately ending up in the seafood market. The means of qualifying, as well as the other requirements associated with the RS, are currently found in Florida Statutes (F.S.). Once these criteria are moved into rule, FWC will seek to have the qualification requirements removed from F.S. in order to eliminate redundancy and potential future conflicts between FAC and F.S. requirements. FWC will also work with the commercial fishing industry to improve the qualification criteria to ensure they continue to correspond with the intent of the RS program and continue to add to the sustainability of Florida’s marine fisheries. The proposed rule amendment will not have any effect on fishery regulations and will serve only to incorporate existing statutory regulations into the FAC.