February 8, 2015 — Maine’s scallop fishermen are benefiting from a new management system that has made scallops more plentiful along the ocean bottom off Maine’s coast, particularly in the rich scallop beds Down East.
Despite the good news, fishermen still struggle to win a premium price for their scallops in the global marketplace. They compete in a market dominated by a large-scale commercial scallop fishery centered in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which controls more than 90 percent of the market and supplies scallops that have been caught by draggers and packed in ice for days. Maine fishermen, conversely, retrofit their offseason lobster boats and drag for scallops on day trips, providing significantly fresher scallops.
An aggressive new regulatory plan in Maine – modeled in part on the successful efforts to revive the once-depleted fishery in federal waters more than a decade ago – seems to be the reason for the increase in scallops in the state’s waters and a threefold increase in the number of active scallop fishermen, who now number 420.
The measures, which began in 2008, included shortening the season by half, imposing daily catch limits, instituting closures and mandating harvest reports. Scallop managers have a huge advantage over the managers of other troubled fisheries, like cod and shrimp: Adult scallops sit on one place, like crops in a field. And just as farmers rotate their crops, fishery managers began rotating scallop beds to give young scallops two years to grow and reproduce before being harvested.
Many Maine fishermen bitterly opposed the measures because they didn’t believe they would work and feared they would lose money. But the plan’s success has made believers out of some of its harshest critics.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald