December 7, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The New England Fishery Management Council has finalized the scallop plan for 2019-20, the fishing year beginning on April 1st.
NMFS staff estimates that catches will be similar to this year, which are expected to be around 60 million lbs.
However, the plan adds one additional closed area trip for each of the approximately 310 full time vessels in the fishery. At 18,000 lbs per trip, this has the potential to increase landings by around 5.5 million lbs.
Open access days will remain the same, meaning that the resource scientists expect to see a lower volume landed from the same number of days at sea.
Part of this is due to projected changes in size of scallops landed.
Bristol Seafoods, in Portland, has excellent customer facing information on Scallops, and CEO Peter Handy offered his take on the 2019 season.
Handy said that if the season plays out as the council expects, Bristol’s customers should see the same volumes of 10-20’s and 20-30’s as last year, but there may be a decline in U-10’s and U-12’s.
Whether such a decline materializes will depend on the size of the scallops in some of the closed areas now being fished for the second year. Last year, says Handy, the area that produced the largest amount of U-10’s and U-12’s were from Closed area 1 and the Nantucket lightship. This year, those areas will only be accessed once if at all, as part of a ‘flex’ trip allocated by the council. Handy says “Overall, it looks like the trips to areas that have the most plentiful big scallops was reduced from two down to one.”
This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.