November 27, 2020 — Earlier this week NOAA Fisheries announced the renewal of a temporary rule to extend portions of the fishing year 2019 carryover provisions in the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan into fishing year 2020.
NOAA initially published an emergency action on June 1, 2020 at the request of the New England Fishery Management Council. At the time the June action allowed limited access general category individual fishing quota vessels to carryover all fishing year 2019 unharvested quota into fishing year 2020. The June action also allowed any access area carryover pounds and unharvested research set-aside compensation pounds from fishing year 2019 to be available for harvest through August 31, 2020.