November 12, 2018 — The state has chosen four fishermen from eastern Maine from almost 1,300 applicants who sought the first new scallop fishing licenses to be issued in Maine in the past nine years.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources held a lottery this week to determine who among the nearly 1,300 applicants would be allowed into the lucrative scallop fishery this coming winter.
The names of Matthew Alley of Beals Island, Chase Fitzsimmons of Lubec, Johnathon Oliver of Deer Isle and Frank Gott of Bar Harbor were drawn from the pool. Each of them has 30 days to submit formal paperwork to the department to get his license, DMR officials wrote in a release.
The lottery was devised last winter as part of a system to allow new people into the fishery while still limiting the number of licenses issued by the state. Only people 18 or older who previously have been licensed to fish scallops (and who don’t currently have a license) or who have worked on the crew of a commercial scallop boat are allowed to participate in the annual lottery.
The 2018-19 scallop fishing season is expected to get under way in the next few weeks and to run until early next spring.
The state stopped issuing new scallop fishing licenses nine years ago when stocks were declining and the state’s annual scallop season was in danger of being canceled. A new fishery management scheme the state developed and implemented since then has helped stocks recover, while demand has pushed the price of scallops to historic highs.