The council is said to regulate scallop harvest form Maine to North Carolina and now it wants to reduce the harvest by 25 percent. This has sent a wave of joy among New Jersey’s commercial scallopers. They said that the cuts would have hurt them economically; environmentalists said the ruling set back efforts to conserve other species affected by the scallop dredges.
The council said that it has listened the case presented by the scallopers at a meeting and then reversed its earlier decision. Barnegat Light scallop boat captain Pete Dolan felt relief Wednesday afternoon after hearing the government gave up its proposal for a major cutback in harvests of the popular shellfish this year.
Patricia Fiorelli, a council spokeswoman added that the council made its decision based on the economic case made by the industry. They heard about losing market share and economic impacts and people being laid off. But environmental groups were not pleased with the decision. Julie Wormser of the Environmental Defense Fund said that the council process was awful. She told that the November decision came after eight months of work and was not just about saving scallops, although it reduced the harvest from 24 percent to 20 percent of stocks.
The proposed scallop cutbacks would have cost the industry, according to one estimate, about $41 million in landings this year but then led to higher landings in future years. Peter Hughes, a manager at Atlantic Capes Fisheries in Lower Township, attended the council meeting in November and drove to Portsmouth, N.H., for the meeting. He said the council had better data Wednesday than it did in November.
