For nine straight years New Bedford has become nation’s highest revenue fishing port due to the abundance availability of scallops. Survey showed the strongest stocks of young scallops in nearly a decade. Local fishers are not happy with the cuts in spite of such incredible strong stocks. But the New England Fishery Management Council has passed rules reducing number of fishing days from 37 this year to 29 in 2010.
As per the industry new rules will mean a loss of $300,000 per boat. Eilertsen, fisherman of Fairhaven, said that this rule will cause the loss of job for someone somewhere. Chris Kellogg, deputy director of the New England Fishery Management Council, which devises local fishing rules, said regulators took a conservative approach for the coming fishing year, which begins in March, after the industry overshot its projected catch last year.
The local scallop industry was in major distress in the mid-1990s after regulators closed three key scallop areas to protect vulnerable groundfish, such as cod and flounder. When regulators reopened the areas to the scallop fleet in 1999, an abundance was waiting to be caught. The industry got good news in August when the Northeast Fisheries Science Center on Cape Cod released survey results that showed juvenile scallops on Georges Bank were at their highest level since 2000.
