Tag Archives: Maine scallop fishery

Maine scallop fishery, a conservation success story, to start for the winter

The state’s rebuilt fishery for scallops, which runs from November to April, is getting started for the winter in the coming days. Many in the state’s seafood industry consider Maine scallops a conservation success story, as the fishery collapsed in the mid-2000s and slowly rebuilt to the point where fishermen last year collected the highest total since 1997. >click to read<18:45

Maine – Industry confronts access issues as scallop season opens

SMR-Scallop-Meeting-1-300x199The Maine scallop fishery opened Tuesday morning, with predictions that the boat price will be high, the season short and the pressure to let more people into the fishery intense. Last week, Trisha Cheney, the Department of Marine Resources’ scallop resource coordinator, hosted an outreach meeting in Ellsworth to give industry members a heads-up about what to expect for the coming season and to hear their concerns about the fishery and the way it is managed by DMR. Read the article here 14:00

Maine Legislators Make Attempt to Regulate Scallop Fishery

sc3178_01eThe Maine Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources will hear a bill Wednesday that would put additional regulations on Maine’s scallop fishery at a time when the fishery is growing in both volume and value. The Bill, “An Act To Promote Sustainability in the Scallop Fishing Industry” (LD 908), sponsored by imposes a maximum width of five feet, six inches for scallop drags, reduces the trip limit to 90 pounds per day and opens up the existing limited entry permitting system to anyone who previously held a hand fishing scallop license or scallop dragging license. Read the rest here 17:35

Record prices help buoy Maine scallop fishery

In the mid-2000s, when Maine’s scallop fishery hit historic lows for volume and value, its future did not look promising. A lot has changed since then. Annual catch totals still may lag behind what they were in past decades but, according to Maine Department of Marine Resources, 2014 is one of the most lucrative years the state fishery has ever had. Scallop fishermen harvested 584,000 pounds of scallop meat in Maine’s coastal waters last year and,,,   Read the rest here 10:42