Commerce Petitioned to Open Northern Edge for Scallops
NEW BEDFORD, MA (May 6)—The Fishery Survival Fund has petitioned the Secretary of Commerce to “compel the National Marine Fisheries Service to create a rotational limited access
scallop area within” the Northern Edge of Georges Bank, on May 7.
The Fund, representing over 200 sea scallop fishing permits, announced this exceptional legal action by its counsel, David Frulla of Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington, D. C.
This contested area, long sought by the decimated sea scallop fishery, has been closed to fishing for sea scallop for more than two decades by the Fisheries Service. Sea scallops are the
lead landed species in New Bedford, MA in past years valued at well over $350 million, according to the Fisheries Service annual statistical report.
The NE Fisheries Management Council, through its Habitat Management Committee set up following the Magnuson Reauthorization Act, had closed the area having labeled it as an
Essential Fish Habitat under new federal law.
Two efforts failed to satisfy the Council’s concern about significant habitat impact damaging spawning of Cod fish by the scallop dredges working the sea bottom, through the formal Framework procedure to seek limited fishing access, Frulla told the Fishery News.
It was reported that the efforts came quite close to being approved, before the Council “shelved the effort”.
One key reason for the Framework failure, Frulla argued, was that the Council used the standard for protection as excessive and beyond the statute and did not comport with the fishery
act’s “practicability” requirement. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston had heard similar issues in the past finding that” practicability” had limits and did not reach all possible
means for possible habitat protection.
The case was Conservation Law Foundation v. Evans, 360 F3d, 21, 27-28 (2004).
