Scallopers, elected officials and a local researcher support the reopening of this section of Georges Bank, which has been closed to scallop fishing for more than 30 years.
resident Donald Trump on Thursday declared July 2 National Scallops Day. To mark the inaugural holiday, he announced his administration’s plan to open fishing grounds that have been closed since 1994: the Northern Edge.
The area is about an 18- to 20-hour steam from the nation’s scallop capital, New Bedford, and it’s been closed so long that younger generations of fishermen have never fished its bottom.
“Are you here to wish me a ‘Happy Scalloper Day?’” Tony Alvernaz, one of the older-generation scallopers who has fished that small tip of Georges Bank, quipped when he answered the phone.
“Everybody is like amen, about time, holy Jesus,” he said of the plans to reopen the area.
In recent years, fisheries regulators raised the possibility of reopening the sliver of ocean bottom, but ultimately voted not to take it up. Regulators, informed by research scientists, weigh the sustainability of the resource and the needs of the fishing industry when determining where fishermen can go, for how many days, and how many pounds they may catch.
In 2024, an analyst for the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) said there was a high density of scallops in the Northern Edge, but that they need the aggregations to ensure the future success of other scallop grounds, The Light previously reported. That was, in part, the reasoning for its closure in 1994: to protect the spawning habitats of scallops and other fish species.
NOAA Fisheries did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the process or timing of the proposed reopening.
By
steve from amherst ·
