For nine straight years, the booming scallop catch has made New Bedford the nation’s highest-revenue fishing port. This summer, a survey of a key Northeast fishing area showed the strongest stocks of young scallops in nearly a decade.
So why, scalloper Dan Eilertsen asks, is he looking at 22 percent reduction in the number of days he can fish next year?
"The resource is just so incredibly strong," said Eilertsen, who owns four scallop boats. "It’s just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and it doesn’t make any sense."
The industry estimates the new rules will mean a loss of $300,000 per boat.
In 2000, New Bedford started its string of nine straight years as the top revenue port in the country, including last year, when it had a total catch worth $241.3 million.
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.
The cuts as the stock flourishes are even more baffling at a time when the jobs are badly needed, Eilertsen said. Scallops are a success story that should be a lot more successful, he said.
"Overall, I don’t know that we’re really managing anywhere near our full potential," he said.
The biggest danger is that the cuts, and the subsequent lower catch, could make a healthy market appear unstable and scare buyers into alternative markets, said Kevin Stokesbury, a leading scallop scientist at the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.