The council’s intentions are good, but it should reconsider the unnecessary burden over-regulation would place on a healthy and important fishery.
The council chose a conservative method of calculating the allowable scallop harvest by dialing-down the numbers to allow for a significant amount of scientific uncertainty about the number of scallops out there.
Since scallops lie on the sea floor and have been studied extensively by UMass Dartmouth and others (with partial funding from the industry), their population dynamics are some of the best-understood in the country. It’s hard to imagine a fishery with less scientific uncertainty.
Scallopers are not going out of business, at least not now. But that should not be the standard for promulgating new regulations. Science should be the standard, and it looks like this time, science may be on the side of the scallopers.
Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, a scallop researcher at UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, told The Standard-Times the council "went too far," and we agree.