NEW BEDFORD — The scallop industry is chafing under regulations that prohibit fishermen from harvesting scallop stocks on parts of Georges Bank that, the industry maintains, have actually become overabundant.
"There's two areas with a lot of older scallops where we haven't been able to fish for the last 15-plus years," said Drew Minkiewicz, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer with the Fisheries Survival Fund, an industry group representing scallop fishermen from Maine to Virginia.
"There's 30 million scallops up on the Northern Edge, according to the latest SMAST estimate, and we're not getting access to those," Minkiewicz said.
The Northern Edge, officially known as Closed Area II, is that portion of Georges Bank bordering the line separating U.S. and Canadian waters and has been closed since 1994, according to Minkiewicz.
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