July 2, 2026 — President 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.