Dr. Kevin Stokesbury of the School for Marine Science & Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth reminds scallopers that with the southern portion of Closed Area II opening to scallop harvesting there is a concern that the opening could shut down before the scallop TAC is collected because of yellowtail flounder by-catch.
This situation happened before in the CAII scallop exemption fisheries of 1999 and 2006.
Please read Dr. Stokesbury’s letter and map with the scallop densities from their video survey and the results of their yellowtail flounder tagging study.