December 14, 2015 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The Maine scallop fishing season opened on Dec. 1 and, less than two weeks later, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher closed it down in large areas of Downeast waters.
Last week, DMR announced that, as of Sunday, scallop fishing in Gouldsboro and Dyer bays in Hancock County and Wohoa Bay, the Jonesport Reach and the department’s Inner Machias Rotational Area, all in Washington County, are done for this season. According to DMR, Keliher shut the fishery down in those areas “in order to protect Maine’s scallop resource due to the risk of unusual damage and imminent depletion.”
At a meeting in Ellsworth just days before the season opened, DMR Resource Coordinator Trisha Cheney warned that scallop populations throughout the state were extremely low. While the department agreed to industry requests to set the fishing season (except in Cobscook Bay) at 70 days, Cheney said, it was likely that fishing in some areas would be closed after only a few days of fishing.
The closure was announced after just seven days of fishing. (In most areas, fishing is allowed only four days per week, Monday through Thursday.)
With the scallop resource still in poor condition, DMR is worried that continued harvesting in the closed areas could deplete the stock in those locales beyond its ability to recover.
“Continued harvesting may damage sublegal scallops that could be caught during subsequent fishing seasons, as well as reducing the broodstock essential to a recovery,” the department wrote in an explanation of the adoption of the emergency closure rule.