Fishermen dive into scallop season
The scallop fishery started for the winter season on Dec. 1 on an optimistic note, the Ellsworth American reported.
Over the past five years, scallop landings have almost tripled, to 453,000 pounds in 2015.
The fishery employs hundreds of draggers and divers, and the number has been rising in recent years, Trisha Cheney, a resource management coordinator at the Department of Marine Resources, told the newspaper. The larger workforce reflects the high price fishermen receive for their landings — $12.70 per pound in 2015 — and perhaps something of an increased abundance of scallops in Downeast waters that some fishermen attribute to an aggressive management program the DMR implemented.
“Sea scallops are among the most lucrative commercial marine species caught in the United States,” Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries project director at Coastal Enterprises Inc. of Portland told Mainebiz in October.
Maine's scallop industry was worth $5.7 million in 2015 for 452,672 meat pounds of scallops, down from 2014's $7.6 million and 605,360 meat pounds, according to the DMR. The per-pound price remained similar, however, at $12.70 in 2015 and $12.67 in 2014.
The state’s management plan of the scallop resource includes closures triggered when the harvest exceeds target levels, according to the DMR, Combined with the use of limited access areas, where harvesting only occurs one day a week, and rotational closures, which are similar to crop rotations. The DMR's management approach has resulted in a steady increase in landings and value for Maine's scallop fishery.
The plan resulted when the fishery experienced an all-time low in 2005.
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