Scallopers push to open northern edge of Georges Bank

BOSTON — Coastal lawmakers and scallopers railed Wednesday against a decision fishing regulators made last year to keep closed the northern edge of Georges Bank, a thriving scallop ground that has been shuttered to commercial fishing since 1994.

“It’s singularly my most frustrating experience, as someone who thinks of the environment every day, but also worries about the economy minute to minute in my own district. It’s stunning to me how long — decades — this has been closed,” said Sen. Mark Montigny of New Bedford.

Montigny chaired a Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight hearing on Wednesday which explored the state of commercial sea scallop fisheries and regulations impacting the industry.

New Bedford is the largest port in the United States for sea scallop landings and revenue. Other ports in Massachusetts are important for smaller scallop vessels, including Gloucester, Provincetown, Barnstable and Chatham.

Last year, the New England Fishery Management Council voted against reopening the fishing grounds on the northern edge of George’s Bank, a shallow underwater plateau between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia that is rich in biodiversity and a known spawning ground for Atlantic cod and habitat for scallops. The Light reported that Mayor Jon Mitchell was among those asking the council to reconsider opening it, citing headwinds for the region’s top fishery, including falling prices and fewer days at sea for fishermen.

The council voted not to continue discussions on reopening the area, as they said the high density of scallops there helps spawn other nearby scalloping grounds.

“It has been deemed a habitat area of particular concern,” said Cate O’Keefe, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council, at Wednesday’s hearing. “There is … habitat which has been linked to important rearing in juvenile Atlantic cod habitat, juvenile American lobster habitat and Atlantic herring. It’s also an area of incredibly high productivity for scallops.”

The council has considered allowing access to the scallop fishery in this area multiple times since it closed in 1994, O’Keefe said. The most recent time, for which discussions started in 2022 and ended with the 2024 vote, the council “decided that they had a difficult time identifying appropriate areas and seasons,” she said.

“They cited that opening this area to the scallop fishery could undermine long-term optimum yield of scallops, and the quote that I have here is, ’The council had a fundamental conflict between optimal timing for scallop yield and the importance of the northern edge to other fishery resources,’” O’Keefe said.

Tony Alvernaz, a 63-year-old boat captain from New Bedford, said he’s one of the only active fishermen left who can remember fishing on the northern edge before it was banned.

“I’m one of five active captains who could say they fished this year that have fished up on the edge,” Alvernaz said. “There’s a whole generation of fishermen that have not fished there. I’d say it’s billions of dollars of resources for a grave mistake, a grave error of bad data, bad science.”

The Fisheries Survival Fund, a nonprofit representing Atlantic sea scallop fishermen, submitted a petition to the federal government in April to restore scallop fishing access across the northern edge of Georges Bank.

The petition was filed to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February mandating a government-wide review of regulations to identify those that impose “undue burdens” on businesses.

The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy included the Fisheries Survival Fund’s petition among just 21 proposals selected from more than 75,000 nationwide for special consideration in comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget. It was the only fisheries-related regulation identified.

“I don’t agree with Trump on much of anything, and I really do wish that this wasn’t the way it’s decided,” Montigny said, “but I tell you what, if I were in his seat, the same thing would have been issued. Except I would have said, get it done tomorrow.”

Montigny continued, “The industry finally was smart enough to stick together, because they’re all out working hard and fishing, and they never stick together, never have in my life. And they finally stuck together and said, ’We might have an ally.’ It’s not an ally I’d want to go to bed with, but they are so frustrated as — forget an industry, individuals working hard and not getting answers.”

Eric Hansen, a New Bedford-based scalloper, president of the Fisheries Survival Fund and an at-large member of the New England Fisheries Management Council, submitted in written testimony to the committee that fishermen are “not asking for a free-for-all.”

“We are advocating for a science-driven, rotational access, much like the management framework that turned our scallop fishery into the most successful and sustainable model in the country,” he wrote. “Ignoring that data while fishermen face tighter quotas in other areas is not only inefficient, but unfair to the men and women who have invested their lives and livelihoods in this fishery. Failure to harvest scallops from this area will result in natural mortality, which serves neither the needs of the nation nor those of the Port of New Bedford.”