MACHIAS, Maine — Citing “intense fishing” and a need to protect scallops stocks, state officials have decided to close some scalloping areas in western Washington County.
The targeted closures for Pleasant Bay off Harrington and Addison and for lower Englishman Bay off Roque Bluffs were announced last week and went into effect on Saturday, Dec. 27.
Targeted emergency scallop closures have become common in Maine over the past few years as the state has adopted new management procedures in order to better protect scallop stocks in state waters along the entire coast. Declining scallop landings in the state fishery in 2009 nearly resulted in the Maine Department of Marine Resources canceling the entire second half of the scallop fishing season that year.
The latest emergency closures apply to all of inshore Pleasant Bay east of Strout Point and Foster, Dyer and Flint islands and west of the southeast point of Cape Split. The affected area in Englishman Bay includes waters east of Roque Island, north of Great Spruce Island, north and west of Halifax Island, and between Shoppe and Cow points in Roque Bluffs.
“The Department is concerned that unrestricted harvesting during the remainder of the 2014-15 fishing season in these areas may deplete a severely diminished resource beyond its ability to recover,” DMR officials indicated in its closure announcement. “Continued harvesting may damage sublegal scallops that could be caught during subsequent fishing seasons, as well as reducing the broodstock essential to a recovery.”
In addition to the two areas closed last week, two-thirds of the scallop fishing territory between eastern Penobscot Bay and West Quoddy Head have been closed to fishing for the entire season, which opened Dec. 1 and is scheduled to end on April 11. Regularly scheduled closures will rotate among three sets of scallop fishing areas in eastern Maine each year through early 2022, with only one set open each year.
Scallop landings in Maine have fluctuated over the past 60-plus years, hitting highs of more than 3 million pounds in 1980 and again in 1981. Declining stocks led to an all-time low of only 33,000 pounds harvested in Maine in 2005. Last year, however, more than 424,000 pounds were harvested by Maine fishermen.
Despite fluctuations in the statewide harvest, prices that fishermen have earned for their catch have increased steadily and significantly in the past five years, increasing from a statewide average of $7.41 per pound in 2009 to $12.24 in 2013, according to DMR statistics. Prices so far this season are even higher, with fishermen getting between $13 and $14 per pound when the season began, industry officials have said.
