Scallopers press for reopening Northern Edge

The New Bedford scallop fleet and supporters continue to push for a reopening of the Northern Edge scallop access area, a year after the New England Fishery Management Council decided to continue the 30-year closure.

The Northern Edge of Georges Bank is seen by the council as a critical area for juvenile cod, lobster and herring, and the closure has been touted as habitat protection for those species and the scallop biomass.

In April 2025 the Fisheries Survival Fund, representing East Coast scallop fishermen, filed a petition urging U.S Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to reopen the Northern Edge. Their pitch echoed arguments the Fisheries Survival Fund made, unsuccessfully, to the New England council in June 2024.

Now fishermen are hoping to get traction amid the Trump administration’s push to reduce regulations on business. At a July 30 meeting of a Massachusetts state Senate committee, New Bedford fishermen and their legislative supporters pressed their case.

The next day committee chairman, state Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, urged Lutnick to take action and compel the council and “endless bureaucracy” to reopen the Northern Edge.

The Northern Edge is roughly defined as the area encompassed within the Closed Area II Habitat Management Area (HMA) and the adjacent portion of the Northern Flank of Georges Bank. New England Fishery Management Council graphic.

“Opening this area will provide relief to scallopers facing dwindling quotas in other permit areas. For example, total scallop landings in 2024 were only a third of the scallops harvested in 2019,” wrote Montigny. “This is not a sustainable path, and failure to provide access to additional healthy scallop grounds will only result in existing populations dying a natural death while fishermen and our local economies continue to lose out.”

Montigny noted that “commercial fishing, and the scalloping industry in particular, provides thousands of jobs in New Bedford, Massachusetts and along the Eastern seaboard as captains, crews, processors, welders, ice plants, marine suppliers, fuel operators, truckers, and much more. These jobs, and the economic production tied to them, are facing increased pressure from a flood of foreign scallop imports that do not face the same rigorous standards as our sustainable fishery.”

“This competitive disadvantage can be allayed, in part, by opening up new grounds in the Northern Edge to compensate for the limited landings ongoing in the Atlantic region.”