Is the scallop fishery well-managed? Most people, including scallop fishermen, scientists, and environmentalists, had the same answer: yes.
“I think the harvest is being managed, compared to any other fishery in New England, fabulously,” Peter Shelley, senior counsel at Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group, said.
The majority agree that the New England Fishery Management Council is doing a good job at keeping the scallop population sustainable and allowing fishermen to make a good living. 
Last year, commercial fishermen landed more than $300 million worth of fish at the Port of New Bedford, and 85 percent of that value came from scallops.
Michael Quinn, whose family has been in the scallop fishing industry for 30 years, said he believes the industry is well-managed partly because of the collaboration between fishermen and researchers.
“We get to take scientists directly on our vessels,” Quinn said. “We go out to sea with them. We’re living with these people for a week at a time doing all the data together.”
Data on the scallop population is collected through drop camera surveys. That’s when scientists attach cameras to a big, metal, square frame and drop it to the bottom of the ocean. They take pictures of the scallops and then scientists on the management council’s Plan Development Team use that data to help figure out how much fishermen can catch and which areas should be opened or closed for fishing.
David Bethoney, research faculty at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, assists with the drop camera surveys. He said there’s actually a lot of scallops in the North and Mid-Atlantic Ocean right now.
“The past few years, really 2012 and 2013, we’ve seen this incredible recruitment of scallops, and it’s resulted in the highest biomass we’ve ever observed,” Bethoney said. 
However, Bethoney said scientists don’t know exactly why that happened. It could be a combination of closing off areas to fishing, a higher presence of food and fewer predators.
Whatever the reason, there’s more scallops. But, it turns out, that’s not entirely positive.
The point of closing fishing areas is to give scallops a few years to double in size so fishermen can catch the most valuable meat, but Bethoney said that’s not what scientists observed in the areas with dense scallop populations.
“There’s scallops that are probably about five years old and they are only 70 to 80 millimeters shell height on average,” Bethoney said.
By that age, scallops should be around 100 millimeters.
So regulators were left with a dilemma: do they open the areas for fishing, regardless of the scallops’ size because of how old they are? Or do they keep the areas closed and wait for the scallops to grow, but then risk them dying before they’re harvested?
The management council decided to open the areas and their plan is under review by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The new plan is projected to result in more than 60 million pounds of scallop landings over the next fishing year. That’s compared to just two decades ago when the average landings were less than 16 million pounds.
Today, scallops also have a very high price tag at the Port of New Bedford.
