Scallopers Weigh
Regs & Access
by Laurie Schreiber
The Mary & Donna rigged for scallops. Trisha DeGraaf, Maine DMR said “An owner/operator requirement may stem some of this additional influx in effort from these latent licenses as well as decrease some of the newly activated effort this past year.” There was support for making the entire fishery owner operated. © Photo by Sam Murfitt
ELLSWORTH – Effort control in the state’s scallop fishery was the main topic on the agenda of the Scallop Advisory Council (SAC) on April 29, shortly after Department of Marine Resources (DMR) commissioner Patrick Keliher was in conversation with the governor’s office about instituting an owner/operator requirement for license-holders, and imposing a freeze on activating latent licenses during the 2014-2015 season.
At a meeting attended by about 20 fishermen, the SAC ultimately asked DMR resource coordinator Trisha DeGraaf to take an amended proposal back to Keliher: the SAC supported the owner/operator concept but rejected the freeze, instead proposing that if latent license-holders want to reactivate their licenses, they must be owner/operators. And they supported the idea of investigating how the entire fishery might be transitioned to owner/operator.
