| Wild Scallop Stock Enhancement Project
Marsden Brewer, Coordinator
A Fishing Community Based Project
December 2001 update:
There has been a lot that has happened over the last few months. On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend a bunch of fishermen got a welcomed surprise when about twenty members of the Eastern Penobscot Bay Environmental Alliance showed up at the Stonington Fish Pier to give us a hand stuffing spat bags for this years larval collection effort. In three and a half hours we were able to stuff and rig about 3500 collectors.
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Stonington fishermen heading out to set 900 spat bags
Over the next couple of weeks material was distributed up and down the coast to other fishermen interested in spat collection, and the gear was set. In areas where we have had success in spat collection lines were rigged with up to 30 collectors on a line to minimize the amount of lines in the water, in other areas where we are "just looking" 5 to 10 bags on a line was recommended. |
In Japan they set around a million bags. While that may sound like a lot, when you consider the amount of lobster boats on the coast of Maine and the amount of traps the Government Regulators claim we have in the water, it really isn't that many! 1000 boats X 1000 bags, or 2000 boats X 500 bags, either way you end up with a million. With so much of the fishing industry dependent on just one fishery "lobster" it makes sense to expand our options. The hardest part will be to keep this fishery open enough to allow fishermen to have this option while the Commissioner tries to develop a management plan for Scallops.
On November Eighteenth I went out with another fisherman, our state scallop scientist, and reporter from our regional newspaper to move some of this years gear to "winter over" What I observed was that settlement was a little later (about a week) than last year. It is two early to speculate on the amount of scallops in a bag. |
