In a year of mounting physical and written protests against national fisheries policies, the latest could be the loudest — at least in the size of the protesting chorus.
No less than 1,000 scallop fishermen, retail and wholesale seafood dealers and other scallop-dependent businesses and their employees signed a letter hand-delivered Friday to the office of Jane Lubchenco, the Obama administration's steward of the oceans.
The point of the protest was the decision of the New England Fishery Management Council last month to cut back access to the scallop grounds despite the stock's undisputed health.
"The action fails to balance the conservation of scallop stocks with the economic and social health of the industry," Herman Bruce and Malvin Kvilahaug, writing on behalf of the Fisheries Survival Fund, said in their letter, "and it will cause unnecessary damage to fishing communities from Maine to North Carolina, as well as local, regional and national economies, more generally, at precisely the wrong time."
Accompanying the letter were pages of names of co-signers — most from New Bedford, but also ranging up and down the coast including token representation from Gloucester and Newburyport.
"New Bedford is the scallop port, and we're the groundfish port," said Larry Ciulla, president of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.
At its November meeting, New England's federal council, which legislates and makes policy with the National Marine Fisheries Service, reduced access to the grounds to an extent calculated to allow no more than 41 million pounds to be caught next year.
The action represented a conservative impulse; the industry had hoped for 47 million pounds based on the deduction by federal scientists that there are 300 million pounds of harvestable scallops and that 65 million could be caught safely.
Because scallops are virtually sedentary, scallop science is considered inordinately good.
The Fisheries Survival Fund letter essentially echoes a Dec. 15 letter to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke — Lubchenco's superior in the fisheries' government hierarchy — by Congressman Barney Frank, whose district includes New Bedford, and an October letter directly from Frank to Lubchenco.
The October letter covered a series of complaints about federal fishery management policy, including the alleged mismanagement of the scallop observer program in a way that boat owners were left to pay for observers during the duration of the fishing year.
The letter also zeroed in on another conservative catch limit, this one on pollock. The allowable pollock catch set for next year is barely one third of the actual catch in 2008, leaving many to worry that the tight limit could become a circuit breaker for the onset of catch share fishing by sectors, or commercial fishing cooperatives, beginning next May.
"This is no small matter," wrote Frank, "as this species could trigger the shutdown of the entire multispecies fishery."
The Dec. 15 letter, focused on the reduced access to scallops, was signed by 15 of Frank's House colleagues and senators. Congressman John Tierney was a co-writer of that document.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
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