Citing "demoralizing" restrictions placed last week on the thriving East Coast scallop fishery and "moral issues" of environmentalists he concedes he can't fathom, Congressman Barney Frank has pledged a major effort to modify the Magnuson-Stevens Act, under which the nation's fisheries are regulated.

Frank also accused the nation's federal fishery regulators of harboring "an anti-fishing bias."

Meanwhile, the Pew Environment Group has already mobilized dozens of organizations and scientists to resist Frank's push.

Frank's frustration, expressed in a telephone interview Wednesday, came in the aftermath of the November meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council a week earlier, and builds on a recent, lengthy letter of complaints he sent to Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which regulates fisheries.

Lubchcenco and Frank, who represents New Bedford and has been a stalwart defender of the fishing industry, maintain a difficult diplomatic and political dialogue over a range of fishery conservation and economic issues.

After fierce debate at its meeting in Newport, R.I., the council reduced access to the healthy scallop stock in the waters of southern New England and Georges Bank.

The council cut days at sea for full-time scallop vessels fishing in open areas to 29 days, and decreased the number of allowed trips to special access areas from five to four for the 2010 fishing year, according to Saving Seafood, the daily news digest of the fishing industry that is published from Washington, D.C., and New Bedford.

"The economic impact to fishermen and the regional economy is substantial," the Saving Seafood Web site quoted Frank as saying.

"The scallop industry is a great success," Frank told the Times yesterday. "It's very discouraging, totally demoralizing for the success to be followed up with draconian restrictions."

The council also voted to reconsider the length of the seven-year rebuilding timetable for yellowtail flounder, a species that is taken as bycatch by the scallopers and is also a valued groundfish.

Patricia Kurkul, the Gloucester-based regional administrator of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, opposed lengthening the rebuilding timetable for yellowtail, and last month, during a peaceful protest of NOAA and NMFS policies at the regional offices in Gloucester's Blackburn Industrial Park, Kurkul advised protesters in a private meeting that she sympathized but was handcuffed by Magnuson-Stevens, and advised them to get the law changed.

Scallops are the most valued and successful stock on the East Coast, and are responsible for New Bedford's ranking as the nation's No. 1 cash value port.

To that end, Frank has repeatedly wondered aloud why fishery regulation based on Magnuson-Stevens subordinates social and community economic concerns.

Initially enacted in 1976 and reauthorized and modified in 2006, Magnuson-Stevens establishes firm deadlines for the restoration of healthy stocks, but has been criticized by industry figures and independent scientists for presuming that all stocks in an ecosystem can be restored simultaneously.

The push to modify Magnuson-Stevens pits Frank and his allies in a small but powerful coalition on Capitol Hill against an environmental alliance organized and led by the Pew Environment Group, which has been gathering signatures opposing any change in Magnuson-Stevens since last spring.

The multi-billion dollar ENGO or environmental non-government organization in April listed 44 environmental groups that shared Pew's position against modifying Magnuson-Stevens; the number jumped to 67 in July, and focused on Sen. Charles Schumer of New York who had joined the coalition that included Frank and Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, and was headed by Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey.

At the end of September, Pew sent a letter signed by 118 scientists to senators. The letter warned that the bill now filed by Schumer as well as Pallone "would add loopholes and exceptions that delay rebuilding deadlines and favor short-term economic gains over the long-term health of fish populations and coastal communities.

"Delaying rebuilding may have significant adverse impacts that reverberate throughout marine ecosystems, affecting prey and predator relationships and impeding depleted species' ability to recover."

In his interview with the Times, Frank said he considers the opposition to the bills to represent "a different kind of environmentalism."

"Whether fish recover in seven, nine or 11 years, doesn't seem to me to be a moral issue," Frank said. "But to them, it seems to be."

In his letter to Lubchenco last month, Frank wrote that "in situations where it is clear that more fishing opportunities are warranted, either through updated stock assessment data, or mistakes in the scientific assessment or review process," Frank wrote, "the agency must be willing to act on its own to ensure decisive and immediate action to implement revised regulations necessary to protect fishermen and fishing communities from unnecessary and often devastating financial hardship."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-1283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.