On the Water: NGOM Scallop Season
- Evan Balzano
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
The 2025 Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop season was marked with tragedy on April 25, when an on-board accident caused the death of Jaxson Marston and the serious injury of Jamie Bailey. Our sympathies go out to those families and all those affected by the tragedy.
GoFundMe pages have been set up for Jaxson's family and for Jamie's recovery.
Reflections from Evan Balzano, MCFA's Fisheries Resilience Coordinator
In early April, I went on a Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Scallop trip with my father, Vincent Balzano, on F/V Northern Lights. Like many others in the commercial fishing industry, I have been fishing with my father for basically my whole life. If my father needed the help and I didn’t have school or something sports-related, he would take me out on a trip. As I got older, I found myself going more and more.
My first trip was a groundfish trip when I was 8 or 9 years old. I wasn’t all that useful on deck, so I found myself behind the wheel steering us into port. About every 30 seconds I would turn back to my father on deck and ask if I was going the right way. I would usually get a point in either direction from the knife he was using to dress a cod. My mother always reminds me that I called the house on that trip to tell her with enthusiasm that I was driving the boat and was being a big help for Dad.
There was another time I was driving us in using the autopilot, which I had never used before, and I took it out of autopilot to avoid a lobster buoy. But when I put autopilot back on, I accidentally did a full-speed donut to get us back on track. Which resulted in my father nearly going overboard off the starboard side. (Sorry, Dad.)
What's NGOM?
The Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) scallop season opens on April 1 each year and runs until the annual quota is reached. The NGOM area goes from its most southern point on the latitude roughly of Boston, MA all the way to the US Canada border at its most northern point. Since the best fishing is off the coast of Massachusetts, many Maine fishermen leave their homes to stay in Gloucester, Mass for the season to reduce travel time. This year, the season was open for 21 days and 624,191 pounds of scallops were landed - a highly lucrative industry.
It had been three years since I last went on a NGOM trip and at that time it was a small-boat fishery with roughly 100 boats fishing for scallops. This year, it was going to be different. The other scallop fishing grounds were all being kept closed until the middle of May to protect sensitive stocks, so the only fishing was going to be on Stellwagen Bank for the start of the season. From 40 footers out of Downeast Maine to 90 footers from New Bedford, everyone wanted a piece of Stellwagen and close to 200 boats ended up participating in this small part of the fishery. No peace and quiet on these trips! You could always see a few other boats nearby and it often felt like we were on top of one another.
Why is everyone fishing here? In other parts of the Federal Scallop fishery, biomass has dramatically declined and are expected to take cuts to quota in the coming years. This isn’t the case with the NGOM management area, especially Stellwagen Bank where there is a high density of scallops on top of the bank. With so much biomass present, hitting the 200-pound/day limit has become highly efficient. Pair that with an average ex-vessel price of $31.81 per pound on the New Bedford auction, it is easy to see why this fishery is attractive. Over the last five years, we have seen a great increase in participation in the fishery and that continued to be true this year.
Overall, the trip went well. We caught our limits and got in and out of Gloucester no problem. We did hit some rough weather on the way out which prompted me to “puke and rally,” something I feel like I always have to get out of my system when I haven’t gone on a trip offshore in a while. I like to think of it as being out of “sea shape”- just takes time to get back in shape. And of course the trip ends the same way many others have in the past. With my father (lovingly) yelling at me from the deck that I’m going the wrong way while I’m driving the boat into Gloucester Harbor.
