Sternman Josh Gatto shucks scallops on the trip back to shore off Harpswell in 2011. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

A federal agency has passed the ruling needed to reopen federal scallop fishing in the Gulf of Maine, just under a week after it was forced to close because of delays in finalizing annual catch limits.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday afternoon that fishermen will be allowed to resume scalloping on Monday through the remainder of the season — which ends once a certain amount is caught.

NOAA temporarily closed the regional fishery on April 12, the first midseason closure since regulations were put in place 16 years ago. It impacted those who fish for scallops in federal waters, 3 miles offshore in the northern Gulf of Maine region.

The closure went into place after the fishery hit a default quota, a significantly lower catch limit that goes into place when no rules are passed to prevent overfishing.

Members of Maine’s fishing community told the Press Herald that NOAA fishery regulators have been challenged by the transition to a new presidential administration and by the federal staffing cuts the Trump administration is making.

Togue Brawn, a seafood dealer and fishery management official, said it’s been challenging to wait on NOAA Headquarters, in Washington, D.C., to finalize the rulings with no timeline on the table.

“We have good contacts at the Northeast Regional Office (of NOAA), but from what I understand, even they were sitting on their hands, waiting to find out what was going to happen — waiting for the edict that would come down,” Brawn said.

The delay, and the uncertainty about how long the pause would last, put many of Maine’s scallopers on edge.

Now, scallopers are back to business as usual — and not particularly steamed up anymore.

“It was about what we thought the time frame might be,” said Kristan Porter, a scalloper and lobsterman from Cutler, who will head back to Massachusetts to resume fishing on Monday. “We’ll just get back and finish up.”

NOAA ultimately passed the same rules proposed by the New England Fishery Management Council in December 2024. Fishermen are allowed to catch up to 675,563 pounds of the mollusks this year.

Even though there has been a large amount of frustration around the cause for the delay, Brawn was glad to see the default measures go into place to prevent any harm to the fishery.

“We’ve got a win in the northern Gulf of Maine, and we just need to keep being conservative and make sure it’s not overfished,” Brawn said. “The fishermen are happy to get down there and make their money in this sustainable fishery that a lot of them worked very hard to preserve access to.”

From April 1 until NOAA announced the temporary closure on April 12, fishermen caught 314,364 pounds of scallops. That means they can land another 361,199 pounds before they reach the catch limit and regulators close the fishery for the season.