NOAA Fisheries Awards 14 Projects in 2026 Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside Program

NOAA Fisheries has made 14 new grant awards through the Scallop Research Set-Aside Program . These projects support research that informs management decisions for one of the most valuable wild-caught fisheries in the nation.

Instead of awarding federal funds, this unique program sets aside a portion of scallops that would otherwise be available for commercial harvest. Those pounds are awarded to researchers who then work with the fishing industry to both conduct their research and harvest the scallops to fund the work.

This year's projects were awarded more than 1.5 million pounds of Atlantic sea scallops. At an estimated $16 per pound, the awards are expected to generate more than $25 million. Of that amount, $6 million will directly support research. The remaining $19 million will go to harvesters in support of small business owners and local fishing families.

The U.S. sea scallop fishery is a major contributor to the national seafood economy. In 2025, commercial scallop landings totaled 23.1 million pounds, valued at $417 million-making it the largest wild scallop fishery in the world.

The awarded projects are investigating research priorities identified by the New England Fishery Management Council. This year's projects include enhancements to existing scallop surveys, such as:

• Expanded coverage on Georges Bank
• AI-enhanced processing of survey imagery
• Continued support of industry-driven data collection and co-management

Also new this year are two projects exploring opportunities for enhancement of scallop resources.

The research set-aside program is a model of innovation. It funds essential research without using federal dollars and builds strong partnerships between scientists and the fishing industry. NOAA Fisheries currently supports research set-aside programs for Atlantic sea scallops and monkfish .

Learn more about the Scallop and Monkfish Research Set-Aside Programs.

2026 Scallop Research Set-Aside Surveys

All 2026 Research Set-Aside (RSA) funded scallop surveys. New projects include expanded coverage of the SMAST DropCam survey. The ME DMR dredge, VIMS dredge, and CFF HabCam surveys were funded through 2024 and 2025 RSA grants.

Institution	Project Title	Total Budget	Allocation (lbs)
Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance	Designing and Testing Dynamic Co-management to Protect Scallop Seed and Maximize Yield	$2,999,556	2026: 62,255 2027: 125,217
Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF)	Sustaining and Improving the Research Fleet Approach in the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery	$1,529,523	2026: 49,560 2027: 46,035
CFRF	Sustaining ScallApp Use for Industry Tracking of Scallop Health and Reproduction	$394,250	2026: 12,320 2027: 12,320
Coonamessett Farm Foundation	Seasonal Survey of Scallop Fishery on the Eastern Part of Georges Bank	$3,000,314	2026: 92,402 2027: 95,118
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (SMAST)	Important Extensions to the 2026 Georges Bank Drop Camera Survey	$317,261	2026: 19,829
SMAST	Interactive Effects of Food Availability on the Temperature Tolerance of Atlantic Sea Scallop Early Life Stages	$1,326,877	2026: 82,930
SMAST	Spatiotemporal Variability of Atlantic Sea Scallop ( Placopecten magellanicus ) Shell Height to Meat Weight Relationships and the Environmental Factors Affecting It.	$2,467,341	2026: 79,037 2027: 75,172
University of New Hampshire	Recruitment Enhancement Feasibility in the U.S. Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery	$3,075,328	2026: 54,940 2027: 70,329 2028: 66,940
Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)	AI-Enhanced Processing of HabCam Imagery to Improve Atlantic Sea Scallop Survey Products for Stock Assessment	$1,713,701	2026: 52,522 2027: 54,584
VIMS	Monitoring Environmental Conditions and Sea Scallop Mortality in the Elephant Trunk	$1,661,806	2026: 51,143 2027: 52,720
VIMS	Assisting the Scallop Management Decision Process with a GIS Tool	$1,008,564	2026: 30,823 2027: 32,212
VIMS	Assessing the Viability of Spat Collection in the Southern Portion of the Sea Scallop Resource	$1,162,324	2026: 52,033 2027: 20,613
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI)	Combining Biology, Ecology, and Physics to Predict Recruitment for the Atlantic Sea Scallop, P. magellanicus	$1,999,652	2026: 61,260 2027: 63,718
WHOI	Developing an Early-Warning System to Forecast Sea Scallop Mortality Risk under Thermal Stress	$2,661,104	2026: 52,430 2027: 113,889

Project Summaries

Institution : Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance, Inc.

Title : Designing and Testing Dynamic Co-management to Protect Scallop Seed and Maximize Yield (2-year grant)

Principal Investigator: Melissa Sanderson, Caitlin Townsend, and Steve Martell, Ph.D.

Project summary: The research team will develop and pilot the Scallop Seed Avoidance Program, a voluntary, fleet-led, near real-time spatial management system designed to identify and avoid localized scallop seed hotspots. The program would integrate industry-reported data with analytical "trust-but-verify" tools to build and test the infrastructure required for an industry-led system for voluntary dynamic small-scale closures.

Institution : Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF)

Title : Sustaining and Improving the Research Fleet Approach in the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: N. David Bethoney, Ph.D.; Rebecca Smoak; Melissa Sanderson; Mark Hager; and Anthony Lucia

Project summary: CFRF researchers will continue and enhance the Scallop Research Fleet fishery-dependent data collection program. Through this program, scallopers gather year-round data on scallop shell heights, meat volume, and reproductive status, producing consistent and reliable data enabling calculation of shell height to meat weight ratios and monitoring of scallops' reproductive stages.

Institution : CFRF

Title : Sustaining ScallApp Use for Industry Tracking of Scallop Health and Reproduction (2-year grant)

Principal Investigator: N. David Bethoney, Ph.D.

Project summary: ScallApp is a smartphone application for collecting fishery-dependent data on sea scallop disease, meat quality, and reproductive condition. CFRF researchers will transition the app from a pilot phase to a sustained industry-integrated platform by implementing improvements fostering open use, optimizing industry participation incentives, and delivering actionable insights to inform scallop science, management, and industry decision making.

Institution : Coonamessett Farm Foundation

Title : Seasonal Survey of Scallop Fishery on the Eastern Part of Georges Bank (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Lusia Garcia, Farrell Davis, Natalie Jennings, and Liese Siemann, Ph.D.

Project summary: The research team propose to continue their seasonal dredge survey in the eastern Georges Bank region, which is used to generate seasonal indicators of scallop biomass and recruitment, reproductive activity, health condition, predator abundance, and distribution of key predator and bycatch species.

Institution : University of New Hampshire

Title : Recruitment Enhancement Feasibility in the U.S. Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery (3-year grant)

Principal Investigator: Michael Coogan, Ph.D.

Project summary: This project will evaluate the feasibility of scallop recruitment enhancement in northern New England by deploying spat collectors in Maine and New Hampshire, growing out juvenile scallops in nursery systems, and conducting controlled field reseeding trials. During the grow-out period, the applicant will estimate predation risk and test whether exposure to predator chemical cues induces defensive traits in juvenile scallops.

Institution : University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST)

Title : Important Extensions to the 2026 Georges Bank Drop Camera Survey (1-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Adam Delargy, Ph.D.; Kevin D.E. Stokesbury, Ph.D.; and Amber D. Delargy

Project summary: The research team expanded the SMAST drop camera survey that was funded under the 2025 Scallop RSA program to include additional coverage across the Northern Lightship South West and Southern Flank regions-areas of unexpectedly high scallop density in the 2025 fishing year. Drop camera imagery will identify bottom substrate, estimate shell height, count macrobenthos, and estimate scallop density, abundance, and exploitable biomass.

Institution : SMAST

Title : Interactive Effects of Food Availability on the Temperature Tolerance of Atlantic Sea Scallop Early Life Stages (1-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Geoff Cowles, Ph.D.; Max D. Zavell, Ph.D.; Kevin D.E. Stokesbury, Ph.D.; and Brian Beal, Ph.D.

Project summary: The research team will investigate the effects of bottom temperature on scallop recruitment by lab-rearing larvae from spring and fall spawning periods under varying temperature and food concentration scenarios. Output of these experiments will be used to predict potential "match-mismatch" dynamics between the timing of scallop spawning and the availability of essential food sources under a range of temperature scenarios.

Institution : SMAST

Title : Spatiotemporal Variability of Atlantic Sea Scallop ( Placopecten magellanicus ) Shell Height to Meat Weight Relationships and the Environmental Factors Affecting It. (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Nicholas M. Calabrese, Ph.D.; Adam Delargy, Ph.D.; Max Zavell, Ph.D.; and Kevin D.E. Stokesbury, Ph.D.

Project summary: This project will quantify variability in scallop shell height-meat weight relationships over space and time and identify environmental drivers of that variability. These relationships are used to convert survey abundance to biomass, so small changes can substantially affect stock assessments and fishery value. Monthly sampling of scallops from different areas will be conducted by cooperating commercial fishing vessels, and these measurements will be used to develop spatiotemporally explicit statistical models to refine stock assessments.

Institution : Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)

Title : AI-Enhanced Processing of HabCam Imagery to Improve Atlantic Sea Scallop Survey Products for Stock Assessment (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Ming Sun, Ph.D.; Yi He, Ph.D.; Roger Mann, Ph.D.; and David Rudders, Ph.D.

Project summary: The research team will develop a structured workflow to use computer vision models to process HabCam survey imagery. This process will train models to detect, count, and measure scallop shell height; convert model outputs into estimates of density, abundance, and size frequency distributions; and validate the outputs against human-interpreted data to produce assessment-ready datasets.

Institution : VIMS

Title : Assisting the Scallop Management Decision Process with a GIS Tool (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Roger Mann, Ph.D. and David Rudders, Ph.D.

Institution : VIMS

Project summary: This project will streamline the New England Fishery Management Council's annual scallop specifications recommendation process by developing a user-friendly GIS tool to visualize complex assessment and landings data. The tool will help scientists, managers, and industry stakeholders more easily assimilate large volumes of information, ultimately simplifying the transition from raw data to actionable decision-making.

Institution : VIMS

Title : Assessing the Viability of Spat Collection in the Southern Portion of the Sea Scallop Resource (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Sally Roman and David Rudders, Ph.D.

Project summary: Investigators will test the use of fuzzy rope systems to collect newly settled sea scallops in the Mid-Atlantic, where they are experiencing increased natural mortality. Collection of juveniles may assist future enhancement efforts if scallops can be grown out and transplanted into areas with better growing conditions.

Institution : VIMS

Title : Monitoring Environmental Conditions and Sea Scallop Mortality in the Elephant Trunk (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Sally Roman and David Rudders, Ph.D.

Project summary: This project will conduct quarterly sampling in the Elephant Trunk Area to monitor environmental parameters, predator abundance, and sea scallop mortality, aiming to understand the drivers of recent, unexplained mortality events in the region.

Institution : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI)

Title : Combining Biology, Ecology, and Physics to Predict Recruitment for the Atlantic Sea Scallop, P. magellanicus (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, Ph.D.; Irina Rypina, Ph.D.; and Gregory Britten, Ph.D.

Project summary: The research team will conduct lab experiments with live scallop larvae to evaluate larval buoyancy and food-induced and predator-induced swimming behaviors under different conditions. These outputs will be integrated into a model that realistically simulates scallop larval dispersal and could be used to enhance the predictability of scallop recruitment.

Institution : WHOI

Title : Developing an Early-Warning System to Forecast Sea Scallop Mortality Risk under Thermal Stress (2-year grant)

Principal Investigators: Christopher Murray, Ph.D. and Rubao Ji, Ph.D.

Project summary: The project team will perform experiments that assess the effects of peak temperature, warming rates, and heat exposure duration on adult scallop mortality and biophysiology. These results would be integrated with an operational physical model and Dynamic Energy Budget model to simulate energy deficits under thermal stress and link these deficits to mortality rates using random forest models.