For the first time in 35 years, regulators shut down the United States' Northeastern Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery Tuesday afternoon.

Researchers are worried over reports of what some called a completely "collapsed" stock that could be fished out of existence if it stayed open for 2014, reports the Bangor Daily News.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section, a subset of the multistate agency that oversees North Atlantic shrimp fisheries, met Tuesday in Portland to set guidelines for the coming season.

By consensus, the commission decided to close the fishery for the 2014 season, denying a 175-metric-ton catch limit recommended by its Northern Shrimp Advisory Board.

“The Northern Shrimp Technical Committee has considered the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp stock to have collapsed with very little hope for recovery in the near future,” Kelly Whitmore, chairwoman of the committee, told members of a section advisory panel Tuesday morning. “There are no small shrimp around right now. It doesn’t bode well for the future.”

The committee had urged regulators to shut down the fishery this year, but they had went ahead with it anyway, with a catch limit of 625t.

That represented a 72% decrease from the allowable catch set for the previous year, and shrimpers ultimately caught only 307t, or about 677,000 pounds.

“There are very few, if any, shrimp left,” Whitmore told section members. “It just seems like we’ve reached the bottom. There’s probably no such thing as a ‘do no harm’ fishery at this point.”

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