Portsmouth, N.H. (AP) - Northeast fisheries regulators on Wednesday rolled back sharp scallop catch cuts after heavy political pressure and fishing industry protests drove them to reconsider.

The New England Fishery Management Council voted 10-5 to adopt more lenient rules that restore a 22 percent cut in the number of fishing dayst.

The council initially refused to reconsider, but that changed after Gov. Deval Patrick intervened with the council chair earlier this month.

Members who voted for the change Wednesday said they were correcting a mistake that would have caused a healthy industry major short-term pain for minimal gain.

The rare reconsideration angered some members, who worried future decisions would be based mainly on who has political sway.

"This one takes the cupcake ... for really, filthy political maneuvering," said council member Dave Preble, who blasted the media, "special interests" and "misinformed politicians."

swooping in like vultures to the kill."

In November, the council passed rules that cut fishing days from 37 to 29 this year and eliminated a trip into the Georges Bank fishing area that scallopers said would have netted 18,000 pounds per boat. Wednesday's vote gives scallopers 38 fishing days, but didn't restore the lost trip.

The council said their initial cuts aimed to keep the stock healthy after scallopers overshot their projected catch during the last two years.

It estimated $41 million less in revenues in the first year, compared to the option chosen Wednesday, but projected that by 2016 that would mean a total of $17 million more in revenues.

But scallopers said the cuts were overcautious and unneeded in their healthy fishery, which extends from Maine to North Carolina. A booming scallop business has made New Bedford the nation's top revenue port nine straight years, including a catch worth $241.3 million in 2008, the most recent year statistics are available.

After the November vote, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang estimated his city's total economic loss at $250 million, which he said would be devastating in a brutal economy.

"We will collapse this industry, we will collapse the city, if we have a regulation like this at this time," Lang told the council Wednesday.

A thousand people signed a petition decrying the cuts, and 16 congressmen sent a December letter to Commerce Secretary Gary Lock asking him to direct the council to reconsider.

When the council initially declined to put the issue on its Portsmouth meeting schedule, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said council chairman John Pappalardo should resign. Patrick then called Pappalardo into a Sunday meeting on Jan. 10. A day later, Pappalardo said the council would reconsider the scallop decision.

Pappalardo acknowledged Wednesday that the governor's weekend summons "weighed heavily on my mind," and he lamented that the council's relationship with the scallop industry had gone "awfully wrong, took a terrible turn."

In arguments before the council, Drew Minkiewicz of the Fisheries Survival Fund, an industry group, said regulators relied on an outdated, overly strict definition of overfishing that led to the unneeded restrictions. He said new federal science showed scallopers could fish at a much higher rate without overfishing the stock.

He also said it made no sense to ask fishermen to take a $41 million hit now for a projected $17 million gain over the next six years that may not even happen.

"Would anyone here take that deal?" he said.

Council member Dave Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman, said the council was not allowed to use the more recent federal data on overfishing because the science hasn't been peer-reviewed, and it's unknown if it's correct.

Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group, said Wednesday's revote would likely not affect a scallop stock everyone agrees is healthy, but does undermine the council's integrity.

"It's important ... that we trust the basis on which decisions are being made, that they're being made on the science, and they're being made on sound policy arguments and they're not being made because of political fears," he said.