BOSTON – If Cliff Goudey’s new scallop dredge catches on, the future of the Northeast fishery won’t look very futuristic, but there could be less debate about whether scallopers are ripping up the ocean floor.

Forget high-tech gadgetry. A simple angled line of large, inverted cups is the key feature of the dredge designed by Goudey, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sea Grant program.

On a traditional dredge, the scallops are knocked free of the ocean’s bottom and into a trailing chain bag by a metal cutting bar. Environmentalists say that bar is the most damaging feature of the dredge, destroying the ocean floor habitat that marine life depend on for survival.

“It’s been likened to a bulldozer going along the bottom,” said Gib Brogan of the environmental group Oceana.

Goudey’s dredge replaces the cutting bar with the line of cups, which redirect the water flow created when the dredge moves, shooting it at the scallops and popping them off the seafloor.

Scientists differ about the effects of the fishing gear on the ocean floor. Ironically, Goudey believes the problem is hugely exaggerated. He said the traditional dredge moves so quickly it barely hits the bottom and can’t do the damage environmentalists claim.

His work, he hopes, eventually can help make the issue irrelevant.

“Right or wrong, the disturbance being caused is unnecessary,” Goudey said. “If you can catch scallops without doing that, why not?”

The scallop is a shellfish about the size of an adult hand. Most people eat only the abductor muscle, which opens and shuts the animal’s shell. Scallops are found worldwide, including off China and Japan, but the Atlantic scallop is larger than other species.

The Atlantic scallop fleet consists of 350 boats in ports from New England to Virginia, and another 400 or so smaller boats that fish scallops less frequently.

The scallop industry has steadily grown in Virginia, from a volume of 9.1 million pounds worth $41 million in 2000 to 19.6 million pounds worth $92 million in 2004, according to federal statistics.

Virginia’s richest fishery is concentrated on the Eastern Shore, on the Peninsula and in Virginia Beach. Some vessels go far offshore for weeks at a time.

New Bedford’s scallop fishery is hugely profitable and the reason the city has been the highest revenue fishing port in the country for seven straight years. Last year, the port’s catch was worth $281 million.

But regulations to protect the ocean floor could cut into those profits.

Such rules are already in place in scattered areas around New England. Last month, the New England Fishery Management Council cleared the way for more by designating rich scallop grounds in the Great South Channel off New Bedford as critical for juvenile cod.

Environmentalists say cod are struggling partly because the dredges are destroying bottom habitat where young cod mature and take shelter from predators. The council’s new designation means scallopers eventually could be banned from areas in the channel.

Chris Wright, 45, a New Bedford scalloper, said he doesn’t believe his dredges are hurting the bottom off New Bedford, which is still productive after decades of fishing, and no one has proved they’re hurting cod, either.

“I get the feeling they feel like they can keep cutting us back because we’ve done well,” he said.

Even as advocates push for new rules, science doesn’t give a definitive answer on how much they are needed. A federal report by the National Research Council in 2002 said dredging does long-term damage to stable areas of seafloor, such as the gravelly Great South Channel. It recommends a combination of restrictions, including cuts in fishing time, new gear and closed fishing areas.

But a 2006 study by the researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth compared an area of Georges Bank that was dredged to an undredged area, and found over 13 months there was less bottom disturbance in the dredged area. The study suggested previous research had overstated how much damage a dredge can do in the always-shifting seafloor environment.