WASHINGTON – Arguing that scallop dredging is hurting New England groundfish stocks, conservationists are pushing for greater limits on dredging in the courts and with the council writing new rules for the sea-scallop fishery.

“We’re making this a real priority issue,” said Chris Zeman, a lawyer for Oceana, the Washington-based environmental group that last year urged a federal court to close scallop-fishing grounds off Cape Cod to protect delicate marine life from what it says are damaging dredging practices.

That request was rejected by the U.S. District Court in Boston, and now Oceana is appealing. Briefs in the case are to be filed in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the group is asking the New England Fishery Management Council, which writes fishery rules subject to approval by the National Marine Fisheries Service, to close 75 percent of the ocean area where scallopers now work.

It wants its thousands of members, and other environmental activists, to weigh in with the council, members of Congress and the region’s governors.

Oceana says 80 percent of scallops come from a quarter of the ocean area – about 3,000 nautical square miles stretching from New England to North Carolina – now affected by scallop dredging.

Closing the rest of the areas to scallopers wouldn’t hurt the harvest and would protect groundfish – both adults and juveniles caught as bycatch in the metal-ringed dredging gear and juveniles whose habitat is harmed when the gear scrapes along the sea floor, the group says.

Scallopers say they’ve already endured plenty of restrictions.

For instance, there are limits on gear and the number of men who can work on scallop boats. Most shucking must be done at sea, to limit fishing time on boats, and full-time scallopers can fish for only 120 days in a year-round season.

Scallopers were also closed out of Georges Bank after groundfish stocks collapsed in 1994, although some of that access has been restored.

There are about 250 full-time boats in the sea scallop fishery, and the council expects record landings – 54 million pounds – in the new season beginning March 1.

Sea scallops are considered the second-most-lucrative catch for a New England fisherman, behind lobster.

Environmentalists’ arguments “belie a lot of hard work that’s gone on to make this fishery operate cognizant of environmental concerns,” said David Frulla, a Washington-based attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, a Massachusetts scallopers group.

The council is expected to recommend some sort of rotational management scheme that would leave some areas open, and close others to allow small scallops to grow and limit access to others.

Oceana says record-low levels of cod are surviving to maturity in certain ocean areas because juvenile cod, in order to thrive, need gravel sediments where sponges and corals live.

But one sweep of a dredge removes nearly 80 percent of marine species from the ocean floor, leaving juvenile cod without necessary food or protection from predators, the group says.

Scallopers aren’t convinced their gear does significant damage to groundfish. Flounder, not cod or haddock, tend to get caught as bycatch, they say, and scallopers stay mostly in sandy areas because that’s where scallops grow. Too many rocks will hurt the gear, they say.

“There might be scattered rocks around where we fish, but if there is any [real] amount of rock, we won’t be able to fish,” said Malvin Kvilhaug, 64, of New Bedford, who owns three scallop boats.

Andrew Applegate, a marine biologist who works for the New England council, said the agency is considering ways, through the rotational scheme, to reduce habitat impacts. But there’s no consensus on just how much damage a dredge can do, he said.