Mecox Reclaimed For Shellfishing

Other than a healthy set of bugs, the East End's 1996 scallop crop seems to offer little to crow about.

There is something to crow about in Southampton, however. After over two years of work, the Town Trustees have succeeded in bringing Mecox Bay back from the dead. As soon as the certification process is complete, some 500 acres of bottomland - about half the bay - will be open for the first time in decades. Much of the bay has been closed to shellfishing since the 1970s.

"This is huge. A big development," Southampton Town Trustee Scott Strough said on Monday, still ecstatic over a letter the town received from the State Department of Environmental Conservation on Oct. 16.

Corwith And Semlear

"The department has just completed a water quality analysis and determined that approximately 500 acres meets the water quality criteria to be reclassified from uncertified to seasonally certified. . . . This reclassification will open shellfish lands not available to the local baymen since the late 1970s," Lisa Tettelbach, a marine resources specialist with the D.E.C., wrote.

Mr. Strough credited Trustees Peter Corwith and Jon Semlear for leading the effort to restore Mecox to health, an effort that included repeated dredgings of the gut between the bay and the ocean. Road runoff was diminished, and wetlands along the edges of the pond were recreated to stem the flow of coliform bacteria and other pollutants.

The relative number of individual coliforms is used nationally to determine the risk of contamination in shellfish.

Spring Start Seen

Once it is formalized by the state, the certification of Mecox will allow shellfishing from Dec. 1 through April 15, except under unusual circumstances. The official opening of the beds could occur by spring.

The Trustees' next job will be a survey to determine just what the condition of scallops is in the long-closed bay, Mr. Strough said.

In East Hampton, the Town Trustees also are working to reclaim closed shellfish beds. At a work session on Tuesday, the nine-member East Hampton board discussed the possibility of the town's establishing its own water testing laboratory.

James McCaffrey, a Trustee, said he had been assured by the D.E.C. that the town could test its own water (and save time in the process) if it created a lab that met state criteria.

Meanwhile, the state waters of Northwest in East Hampton as well as those in Orient Harbor on the North Fork were reported so denuded of scallops that few baymen even tried to go out when the season opened last week. East Hampton Town waters were opened to commercial scallopers on Monday, and, although they were ordered closed because of the rains over the weekend, scallopers say they don't expect to find much when they do venture out.