East Hampton Town waters will open to bay scallop harvesting at sunrise on Sunday, though this year’s crop is understood to be yet another in a string of disappointments, with few of the local delicacy’s population surviving.
As reported in The Star last month, for the seventh consecutive year there was a late summer die-off of adult scallops in many areas of the Peconic Estuary. Researchers point the finger of blame at a combination of stressors, including a novel parasite, rising water temperatures due to climate change, low dissolved oxygen levels, and habitat loss.
This year represents “kind of the same story” as in recent years past, John (Barley) Dunne, the director of the town’s shellfish hatchery, said on Monday. “The recruitment is good. There’s bugs all over the place. Spat collection shows that there’s some adults spawning every summer. But they’re just not making it to harvest size.”
“There are some small pockets in town” where live scallops might be found, “where somehow they’re surviving,” he said. “I’m not sure how, but they’re lucky enough to survive.”
New York State waters opened to bay scallop harvesting on Monday, as set by the State Department of Environmental Conservation. The East Hampton Town Trustees, who have jurisdiction over most waterways and bottomlands in the township outside of Montauk, set the opening and closing dates for town waters, choosing the Sunday after the harvest opens in state waters. The first day is reserved for recreational harvesters only.
“So that first Sunday will give hand-harvesters a chance to get in and get any scallops before the mechanical dredgers start to work on Monday,” John Aldred, a deputy clerk of the trustees, told his colleagues at their Oct. 26 meeting. “If there are any scallops available,” that is. “Good luck, everyone.”
Although it is unlikely that there will be scallops remaining in town waterways as late as March 31, 2027, harvesting may continue until sunset on that day. The opening and closing dates also apply to Lake Montauk.
“I think it’s more of the same on the harvest front,” Mr. Dunne said Monday. “Driving in today was pretty depressing — no boats around North Haven, nothing in Northwest, which is pretty sad.”
Mr. Dunne is optimistic about future survival of bay scallops in town waters, however. Thanks to Harrison Tobi, an aquaculture and bay-scallop specialist with the Cornell Cooperative Extension Center in Southold, “we got hold of some brood stock from Moriches and Massachusetts, where they seem to be surviving the parasite,” he said. “We spawned those this spring and had a phenomenal crop this year, probably one of our best in 10 years, so we’ve got well over 300,000 that we’re overwintering and will seed in the spring.”
“We also have high hopes of setting up sanctuaries at the oyster gardens,” Mr. Dunne said, “so we will at least get some protected bay scallops into each harbor next summer through the spawning period.”
While this year’s die-off is understood to be a consequence of the aforementioned causes and conditions, the annual bivalve crop has historically varied.
“Scallops are quite plentiful in the market and of good size,” The Star reported in 1887. Eight years later, however, “baymen find scallops growing steadily scarcer but prices steadily increasing.”
A 1929 item reported on “an unusual set of escallops in Three-Mile Harbor and Gardiner’s Bay this season, and furthermore, the escallops run a good size.” But in 1971, “the economic impact of a poor scallop season such as the East End is now undergoing is not hard to gauge, and it is considerable.” In 1976, scallops were “somewhat scarce” and the season called “fair”; two years later were plentiful. There was a good crop in Three Mile Harbor in 1980; few were found the following year.
In 1985, notably, a brown tide devastated scallops and other shellfish in town waters and the broader Peconic Estuary, the culprit a microscopic algae bloom across the East End.
The brown-tide crisis marked the beginning of many fallow years in which the commercial scallop fishery went all but silent, spurring the creation of the shellfish hatchery in 1989, which launched the seeding and restoration efforts that continue today.
