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Scallop take disappointing on first day; harvest not expected to match last year’s hefty take

ELEANOR P. LABROZZI PHOTO | Young live scallops at low tide on the causeway to Taylor’s Island in Coecles Harbor.

After last year’s banner scallop season, which many believe was the best since the brown tide all but wiped out the scallop population in 1985, baymen and researchers are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for this season, which opened on Monday, November 7.

“Things look pretty good but I don’t know that we will quite get to the harvest of last year,” said Dr. Stephen Tettlebach, a professor at Long Island University and one of the lead researchers in Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Peconic Bay Scallop Restoration Program.

He has a team of divers who monitor about 25 scallop hot spots throughout the Peconic bays.

On Shelter Island, Monday’s results did not give local baymen a lot of hope. Tyler Clark reported on Monday afternoon that the harvest this year “is not very promising … Not like last year,” he said.

Kolina Reiter of Bob’s Fish Market echoed Tyler’s somewhat pessimistic prediction. “It’s not going to be great,” she said on Monday.

Whatever scallops the local baymen do bring in are available for sale at Bob’s and Commander Cody’s and also from the local baymen directly.

Dr. Tettelbach said he believed baymen last year may have landed about 100,000 pounds of bay scallops — up from an official DEC tally of 19,000 pounds for 2010.

Last year, a large number of scallopers dredged the waters on the west side of Robins Island, just south of Cutchogue. Dr. Tettelbach said he doubted that area will be a hot spot this year.

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to be as good this year as the prior two years,” he said. “Last year on opening day, an estimated 50 to 70 boats were working the west side of Robins Island. I’m sure lots of people will be looking there but we just didn’t see that many bugs [baby scallops] there when we did our surveys. It’s typical that an area will be really good one year and the next year it won’t.”

Dr. Tettelbach said Flanders Bay, which was also a hot spot last year, doesn’t seem to have as many scallops as it did the past two years either. He said that might be in part because his group has not seeded scallops into Flanders Bay in the past two years.

Longtime scalloper Ed Densieski of Riverhead shared Dr. Tettelebach’s concerns. He said he’d spent eight to 10 hours on the water this fall throwing in his dredges and throwing back his catch in order to determine where he’d scallop when the season opened.

“I have found some pockets but I’m not sure it’s going to be as good as last year,” Mr. Densieski said. “I had high hopes it was going to be better but I’m not 100 percent convinced yet.”

Mr. Densieski said that, last year, he knew exactly where he wanted to pull his dredges on opening day but this year he was still not sure just before opening day.

“I work from Flanders Bay to Orient Harbor. I’m not sure where I’m going to be going,” he said. “They’re out there. The goal is to find them.”

Mary Bess Phillips, who owns Alice’s Fish Market in Greenport, said she’d heard a mixed bag of reports on the health of scallop beds. But she does know that a lot of people were planning to try their luck at scalloping.

“They’re seeing in the papers that there are all these bugs out there but we won’t know anything until Monday,” she said before the season opened.

Ms. Phillips said that there isn’t great retail demand for scallops beyond opening week because prices routinely soar to $20 a pound. She said that, at that price and in this economy, many consumers will buy scallops only once a season, early on, as a treat. Because of the low demand, she said many markets are limiting the amount of scallops they buy. And with more baymen chasing fewer scallops, they might not find enough to make a living by scalloping beyond the first few weeks of the season.

“The economy is going to play a big role,” she said.

 

JOANNE SHERMAN CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY