All dredged up and nowhere to go: Not extinct, but bay scallops are hard to find

While the rest of us admire fall foliage, East End baymen look to nature for signs that predict the health of the adult bay scallop population.

They watch the docks and parking lots to see if they are littered with broken scallop shells dropped and picked over by gulls, which is a good sign. They scan the beaches after a strong wind to see if scallops have washed up, another good sign. They check in with the guy who throws out an “experimental” dredge just to see what comes up, returning it gently to the sea.

This year, the signs were not encouraging. The bay scallop season, which started in New York State on Monday and goes through March, looks to be just as bad this year as it has been for the past four, which means the most reliable way to get a bay scallop dinner is to know a fisherman, and the most reliable way for a fisherman to make a living is to fish for something else.

On Friday afternoon at the Island’s town dock at Congdons Creek, Mike Tehan was hosing down his lobster traps and putting away most of his fishing gear, but planned to go out on opening day for scallops with a reporter and photographer. Mike’s father was going to miss opening day this year, and his uncle, Chris Tehan, had decided not to renew his commercial scallop license for the first time in years.

At sunrise  — 6:26 a.m., Monday  — the boats of the Clark family were mostly on the water, and the temperature at Congdons Creek was 44 degrees, a lot chillier than last year’s opening day of 58 degrees, but still warm for a fall day, especially one being spoiled by human-caused climate change.

At the Southold Fish Market, Charlie Manwaring was wrapped in an apron and up to his elbows in stuffed clams as part of an assembly line that six years ago would have been opening a mound of bay scallops as baymen brought bushels in. As of 1 p.m., Mr. Manwaring had not seen any scallops, but he thought by Tuesday they would have some.

Over at Braun’s the phone was ringing non-stop with customers wanting to know if they had scallops, and the answer was: “Not yet. No, we may get some today, but we haven’t seen any yet.” Manager Keith Reda had taken the day off, confident that there would be no avalanche of bivalves this year.

The season opened with an interesting range of pessimism. On one end was Islander Wayne King, who scalloped on the very last day of the season in March 2023, and was out again on Monday with his wife Donna.

On Monday, Mr. King, who is “over 80,” guessed that he might be the oldest Shelter Island bayman on the water this opening day, and there was no one around on land or sea to refute it. He and Donna came back with a bushel of scallops, having obviously enjoyed themselves.

At the other end is Tim Sweat, a die-hard bayman who came steaming into Greenport after covering the entire length of the Peconic Bay system, from Riverhead to Flanders, Jamesport to Shinnecock, with a bushel to show for a long day, and vowing this would be his only day of scalloping for a while.

Year after year of poor scallop harvests have convinced him to focus his efforts on a more lucrative fall catch — conch, also known as whelk.

“You see these scallops? These are adult scallops. They should be the size of my palm. This one is half the size,” Mr. Sweat said, who was tired, and angry, about the overdevelopment of near-shore land for second homes. “The people who are in charge on land are not doing anything for the people on the water.”