Shelter Island Reporter Editorial: A way of life
With critical issues that will determine Shelter Island’s future in the long and short term, the Reporter has committed itself to hosting a series of public forums.
Our first event was on Sept. 26, titled: “The Future of Shelter Island: Water, Housing, Health Care.”
Residents packed Shelter Island Presbyterian Church’s Fellowship Hall for an important and vigorous discussion. Future forums will return to these essential subjects we’ll face in the future, but next up, a week from today on Thursday, Nov. 14, at Fellowship Hall, is titled, “Commercial Fishing on Shelter Island: Bringing Back a Traditional Enterprise.”
Charity Robey, in her stories on Opening Day of scallop season poses a question that might better describe the issue for Shelter Island: “How can we catch, grow and eat our way to healthy bays?”
We’re living through a dramatic, and at times a frightening era, when we consider the natural world around us on the East End, this place of magnificent bays and sound and ocean.
We know something isn’t right in this world, with startling statistics of the steep drop of scallops living in our bays. Researchers have listed that the scallop yield for 2022-2023 was 5,537 pounds. The following season was 6,057, but going back to 2018-2019 it was a whopping 110,802.
The absolute bottom was 2020-21, when 56 pounds of scallops were taken.
It was a grim Opening Day on Monday for scallops, but as Ms. Robey’s story reveals, researchers and scientists have hope that methods put in place can bring back the tasty shellfish that once was one of the East End’s greatest exports.
They cite work done in the Chesapeake Bay that revitalized oyster and clam harvests, when that area was devastated by shellfish die-offs.
Come to the forum for a discussion on the science of scallops and our saltwater resources, the business dimension of fishing, and the lives and way of life for the remaining baymen who are out on the water, continuing a tradition that stretches back centuries.
Reporter Forum — Commercial Fishing on Shelter Island: Bringing Back a Traditional Enterprise.
Thursday, Nov. 14, 5:30-7 p.m., at Shelter Island Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall.
