Opening Day against the odds, searching for scallops
Wayne and Donna King spent the morning of the first Monday in November the way they always do — looking for Peconic Bay scallops.
The fact that there have been so few on opening day of bay scallop season for eight years in a row, and that this year biologists’ predictions were particularly discouraging, didn’t stop them.
By Sunday night, only four boats at the Shelter Island Town Dock on Congdon Creek were outfitted with culling boards and dredges. The dock was once the beating heart of the bay scallop fishery. Yet despite fine weather and light winds, only two of those boats went out the next morning.
Keith and Louise Clark went out first thing Monday and were back a few hours later without a single scallop. They did get two conks (whelks, a large, edible sea snail) for dinner. “It was a beautiful day,” Louise Clark said, “We had that, and we enjoyed ourselves.”
A Winter Livelihood In Decline
Until the 1980s, bay scallop fishing was an important part of the wintertime economy, and a way of life for baymen. Opening Day meant going out to throw the first dredge into the water at sunrise, often in the company of your children. Kids stayed home from school to help cull and shuck scallops, and adults took a day off, and there were plenty of scallops for all.
Starting in the 80s, toxic algae blooms ruined several scallop harvests, but seeding efforts took hold in the late 90s. The bay scallop population recovered somewhat, until in the late summer of 2019 a climate change-fueled die-off of most of the adult, harvestable scallops shocked baymen. “It was something that I never expected to see in my life,” said Mr. King. “Nobody thought this would happen.”
Few Scallops Reach The Markets
At Braun Seafood, manager Keith Reda got a few scallops from a fisherman who works on Moriches Bay. “But that’s it. I only really have a couple of contacts over there,” he said, adding that he was still grappling with how to price them. He planned to check in with the Massachusetts seafood stores to see what they are charging for their bay scallops, which are still relatively plentiful.
Charlie Manwaring, owner of Southold Fish Market, had no bay scallops to sell on Monday. “I thought it was going to be better than what it is,” he said. “I had some hope for scallops in Shinnecock.”
Mr. Manwaring thinks he won’t have scallops to sell for another few weeks because baymen are going for the sure money in the few remaining weeks of water temperatures in the 50s. “When guys stop conking, and fishing for striped bass, bay scallops will still be out there. I think we are going to have a few scallops later.”
Why King Keeps Returning
Mr. King turned 86 this year and admits that part of what compels him to fish for scallops on opening day is hope, and part is fear that he won’t be physically able to load a boat and haul a dredge next year.
In 2025, Mr. King was still scalloping on the last day of the season, at the end of March, when he lost a dredge overboard. It had been made by Paul Nossolik, a Greenport blacksmith known to local baymen as Paul the Blacksmith. His handmade dredges were coveted and passed down through families. “I came home very, very, upset, because these are dredges I’ve had all my life.”
Mr. King marked the location, fashioned a grapple, and kept coming back until months later, he retrieved the precious dredge in 25 feet of water. “I came up on the side of the mark with my boat parallel and let the wind push me and all of a sudden, I felt something heavy, and pulled it to the surface,” he said.
This year, even the state inspector, who comes annually to certify the sanitary conditions of the shop where he and Donna shuck the scallops, wondered why they bother with so few scallops to sell.
