Good News on the Half Shell

Despite predictions of a disappointing bay scallop harvest, the director of the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery delivered a mostly upbeat assessment of his agency’s efforts to the East Hampton Town Trustees on Monday. 

Barley Dunne told the trustees that approximately 1.5 million oysters had reached ideal seeding size this year and were disseminated in town waterways including Lake Montauk, Napeague Harbor, Three Mile Harbor, Northwest Creek, and Accabonac Harbor. The hatchery also dispersed around 8 million clams.

“We’re getting great harvest reports on oysters, both commercially and recreationally,” Mr. Dunne said. “The oysters seem to be really doing well.” 

So well, in fact, that “we’re also getting some poaching reports. That’s a concern.” 

Presently, people taking shellfish without a permit, harvesting undersized shellfish, or taking more than the established limit are assessed a $150 fine for a first offense. He recommended an increase in the penalty. “Back in the 1930s, when the trustees did their first ordinances, it was all based on natural sets,” he said. “No, you have this entity that’s creating seed and disseminating it through town, and it’s really become more a theft-of-services or theft-of-product issue.” 

Also of concern was a second consecutive year in which juvenile oysters at the hatchery were afflicted with a bacterium from the Roseobacter clade, though mortality was less than last year and the hatchery’s seeding goal was met, he said. Hatchery officials are working to develop a resistant strain, which Mr. Dunne said usually takes a few cycles. “For some reason, hatchery seed is more susceptible to it,” he told the trustees. “We should be able to develop that resistant strain.”

Some of the scallops spawned in the hatchery died shortly before they were to be seeded in waterways, he said, elaborating on comments made to The Star last week in which he pointed to rust tide and a lack of safe habitat as possible culprits in an expected poor harvest. “But the stuff that we seeded last year,” he said, “some of that is doing really well. In two of the harbors especially, there was a lot of nice scallops left from what we seeded last year.” Winter weather conditions and any appearance of harmful algal blooms in 2017 will determine, in part, the quality of next year’s harvest.

The community oyster garden, a pilot program launched this year in Three Mile Harbor, was a success, Mr. Dunne said, and he asked the trustees to consider doubling participation to 30 individuals or families next year. 

Also at the meeting, Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, told his colleagues that the State Department of Environmental Conservation has requested a recommendation of a waterway that would be evaluated for a possible conditional harvesting program during the winter months. Such a program, he said, allows harvesting in coves, harbors, or bays that are otherwise uncertified for the taking of shellfish but predictably meet water quality standards for certified areas during periods of little or no rainfall. The D.E.C. has operated 15 such programs on Long Island.

Establishing a conditional harvesting program would require a cooperative effort in which town personnel record rainfall, collect water samples, and take the samples to the D.E.C.’s laboratory in East Setauket for analysis. The trustees will recommend Accabonac Harbor, parts of which are either uncertified or seasonally certified for shellfishing, for the program.