November 22, 2019 — An unprecedented effort by conservationists, baymen and the state to save a vulnerable population of juvenile scallops by transferring them to deeper waters has been called off after only a day because of a lack of mollusks to move.
In response to a scallop die-off, the state Department of Environmental Conservation moved quickly last week to approve a new Scallop Salvage and Relay permit to allow vulnerable scallops in an area of water near Orient Harbor to be transferred to deeper, safer waters, with the hope they’d survive and spawn next summer.
Stephen Tettelbach, an ecologist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s marine program, worked with the state and lined up five commercial scallop fishermen to dredge the area for juveniles to move earlier this week.
“The baymen went out, they dredged for hours and hours and got very few,” said Tettelbach, adding the numbers were not enough to continue the program. “There were still a good number of scallops, but not as many as we saw a month ago.”