July 16, 2021 — Scientists studying the early stages of bay scallop growth are finding encouraging signs this year, after two years of scallop die-offs that recently led the federal government to declare a disaster in the Peconic Bay fishery.
Scallops can lay up to 2 million eggs when they spawn in the period of June to August, and this year’s larval scallops will go on to make up the breeding stock for next summer’s spawn.
An expanded survey of scallops being funded by New York state and conducted by the Cornell Cooperative Extension and Stony Brook University is finding higher levels of larval scallops than has been seen in 17 years, said Stephen Tettelbach, a shellfish ecologist for Cornell.
“It’s way beyond anything we’ve ever seen in terms of larval settlement,” said Tettelbach. “It shattered all records we’ve seen in 17 years by far.”
Just as encouraging, Tettelbach said, researchers haven’t seen the summer die-offs of adult scallops that they they saw in the previous two years, a die-off that amounted to 50% of the population by the end of June and 100% in some areas by the end of July. “So far we haven’t seen any big die-offs,” he said.