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NEW YORK: Scallop Disaster Declared, But Some Hope for 2022

July 22, 2021 — Ask any bayman, and all would agree that the bay scallop fishery in the Peconic Bay estuary system in the past two years was a total calamity. As such, it was no surprise to learn that the United States Department of Commerce recently declared the events of 2019-20 a fishery disaster.

The declaration makes the fishery eligible for disaster assistance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Baymen may also qualify for disaster assistance from the Small Business Administration, according to the Department of Commerce. The department has balances remaining from previously appropriated fishery disaster assistance and will determine the appropriate allocation for the Peconic Bay fishery, which can also include funding of habitat restoration and additional research efforts.

“Fisheries are essential to our communities and economy, and we want to ensure America is in a position to remain competitive on the global stage,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement. “These determinations allow us to lend a helping hand to the fishing families and communities that have experienced very real and difficult setbacks in the last few years.”

But there is also some good news, for now, regarding the popular bivalve. While it’s still early, there have been no signs of a die-off this summer among scallops that were spawned last year, according to Stephen Tettelbach, a Long Island University ecology professor who heads Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Peconic Bay Scallop Restoration Program. Dr. Tettelbach’s team conducts periodic dives of the bottomland in several locations during the year to check on the status of the growing scallops.

Dr. Tettelbach was equally enthused about the number of larval scallops in local waters. “We did the first sampling of our larval spat collectors last Monday and saw the largest scallop set in the last 17 years,” he said. “There are small bugs all over the bays.” Small or newly-hatched scallops are commonly called “bugs.”

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Study finding early signs of hope for Peconic scallop fishery

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.

Read the full story at Newsday

NEW YORK: Effort to salvage juvenile scallops called off for lack of candidates

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.”

Read the full story at Newsday

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