2024 Peconic Bay scallop season was 'awful' as efforts continue to rebuild population

The Peconic Bay scallop season set to end next month has registered another period of decline but research and hatchery efforts are helping rebuild the East End’s fragile shellfish population.

Meanwhile, in Southold, the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s shellfish hatchery on Friday kicked off another season of spawning oysters, highlighting a successful multiyear effort to bring back an industry that thrived on the Island a century ago.

Public officials from across Suffolk were on hand to mark the event and to discuss plans for a first-time Long Island Oyster Festival at Smith Point to promote local oysters, even as oyster growers pointed to supply issues last year that sent some scrambling for seed supply. This month's spawn event could produce 9 million to 15 million new oysters for use by local towns and villages, and in restoration work. Last year, Cornell also helped supply commercial hatcheries impacted by the supply crunch, officials said. 

But the biggest challenge the hatchery faces these days is the restoration of bay scallops, which have been primarily harvested in the Peconic Bay and had one of their biggest years in 2018 before a die-off starting in 2019-20, most likely tied to a pathogen, devastated the fishery in the ensuing years.

Figures released by the state Department of Environmental Conservation for the 2024-25 season show only 979.7 pounds were brought to land from all local bays since November. For Peconic Bay only, this season's total is just 524.4 pounds. Before the die-offs, landings hit 110,802 pounds for the 2018-19 season, according to the DEC.

The 2024-25 season was "awful,” Harrison Tobi, who leads the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s bay scallop restoration program, said of the harvest that began in November. “From what I’ve heard from fishermen and what I saw in field surveys, there was a drastically low adult population.”

By comparison, scallop landings for all regional bays for the 2022-23 season were 5,537 pounds and jumped to 6,057 pounds for the 2023-24 season. 

Scallop die-offs likely tied to pathogen

Cornell researchers and their counterparts at Stony Brook University have been working for years to identify a pathogen they believe is responsible for the die-offs and propagate scallops that have a resistance to the disease. As Newsday has reported, that has led Cornell staffers to recruit new generations of scallops from Moriches Bay and Martha’s Vineyard to become the primary brood stock for scallops that are set in Cornell’s long-line hatchery in Orient, to grow and eventually breed in the wild.

Cornell suspects genetic diversity has declined in the scallop population over the years the hatchery has relied primarily on scallops from the Peconic for brood stock, Tobi said. Much work remains to be done, and New York State on Thursday announced it will disburse $3.5 million in funds to help preserve and restore the South Shore’s estuary preserve, including $350,000 for research into bay scallops’ "resilience to disease to increase the species’ population.”

Much is riding on the efforts. “If it doesn’t work, we may not get the fishery back,” Tobi said. He emphasized that bay scallops as a species “is surviving. We’re doing this to restore the fishery. That’s what this is all about. We’re doing the science to bring back jobs to our neighbors.”

That’s cause for concern for a small legacy group of fishermen who had relied on the stock for generations. The retail value of Peconic Bay scallops in 2018 was $1.5 million. The ensuing years have seen the annual figure dip to below $200,000, Tobi said.

“It’s just a few guys who go out and pay their bills and it’s not there anymore,” Tobi said of the scallop fishermen in local bays. The annual die-offs “impact them immensely.”

2024 a 'bad' year for oysters

It's not just scallops that have been affected. 

Local oyster growers say 2024 was a difficult year for the supply of seed oysters from commercial hatcheries. 

“It was real bad,” Tobi said. “Commercial hatchery production of oysters in the Northeast U.S. was poor last year and the cause is unknown.”

Phil Mastrangelo, owner of Oysterponds Shellfish Co. in Orient, said his oyster farm had its best sales year ever in 2024, but faced a problem getting enough seed oysters from a primary supplier in Maine because of survival issues with the stock. He has since increased his suppliers from two to three. That could have impacted sales over the next two years if he hadn't found new suppliers, he said. 

“It was a bit of a setback; we didn’t get seed until August,” he said. “We’ll be a little behind the curve as growth goes.”

Joshua Perry, shellfish hatchery manager for Cornell's hatchery in Southold, said Cornell last year was able to provide 1.3 million seed oysters to local commercial hatcheries, in addition to those it supplied to townships and restoration programs.

Cornell typically doesn't offer its seed to commercial hatcheries, something Cornell board member Thomas Kehoe said should be considered, given there are only two commercial hatcheries on Long Island. "Here's an opportunity where we can be a blessing to the industry," said Kehoe, CEO of consulting firm Kingsbridge Partners in Manhattan.

Bert Waife, owner of Eel Town Oysters on Shelter Island, said his supplier on Fishers Island also had issues offering seed oysters due to the problems facing other hatcheries. The supplier recovered but “I had to scramble for a while,” Waife said.

Oyster growers celebrated a return of Long Island oysters to the Town of Oyster Bay's annual Oyster Festival, which moved 67,000 oysters from Long Island growers in 2024 last year, after previously relying on a supplier from Connecticut, Mastrangelo said. “It was really a big thing,” he said. “They had 250,000 people through there and we fed them all.”

Meanwhile, oyster growers said they are working with Suffolk to launch its first oyster festival. Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, at the Cornell hatchery Friday, confirmed the festival is planned for September. 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.