Surveys offer little good news for Peconic Bay scallop population as season begins

With the season for Peconic Bay scallops set to open next week, researchers say early surveys show the prized shellfish could be harder to find than ever.

Surveys in 21 Suffolk County waterways done in October turned up only 10 adult scallops, said Harrison Tobi,  who leads the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s bay scallop restoration program. Many of the survey areas showed no adult scallops at all, he said, though some did show juvenile scallops, which will comprise next year’s breeding stock.

"It’s not looking great for the harvest this year," Tobi said of the season that runs through March. Most bay scallops are taken from Peconic, Shinnecock, Gardiners and Moriches bays. The October survey, he noted, was similar to or worse than findings in the 2023 survey.

The results mark the sixth straight season of significantly low scallop populations after a die-off that began in 2019. Landings for bay scallops have declined markedly since then.

Peconic Bay scallop landings for the 2022-23 season amounted to 5,537 pounds and 6,057 pounds for the 2023-24 season. That compares with a recent high of 110,802 for the 2018-19 season, the last before the die-offs began.

By comparison, Moriches Bay, which had only 1,166 pounds harvested in 2022-23, saw an fourfold jump to 4,831 pounds in 2023-24, Tobi said, citing New York State figures.

The worst year for Peconic Bay scallops was 2020-21, when 56 pounds were harvested.

One area of concern this year is that while juvenile scallops were seen at the 21 sites around Peconic Bay where the surveys took place, the number of those young scallops was relatively low.

"It’s concerning to see low juvenile numbers, but I wouldn’t say it’s a total loss" for next year, Tobi added.

Cornell has been working to add genetic diversity to the Peconic Bay scallop population to help the population develop better resistance to a parasite that is now viewed as the primary cause of the die-off. The hope is that wild scallops from Moriches Bay and Martha’s Vineyard, which have shown better tolerance to the parasite, could help the Peconic population fight it off. It could be two years or more before researchers know if their theory is working

Tobi noted in some cases, Peconic Bay scallops are surviving better in poor quality water, in part because the parasite doesn’t appear to do well in that water.

Cornell has about 400,000 juvenile scallops in its longline breeding facility near Orient, which will be seeded into areas of the bay next year to fortify the 2024-25 breeding population. Scallops live for about two years. 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

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