Brookhaven Town approves shellfish zone expansion off Bellport

Thomas Schultz remembers moving with his family to Medford in 1973 and wading into bays off the South Shore to catch shiners and sea horses — tiny fish in a rich habitat that included an abundance of clams.

By then, Long Island's oyster population was all but gone following decades of overharvesting. 

But with the expansion this month of a Bellport Bay shellfish management area, where harvesting is barred to allow oysters to grow into maturity, a process that takes up to three years, efforts to rebuild the bay's bivalve population took another step forward, he said. 

Restoring Bellport Bay's — and Long Island's — oyster industry is an essential part of local culture and the regional economy, said Schultz, 57, co-founder of the nonprofit Friends of Bellport Bay. It was an industry that was largely lost decades ago because of overfishing and nitrogen pollution caused by untreated sewage from cesspools, experts have said.

When oysters start growing outside the management area, “then they can be harvested by recreational shellfishermen and/or baymen,” Schultz said, adding that oyster shells provide habitat for other species. “Now we have a beautiful ecosystem teeming with life, and it starts with the oysters.”

The Brookhaven Town Board voted 7-0 on Feb. 1 to double the size of a shellfish management area 30 yards off the coastline in the Village of Bellport from 2 acres to 4 acres. The area is one of 11 such management areas in Brookhaven waters, covering a total of 13,460 acres.

Friends of Bellport Bay has a two-year, renewable contract with the town to supply oysters for the management zone. With shellfishing banned there, the mollusks can reproduce — a single oyster can produce millions of eggs at one time, though few of them are fertilized and survive to maturity — and eventually spread throughout the bay, Schultz said.

The nonprofit has planted 3.5 million oysters since 2015 in the existing 2-acre management area, he said, adding oysters can spread from Bellport Bay west to Patchogue Bay and east to Moriches Bay.

Some baymen opposed expanding the management area, saying they feared that barring shellfishing there would hurt their livelihood.

John German, 77, of Brookhaven hamlet, said the restrictions would “take away from the baymen,” adding he doubted claims that the area had boosted oyster populations.

“It’s going to hurt everybody," said German, who has been plying the waters for 59 years. "I ain’t going to starve to death, but it's certainly going to hurt your income because that’s the only place you can work in the wintertime.”

Supporters of expanding the area disputed that. They said the management area, with its rocky bay bottom, was a poor place for shellfishing but a perfect location for oysters to spawn — young oysters, called spat, attach themselves to hard surfaces while they grow.

Another bayman, John DiNaro, 78, of Brookhaven hamlet, said the management area will benefit fishermen by restoring the oyster population.

"We must compromise," DiNaro said at a public hearing before the town board voted on Feb. 1. "That [additional] two acres is minimal."

The expansion drew support at the hearing from environmental nonprofits such as The Nature Conservancy, Save The Great South Bay, and Seatuck Environmental Association.

Carl LoBue, of The Nature Conservancy's Cold Spring Harbor office, said the original 2-acre management area in Bellport Bay "seems to be doing pretty good, and now it might be time to expand.”

The Nature Conservancy, which owns 13,425 acres in Great South Bay for shellfish restoration, bought 150,000 “big, ugly oysters” two years ago from growers “who at the time [during the COVID-19 pandemic] couldn’t sell any of their oysters," LoBue, 54, said. "And those are now living on the first two acres.” 

Andrew Mirchel, of Save The Great South Bay, called management areas "nature's best hope right now."

"Every town on Great South Bay has been working for decades to bring this bay back," he said. "The benefits are all over the place, and they're all good."

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.