Where Have All the Scallops Gone? : Algae Kills Off N.Y. Shellfish Harvest

Billy Schultz has harvested clams and scallops from Long Island waters for 29 years, but a massive bloom of algae that killed most of the crop made him decide to pass up opening day of scallop season.

“It’s the first time I’ve missed opening day,” the 49-year-old bay man said. “But we’ve been dealt a very serious blow this year.”

The culprit was a rare summerlong brown algae bloom that blanketed waters of Peconic Bay, at the eastern end of Long Island, blocking out sunlight and starving and suffocating most of the scallops.

Arnold Leo, the secretary of the town bay men’s association, said that he will not waste his time harvesting scallops during the state season that opened in September.

“It’s really pathetic. It’s just not worth it,” he said. “And increasingly I’ve been hearing bay men tell their sons they can’t encourage them to go into the business.”

Five years ago, before tainted shellfish became such a frequent problem, Long Island bay scallops made up 44% of the national marine landing figures, but now they make up just 15% of the total, Larry Penny, town natural resources director, said.

Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts account for most of the balance, he said.

Besides scallop industry woes, bay men have been walloped by water pollution that has tainted the oysters and clams in Great South Bay, on the south shore of Long Island.

“It’s depressing,” Leo said. “The problems seem to be multiplying.”

Local clammers and bay men now number about 4,500, compared to more than 10,000 a decade ago, said Leo.

Those who have stuck it out are finding it tougher to make a decent living, said Schultz.

Penny estimated bay men’s loss at $1.2 million, but the full loss from the scallop crop’s failure may be as much as $8 million because middlemen and restaurants are affected.

“It’s a massive disaster,” Leo said. “But worse is that the spawn was likely killed so there may be no scallops next year.”

Scallops breed in bay estuaries once a year, making regeneration of a depleted crop difficult, Penny said.

In recent years, scientists have watched the steady decline of the Long Island clam industry, which has fallen from a 700,000-bushel harvest in 1976 to a 178,000-bushel harvest in 1983, the last year for which data was available.

To combat the drop, the state Department of Agriculture and Markets has given six towns in Suffolk County a $90,000 grant to start a clam transplant program.

The program involves taking hundreds of bushels of clams dredged from polluted Pelham Bay waters in the Bronx and placing them in clean, protected waters where they can grow and spawn.

“If we move clams out of (polluted waters), they will clean themselves out in two or three weeks,” said East Hampton bay constable Jeff Havlik.