"Abundance Of Scallops" Prompts Town To Seek Extension Of Commercial Season

With a huge number of bay scallops in the harbor and only a small number of fishermen still on the water, the Harbor & Shellfish Advisory Board lobbied the Select Board on Wednesday to extend Nantucket's commercial scalloping season by nine days.

"There's an abundance of adult scallops in the harbor," Harbor & Shellfish Advisory Board chair Andy Lowell told the Select Board members at their meeting this week. "There are very few scallopers active at this point. The ones who do rely on this for their livelihood have missed a lot of days due to cold weather - I believe 15 or 16 days have been missed for cold weather...It was decided to extend the season, it's simply nine more days of fishing."

The Select Board agreed, voting unanimously in favor of the recommendation from the Harbor & Shellfish Advisory Board, commonly known as "SHAB." But the measure will still require the endorsement of the state Division of Marine Fisheries to go into effect.

Only 15 to 20 boats have been out scalloping through February, according to the town's Natural Resources Department director Jeff Carlson, but they have all been getting their six-bushel limit, generally before noon.

In his comments to the Select Board, Lowell was referring to the town's shellfish regulations which prohibit commercial scalloping when the temperature drops below 28F, a rule intended to protect seed scallops from dying in frigid temperatures. Due to the cold weather this winter, more than two weeks of fishing have been lost in adherence to the regulation.

The one caveat for the nine-day extension of the season is if the harbor water temperature reaches 50F, at which time the season would come to an end. That condition was added because 50F is the temperature at which eelgrass - the bay scallops' primary habitat - comes out of dormancy and scallop dredges could damage sprouting and flowering eelgrass beds.

"These adult scallops really need to be fished and the fishermen really deserve these extra days," Lowell said. "And I’m sure the general public will enjoy having fresh scallops available to them a bit longer."

Tara Riley, the town's shellfish and aquatic resource manager, told the Select Board on Wednesday that the estimated catch through the first four months of the commercial scalloping season was roughly 8,500 bushels.

"That's probably half of what's out there," Riley said.

Even so, the estimated catch to date for the current season nearly equals the 8,709 bushels landed by Nantucket's commercial fleet during the 2023-24 season. That was the first time the island's bay scallop harvest topped 8,000 bushels since the 2019-20 season.

"Requests like this have been made in the past (last one was in 2018) but are usually last-minute," Carlson wrote to the Select Board. "We would like to be proactive on behalf of the fishery since this year has been a great scalloping year for those participating. The bushel increase in December and the sustained supply availability throughout the season has been exciting to witness. We are confident that there are not seed populations at risk as a result of approving this extension request. In May of 2024, we conducted scallop abundance surveys and were surprised to see the number of adults left behind after the season had ended in our surveys. Those surveys will be repeated each spring to give us insight as to the supply left behind after the fishery closes. We would appreciate your continued support of our efforts for actively managing our shellfisheries based on our yearly data and surveys."