Over the next year, a million tiny pioneers will arrive at Sengekontacket Pond. Simply by growing from the size of a pencil eraser to a full three inches, a million oysters are the key part of a project launched by Oak Bluffs and Edgartown to cultivate the shellfish in Sengekontacket, which has been found to have nitrogen levels well above acceptable limits.
Oyster season in Chilmark is set to begin on Monday after the board of selectmen approved the opening of the short season.
At the selectmen’s weekly meeting on Tuesday, the board approved a recommendation from the shellfish committee that permits two heaping bushels a day, Monday through Wednesday. The season ends April 30. Shellfish constable Isaiah Scheffer said half a dozen oystermen had expressed interested in permits — “a controlled amount,” Mr. Scheffer added.
On one of the calm, unseasonably warm early December days we had last month, my husband Isaac took our three-year-old son Emmett and me scalloping in Menemsha Pond for the first time. With each dump of the drag on the culling board we were amazed by what we found — tiny sea robins and flounder that Emmett put in a bucket on the deck, jellyfish, eel grass, and an incredible bounty of bay scallops with their beautiful fan-shaped shells.
Oil Spill in Edgartown Harbor Kills Million Baby Oysters and Fouls
Waters
By JULIA WELLS Gazette Senior Writer
An oil spill of unknown origin sullied the pristine water of the
outer Edgartown harbor yesterday, ruining an entire crop of juvenile
shellfish at a hatchery owned by the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish
Group and posing a possible threat to the rich bay scallop beds off the
north shore of Chappaquiddick.
Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs shellfishermen saw a banner start to
the bay scalloping season, and they share their reason why: Lagoon Pond.
Derek Cimeno, shellfish constable for Tisbury, is watching
shellfishermen surrounded in bay scallops. "Six hundred bushels of
bay scallops were taken in the first two days by family
shellfishermen," Mr. Cimeno said.
The director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group said yesterday that nearly four million healthy juvenile shellfish under culture at his Lagoon Pond hatchery have died in the last three weeks because of extremely poor water quality in the pond.
The deteriorating water quality has not affected mature shellfish and there is no danger to humans who eat shellfish from the pond.
The sale of local shellfish has sometimes slowed but hasn't
stopped on Martha's Vineyard, which has become an Island of
harvestable shellfish in a sea of toxic red tide.
Louis Larsen, owner of the Net Result in Vineyard Haven, which
wholesales much of the Vineyard shellfish to local restaurants,
estimates that overall Island demand for shellfish is off 50-60 per cent
from normal mid-June levels.
The worst bloom of toxic red tide in the history of New England closed in on the Vineyard yesterday after shellfish beds were shut down from Maine to Nantucket, and anxious Island shellfishermen awaited word about a possible closure in their own waters.
"I am just hoping it doesn't come here," said Rob Garrison, director of the solar hatchery run by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).
"It certainly is close," said Rick Karney, director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group.
Edgartown shellfish constable Paul Bagnall has been named officer of the year by the Massachusetts Shellfish Officers Association.
While he had known of the news for months, he was presented with the award at a meeting of the Edgartown selectmen on Monday. The award was given for the year 2006.
A group of shellfish constables came over from the Cape to make the presentation.
Vineyard consumers are enjoying the lowest retail prices on bay scallops in at least ten years thanks to a renewed abundance of the tasty bivalve on Nantucket.
The Nantucket resurgence has been pushing down wholesale as well as retail prices on both Islands.
At Menemsha Seafood in Chilmark, owner Stanley Larsen said the retail price for bay scallops is around $16. His cousin, Louis Larsen of the Net Result, a fish market in Vineyard Haven, said the retail price is about the same at his store.
