During the summer I sell produce grown at Beetlebung Farm every Saturday morning at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market. I don’t find it necessary to have any signage identifying our farm other than an old chalkboard with our name across the top that leans toward the front of our produce display. We use the chalkboard to advertise what we think is best that day, push products that are selling slower than others, or to express ourselves with a rotation of messages both clever and useful.

As the bay scallop season begins, reports and forecasts are in from the five Island towns that have a fishery. And if the predictions from shellfish biologists are accurate, scalloping in Edgartown, Chilmark and Aquinnah will be solid this year, while Oak Bluffs and Tisbury may be a step off from last year.

Opening day for the bay scallop season is as much a part of the
Vineyard culture as any holiday. On Saturday, dozens of smiling Tisbury
residents turned out in Lagoon Pond to harvest bushels of the tasty
sweet bivalves, and they had little trouble finding them.

Holders of family recreational permits harvested 528 bushels last
weekend. Those bay scallops would be valued between $40,000 and $50,000
if they were sold on the retail market.

Lagoon Pond has millions of baby bay scallops. On Tuesday afternoon,
David Grunden, shellfish constable for Oak Bluffs, was out moving some
of them around. There is a gold mine of baby bay scallops out there.
While this doesn't help the fishermen of today, it may be a sign
of a good year to follow.

On Wednesday morning, under a warm sun and blue sky, David and Karen
Berube were out on Cape Pogue Pond, at it again.

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.

Vineyard commercial fishermen are coming out ahead in a price war over bay scallops.

Yesterday, Island commercial bay scallop fishermen received as much as $15 a pound, while their counterparts on Nantucket were paid only $11 a pound.

Consumers on both Islands yesterday were paying essentially the same price, around $18 a pound. In Orleans, the price was $29.99 a pound.

The Vineyard and Nantucket still have viable bay scallops fisheries, though Cape Cod does have pockets of success.

Three years ago, the Nantucket bay scallop harvest suddenly more than doubled in size, from around 15,000 bushels to more than 32,000. It was the year the industry ate its future.

The following season the harvest crashed. The total catch in 2005-06 was one-sixth as large — just 5,500 bushels. It was even worse last season, when fewer than 4,000 bushels were hauled up, the lowest tally since they began keeping records 30 years earlier.

If the bay scallop fishery can be restored to places like Cape Cod and Long Island, the Vineyard may be able to take credit for it.

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) is in the midst of a multi-year scientific experiment in Menemsha Pond that could have a wide-ranging impact on the future of bay scallops in the region.

The commercial bay scalloping season opened yesterday in Aquinnah. Aquinnah is the last town on the Island to open the commercial season. Fishermen have been harvesting scallops in Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Chilmark and Tisbury.