Bay scallops grew quickly in the few months they spent in the Japanese lanterns hanging from the docks at Packet Landing.
By Doreen Leggett
Neal Morris, captain of the F/V Fed Up, has been fishing for a long time, with a lot of captains and for a lot of different fish.
“I started in 1970 when I was 10, scalloping when I was 11,” he said.
Morris, who has gone for sea scallops offshore, started with bay scallops close to 50 years ago.
“I did five bushels a day. It was a nice thing everyone did, a community thing,” he explained.
Bass River always was a good area, bay scallops the most bountiful harvest in the Cape’s longest river.
The heyday of bay scallops in Bass River, and across the Cape, ended close to 40 years ago, but a committed group, including Yarmouth Shellfish Constable Casaundra Healy, is working to bring the bivalve back.
In good years, 1,700 bushels of bay scallops were harvested in Yarmouth. In recent years that number has dropped to 100 – almost all from Lewis Bay – and this season, which runs October through the end of March, looks much the same.
Healy, who previously worked as farm manager for Aquaculture Resource Corporation, wanted to do something about that.
“It was on my radar to put bay scallop back in the propagation mix in Yarmouth,” she said.
She did research, thought about the best approach and location. Healy knew scallops are challenging to grow; unlike clams and oysters, town propagation programs find it difficult to grow bay scallop seed in traditional upweller systems.
Serendipitously, Rick Bishop, executive director of the non-profit Friends of Bass River, was thinking along the same lines, spurred by residents who would love to see the return of the bay scallop.
“Nothing compares to the reaction I get when I talk about bay scallops,” he said.
In the early 80s, Bishop used to fish with his father and get their limit in just a few tows and remembers shucking them with his parents in the basement.
“Bass River had just an amazing reputation for bay scallops, and rightly so,” Bishop said.
Bishop was introduced to Harwich’s Jeff Lang who had partnered with Dan Ward to establish the Scallop Bay Shellfish Company. Ward, an aquaculture farmer and researcher for decades, recently decided to focus on growing bay scallops in his hatchery.
The two decided on a two-pronged effort: Some bay scallops, grown to market size, would be for restaurant sale in the summer, not the fall when the wild fishery opens. The rest would help Cape towns with propagation.
Yarmouth and Falmouth benefited from Lang and Ward’s work as the two figured out a way to grow bay scallops by using Japanese lanterns. The lanterns provide protection for baby bays until they are large enough to survive on their own.
In the wild, baby scallops attach to eelgrass, which acts as a nursery. But huge swaths of eelgrass have disappeared, knocked out by increased nitrogen loading from septic systems.
Yarmouth and other Cape communities are implementing wastewater plans that reduce nitrogen, but until that takes hold Japanese lanterns are filling a need. Once the scallops grow, and get their 18-pair of sky-blue eyes (all the better to spot predators), they survive better.
In September, the town’s natural resources department put 100,000 seed into 25 multi-level Japanese lanterns bought by the Friends of Bass River.
The lanterns were attached to concrete blocks and heavy chains, hung from the dock at Packet Landing. With nutrients in the river the scallops grew quickly.
“One of the biggest lessons was not packing them in too tight,” said Bishop. “This was kind of our pilot project, and it came out much better than expected.”
Healy said scallops did not require a lot of babysitting; set and forget.
By the end of October, they had tripled in size, ready to be released. Healy credits local fishermen and shellfishermen, and old maps, with helping her pick areas with a good chance of success. A local fisherman helped take 14 fish totes of scallops and broadcast them in the river.
She also credited the Friends, calling Bishop the “energizer bunny.”
Bishop has his fingers crossed and if all goes well scallops will be available to be fished recreationally when the season opens this fall.
The bigger hope is continued effort will rebuild the wild fishery, which supported six commercial fishermen in good years and got many residents on the water.
Bishop has been reaching out to various funding sources, and planning ahead:
“In the next couple years my goal is to see if we can do a million. I think it is a number the community will get behind.
“Maybe there will be a festival in our future,” Bishop added with a smiling referral to the Wellfleet Oyster Festival.