SHAB mulls impacts of new scallop seed regulations
BY PETER B. BRACE
An unidentified scalloper took large amounts of seed during the first week of the commercial scallop season.

According to Ken Kelley of the Shellfish and Harbor Advisory Board, a scalloper who was caught harvesting seed last winter (and one of the reasons SHAB rewrote its seed regulations) was found taking seed during the first few days of this season near where Kelley scallops.

"I saw the guy on Thursday [Nov. 2] next to me where all the big seed was right beside me and he beat me in by two hours," said Kelley.

Yet, for all their ire over this seedtaking transgression, an offense Kelley equated to stealing from honest fishermen supporting their families, Kelley and the rest of SHAB

stopped short of publicly identifying the scalloper. But Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto did speak with him and leveled a one-day suspension of his license. Kelley and other members of SHAB, however, think the punishment is too light and that this scalloper should be given a week off from scalloping instead.

"This fellow's a repeat offender," he said

SHAB member and scalloper Doug Smith said: "I'm in the same shanty with him and his catch is horrendous. Over and over and over and over we go through this guy's catch and it's full of seed.

"I would be glad to drop a dime on this guy."

After the meeting, however, Smith could not identify this scalloper.

Working with the Shellfish Association, SHAB wrote new seed- taking regulations this summer that the Board of Selectmen approved on Oct. 25. The revised regulations punish commercial scallopers caught taking seed the first time by suspension of their license for one day, requiring them to also take a two-hour course provided by the Marine Department on seed identification. Second-time offenders lose their license for one week and three-time violators lose their license for one year from the date of the infraction.

Scallopers are allowed to have no more than five percent seed scallops in their daily catch of five bushels. Scallop seed are immature scallops that have yet to spawn, without raised, well-defined growth rings on their shells. Differentiating seed from adult scallops can be a challenge, however, because the town, with the state's Division of Marine Fisheries' blessing, allows scallopers to harvest scallops with any size growth ring. Some, including Town Biologist Keith Conant and the Maria Mitchell Association, believe that scallops with tiny, so-called nub growth rings will spawn again and should not be harvested to allow them to boost scallop populations in the harbors.

Kelley's argument is that the first offense punishment should be a week off from scalloping because the loss of one day's earning is not enough of a deterrent.

"It's nothing to stop him to lose a day, but if you lose a week, you lose $2,000," said Kelley.

SHAB member Patty Stolte defended the revised penalty structure, reminding Kelley that he had the opportunity to attend the meetings in which the new regulations were hashed out. Kelley, who spends his summers in Nova Scotia, was unable to make those meetings, he said.

"Why were you on the scallop committee that worked on this [then]?" said Stolte. "They worked really, really hard on this. These guys worked really hard to get this and now you're saying this is a piece of crap. You can't throw it out as completely useless. There's always going to be people who aren't going to play by the rules."

Incensed that the same scalloper who prompted the Nantucket Shellfish Association to ask SHAB for help last winter would continue to abuse regulations protecting scallop seed after the recent strengthening of the regulations, SHAB discussed and is investigating whether its new regulations are retroactive. If they are, SHAB could consider this scalloper's abuse last winter his first offense and request that Fronzuto hit him with a week off instead of just a day.

Pending advice from Town Counsel Paul DeRensis, Fronzuto said the regulations would most likely not be retroactive.

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