Closing price of $17 not enough to soften blow of poor harvest
SCALLOPS
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto estimates Nantucket's scalloping fleet will have hauled in, at best, 3,850 bushels when the season closes Friday.

"Unfortunately, as predicted, it's no prize," said Fronzuto. "After the ice, we did have three or four consecutive days where people were getting their limits.

"We've said, historically, we need the ice and cold temperatures; it helps the fishery. Guys were getting their limits for the first days after the ice and now they're down to a box, boxand a-half. I think the high yesterday [March 22] was two boxes, so it's dwindled right off."

Fronzuto said the fleet is down from an opening day start of 48 boats to one scalloper in Madaket and three or four in Nantucket Harbor.

With this season's count 1,650 bushels shy of last year's total of 5,500 bushels - a shadow of the 32,500-bushel harvest of the 2004/2005 commercial season - it looks to be the worst season in recorded Nantucket scalloping history.

Fronzuto remains optimistic in the face of a dwindling scallop population in Nantucket waters.

"I think we're making some good inroads; I mean, we're bringing in a million seed and we'll protect them, we do spat protection aggressively throughout the summer," he said. "I think having the new shellfish biologist on board this summer [will help].

"The two interns will help. This will be the third or fourth year that we've had them. Again, somebody dedicated to this that doesn't have all the other things to do."

The price island fishmongers are paying to scallopers is likely to stay at $17 a pound through the end of the week, $2 more than last season's closing price. Although it is more money in scallopers' pockets, it does not make Fronzuto feel any better about fewer scallops. If his harvest estimate comes close to the final count, Fronzuto said this year's catch would be worth about $500,000, based on 3,850 bushels at seven pounds per bushel. However, Fronzuto admitted that scallopers usually get 7.5 pounds per bushel and that seven pounds per bushel is being generous because many of the scallopers he spoke with this year said six pounds is more like it.

Because the water was so warm for so long last fall, the scallops did not really plump up that much and gain weight for the winter, so the weight was down, he added.

"The price going up to $17 obviously takes the sting out of it, but I'd rather have a sustainable fishery with 15,000 bushels with an average price of $12 or $13 and have guys out there actively fishing than have five guys out there banging just to eke this out."

Still, not all in the industry harbor such a grim opinion of the 2006/2007 season. Glidden's Island Seafood owner David Glidden said that except for about two weeks in February, he stocked fresh scallops in his market for all five months of the season. As of Monday, Glidden had two scallopers selling him their catch, and he said that the fishermen who went every day the weather let them did all right. Because of that, he said, his supplies are slightly deeper than last year at this time.

Currently, Glidden is selling Nantucket Bay Scallops for $24 a pound, but Shirley Souza of Souza's Seafood cannot remember how much she was selling them for because she finished selling them last week.

"It was quiet for me, except for the early part of the season," she said. "People [may] have stragglers this time of year, but we're done for the season; we wrapped it up this week. It definitely was off because of the amount of scallops."

The Marine & Coastal Resources Department is sending some of the island's healthiest adult scallops off island to Aquaculture Research Corporation of Dennis, Mass., where the scallops will be spawned to produce one million seed at one to three millimeters in size before being shipped back to Nantucket. The seed spawning is going to cost $6,500. Once on Nantucket, the seed will be grown out to the size of a quarter in floating cages called upwellers and released into harbor locations the Marine Department hopes to designate

as seed sanctuaries. I