SHAB, Fronzuto agree to scallop seed sanctuary
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
When Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto and Town Biologist Keith Conant turned the waters of Second Bend into a nursery for scallop seed, it was unbeknownst to the Shellfish & Harbor Advisory Board (SHAB) which only warmed to the idea after Fronzuto explained his reasoning.

After reading a story in the Aug. 29 issue of The Nantucket Independent about Town Biologist Keith Conant's and new Shellfish Biologist Jeff Mercer's work relocating the natural population of bay scallops and green crabs from Second Bend to other parts of the harbor, several SHAB members at their Sept. 4 meeting lashed out at the Marine & Coastal Resources Department for not including the board in the decision.

However, it is well within Fronzuto's and Conant's jurisdiction to close off parts - or even all - of the island's three harbors to the taking of any shellfish species.

"I know that there was a lot of discussion about this, but we have to have this type of density to have some type of reproduction," Fronzuto told SHAB at its Sept. 18 meeting. "We have the food sources in Second Bend to feed these scallops. We have absolutely no way of tracking them if we put them in separate places."

Conant needed a sheltered part of the harbor to release the roughly 850,000 scallop seed that were spawned off island this spring and are now outgrowing their upwellers off Brant Point. Although Mercer is removing green crabs - an invasive species that regularly dines on scallops - from Second Bend using traps, he and Conant are not finding more than one or two scallops per 12-squarefeet in this part of the harbor.

Conant said that he and Fronzuto chose Second Bend for the seed nursery because of the naturally protective feature of a sand spit jutting well into the harbor from Third Point.

"If we put them in the middle of the harbor, they could pretty much take off and go anywhere, [while] the spit creates a natural barrier," Conant said, explaining that the other bends along Coatue are more exposed to the frequent, strong northeast storms during the winter. "What we want to know is how many of these scallops are going to make it through the season, overwinter, be able to spawn and make it to the [next] fishing season."

Several years ago, Fronzuto closed Madaket Harbor from Jackson Point to Warren's Landing to scalloping to protect an abundant set of seed in the area. At past meetings, SHAB has discussed closing certain parts of Nantucket Harbor to scalloping to act as seed sanctuaries, or closing a portion of the harbor to dredging and allowing only divers to scallop in an effort to save both seed and eelgrass, but no consensus was ever reached and no decision ever made.

"When we left it, we had suggested five or six areas the whole of Second Bend was never discussed," said SHAB member Marina Finch at the Sept. 4 meeting.

Conant's and Fronzuto's choice of Second Bend for a seed sanctuary is a taste of what Conant talked about in late September 2005 when he warned SHAB about a three- to five-year period of low harvests and shared his plan for more strictly managing the bay scallop fishery to help boost the natural populations for the long-term survival of the fishery.

"It doesn't look like we're going to close the fishery down, and it doesn't look like we're going to impose that [growth] ring rule again, so we have to do what we can to save the fishery," he said.

SHAB members at the Sept. 18 meeting, after hearing Fronzuto's logic behind closing the waters of Second Bend to commercial dredging and recreational pushraking, but not to divers, warmed to the idea and endorsed a map of the closure area now being distributed to the public by the Marine Department.

"I'm not against sanctuaries, don't get me wrong, but this is a very productive area," said SHAB member and scalloper Doug Smith, who agreed to go along with the Second Bend closure for just one year. "Two years ago, I personally spent one month in there and I was making one tow a day for 12, 14 bushels."

Fronzuto assured Smith and the rest of SHAB that Second Bend would reopen to all methods of scalloping on the first day of next year's commercial scalloping season, Nov. 3, 2008.

Backing up Fronzuto and Conant was bay scallop researcher Stephen Estabrooks, who said spawning scallops off island and then providing them with a safe, nurturing environment to grow is vital to the survival of Nantucket's bay scallop fishery.

"You need a lot of scallops to have a lot of scallops - right now we're just down so low," said Estabrooks. "Now, they're just so scattered, so far apart you're not going to get any reproduction. At some point, you're going to have to start talking about closing the harbors. What we do now in these next few years is going to be critical to preventing us from going that way."