SHAB, Fronzuto scrutinize shellfish regulations
WATERFRONT
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Should the town adopt revised shellfish regulations this winter or spring, the following rules may apply:

•If you want to catch eels commercially, you can only do so from June 15 to Feb. 15.

•Commercial quahoggers will not be able to use a hydro-dredge to haul Nantucket quahogs.

•When wind and waves blow scallops onto the beaches, it will be okay to take home as many live ones as can be removed from the shore, but it could be against the law to sell them.

These and other proposed changes to the town's commercial shellfish regulations are being batted around by Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto and the Shellfish & Harbor Advisory Board because the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries' laws are not specialized enough to address Nantucket's unique needs.

"It's adding the regulations that we currently don't have for species we're currently not regulating," said Fronzuto. "We've just been relying on the state's guidelines, that are poor, and we need to have a local say over how things are going to be harvested."

The following shellfish would come under the proposed revisions: clams, conch, limpets, mussels, oysters, periwinkles, quahogs, razor clams or razor fish, scallops, sea clams, sea quahogs, sea scallops and winkles.

The revised regulations will also cover commercial harvesting methods, catch limits and seasons of quahogs, mussels, American eels and conch. They would also address alterations to the existing commercial scalloping regulations that prohibit commercial scallopers aged 60 and over who operate with free licenses from selling their catch. The new provisions would also make illegal the use of hydrodredges in the harvesting of quahogs in Nantucket waters.

The quahog regulation changes were prompted by the commercial quahoggers who have pestered Fronzuto about harvesting quahogs with these types of dredges that are armed with water jets that loosen the bottom to expose quahogs. This particular prohibition is to prevent the destruction of habitat on the bottom of the harbor and Nantucket Sound. Under the proposed guidelines, Quahogs can be harvested all year long, but they must be one inch thick at their hinges.

For eels, the new mandate would require they must be six inches in length, harvested Feb. 15 to June 15 and no more than 50 can be taken per person per day. For mussels, they cannot be harvested by mechanical means and must be two inches in length; for conch, their shells must be at least 2.75 inches long.

Fronzuto put conch into the proposed regulations in the fall of 2006 when commercial fluke fishermen were keeping up to 2,000 pounds of conch as bycatch

and making good money when the price was around

$1.50 a pound. With no state DMF regulations for conch, Nantucket's two conch fishermen were having a tough time competing with the fluke fishermen from other Cape and islands towns.

Fronzuto revised the town's shellfish regulations to include conch under the same residency requirement that commercial scallopers must adhere to, which says they must have proof of year-round maintenance of domicile.

Although commercial quahog, mussel, eel and conch harvesting industries are very small on Nantucket, the town still must have the proper regulations to manage and protect each fishery, and to protect their habitats for future sustainability. Currently, Fronzuto has no answers for the inquiries he gets from fishermen interested in these fisheries.

"I think it's the frustration on the department's part that we have no guidance for quahogs, conchs, [eels] and mussels," he said. "You constantly get asked questions, but have no answers."

The revised regulations are in rough draft form and are subject to change. The version Fronzuto is working on right now is full of question marks.

"It's just really a place for us to get started and start to address these issues so we don't have to play catch up," he said. "I'm very surprised that we hadn't had these in place before. I just think we need to be

out ahead of it." I