Scallops plentiful, but price low at $8

PHOTO BY PETER B. BRACE First day was a cold and windy day. Scallopers Dann Pronk, left, and Doug Lindley, right, throw out their dredges for the first time this season on Monday, opening day. After the first two days of fishing, scalloper Frank Dutra said it is the sport of catching his scallops that motivates him to go out now, not the boat price and the size of his catch.

"Everything's fine except the price and the weight," he said. "There's plenty of scallops, that's it. It's bearable."

Eighty-one scallopers who braved the choppy waters of Nantucket and Madaket harbors through strong northeast winds on Monday, opening day of the 2009 commercial scallop season, found all the scallops they needed.

But when they returned to their shanties and began "cuttin'" their scallops — scalloper slang for shucking — they found smaller meats and later, a similar sized price.

The boat price on Nantucket opened at $8 per pound on Monday and remained so as of early Tuesday afternoon, which many expected because of the profusion of scallops in the harbors — conservative estimates put this season's harvest at 25,000 to 37,000 bushels — and the abundance of bay scallops in Chatham, Mass. and in Martha's Vineyard.

Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto said the 76 commercial scallopers in Nantucket Harbor and the five in Madaket brought in 393 bushels on the first day of fishing.

"Nice scallops. No issue with any of that," said Fronzuto. "[But] you can thank June and half of July for that (smaller meats): a very cold, very wet summer. I'm sure it had some effect on the food."

A majority of the fleet in town made their first tows in front of the UMass Field Station with pockets of fishermen trying their luck all along the inner shore of the harbor, on Hussey Shoal, in front of Monomoy and even near The Creeks. But the mother lode thus far is at the field station where everyone went yesterday.

"It's not fantastic, but almost 12 boxes in two tows? That's pretty good fishing if you ask me," said year-round commercial fisherman Dann Pronk. "Nine out of 10 scallops, they were seed [last season]. I pushed over a lot of seed last year. That's why I knew to go there this year because that's where we worked all last year."

In the early days of the 2009/2010 commercial scallop season, most of the grumbling is over the actual size and weight of the scallops' abductor muscle, the only edible yet highly prized part of bay scallops. On average, scallopers are getting six-and-ahalf to seven pounds per bushel right now when they are used to getting 7.5 to eight pounds per box.

Some believe the deluge of rain during June and part of July kept the harbors colder than normal, preventing scallop food from thriving, while others say harbor pollution and algae blooms are the culprits. Scalloper Doug Smith points a rubber-gloved finger at high levels of nitrates and phosphates running into the harbor and a type of algae that ended the scallop fishery in many harbors on Long Island.

"The scallops seem a little stunted, they are small for the size of their shells. I think the brown tide may have something to do with the stunting of the scallops," said Smith. "I don't know whether because they're thick they're small or again, because of that brown tide, the evasive algae there that may have stunted their growth in August, but they're still growing now."

Smith added that he is pulling in a lot of grass in his 10 dredges and is predicting a "slow-and-steady year."

Fishmongers, although excited about the amount of adult scallops in Nantucket waters, reticent over what the rest of the week or the season will bring in terms of catch and demand, related to the high number of fishermen going this year on Nantucket and in other Cape and Islands towns. It is no secret that the challenging economic times are pushing new people into the scallop industry out on the boats and into the shucking shanties. How that infusion of new labor affects this year's fishery remains to be seen.

"My take is the fishing went really well," said David Glidden, owner of Glidden's Island Seafood who as of early yesterday afternoon was paying $8 a pound and selling them for $13.95 retail. "People were coming in early to the dock, but because of the lower amount of net weight per bushel, which was down about 25 percent — and people were expecting a lower price — it was disappointing for a lot of people.

"As far as the market goes, the price is just a preliminary test of the market because with the amount of the people out there and people coming in early, there may be extra scallops on the market."

Over in Chatham, Mass. scallopers are getting $11 a pound for their catch and Louie Larsen, owner of the Net Result in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard is paying $10 per pound. I