The Baymen's Nightmare: All the Scallops Are Dead
You could tell it was going to be a bad scallop season just by looking in the parking lot of the Shelter Island Yacht Club.
When the scallops are abundant, gulls pluck them from shallows, drop them on the macadam from a height, and swoop down to eat the meat from the cracked shell. This October, for the first time in years, the yacht club parking lot was not carpet-bombed with scallop shells.
Sure enough, when bay scallop season opened on Monday, the baymen of Long Island brought news. Most of the adult scallops in Peconic Bay were dead.
Pete Wencel, a bayman who didn’t go out on opening day, struggled with what the die-off will mean for him. “Honestly I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do this winter,” he said. “It’s not good.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/nyregion/peconic-bay-scallop-season.html
