With the commercial bay scallop season off to a lively start, those who love to eat scallops will find plenty at the local market. But there will be sticker shock; the price is well up this year, with Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket again the only big sources for freshly harvested bay scallops.

Bay scallops were retailing at about $22 a pound on the Vineyard on Wednesday.

Tisbury and Chilmark shellfishermen are having the best season this year. On Monday there were 16 commercial scallopers out on the Tisbury side of Lagoon Pond, with just five boats out on the Oak Bluffs side. Tisbury shellfish constable Danielle Ewart said scallopers are getting their limit in fairly short order. “They all came in fairly quickly; one came in after about an hour,” she said. The daily commercial limit is three level bushels in Tisbury.

Chilmark shellfish constable Isaiah Scheffer said opening day on Monday saw 23 fishermen out on the ponds and they had little trouble coming up with their daily limit of two level bushels. Mr. Scheffer said he was hoping for an even bigger year but much seed was lost last year to natural causes. “We lost a lot of scallops to predation. We lost a lot of seed in Feburary and March. A lot of eiders were on the pond and they ate a lot,” he said.

Fishermen are getting paid between $17 and $18 a pound for shucked scallops.

Edgartown is having a fair season, but for old timers, it has to be disappointing. Opening day for Edgartown was Monday, Oct. 18. Shellfish constable Paul Bagnall said there were 20 boats out and they got 35 limits. A limit is three 10-gallon plastic wash baskets. Many of the boats carry two fishermen.

“We are getting 10 and 20 limits a day now,” said Mr. Bagnall.

On Wednesday night, the Aquinnah shellfish committee met to recommend that the commercial season for Aquinnah open on Nov. 15. Shellfish constable Brian (Chip) Vanderhoop said the committee is recommending a two-bushel commercial limit, lower than the three-bushel limit two years ago.

Aquinnah did not have a bay scallop season last year, because there was so much seed in the pond and so few adults. The selectmen will vote on the shellfish committee’s recommendations next week. Mr. Vanderhoop said it is too early to predict the season, partly because of an abundance of eelgrass in Menemsha Pond. When the recreational season opened in that town, the half-dozen fishermen who went found it good but spotty, Mr. Vanderhoop said.

On the Vineyard’s sister island of Nantucket, Dave Fronzuto, harbor master and shellfish constable, said there were 50 boats out on opening day on Monday. “They landed about 500 bushels. The weights are good, averaging eight pounds per bushel, which is better than five and a half pounds last year,” Mr. Fronzuto said. The forecast for the season is that it will be short.

The bay scallop report on the Cape is scant; Michael Hickey of the state Division of Marine Fisheries said there are some off Falmouth Harbor and some in Buzzards Bay off Mattapoisett but few elsewhere.

“The Cape has nothing and everybody wants them off-Island,” said Jeffrey Maida at the Net Result fish market in Vineyard Haven.

All the Island shellfish constables report the ponds are loaded with seed. This year’s spawned scallops can be harvested next year, and constables are being extra protective of the future crop. With Cape Pogue Pond full of seed, Mr. Bagnall is asking fishermen to help transport the young scallops to deeper water or other places.

Miss Ewart has the same issue in a closed area off Hines Point in the Lagoon.

Mr. Scheffer has closed about four acres of bottom on the east flat off Menemsha Pond where the old channel used to be. “There is a lot of seed out there,” he said.

The scallop fishery has had a boost in recent years from the efforts of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group which produces millions of bay scallop seed each year for the local towns. This year the shellfish group delivered nine million tiny bay scallops for distribution in local coastal ponds, director Rick Karney said.

This was also a year when bay scallops had plenty of enemies, Mr. Karney said, including blue crabs, starfish and the latest threat, eiders, a coastal bird that spends the winter on the water. “Since our ponds are no longer freezing over, I think they are feeding here,” Mr. Karney said.

Mr. Vanderhoop and Mr. Scheffer said they watched hundreds of eiders feeding on shellfish last winter.

For Miss Ewart the bad guys in Lagoon Pond are starfish. She said shellfishermen are being encouraged to bring the starfish to the dock.

Another potential threat is a new algae bloom in parts of Nantucket Sound, a dinoflagilate called cochlodinium, which is harmful to shellfish. In the water it looks like rust tide, said Mr. Fronzuto. The Edgartown shellfish department monitored blooms in the outer Edgartown harbor and saw one bloom in Cape Pogue.

Mr. Fronzuto said they’ve been watching it on Nantucket for more than a year. “This is the same species of algae that brought the demise of the Long Island bay scallop fishery. My new biologist, Tara Riley, was mapping it,” he said.