Martha Scheffer was working on her family's Katama Bay oyster farm two weeks ago when she discovered a trove of paternal heirlooms: her father Roy Scheffer's pet oysters.
Lagoon Pond's deterioration in recent years is concerning to its stewards, who see it as part of a complex web of interrelated phenomena both above and below the waterline that put the pond’s health in jeopardy.
While ice demolished farms on the mainland, the Vineyard’s aquaculture emerged relatively unscathed. With the summer demand for oysters just around the corner, Vineyard harvesters may find new markets for their shellfish.
Dark green and gray, slick with algae, pocked with parasitic scars and polychaete worm tunnels, wild oysters are survivors, fighting everything the pond's brackish waters throw at them.
The Tisbury select board unanimously approved changes to the town’s aquaculture regulations that will allow oyster farmers in Lagoon Pond to grow their crops closer to the water’s surface.
Shellfish farmers in Tisbury are lobbying for changes to town aquaculture regulations, hoping to gain more flexibility in permitted growing methods for oyster farms in the Lagoon.
Near Chappaquiddick Point lies an unassuming summer house with a big mission. Over the last summer, the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group has converted the two-bedroom home into a shellfish nursery complete with swirling pools of saltwater and millions of baby bay scallops. And although the project is not yet complete, the hatchery has already helped raise millions of tiny shellfish for distribution to the Island’s coastal ponds.
A bay scallop farming study is one of several projects in Dukes County funded by new state grants, aimed at bolstering the local shellfish industry in a time of climate change.
Oyster farmer Greg Martino won the Tisbury select board’s approval for a one-acre shellfish farm in Lagoon Pond this week, bringing to three the number of aquaculture licenses in town.
