In an effort to lower nitrogen amounts in Sengekontacket Pond, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs are embarking on a yearly project to grow oysters in the Major’s Cove area of the pond.
In Edgartown, shellfish constable Paul Bagnall told selectmen Tuesday that the shellfish committee is proposing spending $24,000 on 250,000 oyster seed for the pond. The original plan was to spend $48,500 on 500,000 oysters, but the amount was reduced because of the number of articles submitted for town meeting.
Bay scallopers in Chilmark are being asked to concentrate on Nashaquitsa Pond until early next month in order to make the most efficient use of a healthy crop of scallops this year.
The Chilmark selectmen voted Tuesday to close Menemsha Pond to scalloping from Nov. 21 through Dec. 3, and increase the daily limit in Quitsa to three struck bushels. The selectmen also agreed to open the area outside of Chocker’s Creek from the eastern buoy defining the closed area to the town line beginning Nov. 21.
To anyone who has spent a languid summer afternoon tumbling in the waves on South Beach or watched the earth’s closest star dip into the horizon at Menemsha, the ocean can seem eternal and unchanging. But scientists are increasingly discovering that human activity is transforming what was once thought to be an invulnerable resource. The ocean is getting warmer, more acidic, louder and filled with the detritus of civilization. What effect these changes will have on the ocean’s inhabitants in the decades to come is unclear.
A smiling Alec Gale hops onto his 52-foot steel fishing boat, The Retriever. “We’ll see what happens today. Something always goes wrong,” he says. It’s 7:30 a.m. and Al has already been up for two hours. He spent the early part of the day with his eight-month-old son Riley. “It’s my only quiet time,” he says. Now he is bounding around his boat, starting one of its three engines, unhooking dock lines and moving the neck of a truck crane around.
The Katama Bay oyster is the talk of Island raw bars. Lovers of
seafood now have a local oyster available through most of the year. This
Island oyster is making its way across the eastern seaboard to
Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.
Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs shellfishermen saw a banner start to
the bay scalloping season, and they share their reason why: Lagoon Pond.
Derek Cimeno, shellfish constable for Tisbury, is watching
shellfishermen surrounded in bay scallops. "Six hundred bushels of
bay scallops were taken in the first two days by family
shellfishermen," Mr. Cimeno said.
Several shellfishermen and fishermen are taking a first step on a long road to raise blue mussels for market in Vineyard waters.
Rick Karney, director of the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group, the project's principal investigator, has applied for a state grant to fund half of a $28,730 feasibility project.Blue mussels are a highly prized shellfish. Island consumers buy plenty of them in local fish markets, but nearly all the mussels come from Canada.
On this November morning, the Menemsha lobster boat Shearwater has made its way three and a half miles south of Noman’s Land.
Noman’s tall cliffs rise above the treacherous rocky waters. Sea birds are adrift in the moving current farther north.
Waves roll from the open ocean and raise and lower the boat in a gentle fashion, like a mother rocking a sleeping child. The sky is blue and metallic; the color of the sea beneath is a darker version of the sky. A gentle cold breeze freshens. The bow points towards Spain.
Island fish, like Island tourists, come and go with the seasons. Striped bass, bluefish, false albacore, bonito and scup and summer flounder all migrate.
Yet there is one species of fish that once were caught here year-round. Winter flounder stayed in Island waters through the changing seasons.
Next week the Chilmark Public Library is hosting a forum with a top New England authority on the raising of juvenile winter flounder.
As the Chilmark shellfish department wraps up its first summer, efforts at spearheading restoration projects have been successful. Selectman Warren Doty, chairman of the board and liaison to the department, reported a low mortality rate among planted scallops and a very high production rate.
“It has been a very successful season,” he said.
To date, 100,000 scallop seed have been set to grow in an upweller, purchased by the town this spring and located in Menemsha, as well as in spat bags and pearl nets.
