Oak Bluffs shellfish constable David Grunden closed Sengekontacket Pond to scalloping before the season opened, disappointing commercial fishermen who can earn a hefty daily paycheck from the prized mollusk, and recreational fishermen looking forward to a fine dinner.
Mr. Grunden first announced the closure at the selectmen’s meeting on Oct. 13. “It was a very difficult decision,” he told The Times on Monday. “A lot of factors had to be considered, including a few people’s wages. But there is a very high percentage of seed in the pond.”
Mr. Grunden said it was the first time he has closed Sengie to scalloping in his 16 years on the job. And the closure was not well received.
He and assistant shellfish constable Jason Mallory have dealt with thefts of property from a department boat, vandalism of Mr. Grunden’s personal truck, and accusations of personal vendettas from commercial fishermen that, in one case, led to a physical altercation.
In addition, the grumbling about the skimpy scallop crop in the town’s half of Lagoon Pond gets louder by the day, despite the fact that Edgartown and Tisbury are also experiencing poor harvests. “It’s pretty taxing right now,” Mr. Grunden said.
Going to seed
Mr. Grunden said he based his decision on surveys he and members of the shellfish committee made. He estimates the Sengekontacket scallop population to be 90 percent seed. The substantial size of the seed would make it easy for fishermen, commercial or recreational, to inadvertently take the seed that will grow to adults, and do heavy damage to next year’s harvest, he said.
“They are the biggest seed I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I’ve been around scallops for many years, and even I have a hard time distinguishing sometimes. I decided this was an opportunity for us to leave everything alone.”
Rick Huss, shellfish committee member and longtime commercial fisherman, concurred. Mr. Huss said the telltale growth ring on mature scallops is not discernable on much of the Sengie seed. “There’s a color ring on a lot of them that you can mistake as a growth ring, but it’s not a growth ring,” he said.
This difficulty was illuminated Monday when a number of shellfish committee members, along with Mr. Grunden and Mr. Mallory, accompanied commercial fisherman Kyle Peters on an exploratory scalloping dive in the pond in response to Mr. Peters’ emotional plea to selectmen at their Nov. 10 meeting.
Mr. Peters implored selectmen for a “divers only” exemption to the closure, because it would cause him considerable financial hardship. He told the board he has been diving for scallops in Sengekontacket for 35 years, and in his view, there was an abundant population of adults. “You’d see one every five feet,” he said. “There’s not a lot of seed piled up like they said there was.”
Mr. Grunden disagreed with Mr. Peters’ assessment, which led to Mr. Peters angrily accusing Mr. Grunden of having a personal vendetta against him. Although Mr. Grunden stood by his ruling, and two shellfish committee members strongly backed him, selectmen sought a compromise and asked Mr. Grunden and the shellfish committee members to allow Mr. Peters to make his case by making a site visit to the pond.
On Tuesday, Mr. Huss told The Times the results of the exploratory dive made on Monday clearly backed Mr. Grunden’s decision. “He brought in 145 scallops, and 21 were legal; the rest were seed,” Mr. Huss said. “We’re in business to make sure the ponds are healthy and to keep them sustainable. But we don’t guarantee people can use the pond for work.” Mr. Huss said he also disagreed with the way the appeal was handled. “I think the selectmen should have backed up David, at least at a public meeting,” he said.
Give seed a chance
Mr. Huss attributes the June dredging of the channel at Little Bridge as a major contributing factor to the superior seed size. “The pond recirculating after three years of being closed has to make a difference,” he said.
“They’re big, they’re beautiful-looking scallops,” Mr. Huss said, describing the prodigious seed scallops. “The amount of growth on them is amazing, and if we leave them alone, we can have an incredible crop next year.”
Mr. Grunden made a similar assessment, adding that natural crop killers like algae blooms are always a possibility.
Mr. Grunden said this year’s Sengekontacket seed have a better chance of surviving the winter because they have more fat for sustenance, and that a larger naturally occurring spawning population — natural recruitment — could be a boon to the pond’s scallop population.
This year, the town of Oak Bluffs paid $37,000 to the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group (MVSG), primarily for shellfish seed. While Mr. Grunden says the MVSG is a valuable asset, the town cannot solely depend on it for new generations of shellfish. “Natural recruitment has to take place for the population to flourish,” he said.
This year the MVSG provided Oak Bluffs with roughly 4 million scallop seeds. “We would never make it if we depended on [MVSG] seed,” Mr. Huss said. “We’d be like the Cape; we wouldn’t have any scallops.”
Mr. Huss added that Cape Poge Bay in Edgartown should serve as an example for those who question the shutdown. “They [Edgartown] let people take small ones, and they were two or three years before they came back to anywhere normal.”
Oak Bluffs taxpayers have a considerable investment in the town’s shellfish resource, which includes clams. In the current fiscal year, taxpayers will shell out $181,990 to fund the shellfish department. That is in addition to the MVSG contribution.
In calendar year 2014, Oak Bluffs sold 669 shellfishing licenses — 14 commercial licenses at $350 each, and 209 recreational licenses at $40 each. The total revenue from all shellfish licenses — which also includes one-week, two-week, nonresident and senior licenses — brought in a total of $17,615.
“Currently Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are about the only areas left with a commercial season most every year,” Mr. Grunden wrote in an open letter explaining his rationale to the fishing community, following the closure. “We are now given an unusual and unique opportunity to try to get the scallop stocks to rebound and set a base for future years … My decision stands that the best thing for the scallop fishery in the Oak Bluffs side of Sengekontacket Pond is to keep it closed to harvest this year. We owe it to the pond and all our scallopers, recreational as well as commercial, to take advantage of this opportunity.”
Correction – an earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled “Madeiras Cove” as “Medeiros Cove”