How many bushels of scallops do you think Nantucket hauled in this year? Hint: It's a lot (2025)

Commercial scallopers hauled in more than 10,000 bushels of Nantucket bays this season, a mark that hasn’t been reached in eight years.

The final tally isn’t in yet, town Aquatic Resources Manager Tara Riley said on the final day of commercial and recreational scalloping season Friday, because she still needs to receive catch reports from some fishermen, but she estimates the number will be “definitely over 10,000 but probably under 12,000.”

The estimated total of 10,000-plus bushels is well above last year’s mark of 8,709. It is the first time the fishery has had a five-digit bushel count since the 2017-2018 season.

“I feel really good, for the size of the fishery. It just shows that there are a lot of people actively going and getting their limit,” Riley said Friday.

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The annual scallop harvest routinely cleared 10,000 bushels annually until a staggering drop in the 2018-2019 season to 3,000. Counts in the following seasons came in at 8,800 bushels in 2019-2020, 7,700 bushels in 2020-2021 and 3,300 bushels in 2021-2022, according to Nantucket Shellfish Association data. The number of bushels caught commercially has now increased each of the last three years.

Riley said in November that the number of adult scallops in the harbor was near what it was in 2012. At that time, around 100 boats were fishing regularly. Approximately 18,000 bushels were caught that year.

The town sold between 80 and 90 scalloping licenses this year, Riley said. Around 50 people were fishing to some degree at the start of commercial scalloping season in November, she said.

By the last month of the season, between eight and 12 were regularly on the water.

Riley said this week that there’s likely a substantial number of adult scallops that went uncaught this season, but she won’t know exactly how many until the Natural Resources Department completes its spring surveys of the remaining population in May.

The fishery could handle a few more active commercial fishermen during the year considering the number of scallops, Riley said, but the excess could also be offset by more participation on the recreational side.

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“Of course I want to protect the working waterfront. I’m worried that the culture and tradition will go away. But there’s also a really robust recreational fishery that I think is equally as important, and that has an opportunity to expand quicker than the commercial fishery just because it’s an easy entry. I think we just need to do some education and outreach in different languages to reach the Nantucket population that might not be aware of that resource you can access,” Riley said.

Results from surveys next month will give NRD a better idea of how they will manage next season, Riley said.

That could include allowing commercial fishermen to take more bushels a day.

“If we’re seeing the same kinds of densities, maybe we’ll have a conversation about opening up with a larger limit,” Riley said.

“This season we probably could have gone to 10 bushels no problem, which is the state limit. But there are a lot of other factors that fishermen in the industry need to consider,” Riley said. “I can just make recommendations based on the supply and they can decide how they want it to go.”

Commercial fishermen were allowed to catch six bushels of scallops a day for most of the season this year after the Select Board allowed an increase from the normal five due to an abundance of scallops in the harbor.

An abundance of scallops, coupled with the fact they had lost two weeks of fishing during the season due to cold, also prompted scallopers to request an extension to the season last month through the Select Board.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries granted permission for the extension on March 31, the day before the season was set to expire. Commercial and recreational fishermen were granted another 11 days on the water.

Riley estimates around 500 bushels were brought in during that period.

An abundance of scallops is a good sign for the fishery, Riley said, but it is equally as important to make sure that population is sustainable moving forward.

“Focusing on the habitat and water quality to make sure that it can sustain itself is really important,” Riley said.

Much of that comes down to protecting eelgrass, a plant that serves as the main habitat for bay scallops and naturally lowers ocean acidity levels that at high levels can break down the shells of shellfish.

“We’ve got some habitat challenges with the eelgrass that we really want to look into protecting because it’s a lot more expensive and hard to restore eelgrass than it is to protect it,” Riley said.

Part of that will be studying how a new style of dredge being used by fishermen to scrape their scallops from the sea floor may impact eelgrass beds, she said.

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