So... I believe climate change is real but this is they type of pseudoscience reporting that sets the cause back.... last year was there “climate change” when the harvest was so high it exceeded demand? It is seriously so dumb to attribute one storm or one tornado or one bad harvest to climate change... especially when it’s definitely *not* a sustained trend, as evidenced by the extreme bounty just 12 months ago, and the note that similar events have happened before. What will they say if there is another record bounty next year? It won’t be covered by the times I bet.
2
@Phliman this is not just one bad scallop harvest season. The scallops have had trouble in the 80's from brown tide. I believe there wouldnt be a need for a scallop restoration program if the scallop population was fine.
All the fisherman who voted for trump and any republican climate change denier are sowing the seeds of their miscast support and votes.
The north fork is reaping what it has sowed. Maybe now the community will vote for people who believe in climate change.
In spite of a good year for Massachusetts bay scallops, we're dealing with a record large "dead zone" void of oxygen in Cape Cod bay right now. Lobster fishermen are pulling out traps with dead lobsters.
2
There is another story about the collapse of a scallop farm in Asia. Looks like scallop lovers will have to find something else to eat.
2
Since climate change is a Chinese-created hoax, the lack of scallops must be one as well. I'm sure the sea is crawling with scallops, and these so-called watermen are just part of the maritime deep (sea) state.
2
Here in B.C. our iconic Qualicum Bay oysters can no longer develop their shells in the wild as the Salish Sea has become too acidic as a result of excess CO2 having been absorbed.
And yet our government still subsidies the fossil fuel industry. Greed knows no limits...
3
Cheers to the Bay fishers who STAYED IN and did not scrape the last live scallops from the seabeds.
5
Peconic Bay is District 1 of NY and represented by Congressman Lee Zeldin, a climate change denier who voted down bills for the National Ocean Policy and pretty much anything to protect the environment. Read his record:
http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/lee-zeldin
If people depend on the Bay's ecosystem for their livelihoods, they need to get smart and find someone who actually will look after the Bay and them. I say this as someone who lived there for many years and has family that has also depended on that ecosystem for a living.
12
"The season in Massachusetts opened a few days before New York, and baymen there were finding a solid set of bay scallops this year, after a bad 2018."
Funny how this is buried in the middle of the article. I feel bad for the folks who have a poor harvest in New York this year, but these things come and go as you subtly point out here. Ask the farmers in the Midwest who experience periods of near-perfect growing conditions interspersed with wet and dry seasons regularly. These flucuations aren't driven by "human caused climate change" as you would have us believe. They are natural phenomenon in a world that is constantly undergoing change of a natural order.
I hope you write a retraction next year or in the following years when there is a bumper crop of scallops in the bay. But by then you'll be blaming humans on the shortage of cranberries that will be caused by the record low temperatures associated with this week's winter storm. "Global warming" was proven to be a farce. "Climate change" is as normal as the change of seasons. Next you'll come up with a term like "Sunlight diffusion" claiming that we're causing more clouds to block the sun's rays from getting to earth. NYT Fake News.
I feel so bad that the elites on Long Island won't have bay scallops to go with their caviar at their holiday parties this year.
1
Why are you so passionately devoted to this theory? Thousands of PHD’s who have spent years of hard research don’t agree with your theory.
2
sad days for sure. Long Island ain't what it used to be.too many people, too many cars, too many lawns, too much run off, too much per capita selfishness, just too much development. too many takers.
2
It’s Dr Steve Tettlebach and he was an excellent mentor and professor at LIU Southampton College to many of us who were lucky enough to study under him. I’m shocked to hear the state of the bays & estuaries, the nitrification & temperatures will have devastating consequences for generations of Baymen and their families. We need to do something to help those local economies ASAP- the storms have been ripping apart the barriers that protect the docks, the waters are toxic: They are bearing the hardest burdens on the front line of climate change.
We should also be fighting to protect schools and programs that generate the leaders of environmental change for tomorrow. The shutting down of LIU’s campus in the Hamptons with its marine science /environmental studies program was a travesty to the waters and environmental conservation projects in the area. God Speed to the few Warriors like Steve who continue to work on the East End.
5
I find it interesting that although there are so few scallops, many of the baymen still go out and dredge the few that are left. Do they think stubbornness is going to magically create scallops to harvest?
The NYC area waters used to be so filled with shellfish that NYC was the "Oyster Capital of the World", and contained almost half the world's oyster population. Prisoners were so sick of eating lobster that they went on strike.
Human caused pollution has destroyed this bounty. Air pollution, water pollution, land pollution. Whether or not a person "believes" in the rapid climate change that is occurring, I think anyone can appreciate clean water, air and land. If we cut pollution of all kinds, it will have a positive effect on the environment and all who live there - including the humans. I don't understand this polarization of protecting the environment. It is not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue. Everyone should be concerned, and take action. Maybe it's too late already.
307
@ALB
There's no indication pollution has changed abruptly to cause the die-off or that it is the primary reason for the overall decline.
There is evidence that the water temperature changed, and that new scallops were introduced to help, and that over-fishing and dredging continued notwithstanding perilously low stocks. The new scallops and over-fishing are the easiest to fix.
23
@ALB I am so glad to see your comment. Your position is the same as my own, and up until now I thought I was the lone voice in the wilderness.
We can take the vitripude, the red faced screaming, the condescending cutting remarks out of the climate change argument by recognizing we all want clean air, water, and dirt. Everyone agrees with this outlook. Here is an issue that can could us together. And boy do we need issues that bring us together, that would be a refreshing change.
45
@marty Merika. Unfortunately, the message would be, “consume less”. Alas, most Americans leave that task to their neighbors. Ultimately, Mother Nature will enforce that discipline on us through involuntary means.
42
On the east end of Long Island the first Monday of November has been a special day. Not this year. Maybe next year, but I wouldn't bet on it. Climate change is real, water quality is sliding. Donald Trump is President and at the rate he's going he will pollute everything in sight. Scallops are the canary in the mine for Peconic Bay.
226
@Steve
The imbecile Trump is gong to jail - it's just a matter of time. But he is just a symptom of the general malaise.
40% of the US voting public still support him even after the disasters of the last three years.
I've been studying global heating since 1979 and, sadly, I see no reason to be optimistic. Last year we broke all records for the volume of CO2 emitted despite us being aware of the consequenses since at least 1988.
61
I hope the fishermen who depend on these creatures remember that our current so-called leaders in Washington think that climate change is nonsense. And vote accordingly.
570
How many dead canaries in coal mines do we need before we take action?
Probably a lot more.
As long as people can stuff themselves, sit comfortably with a drink in hand in front of their HDTV, and drive their SUVs to the corner store instead of walking or cycling, nothing will happen.
Until that catastrophe strikes.
49
When the scallops are gone and the corner store is empty what then?
6
@Sherry
The scallops. The canaries. The bees. The Amazon forest. The empty corner store. Then us.
I'm happy I'm 78, not 28.
13
But according to our esteemed President, no such thing as climate change. So this disaster couldn't possibly have happened - at least in his world. But for the baymen, in the real world, this is real, and is real to all of us whose head is not buried in the sand.
27
Perhaps now less Long Islanders will vote for climate change deniers. It always amazed me how being conservative didn’t include conservation of the natural world.
14
Until people wake up to the negative correlation between voting for republicans and steady declines in their health, livelihoods and standard of living, stories like this will only continue and increase. Foolishly fighting against immigrants and abortion won’t mean much if everything else is gone.
76
This is a sad story, and raises many issues. One is the sexist language, and you really should know better by now. How about "fisherfolk" and "Bay fishers"? Because I don't think Louise Clark et al appreciate being referred to as male any more than I as a reader appreciate you eliminated all females involved in scallop fishing.
8
@thelynx
While I agree that it is better to use gender inclusive language, your focus on that as the primary issue evidenced by this article is distressing to me.
The stakes are so much higher than pronouns...
43
@thelynx
A fisher is weasel-like carnivore of North America, related to the marten. I haven't heard any of the large numbers of active, successful and respected women commercial fishing in Alaska kick about gender terminology. They're too focussed on catching fish.
11
@thelynx Great take away from a tragic story.
10
Despite Pres. Trump's assault on coastal communities with opening leases for oil and gas exploration , including the pristine Alaska protected areas, and cuts to NOAA and EPA, and easing industrial waste dumping into rivers, he did sign in 2018 Save Our Seas Act in a rare display of bipartisanship, to reduce ocean waste dumped by other countries, and to authorize more money for coastal cleanup in the U.S. One step forward and 4 steps backwards. The article talks about rising summer ocean temperatures over 80 degrees in the Peconic Bay as the primary culprit. Massachusetts waters a few degrees cooler didn't have a mass die off this summer.
5
All those tons of lawn chemicals have succeeded in toxifying the saltwater environs of Long Island. Factor in manmade climate change and the inordinate vanity of the Hamptons homeowners and it's clear that nature is doomed.
11
Anyone who flies, drives a car or heats their homes with oil or natural gas should just keep their scallops shut.
5
It's been known since the brown tide in the 1980s that humans were degrading the Peconic Bay -- nonetheless, reckoned to be one of the cleanest estuaries on the East coast.
I remember a conference at the bayside Lobster Inn the summer of 1989. Scallops were going through their first die off. Cornell researchers spoke, and named the guilty parties: run-off from Long Island's famous duck farms, fertilizer sustaining Suffolk County's valuable agriculture, cess pools, more fertilizer for the boom in new homes and gardens, and still more fertilizer for smooth green lawns and even smoother golf courses.
A while later -- one year? several? -- the community began re-seeding with infant scallops. But they forgot to stop the nitrogen-laden flows. It seemed unimaginable to relinquish the ease and economy of commercially fertilized crops, quick installation of sewerage via cess pools for quickly-built new homes, those perfect, rolling, green, green lawns of golf. Amen.
10
The scallops are not ours to eat.
They deserve to live out their own lives, and not for our pleasure.
Leave what few are left in the water!
1
Oh, good God. The next thing we know you'll be saying asparagus shoots have feelings too.
If a thing is plentiful, then we can eat it. If the scallops fail because of warming waters, that's another matter.
If we want to "plant" mussels in our harbors in order to filter the water, then that's something else, and their collection should be regulated.
Have some sense.
2
I wonder what the ocean water temperature would be if Scalia hadn't handed the presidency to Al Gore who won the popular vote with 50,999,897 instead of George Bush 50,456,002.
Think the planet is going to be inhabitable much longer?
The next mass extinction will be homo sapiens.
9
@Sharon Al Gore's carbon footprint alone could conceivably have killed these scallops
6
Obviously this is Trump's fault.
3
Personally, I think if you've voted for and continue to vote for GOP politicians, who have for decades, actively and intentionally obfuscated the truth about climate change at the bidding of their fossil fuel corporate handlers, and blocked any legislation that attempted to address it, you DESERVE all the misfortune, pain, loss, and sorrow that you get (and this Peconic Bay incident is only the tip of a globally sized iceberg). It enrages me that the rest of us who have been aware and and deeply concerned and trying to address it, and supporting and voting for people who would, will also have to suffer as a consequences of your destructive stupidity.
9
@rjstudio Well if it makes you feel better it enrages conservatives that liberals constantly preach climate change and yet do little in their own lives to change their habits and do their parts. If you want to effect change maybe begin with getting fellow liberals to stop taking private jets, having multiple houses, ect.
When Leonardo DiCaprio says everyone needs to be aware of climate change and then rents the worlds biggest yacht, it says to me that climate change can't be that serious if the very people most vocal about it, clearly don't see the need to change their lifestyle.
7
Should we blame Trump and the GOP?
Here's a metaphor: Let's say you eat cheeseburgers and fries for every meal, and one day you drop dead from a heart attack. So is that last cheeseburger the cause of your death? Was it that very last fry that did it?
Maybe, maybe not.
But they didn't do you any good.
1
@Scott Cole Based on that you can still blame the GOP and their science-denying. trump is just the culmination of a 40-year push by the GOP to dumb down the government and ignore science. trump isn't helping, that is for sure.
8
@Scott Cole My favorite study, that everyone seems to ignore, came from the Journal of Environmental Psychology and it states that climate change skeptics were most likely to report pro-environmental behavior....no one every seems to care that the side worried the most about climate change seem to behave in the least sustainable way.
1
I have as much disdain for Trump and the climate change deniers as most of the people posting here. But to attribute the decline of the scallop population to Trump misses the point, and may just become another dismissive talking point for the extreme right. Trump could have magically morphed into AOC 3 years ago, pushed through a green new deal, and these scallops would have still died. The change required to prevent this probably should have started 30 years ago (or before).
Sure, we need bold leadership that's not in denial about climate change. But as someone who grew up on LI, I can't help but think that everything about the metro NY area, however you vote, is a big part of the problem: too many people; too much consumption; and an endless demand for, and supply of convenience. As Walt Kelly noted in 1971, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
18
@Andrew N -- Yes, we should have started 30 years ago, instead of waiting until today, all the while delaying the inevitable need for drastic measures. It's time to elect people who will take those drastic measures to save our planet. Half-measures, and whining about what we didn't do 30 years ago, probably won't help.
16
@ChesBay We were told 40 years ago that the climate would change and not for the better. We ignored it. Most of the ignoring came from the Republicans. Al Gore called it to our attention, and everyone laughed at him. Obama tried to do something with the Paris Agreement -- which was a monumental effort to get the rest of the world on board. Trump has killed that. Obama went bold for cap and trace and a tax on carbon (which other countries have adopted) and that was spent energy for nothing. Once again, the capitalists and the Republicans killed these efforts. It is time to get rid of the Republicans. Do not ask them to cooperate in this. They are all climate change deniers. We have fires in California and Australia. Floods in the Midwest and no planting season -- which is causing farmer suicides. The arctic in on fire. Siberia is on fire. Permafrost is melting in Siberia and the locals are pulling mammoth tusks out of the muck and selling them to China -- these are animals who roamed the world 15,000 years ago. On and on. We have glaciers melting all around the world -- all 198,000 of them. The sea levels are rising. We are losing barrier islands. How much more do you want to know. And the Republicans tell us that this is not happening, that climate change is a hoax. A pox on all of them.
17
@Andrew N It was fossil-fuel-funded “Republicans” who blocked the fighting of global heating. Also, Ralph Nader tipping the election of “W” , and the defeat of Al Gore, as President did not just bring on the Iraq War disaster, tax cuts for the wealthy, blowing up the national debt, and the freedom of Wall Street to nearly destroy the American economy. It guaranteed inaction on climate change. The Bernie Cult did it again tipping the election to Trump by voting for “Green Party” Jill Stein, and they may repeat that in 2020.
9
Americans have done this to themselves. They refuse to accept the reality of climate change because it will force them to rethink how they live and it will require heavy government regulation and intervention to address. They vote for ignoramuses and others who are so ideologically rigid and fanatical that they will sooner see the world burn (literally) than confront the truth and change their minds. And, now, Bloomberg is considering a run for the Democratic nomination because people fear that Americans won't vote for Elizabeth Warren - a woman who has a well-thought out plan for her policies, who is in favor of directly addressing climate change and who, most importantly, understands that it is impossible to have a good society without good government. These fishermen are suffering and I feel for them, but they are electing people who are making the problem worse. As such, they are part of the problem.
38
@ Shaun Narine
Those who are tempted to feel vindictive toward the climate deniers and their political puppet-masters should remember that the deniers will suffer for their mistakes as much as the rest of us. And their descendants, should they have descendants, may suffer far more than any of us now can imagine. Vindication and vengeance will both be irrelevant.
Shaun I think not. It is one thing to deny science if it only affects yourself, like listening to the tobacco companies when they said smoking doesn't cause cancer and continuing to smoke. Denying the science climate change is like forcing cancer on everyone else. It's unforgivable.
2
"The relationship between excessive nitrogen, algae growth and low dissolved oxygen levels in estuaries is well documented. Hypoxia causes indirect and long-term impacts to the ecology of estuaries such as changes in sediment biogeochemistry, shifts in species composition, and in severe cases, leads to conditions that kill aquatic animals. Periodic fish kills in the western part of the Peconic Estuary have been attributed to sustained low dissolved oxygen concentrations due to a bloom of non-toxic algae and an influx of fish to the area. Economic impacts include negative effects on commercial fisheries, recreation and tourism."
From the Peconic Estuary Study https://www.peconicestuary.org/threats-to-the-peconic/water-quality-overview/nitrogen-pollution/
11
I hope my local neighbors will now see it is past the time to vote out our Congressman, Lee Zeldin, who continues to blindly support Donald Trump who believe that climate change is fake.
My community is suffering and something must be done. We need enlightened leaders now.
40
@Julie Levine never overestimate the American people.
6
@Julie Levine Given the way votes went last week, I'm not hopeful. People out here have their heads stuck in the silt.
6
Sad story but beautiful photography! We can only hope the scallops can come back.
12
@Leslie M. Gaines They can come back if we don't eat them—and there is actually nothing essential in animal products, not even vitamin B12, that can't be found in a plant-based diet.
3
@Leslie M. Gaines "We can only hope the scallops come back"?????? Thoughts and prayers and Hey, great photos of the catastrophe????? Hard to believe I'm reading this.
1
@Leslie M. Gaines Hope isn't going to cut it.
3
PCB laced microplastic is displacing plankton as the beginning of the ocean food chain. YET more often than not people blame climate change and propose solar panels, electric vehicles, wind farms when all they will do is make it worse. You want to save the world save the oceans. Plankton can stop global warming in its tracks if we keep plastic away if we don't in ten years we are all doomed and no need to pause and consider climate change, as plankton goes all life goes.
18
@horsedrag This the ultra mistement. Literally every sentence is scientifically unsupported. There is no evidence of linking micro plastics to plankton problems. There is evidence that you cannot grow enough plankton to solve global warming. The biggest problem for sea life with global warming is it makes the ocean more acidic.
3
@Steve Ross Sorry Steve but your wrong. I was the first person to address toxic maring plastic 30 years ago in a series of lawsuits that lasted 20 years. I have literally thousands of supporting documents, hours of expert testimony, was awarded the EPAs highest civilian award for my revelations NASA agrees with me. You have the science backwards The oceans are acidic because phytoplankton is half gone. Think of it this way in the beginning the world was a burning toxic soup of CO2 phytoplankton came along and feasted on it creating our oxygen and still does it became forests, and food for all sea life. Restored to historic levels it can easily handle 400 PPM CO2. Yore comment is seriously flawed and lacking any understanding of the most important organism on the planet. If we attempt to fix global warming with solar panels, electric vehicles and wind farms we're doomed.
We need leadership to increase state and federal gas tax. (and I drive a lot). Paying at the pump will force behavior change.
9
Suffolk County needs sewers and people have to be much more responsible regarding their lawns , too much fertilizers and other chemicals. Nitrogen contributes to the algae blooms which is bad for sea life. Suffolk officials including Bellone have to educate the public to the need for sewers both to protect our waterways and our ground water.
31
@JAB There is a cesspool-to-septic plan in place. Trouble is, the grants for it still result in huge out of pocket costs for homeowners. I would switch, but it's out of my price range right now, unfortunately. For now, most of us out here continue to dump our stuff in a hole in the ground. Sad
3
Baymen- it's time to hold the Republican party responsible for denying climate change. Organize and join the protests! We need to abandon fossil fuels and move towards renewable energy and energy efficiency in general. THIS IS A CRISIS.
34
First the lobsters vanish, now the scallops; us next?
3
The Baymen may be among the holdout Republicans on the east end, but the last election in the town of East Hampton went solid Democratic, including the town board and the Town Trustees. It’s the mid-Island Republicans who support trump-clone, Lee Zeldin, that are the threat.
20
So, these baymen are americans and we should feel compassion to their plight. Indeed I do feel for them, that their livelihood seems to be going up in smoke, and there's very little they can do except to find some other jobs.
Yet, a part of me can't help remembering the fact that in countless developing countries, not only their livelihood but their land and homes are disappearing too, thanks but no thanks to climate change. (And yes, it's the far wider pattern of "climate change," rather than the more narrowly-defined "global warming," that would account for the increasingly drastic natural phenom and disasters.)
Some would say, you can't blame it on the baymen for supporting Trump and GOP, denying climate change as hoax and fake news. I would argue that their votes have real consequences. The rolling back of environmental protection policies, the defunding of agencies, the aggressive pursuit of poor policy choice (hello, coal), we can go on and on of the horrendous direct consequences.
So yeah, of course I blame those who voted for Trump and GOP. Now that the chicken has come home to roast, what would they say to their ballot choice? This is a moment of truth, and if they still cling to Trump, then I'm sorry, my last ounce of compassion would go out the door with it.
28
@tiddle what on earth does trump being In office for three years have anything to do with a cyclical industry at best, and the current climate change observations and issues? Anything he’s done in the last three years have little to do w planetary climate change. And China is still building coal plants....
13
Mark, I’m sorry, truly sorry, that Trump is the disaster that he is, but we must face the fact that we have work to do and Trump is undoing all that we’ve fought for tooth and nail. He is going backwards. I’m sorry people have invested their hearts and souls into him. But they have to move on. We don’t have time to mess with him. Please. Let him go. We need to move.
7
@tiddle Unbelievable. This is the fault of the GOP and Trump? Grab for straws often?
1
Vote in 2020 as if your livelihood depended on it...
26
Let's call it "Global Warming", not "Climate Change" because Warming is definitely happening.
3
@Arthur
The changes include all kinds of extremes. In the coming week, records for cold temps for this time of year are expected to fall in much the country due to the arrival of an Arctic air mass. It's the extremity of the temps, not only that they can be extremely high.
4
@Arthur But, but, but. What are you going to label it when temperatures plummet and we get record snowfalls? Snowflakes are not confined to falling from the sky.
3
@Cornflower Rhys More grasping for straws and trying to label that which is naturally occurring. Rushing to judgement what is causing the scallop problem by labelling it as the fault of "climate change" (aka global warming), the GOP, and Trump is amusing indeed.
2
Birds are disappearing, Long Island scallops are dying, fish in the west are dwindling. Wake up, people!
29
@Sasquatch fewer insects fewer birds
1
Let me guess who these guys vote for.
27
It is not the humble and knowledgeable fisherman, or small ranchers, that bother me, though they should educate themselves. It's the mean-spirited, manipulative and deliberate group collective of unchecked power and greed; call it what you want, capitalism, communism, or socialism.
Sexism in general is a problem; because women/ other are generally more likely to care about the future and bring more global balance. ..
But there is a long list of enablers of ruination and global warming. of wildlife and the environment loss; but also of the arts, publishers of literature, humanities and science; important government institutions; excellent journalism and a free press; access to first rate education, and a fluid public democracy.... by corrupt chambers of commerce, tech baron manipulators; illegal, corrupt industries and trade; fossil fuels, arms industries/ plastics sub industries: chemical, pharma, and health; irresponsible investors and banking, private equity; hedge funders; irresponsible land developers, corporate hoteliers; forest products industries; destroyers of boreal and rain forests, destroyers of natural eco systems, fresh waters; other carbon sinks including good farming, swamps, river deltas -and oceans; corporate GMO and bad practice agriculturalists, giant corporate beef industry; any and all criminal power structures supporting phony governments of oppression and fraud.
Instead of saying look at all those jobs (!) , re-form all those jobs.
7
I grew up on Long Island in the 60's and 70's, and my father ( and uncles, and cousins ) were Baymen. We ( our family ) clammed most of the year, except for the fall when it was scallop season. It paid well, supported big families, and taught us all how to work for a living. I clammed summers and weekends in high school for a part time job, and had a boat before a car. First the clams went, and now the scallops. I feel badly for all the fisherman. But we have done this to ourselves. This is just the beginning of the climate disaster.
67
@Robert
Big families are not good choices either.
1
@Robert The article plainly stated that scientists have not yet determined the cause and yet it is climate change? There once was a boy who cried "Wolf!" a lot and we know how that turned out.
2
So, that's the end of the line for monitoring the scallops.
Now, the monitoring is on those whose livelihoods have been disrupted - are they going to join us who feel climate change is real going to hurt us all?
14
@tarik it’s called nature. This type of thing has been happening ever since I started scuba diving in the 70’s. Especially on the West Coast
5
Another first for capitalism: Sterile, life-free oceans! Yea! USA! USA! USA!
What’s next? Burn off all the forests so that there is no where for animals to hide (from us)?
Good job, humans! Getting the planet cleared of life so that the aliens can inhabit the place without opposition.
23
And they will all go vote republican who denies their struggle...
16
Trump will give them YOUR tax dollars as a handout, and everything will be ok with them.
12
@Shelby No, not enough big industry to get handouts. They only plan handouts to big ag, not little ag.
I have family roots out there on the North Fork, a very special place. I’ve been to Braun’s and the Southold Fish Market many times, and I miss the heavenly aroma that greets you as you open their doors. We always looked forward to the opening of scallop season. I certainly hope it’s not over, and that the spawning this year means the scallops will rebound next year. But 80* waters? It was never that warm when I was a kid, frolicking in the bay.
10
@Susan
Indeed - I spent many beautiful summers out in Aquebogue - fall meant scallops, beautiful fall colors and the great weather of October.
The North Fork has gotten far too precious in recent years - all began to change with the wineries and the money coming out from the city. My memories will suffice.
1
So classic to blame a politician for policy that has little to do with the issue at hand. I’d like to see the survey results from those who want to blame a politician but do not have an more advanced on-site waste water disposal system for their home. Use of cesspools on Long Island are the single most significant contributor to excess nitrogen loading into groundwater and bays. So before you blame any politician, ask yourself if you’ve done your share to solving the problem by having minimized your personal impact on the environment. You don’t need to be compelled to act on your own free will to do the right thing by upgrading your cesspool.
12
Cesspools have been banned for a long time. There are no more cesspools now than there were 20 years ago and there were scallops then. So no, the problem is not cesspools.
12
I live on the East End and I know that nitrogen in our waters is a terrible problem. But the scientists studying the problem of the devastation of the scallop harvest have clearly identified the warming temperatures of the waters to be the cause. That is not due to nitrogen loading. It is due to human caused climate disruption.
16
@Hank agree. And- How much fertilizer runoff from all the fancy wine farms and other ag/residential uses have affected the local waters?
4
Likely to be the new normal....climate change is here.
5
I wonder how many of the fishermen are Trump/ GOP supporters, considering their “Climate Change is a Hoax” stance???
16
Never experienced a heat wave on the East End like the one this summer. Lots of things curiously absent from the shoreline: hermit crabs, jellyfish, horseshoe crabs. Very few seagulls about. What was washing up: whole intact crabs and clams, dead. Lots of plastic trash. Saw a big Trump flag flying off the stern of a yacht.
43
this is just the beginning as our oceans die
12
Maybe the baymen should find one of the millions of jobs that Trump claims to have created in all those new and reopened factories and coal mines.
25
There is a political side to this. How many have voted for a Republican, a representative of a party that denies the very existence of climate change. How many voted for Lee Zeldin or Trump. Suffolk County went for Trump by 52%, Lee Zeldin by 58%. How much of this is the inability to grasp the reality of our looming disaster until a part of it actually effects you personally. Greenport and a good chunk of Southold will simply disappear with the predicted sea level rise. It'll get uninhabitable before that due to storm surges and tides. These particular ship has sailed and there's not much that can be done at this point for the Peconic's baymen.
60
Well said!
7
The truth of climate change is going to be continuous, scallops today, and something else tomorrow.
At this point, we can only hope humanity gathers to fight the worst effects before its too late for humanity.
27
If there are so few scallops this season, maybe they should leave them alone and cancel the season. If the population is eeking by, maybe it could use a bit of help.
15
@mlbex you didn´t understand the problem. There will be not more scallops period, if the water temperature keeps on rising. Scallops need cold water, very cold. The warming of the oceans is not making their lives easy. It is klling them. US Republicans politicians in charge keep denying science and meanwhile the Earth changes, animals die etc. US enviromental policies are uselss.
15
Avoid the temptation to blame the watermen for their predicament. Yes they drive large pickups, and may have even voted Republican (and thus against environmental protection). But they're not themselves actively against environmental protection, they're not long-term resource managers or policy wonks who should have seen this coming. Even if their second job was hugging trees and driving electric cars, the resource they depend upon would still be in jeopardy. It does no good to blame the victim, to smugly state that somehow they deserve this fate.
24
@Greg - don’t blame Republican watermen? Give me a break. Anybody who denies climate change and votes for Trump and other climate change denying Republicans ARE the problem. In case you didn’t notice, Trump only has power n]because his base supports him and the Republicans are all in fear of being primaried by Trump. So, yeah, voters ARE responsible. Imagine that.
27
I asked the question not to blame them but more out of the curiosity if they will still vote for Trump and GOP after all of this??!
7
@dolfer I would think they are angry that they have lost their jobs... but Trump will tell them it isn't climate change, feed their anger, and they will BELIEVE. That is the problem. We have wasted four very vital years of preparation, tax incentives for clean energy, and other solutions -- but humans' survival on earth is no longer a given. Nobody gives Carter credit for being a good President... but had we followed HIS advice and action, we could have been leaders in saving civilization...
17
I don't understand the peeps here who accused the baymen of being Trump supporters. Where is the proof of that? Chesapeake watermen (and women) yes - read Earl Swift's non-fiction "Chesapeake Requiem" - but Long Islanders?
6
An awful lot of people in Eastern Long Island are indeed Trump supporters—it would be great if this weren’t the case, but unfortunately it’s true. Our current Congressman, Lee Zeldin, is a Major Trump supporter and enabler.
41
@PrairieFlax I know the area. Lotsa Trump support. They elected Lee Zeldin. Some, of course, is related to the Democrats notions on immigration policy. If you go to some parts of Suffolk County you will be convinced you are in Central America. If the Democrats had a sensible immigration platform we might actually be able to get rid of Trump and Zeldin.
7
I'd like to be on your bandwagon PrairieFlax, but alas, I'm from the area in question. Yes, a lot of them are Trump supporters.
When Trump made that speech slamming Ted Cruze and his "New York values" tripe, he was in Patchogue. I was watching on TV and immediately said, "Trump's going to win Suffolk County." MS 13 actually IS a problem in that area, btw.
7
The seafood restaurants and stores should fund the reseeding of the bay with baby scallops and hope for the best. Scallops are being farmed off the coast of Maine.
7
@Kay Sieverding If higher water temperature is the problem in NY, how will reseeding and hoping for the best solve the problem?
32
@Kay Sieverding Hoping for the best is leading us down the IPCC RCP 8.5 scenario which predicts 3-4 degrees C increase by 2100. By 2050, every environment in the world will be transformed. Scientists are already predicting the loss of over a million species. We are experiencing but a small taste.
8
@Kay Sieverding - Did you read the article? They did that and there was a huge crop of scallops... but this year sea water temps are too hot and are killing all of the adult scallops. So, re-seeding them will do nothing if the temp keeps rising.
7
I wonder if anyone here knows the answer to this: I live at the edge of a small cove in Rhode Island. When I was a kid in the 1950s, there were always scallops in the cove.
Then over the course of 1-2 days dredgers came in and harvested all the scallops and in the process of dredging ripped all the seaweed off the bottom of the cove. To that day to this, 65-70 years later, there have been no scallops and no seaweed in the cove.
The article says the scallopers use dredges. I am wondering how much damage they do with those? Perhaps it is not the water temperature alone, but this devastating method of harvesting that is finally catching up with them.
75
I wouldn’t be surprised if over-harvesting and suboptimal methods also play a part.
16
@KarenAnne
Thank You for your really interesting comment; and for being observant of possible parallel carelessness that impacts nature, and species of life everywhere.
10
@KarenAnne Most of it is due to higher water temps. The WaPo wrote a very long piece on the effects of a hot zone off the coast of Paraguay. They directly attribute it to the decline in the number of yellow clams which have long been a diet staple there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-world/
1
Here on the west coast oysters are dying. They say the ocean is absorbing the extra CO2 which makes the ocean more acidic and dissolves baby oyster shells. Perhaps that is at play with scallops too.
21
Lived and worked on Long Island in the 70s and 80s. We had an unusually warm January in 1980 which caused a major decline of the blue mussel population in the waters around Long Island that year.
10
What struck me in this story is that while only a handful of scallops were caught, too few to even sell, they were kept anyway instead of being released.
26
This area was consumed by the red tide this summer. That kills scallops.
14
Scallop population is and always has been cyclic. Water salinity is affected by rainfall has much to do with their migration. Unlike oysters, the little buggers are very mobile. Florida’s Gulf Coast hosts many excellent scallop populations and the water temperature can exceed 80 degrees. The good news is that spawn from just a few scallops can re-populate a bay. Please don’t use the cyclic nature of scallop populations as another political statement to justify “climate change” - whatever that amorphous term is supposed to mean. Don’t worry folks, the scallops will come storming back.
8
@Irving Schwartz So the concerns expressed by a shellfish ecologist who has been in this area for some time should be ignored? I know experts are oddly unpopular in this day and age, but I'd suggest we listen to this Mr. Tettelbach.
94
@Mike
I found Mr. Schwartz's comment to be very informative: that of a knowledgeable person long accustomed to the ways of scalloping, and scallops!
Mr. Tettlebach the shellfish ecologist might not have thought of the increased rainfall and lowered salinity factor, or neglected to suggest it. Perhaps Hurricane Dorian or other storms impacted the immediate bay area with heavy rains. I was in Western Massachusetts recently and the brooks were dry there.
Both the hurricane, and the mini drought, one hundred and fifty miles inland, could definitely be trends related to climate change.
3
But neither you (nor prob anyone else) can say with any degree of certainty that the cycle remains unaffected by climate changes, and that everything will return to “normal”, much as one might like to side with you.
4
Baymen, ignore anyone saying to you "we told you so" and simply change your vote for 2020. Trump is part of your problem; climate change is destroying your hauls. It is not a hoax. Vote the GOP and their oil/coal enabling out of office and save the planet. If the planet is healthy it will give back to you.
101
People are just too stupid. And too selfish. That's the lesson. We could take care of this planet and all it's creatures. We could feed everyone. We could keep populations down by supporting easy access to free birth control. But we don't do any of this. Aren't we brilliant, sophisticated creatures? Hastening our end as a species, when even dinosaurs with their puny brains lasted millions of years. Aren't we terrific? This article is just another little nail in the coffin. What a fantastic species we are. If there is a Higher Power, he/she or it must be disgusted with us. Disappointed is too mild a word. Our greed, lust for power and blatant disregard for others-- all of it is coming back to haunt us. Mother Nature doesn't play. I pity my future grandchildren. But innocents always suffer don't they? Good job humanity. Good job.
58
@Eva Lockhart I have come to the same conclusion as you have. I have given up hoping humanity will find a way to a sustainable future. It won't. We will have mass extinction and the collapse of entire ecosystems including eventually our civil societies and likely even humanity itself. I wish we were smart enough to avoid this outcome but despite knowing for several generations this was happening, we've done nothing to bend the Keeling CO2 emissions curve. It's just a matter of time. The disruptions will pile on top of each other until it all fails.
10
@Eva Lockhart The dinosaurs have us beat. They didn't cause their own extinction.
5
@Eva Lockhart I am very sorry that we are taking the innocent species with us. If humans destroy themselves out of greed that's one thing, but to kill the planet and the other species on it, that's unforgivable.
10
These creatures are going EXTINCT and all we care about are the poor humans who can no longer make a living off killing them.
26
Well gosh - couldn't you see from the photo, the shuckers were just plain hungry & wanted a "Mess of em' for supper" ...?
2
Somewhere, Joseph Mitchell is crying.
1
These people are fishermen, but unfortunately they seem totally disconnnected from the natural environment that sustains them. Like most people in the industrialized world. Read some Robinson Jeffers, read the Dark Mountain Manifesto, read Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and realize our civilization is over. Either we transform it into a post-capitalist steady-state form, or we experience uncontrolled social collapse. My guess is the odds are about 1:9.
34
@T. Clark Thank you for the reading suggestions. Read some Jeffers and the Darkness Mountain Manifesto- eye opening and powerful
2
@Justin, add ‘The Sixth Extinction’ to your list.
2
"Climate change is a hoax".... until of course all the animals are dead. This is very much a part of long term GOP policy of war on the environment. Either vote blue or stop whining.
70
Everyone knows there is no global warming. It's a Chinese hoax. It's a hoax by scientists!
MAGA!
When are people going to wake up? We've been warned by science that global warming has been a problem since before President George Bush in 1988!
28
@Donna - I was a geology major in college in the late 60s and knew about it then. Was shown charts including one charting the growth of CO2 emissions that had been going on for some time already. Al Gore was learning about this at the same time.
42
@Donna Jimmy Carter put solar panels in the White House, we instated a 55 mph speed limit federally, as well as tax incentives for clean energy innovation. We were supposed to keep our thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer. It was a BEGINNING. Then Reagan, who loved the rich and their oil, won. He spent money taking OUT the newly-placed solar panels, and the USA promptly forgot all about climate change. We'd be fine now, if we had kept the ball rolling in the late 70s...
13
Reganism was the beginning of the end. Long live trickle down. Or not. We will see.
2
I sure hope these well meaning fishermen realize they are represented by congressman Lee Zelden, one of Trump's (the climate change denier) biggest supporters.
143
This is the population that has re-elected a Trump supporting Climate change denier multiple times.
88
The sad thing is that this was completely predictable. And it will only get worse. The first questions about CO2 in the atmosphere were in the late 1800s. I read a paper about its being a potential problem that was written in 1906. In the 1960s and 70s there was alarm angst scientists and acknowledgement by fossil fuel companies that it was a threat.
Since then there has been a concerted effort by fossil fuel companies who paid certain academics to sow DOUBT about the science, in much the same way as the tobacco companies did as they too sold death to people. They even use the same PR firms to do it. Of course politicians, bought and paid for by oil and gas, either promulgated the false narratives amor refused to mention it and pilloried those who did. The people were left in the dark by these campaigns saying it was all a socialist plot and or was fake news.
Now the pot has boiled. We have reached over 415ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. We have yet to feel the effects of that in any large scale. Think of this. When an aeroplane applies full thrust to its engines in order to take off, it moves very slowly at first. This is because the power applied has to overcome the weight of the aeroplane. But as it starts to move it speeds up faster and faster until it reaches takeoff speed. By then it's moving fast and it takes a lot to stop it. We are at takeoff speed now and we won't be able to stop the impending disaster. We can't cool the oceans or refreeze the icecaps. It's too late.
72
@Deirdre Oliver
Every day seems to bring news of ecocidal disasters. And we are fiddling around with climate change deniers in positions of power. Greta Thunberg is right. How dare they.
55
Some people here seem to think that Trump singlehandedly caused climate change, or that his election somehow prevented us from stopping it.
No one knows what it would take to stop climate change, and they are lying if they tell you they do. That said, these fisherfolk may have finally realized what is at stake.
5
@Paul
Au contraire. Roger Revelle of Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California noted with alarm that the monitoring of global CO2 (the primary greenhouse gas causing rising temperatures and climate change) levels in the atmosphere on the island of Hawaii was showing year-after-year increases for multiple decades in a row. That was about sixty years ago. Exxon scientists noted the same thing in the 80's.
How do we mitigate the changes taking place? By reducing green house gas emissions. Choose which side your on. Trump's on the side of mass extinction. I'm on the side of preserving and protecting life on planet earth. And I'm no liar. Capiche?
114
@Paul The first thing to stop rapid climate change is to have the intelligence and humility to not block the efforts of others trying to limit greenhouse gasses. Like Dear Leader's revoking of California's stricter auto emission regulations for example.
12
@Paul You're just wrong. There is plenty of information about how to retard climate change, and the Scandinavian countries, for example, are making major leaps forward in this.
No one is saying that Trump caused climate change, but he is a major impediment to the US efforts to combat it.
14
Peconic Bay is a shallow body of water surrounded on three sides. A glance at the NOAA charts indicates that it's not much deeper than 25'.
Bodies of water like this are prone to heating which stratifies the water column and that prevents oxygen from getting down to the scallops habitat. It also kills the eelgrass, crabs, juvenile fish, and all the other invertebrates that are unable to get out of bays like Peconic.
Situations like this will become more and more common as the climate warms. Scallops will shift further north or will be found out in deeper waters. For a while at least.
Here in the PNW a few lakes are getting solar powered air pumps to help oxygen get down into the water to save aquatic populations. It might help Peconic Bay as well but it's only a temporary fix.
I'm no longer fishing so I don't hear from others like I used to (I collected specimens for research) but I used to hear fishermen blame Democrats for things like increased gas prices after the US invaded Iraq. A small percent of them understood that they were the last bunch of cowboys but most couldn't comprehend the changes that occurred in front of their own eyes.
Fishermen should be trading their dredges for aquaculture tools but sportsmen and real estate agents are calling the shots in waters near land and it's still too much of a gamble.
It's only going to get worse. Small operators like baymen are no longer viable.
47
@lightscientist66 these scallops (bay) are not going to "shift further north or will be found out in deeper waters." They require a particular habitat that's found in only a few places in the northeast.
13
@Kevin Aren't the scallops doing well in Massachusetts? I thought I read that in the article. The water is cooler up there. But not in deeper waters, just in similar bays.
@lightscientist66 My old navigation map showed plenty of depths like 36' or 38.' And you get a lot of churn where tides squeeze through tight spaces -- try going from Orient Point to Flanders in a small sailboat. And there was aquaculture in the Peconic -- oysters to the North, clams to the South. Though I haven't been out in 15 years to check if the aquaculture has stayed viable.
Wonderful photography!
Sad story.
18
@Michael Great minds! I was going to make the same comment. I would love to have these photos on my wall. They are great art. Thanks to Johnny Milano.
3
I cannot believe the baymen were allowed to harvest ANY scallops this year. The few survivors carry genes that contributed to their survival, and we need those genes to make it into the next generation. There should have been a moratorium placed in advance of the season. It's possible that I am not understanding their life cycle, but even if the harvestable adults don't spawn, there are other arguments to be made for a harvest moratorium.
Certainly whatever wildlife feeds on them is in mortal danger if we harvest all that remain.
51
@Heidi They died because it got too hot for them. Any progeny will also die so it's likely that scallops in that place are gone for good no matter what anyone does.
There's a thing called functional extinction. It means that there are too few breeding adults to replace themselves so each generation becomes smaller and smaller until there are none. That takes time. Then there are disasters that wipe out all of them. This appears to be one of those. Corals are in the same place. The sea is becoming too hot for them to survive. There are always other factors too. Pollution, algal blooms (as here), habitat destruction etc all play a part. We are in the middle of the 6th great extinction era and WE are the major cause of it. It's interesting that it only gets noticed when money is involved. Like honey bees. In affecting the production of honey for money, people started saying OOPS! Wild bees and all other flying insects are steadily disappearing but who cares? Birds and other creatures that live on them are going with them. But unless it affects US, who cares?
27
@Heidi
Fishermen can't seem to constraint themselves when is there is no regulations limiting their catch for the season. They like many others just see dollar signs and get take a much as they can without thinking about the future. What is new?
16
@Vail
A sanctimonious tirade directed at fisherman!
"...can't seem to constraint themselves when there are no regulations..." It's human nature. That's why there are speed limits on highways. Do you ever speed?
They aren't the ones to blame...!
6
So even though the fisheries is in the state of collapse they still took the very last ones just to make sure they were ALL gone???
25
@Mark Potter that’s not how it works. These adult scallops already spawned and only have a life span of two years. Harvesting them wouldn’t have an impact on the next generation at all. You can’t harvest young scallops, that are only a year old.
11
@Lisa Zamber How much damage does dredging do to the young scallops? As I noted above, in the small cove I live on, dredgers totally destroyed the scallop population in 1-2 days of dredging over 50 years ago.
12
What happens when market values dominate and democratic values are replaced by corporate values. Oh well, the ocean was nice while it lasted.
34
Awful story. Thank goodness these baymen and baywomen have Lee Zeldin, their congressman, to help fight their fight against man-made climate change.
Oh wait, apparently Zeldin has a 10% score from the League of Conservation voters, supported withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement Treaty and said this a couple of years ago "It would be productive if we could get to what is real and what is not real...I'm not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are."
Clearly the baymen, their neighbors and friends will get rid of a congressman whose positions and votes are accelerating the destruction of their livelihood. Right? Right?
179
@JS
Don't think they are getting rid of their congressmen. Do they connect the dots when it comes to the environment and politics? Don't think so.
34
@JS Suffolk County voted for Trump in 2016 and they will do the same, most likely, in 2020. Keeping the White Man as top of the heap is more important than ensuring clean air and water for their children.
8
I wonder how these fisherman will vote in 2020?
35
@k richards Well they saw fit to take the last of the scallops out of the bay rather than leave them and allow them to reproduce so my guess is they will vote for Trump again.
7
@Mark Potter So sad-I'm afraid you're correct.
2
@Mark Potter according to others it doesn't work that way. The scallops have a two-year life cycle. The higher temperatures are killing the scallops. Leave them in the water and they will die because it's too hot. If the water temp comes down, they can reseed with young scallops later. They had previously reseeded after some other catastrophe and had some excellent seasons.
1
the billionaires and corporations are making more money than ever. They are very happy. But what will they buy when there is nothing worthwhile left. Perhaps artificial reality will be so good by then that everyone will be permanently hooked in so there is no need to look at the filthy dying planet left behind. But the earth will have the final word and destroy humans and most life on earth so she can begin again from scratch.
30
@bobby
The billionaires will get in their private rockets built by Tesla and go off to other planets to survive.
There are many good novels on future apocalyptic societies, but one of the most vivid for me (hate to say"my favorite") is "The Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler.
1
To those of you who question the fisherman and their contributions to ecology. They have been the canaries in the coal mine so long that when they first complained in the 1940’s REPUBLICANS were seen as the environmental hero’s, and the Republicans actually tried against the duck industry. Of course now they are Trump zombies. But the collapse on Long Island has been going on my entire life
26
@John
I guess that must be why some people felt the need to still harvest every last scallop they could find. If anything it will increase the chances of them not returning.
3
Just think, when all the wildlife is gone, at least we’ll have money to eat.
43
I used to live on the North Fork on the East End and so looked forward to scallop season. They are truly one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. Clearly climate change will cause far greater disasters than me missing my scallops, but the ignorance with which we move forward is genuinely disheartening. Though the current Administration has a long list of terrible actions, those on the environment most affect the future of my children and should get those who feel the same to vote them out!
67
What's odd is how many fisherman out here vote for trump and local GOP climate change skeptics. Please, can anyone explain how my neighbor who is a professional fisherman in the Sound can be such an avid trump supporter. Btw, I live 5 minutes from Peconic Bay
61
@anthony holbrooke, Check the color of their skin
10
@anthony holbrooke The same way many in unions vote for Trump and the GOP, which has for years been fighting to bust up all the unions from steamfitters to teachers. Oh, except the cop union. The GOP are fine with that one.
19
@anthony holbrooke
The same way someone who has an unfaithful and abusive spouse or partner will reject every sort of sensible advice and stay with them... they close their eyes and ears to truth and follow only the advice of people who tell them what they want to hear...
The same way a patient with an incurable illness will desperately fall for the claims of snake oil salesmen and swear by their “miracle” cures even as their sickness gets worse...
Its the same with most people who vote for these GOP lowlifes... coal miners, assembly line workers, steel workers, fishermen... they know the end of the line isn’t far away but they are willing to embrace those that make outrageous promises that are obviously the most egregious lies from the very people who’ve been exploiting them from the beginning... simply because the other side is telling them change must come and your way of doing things is no longer a viable sustainable option.
They are willing to take a chance with the conmen because on that one and in billion chance they deliver, they get their happy ending.
The only other option is a flat out change or an end to their legacy.
The conmen know this and prey on the desperation, plying these folks with pretty lies and empty promises.
9
This gave me chills. A harbinger of the future of pollution and climate change.
22
What do they expect when the water is overheated, polluted, and the area has been over-harvested for years. Regulation that isn't strong enough, global warming, the baymen, and consumers are all at fault.
9
@J Coletti over-harvested? There are strict limits on how much you can take and the season is short. There were plenty of adult scallops this year until the water temperatures got too high for too long in July. This is global warming. The baymen are not to blame for this. You are just wrong.
17
@J Coletti Maybe you should read the articles you comment on.
6
Yet in 2018 Suffolk county bucked the blue wave and voted climate change denier Trump's enabler Lee Zeldin back into Congress. Yes, indeed, elections do have consequences!
77
I remember seeing so many stories about voters along the entire northeastern US coast (mainly fishermen) who voted for Trump because they thought he'd improve their livelihoods. Little did they know he would do things that exacerbate a decline (via inaction over climate change). The question is, are they ready and willing to vote for someone who believes in climate change and will, therefore, enact the changes necessary (no matter how painful they'll be) for the future of all inhabitants of this planet?
65
The failures related to climate change seem to be most dire along the coasts where temperature related effects like oxygen sea, algae blooms, salinity, acidity, species invasion, and temperature ranges are beyond our control. The oceans are going to get hit the hardest from this disaster and will take the longest to recover.
19
Disappearance of aquatic species is the new normal and sadly scallops are just the latest example. Humans are killing the planet faster than it can heal.
My teenaged grandson will never have so many of the experiences that made life in the US special for me growing up.
Environmental criminals like Trump who steal our children's futures should pay for their crimes.
74
@Ken Solin I am just curious, Mr. Solin, if you would answer. What do you think about immigration into California?
1
@Wan, are they letting environmental criminals emigrate into California now? Just asking for a friend.
1
The saddest lesson from this story is that things are going to get bad before they get even worse. Please get out and vote next year. Our future and our very lives are at stake.
71
In the parable of the rich man and the beggar, the soul of the rich man pleads with God to send someone to warn his relatives of the errors of their ways before it is too late. He is informed that they already have Moses and the Prophets and that further warnings should not be needed.
With the virtual extinction of the Peconic bay scallop population, mankind has received another very clear warning from Mother Nature. If anyone believes that life 50 years from now will be like life now if we do not change our ways dramatically they are guilty of a very misplaced optimism.
We need to radically restructure our economies, ethics, and populations if life is to remain viable for humans. We have been warned in so many ways. This is only another clear signal.
60
Climate change , may be.
The real understanding of this new era is unpredictability.
Get used to it.
Tomorrow there WILL BE A SECOND SANDY AND THAT IS IT .
3
It's hard to have sympathy. Do these people give back to the ocean, protect it in any way? From this story, all I see is plunder for generations.
I don't expect any positive stories on the environment for the rest of my life, although I'll work for it and I'll hope. All over the planet, increasingly desperate people are ravaging the earth's bounty with no effort to understand and nurture it. Humans have become scavengers rather than protectors.
23
@Allison I’d say that most subsistence fishermen are more attuned to conservation efforts. They understand what a bad year can do to their livelihoods and are more willing to participate in restoration efforts - as mentioned in the article you are commenting on.
16
For many years I lived in a saltwater community on the coast of Maine that was rife with small, independent commercial fishermen, and I can tell you that blaming such fishermen, while easy, isn’t the answer. This is a far more nuanced and complex problem then that. Nobody works harder and on more faith than these men and women do, or is more vulnerable to well-meaning but crippling and often baffling regulations. Now they have the indelible and irrefutable effects of climate change literally affecting their livelihoods. The fishermen, who in my experience were all stewards of their environment (and to a man in love with it), are just one thread of a complicated web, and too easily targeted.
35
Daniel and Robyn, thanks for the correction. I reread the article and noted this time the restoration efforts.
20
When it became clear that scallops would not be available in sufficient numbers to support commercial fishing, at least this year, the scallop-men should have been encouraged to leave the scallops alone, so that the shellfish might produce heartier offspring. That, after all, is evolution, and that's all we've got at this point.
8
You people have no idea what your talking about. The adult scallops were plentiful until about July, when there was a mass die off during spawning and abnormally high water temperatures for too long of a period. There was no harvesting of any scallops. Scallops season opens in November.
10
@Lisa Zamber
From the article:
"Ken Homan of Braun’s, a longtime distributor of bay scallops, has seen years that were down, but never a year when his best suppliers decided to skip opening day. By the end of the day Monday, Braun’s had sold 24 pounds of Peconic Bay scallops, down from 2,000 pounds on opening day last year."
So there were a few scallops harvested. But unfortunately those "abnormally" warm water temperatures are perhaps the new normal, and if so, the scallops will either adjust to them via evolution or disappear from Peconic Bay.
6
@Lisa Zamber
Seems that you are in error.
Had a Gourmet Seafood business
in LA for 20 years. Maine day boat
scallops, were 80%of my business.
The last few years, were incredibly
difficult as scallops just dried up during
the inshore season. Season used to open in
November, but has been pushed back till Dec.
Even with the strict quotas now in place,
ask the fisherman (women) how the
future looks to them.
8
Scallops grow just fine here on the West Coast of Florida where summer water temperatures are in the upper 80’s so it’s not warming so look for pollution.
5
@James it’s a different species of scallop. Just because a brown bear can thrive in temperate climates, doesn’t mean a polar bear can.
38
@James not all scallops are the same. Peconic bay scallops cannot survive such warm temperatures . The water reached 85 degrees for 5 days straight this July. NEVER seen before. The stress of spawning in such high temperatures resulted in mass die off. Water temperatures have been abnormally high for the last five years here as result of global warming/ climate change. And people are being directly affected in all kinds of ways. Me and my father are out of work for an entire season now because of this. And so many families will be affected.
45
Not the same kind of scallops.
11
Another vote for Trump will solve all of their problems.
25
Everyone of them a Republican who goes home to watch Fox demonize a little Swedish girl who dares complain about the earth she’s inheriting.
86
You have no idea this is true so why do you find it necessary to spread it? Don't be like Trump!
8
@Steve You paint with an awfuly wide brush -- and I'm not a Republican.
8
Thanks for making this story more prominent in today's online edition. Its an extremely important example of what is happening to all of us.
26
@KATHLEEN
People are not reading paper edition. Main edition is online edition anymore.
You are addressing this is a app like. no This is it, it is NYT.
Give up paper save the trees .
1
@su
I understand the point you are trying to make but consider that cutting down trees locks up their carbon, as long as you don't burn them, and makes room for new, growing trees which lock away more carbon. The server farms that deliver digital content use huge amounts of electricity and, unless that is generated from renewable sources, probably contribute more carbon on net. Its all so complex.
13
@Ken
As we have been fighting this battle in Western MA for quite awhile, and continue to do so: Older, mature trees sequester way more carbon than immature trees.
The human-created climate crisis (in the air, on the land, and in the waters) and its rapidly approaching dire consequences to all life on the planet, sadly reminds me of this quote:
“How did you go bankrupt?"
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Our collective moral bankruptcy and material greed has negatively affected every corner of this planet and every species to which this Earth will always be our only home.
46
News alert for Sawyer Clark -- this is not sudden. Scientists have been warning about this for years, but people haven't been listening. Or they like their habits too much to adjust them. Or they buy into the lies of certain politicians and corporations.
But don't call it sudden.
37
@Paula S
An example from a May 30, 2014 Daily Mail:
"Oystars, clams and mussels could be disappear fro menus if their habitats are affected by climate change, researchers have warned.
A new study found half the marine mollusk species looked at are projected to lose a big slice of their North Atlantic habitat to global climate change in this century.
Researchers say the animals are unable to shift their habitats - and instead will simply die out in many areas."
A prediction from little over 5 years ago and you are right, there were so many more.
17
@Paula S
We have been aware since the book Silent Spring which predicted where we are now. Scientists do not all agree that this can be reversed; some of them believe we have passed the tipping point. I hope for future generations they are wrong. We owe it to our children, grandchildren et al to stop pretending that the use of fossil fuels will not eventually destroy the ozone layer which now protects our air. It will do that unless we change. Our planet cannot sustain life without oxygen to breathe. That includes wild life, human life, and Marine life in the oceans which are becoming acidified and polluted.
7
Another hard fact to take in, somewhat pointing at global warming, the elephant in the room. Once again, there will be denials and blame aplenty to be thrown around when finally the chances are that, both in the short term and down the line, business will just resume, as usual, with the overfishing of the oceans until there is nothing is left off while in the process the industry will silently hope that some invisible hand will reinvigorate the stock overnight hence save the next season.
Such a bleak outcome has long been in the cards, supported by scientific data who have been sending warnings for decades now. Mostly to deaf ears.
It's just too bad that the ones most directly impacted by it here aren't necessarily the ones most guilty for, meanwhile, at this point, everyone is on the same boat.
The slow and steady undergoing process of acidification of the oceans is already directly impacting the seafood chain, killing coral reefs, hampering, on a large front, sea life's development, for instance by weakening their exoskeleton.
32
Green New Deal anyone, especially my so-called conservative trump voting friends?
Conservative actually means "to conserve!"
31
Aren't those who harvest lobsters in New England waters facing the same eventual fate?
10
@Andrew Porter How did this happen all of a sudden from last years' surplus? Climate change has been slowly affecting the waters for years but this seems so drastic. There must be other factors involved such as pollution, algae, etc.
4
@breezyvalley It can take a long time to walk to the edge of a cliff. How long does it take to fall over the cliff?
7
I can't help but wonder who these fishermen vote for? I have fished in the pacific all my life, and watched as the salmon population dropped to all time lows. BTW, Patagonia has a special out about saving the pacific salmon fishery (worth a watch). Water is a big topic here in Ca., so is climate control (anyone who is awake should be aware of the battle between Trump and Ca on auto emission and climate change).
I fish with several Trump fans (though the salmon demise didn't start with Trump). As we fish and talk, its always baffling to me how environmental policy is not directly tied to fish population and management. I still cannot wrap my head around how my friends can let their hate of democrats short circuit their ability to drive their party to maintain a healthy earth. Reminds me of the farmers here in Ca that support Trump and Republicans who make Mexican laborers out to be boogeymen, while their farms and lives AND WEALTH depends upon that cheap labor.
111
The feces are in the fan, fellow peeps. The warning lights are all flashing red and the sirens are sounding the alarm.
Do we care enuf' to change our evil ways?
All signs point to No. In '18, we drove and flew record miles, built bigger McMansions and bought more urban 4WD SUVs and pickups, WASTED a record &age of the energy and food we produce…
How 'bout you? Do you know what your Carbon Footprint is? Or how it compares to, say, the average Brit's? Have you ended your pleasure driving and ego travel? Insulated your house and sealed the leaks? Installed LEDs and powerstrips? Yada and yada…
Or maybe it's better to just wait for "them" to do something first? Waddya think?
36
@Miss Anne Thrope How many of us have seriously curbed our airplane travel? I understand that to be the single most effective thing an individual can do to reduce greenhouse emissions.
5
@Barney Wolfe The single biggest impact on the environment is repopulating. We are adding another billion humans every 8 years. It took us 150K years to reach 1 billion. Then 100 years to hit 2 billion, since then it's been geometric 'growth.'
5
The few remaining scallops are the most hardy and represented an evolutionarily select seed population for next year. So why catch them?
29
For profit of course. Money comes first, last and always. Vision and responsibility not so much.
8
@Richthornley How do you know that? They may have just spawned later by happenstance. Jumping to an optimistic conclusion with zero data or science is called denial.
1
@Rob
richthornley is 100% right
you are 100% ignorant
Read a book about evolutionary biology
(SJ Gould is a good place to start)
Hopefully, they’re voting for the party that’s trying to address climate change and pollution.
23
They need to stop dredging the scallop and let them recover. May be the one that survived the high temperature were able to evolve to withstand the harsh environment, but they were being dredged up and eaten.
Please give the scallop a chance.
36
@Joe Well the reporting did indicate that they stopped dredging and went home. Clearly this problem is not one of over-fishing. Blaming it on that just masks the issues here.
4
@Joe
Umm, evolution takes a bit of time, the one thing we don't have. Actually that's the whole point of human-caused climate change - it's too quick for nearly anything to evolve to deal with it.
2
@Salix The one that survived can withstand the harsh environment and their offspring will most likely to survive. An individual won't evolve in his lifetime but an population does in the long run.
The scallops that are alive might able to live in hot environment and their offspring are most likely as well.
Life these days is a torturous awareness of the consequences of human greed and stupidity and gross malevolent negligence. We have been made aware for decades, but chose to live in the banquet of our times. Consume, party, and consume some more. And have more children to fill that good old baby moment. Well, here it is. Time to pay the Piper.
25
Put "climate crisis" in the title of the article and any other that is about the effects of it.
17
After the interviewing should be asking each baypersons (there are woman fishing also?) - some of these questions - do you believe in The Clean Water Act? Which president signed the Clean Water Act (Nixon)? Did you vote for Trump? What do you think about cutting environmental regs by Trump? Do you think more nitrogen from lawn fertilizers and septic systems is a good idea? Did you know the Clean Water Act in the courts where has been going after point source pollution including from septic systems? Do you believe man is the cause of global warming?
Long island sound lost its lobsters with warming and the scallops are gone and with record temps won’t be coming back probably . Global warming is no longer theoretical. Scallops go up and down with year ‘sets’ but they won’t be up with record temps . They need eel grass which does not like cloudy water from nutrient caused blooms. Bye bye scallops.
I’m guessing based on my friends who commercially fish and acquaintances who fish that a poll of these fellows will show numbers skewed heavily that voted Trump. Temper the empathy. Own your vote. Look your kids in the face and say I give you a cr*p future . 2050 median sea level rise of 1.5 feet, warmer water holds more co2 which acidifies water and kills spawning shellfish .warmer water helps things like red tide really take off. It’s not just warm water in itself.
94
Thank you!
9
@John
Louisiana has allowed oil barges to transit the Gulf, spilling oil. The wild grasses which protected New Orleans are dying, as are the old fishing communities. Mitch McConnell supports the coal mining industry which has produced a mountain of coal mining sludge on mountain tops due to mining there. It is only a matter of time before that sludge breaks through barriers burying rivers, streams, and the communities below. No one wants to see their jobs disappear; however, McConnell et al ensured that Clinton's offer of financial support for job retraining was defeated. Trump and his corrupt Cabinet have removed Nixon's EPA regs. Trump will not live to see the day when Mar a Lago is underwater.
7
I’m curious. How many have been voting Republican all these years? If so, this is what they voted for. Elections have consequences
50
Weird. Biologists warned against overfishing and climate change, and said it would cause decimations in mollusk and crustacean populations. And now fisheries are collapsing.
Almost like reality doesn’t care how much human politicians choose to ignore reality...
64
The article is heart-breaking, but the photos are...stunning. Sublime, perfectly toned. they literally transported me to the nighttime boat journeys and the plight of the baymen and baywomen. Thanks Johnny Milano.
20
Get used to it. Adapt or die. Move away while you still can, or stay and suffer the consequences. Harsh words, but MANY, perhaps ALL of us, may have to face that reality due to the consequences of global climate change - sooner than we think.
19
Do most of these salt of the earth fishermen deny climate change and if so, do they vote Republican. If the answer is yes, than I have to be honest, I don't care about their plight.
32
And our politicians do nothing or worse. I feel sorry for my grandchildren
23
If only we could do something as a species? Perhaps join in an international effort to combat environmental damage and improve sustainability. If only there were a way to prevent overpopulation and overharvest. If only there were a way to use the power of economics to address environmental damage. Maybe science can help?
If only.
None of this.. not one tiny piece, is unprecedented or unexpected. And at the end of the day, ....well, never mind. This IS the end of the day. "Canaries in the coal mine" are dropping all over the place. And we human "miners" look around like it's a surprise.
What's really chilling is not a bunch of dead sea bugs. They are just the latest thing to get some air time on the pages of the NYT today.... it's that adult humans are silly enough to elect people who destroy even the inadequate efforts we have been making. Yeah, you know who that is.
Whatever, just blame it on brown people and get your sea bugs from the next state up. Nothing to see here.
30
Your story says scallops were plentiful last year and are plentiful in Massachusetts waters this year. Is it likely global warming finally kicked in this year and caused an entire species to become extinct? Let’s see what happens in coming years before we push the panic button.
6
@Never Trumper
Biology is like that. The only reason the northeast still has hemlocks (unlike the Virginia hills - which are devastated - visit Skyline drive in the winter to see) is that the winter temperatures are still cold enough to keep the woolly adelgid at bay. It's a change measured in single-digit degrees. Current projections even with lower achievable carbon emissions can have VA winters in CT by 2025.
The lobster fishery in Long Island sound is commercially collapsed, ostensibly from temperature rise, but also possibly from recent spiked pesticide use on the shoreline.
All of this is predictable. We have reversed the effects of human activity on ozone and acid rain by concerted efforts. It will cost more to fail than to succeed in climate efforts.
22
2017, 2018 and 2019 each hottest years since records started to be kept. Facts are stubborn things. Bivalves and lobsters can’t live in water temps that are now consistently too hot
18
@Never Trumper Global warming is increasing the chances in any given year that the water temperature will be too high (causing the oxygen content of the water to be too low) for the scallops to survive. That won't happen every year, but the odds keep going up. If it happens a few years in a row there will be no scallops left to reproduce, and the species will in fact be extinct, at least in that area. It won't do any good to push the panic button at that point.
8
Mr. Sweat is not a fisher. He is a fisherman.
A fisher is an animal in the family that includes ferrets, otters, weasels, minks and some others: long skinny carnivores.
10
@Jonathan Katz You will be cancelled for that blasphemy.
We are killing ourselves to live the way we all have since the mid 1800s. This is so sad.
10
Let’s hope these fishermen remember this when they vote in 2020.
23
The big question is, 'How many of these Scallop fishers voted for Trump.' It's either the pollutants or the ocean's warming and Trump is bad news on both. Trump is dialing back the EPA and refuses to believe in global warming. How on earth any intelligent person can identify with this disgrace is the even bigger question.
29
@Issac Basonkavich
Just for the record, Trump /believes/ in climate change as evidenced by the permit application he filed to protect his golf course in Ireland (see Politico article from 5/23/16) which explicitly cited "global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure." But he is doing the bidding of the petro-oligarchs who own the politicians like Pence whispering in Trump's ear and who are not ready to get off the gravy train of fossil fuels.
12
and today, Trump has just allowed dredging in protected waters. Oh well, Let them eat cake!
28
The uncomfortable truth about climate change is that there are simply too many human beings on this planet. Human existence brings increased carbon footprint with known consequences. I'm afraid we're swimming upstream against the tide of human reproduction. There's not a lot that science can do about that.
12
Actually, according to UN population projections (which have an excellent accuracy history), the world population is set to level of somewhere around 12 billion people. Moving people out of extreme poverty and educating women are the predicted drivers of the leveling off. What we need to do is plan for a population of about 12 billion, and figure out the best ways to minimize and adapt to climate change. Hint: the solution requires people in the US to change their consumption and living habits, which is already an uphill battle.
6
You say 12 billion like that is a sustainable number as long as it “levels off” and remains steady somehow. 12 billion is going to be an ongoing catastrophe, especially when ALL of them are educated to want and expect electricity, automobiles, air travel, air conditioning, heating, pesticide-grown food, all the consumer entitlements of a middle class life, including the daily tonnage of trash that your average middle class person adds to landfill. There will never be enough quality food and enough untouched nature and enough clean air and water to make human life look anything like it did in the good old days of only 3 or 4 billion.
13
@Patricia
The U.S. is not the problem; if you want to focus on the problem, look at the millions of crop burning farmers in India, or the industrial plants in China which operate without scrubbers spewing Mercury into the air and polluting farmlands with upstream industrial waste. Bribery is traditional in both countries. Look at the offshore pollution destroying communities in West Africa. Now look at Trump's fight with Gov. Newsom regarding auto emissions and off shore drilling for oil. The outdated Electoral College negated the popular vote and put a corrupt, greedy grifter in the WH. Trump is not only uneducated with a Business Degree purchased by a wealthy father, he is willfully ignorant showing all the signs of Early Onset Dementia: lack of short term memory, narcissism, sudden incoherent rages, and willingness to put his country at risk from adversaries: Putin, Duterte, Erdogan et al. Those who voted for him in the farm belt will see their small farm communities die off, unable to compete with Big Ag and tariffs. Those in the rust belt have seen their factories either closed, or run by engineers and robots. Unemployment is now ending for long term unemployed. Dollar Stores with low pay and no benefits offer jobs which will not sustain viable communities. Wal Mart pays low, and offers no benefits for other than management. Wal Mart imports cheap products made in China and Vietnam. Cheap clothing fades, and is made in toxic environments.
1
Another example of an industry doomed by modern day challenges, in this case climate change, but not letting go until every last one of the scallops have been dredged for human profit. Coal, oil, palm oil, etc....
18
It is all inter-related and climate change affects the ocean by making it warmer and more acidic (via CO2 absorption). The effects ripple out by first affecting the most vulnerable species. It then expands out. Another example I heard about is lobsters seem to be moving to colder waters and there are less of them in traditional areas.
So the evidence of the the start of impacts starts to accumulate and time will show how these impacts will affect others - scallop draggers may be the first in a long line of potentially affected industries.
For example, the Bay of Fundy scallop fishery is extensively managed according to a plan between the industry and the government. Bad years lead to reduced activity to bring stocks back to some sustainable level.
Not sure if such a plan with quotas exists in NY and whether they would have seen it coming. Or whether it is too late as per what happened to the Atlantic cod fishery in Canada.
7
How is it possible the fishermen who went out on opening day in spite of knowing the number of scallops were at a record breaking low, decided to dredge up the few that were there? Did they not consider for one moment that perhaps they should think about how to help the scallops recover?
37
@Lorraine, profits over consequences on an individual level - these people need to survive. It's the same mind set that drives multi-national corporations and mega pharma companies to put profits over people. People who can't afford this thing they need to survive die as a consequence. Food, clean water, medicines - it doesn't make any difference. No pay, no play. The people at the top don't CARE about the consequences - they in general aren't affected by them because they think the money they have will always protect them, no matter what. But it wasn't the elites who survived the last bout of global climate change, terminating in the last Ice Age about 11,500 years ago.
8
@Lorraine Do you fish for a living? Some fisherman have to give it a go and really see what's going on in the water. Sometimes predictions can be off. This years early predictions for Long Island bay scallops, as dire as they were, appear to be optimistic.
1
@Lorraine as you probably know, the crab in beautiful northern CA have had a tough time of it these past few years. The crab fishing folks devote time, energy and sacrifice to preserve this beautiful species. Crab lovers (like me) have simply moved away from eating crab-- maybe if and when they heal, I will try again.
6
Great story brought to life by Johnny Milano's beautiful photos.
10
At one time, perhaps it is still the case, 70% of breathable oxygen came from the sea.
I can't think of anything more dramatic to add to that
14
@shrinking food
it still comes from the sea. The problem is that the warmer water gets the less oxygen it can carry in solution. A small temperature increase can mean a rapid loss of dissolved oxygen.
4
The impact of climate change may be a slow mover, but it looms over the future of important ecosystem services like commercial fisheries like nothing else. Previous issues that have been dealt with through changes in regulations and establishment of marine sanctuaries, like overharvesting, pollution, or physical habitat degradation pale in comparison. We can't be reactive like we normally are with regard to issues, we must be proactive, because once those impacts get here they will be difficult or even impossible to turn around. If the habitat isn't there, there's no hope for those organisms to return.
17
We really need to up the effort to identify keystone species in as many ecosystems as we can. It may be one of these keystone species that wakes us up to being too late.
Hopefully Scallops are not a keystone species.
8
The underlying problem is inherently human; we want it all. We don’t need to eat scallops to survive yet, even knowing many years ago that climate change would impact marine life, we continue to devour wild seafood and shellfish. Many folks insist on wild-caught and sneer at eating farmed fish but that’s what I eat. Sure, there are issues with aqua-farming but my sense is it’s better to leave wild marine life alone and give it a fighting chance to survive. In the end, it’s all about the sacrifices we are collectively willing to make.
15
@Dave Bee
Farmed raised is corporate raised. Never healthy and it takes away from the small commercial fishing unit. You should rethink what causes all of this. Until we make the hard choices that will ultimately benefit us rather then short term profits for the big guys we lose. I disagree with your premise. Not against some types of aquaculture but it should NEVER replace a well managed wild caught product.
6
@Dave Bee : Yes, the problem is with humans "wanting it all". But the real issue isn't with humans wanting *scallops*. It's with them wanting all the things that are contributing to climate change -- individual cars, suburban homes, cheap grain-fed industrial agriculture cattle, plane flights to exotic locations for vacation.
The fact that humans want *food* is *not* what caused the climate crisis. The climate crisis is what's causing the decline of the scallops.
Yes, it would help right now to cut back on consumption of marine products for food (if you don't live somewhere where you live depends on fish for survival). But the bigger help will be doing all the things we need to do slash our carbon output.
10
@Dave Bee Peconic Bay Scallops, even at their healthiest, live for 18-24 months or so. 1-year olds (juveniles) are not harvested, since they have yet to spawn. 2-year-olds (adults) are harvested as they will die off anyway. Feel free to eat corporate farmed fish, but "leaving them alone" will do nothing to solve this tragedy.
2
Another episode of climate decay. And the hits just keep on coming as our politicians abide the wishes of big oil, and the media tell us how oil producing nations increasing production and creating a glut “complicates” efforts to slow climate change.
31
Day by day we see ever more signs that we are altering the support systems for life on this planet. We won't be the first to go, but the facts point toward mass extinctions.
More and more we will be eating our "seed corn" and human existence will be in crisis. It won't be a good time to be alive when scarce resources will be battled over.
34
Here in RI I know several commercial fisherman that are hesitant to accept that the ongoing onslaught of the seas will have consequences. Why hasn't this industry accepted that the party won't go on forever? Cape Cod was named because the cod were so abundant you could scoop them up off shore. Now there are virtually none on the Cape. Until these fisherman agree to invest in re-sustaining the stocks, in the manner of reforestaton or oyster cultivation, this pattern will only worsen.
50
FACT: there is no safe amount of sea food to be harvested. Because of the oil companies all governments have been lying over and over about the effects of each and every spill. Big oil has almost decimated our oceans and the sea life in them and if we don't back of over fishing our oceans are doomed then we as a people as doomed. This is just a tiny example of what's going on everywhere.
39
We need to step back from everyone’s go to explanation for any anomaly (global warming and climate change) and realize that population is the ultimate cause. We will never slow anything down until the world population goes to zero growth. More people require more resources and more energy and there is no denying that.
41
@Jim Zero growth isn't going to happen because well-to-do westerners decide that is best strategy to save the planet. The most immediate and practical solutions they can implement is to seriously modify their own lifestyles, and abandon a culture of materialism for a more sustainable one. And, yes, this includes a major reduction of the consumption of animal products.
34
@Jim Climate change and population growth are two prongs of the same fork that humanity seems intent on putting straight into themselves.
10
An excerpt of an Oct. 31, story in The Guardian by DP Carrington:
“The research is the first to reveal the knock-on effects of insecticides on fish. Harm to bees is well known, but previous studies in Europe have linked neonicotinoids to die-offs in other freshwater species including mayflies, dragonflies and snails and also to falling populations of farmland bird that feed on insects, including starlings and swallows. The insecticide has also been shown to make migrating songbirds lose their way."
It’s not just neonicotinoids-
Suffolk County has been spraying our wetlands with pesticides for years calling it ‘nuisance control’ when scientists have proven the inhabitants of those wetlands would naturally take care of any so-called nuisances by having them for dinner. Now the price is being paid and the County is still dropping poison over our waters killing everything from the top down.
97
@Bambi
Much of the wetland spraying for mosquitos these days is with BT. It is a naturally occuring bacteria. It is harmless to anything but Dipteran insects (flies and mosquitos). Neonicotinoids are not used in aerial spraying for mosquitos. It is a systemic insecticide it is used in ornamental plants mainly.
5
I just finished reading a long article about lobsters in Maine. The warming water up in the bays of Maine has cause a 20 year boom in the lobsters harvest up there (the warming water is good for the baby lobsters). But the water is still getting warmer and now its getting too warm for lobsters. They are moving into colder water, they are moving deeper and further North. The lobster industry is in trouble and they know it. It appears the scallop industry is in the same trouble. Reality is a slap up the side of the head,isn't it.
139
The way Americans fish and eat scallops is disgusting.And they have no sense of ecology like the British. There was a war on the coasts of Brittany, with guns on boats (the British ) because French fishermen were trying to impeach British industrial fishermen with huge boats to come catch the scallops in French waters when the French law prohibited the catch for population recovery at a certain time of reproduction ( but the European law was authorizing the fishing ) .
Scallops are wonderful delicate shell fish that we eat in the shell in France, with the corral ( the genitals -the best part). You buy them for 2 euro each in season and about 3 or 4 of them in full flesh ( not just the muscle ! ) are enough to feed one person .The anglos destroy the scallops, fish them industrially, only eat the muscle, discard the rest , then keep them soaking in buckets, freeze them and eat them by the dozens . A sad waste and a sad ignorance of the laws of nature and taste that will conduct to extension without doubt .
It is like crabs. The anglos don't know how to eat crab in the shell and eat everything , so they fish them industrially destroying entire population and process them in factories to can only the white meat.
33
@JPH sorry extinction. don't know what the correct engine was thinking...
3
@JPH When your only 'talent' is industrialization and temporary promotion of 'quantity', not 'quality', that is the unfortunate consequence.
'Anglos' only care how much money they have and how much 'stuff' their wealth can buy, as a signal of their sad 'self-worth'.
18
@JPH We are all waiting for the French to come and save the world with their enlightened ways.
2
What’s the “human caused climate change” that is the reason behind the lousy scallop harvest?
An explanation rather than evidence-less bleating would be helpful.
8
@Cjmesq0 Water Temp changes, about a one Celsius increase over the last decade. It doesn't seem like much, but it could make an area that was once on the edge of that Scallop's habitat uninhabitable because it is too hot. We are also seeing this with the bulk of the lobster catch moving north into Canada.
Think of it like the tree line on a mountain, where trees simply can no longer grow to the cold. As the temperature warms, the tree line will move up the mountain. In this case, the scallops are dying off as the warmer water moves north.
29
@Cjmesq0. It’s really time for deniers to quit the pseudo-intellectual skeptic posture. The scientific literature is drowning in research and documentation of global warming and its connection with climate change and its effects. It’s like being skeptical of the science underlying the operation of the computer you’re using to post your comment. Additionally, it would be impossible for any article related to any matter to restate the foundational basis of every assertion. With global warming and climate change it’s all out there for you to research. Make America Think Again!
10
2019 was the hottest summer on record.
8
My heart breaks as I read this story. I lived in this area during the summers from the late 40s thru the 60s and just visited it a few weeks ago. I find the fact that within the past week Trump formally withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord and the fate of the Peconic Baymen to be deeply disturbing. Our future, our children’s future and are grandchildren’s future depend on addressing climate change issues. The scallop collapse is further proof of the urgency of the problem confronting all of us.
86
Dredging, as a way of fishing for scallops, is destructive. It scrapes the bottom, disturbing habitat and destroying those organisms that can’t get out of the way. It transforms the benthic zone, once rich and complex, into a wasteland.
This kind of destruction snowballs. But it’s not something the majority of the fishing industry thinks or cares about. But every time one species goes extinct, it takes a dozen other species with it. Just we don’t notice unless it has an immediate impact on our wallets.
Buckle up your seatbelts one and all. The evolutionary bottleneck (of our own making) looms ever closer. What are the odds than humans will squeeze through to the other side?
103
@Ellen B
"The evolutionary bottleneck (of our own making) looms ever closer. What are the odds than humans will squeeze through to the other side"
Must we wait until it affects us, the apex predator?
Can't we fix this because we care about the environment, instead of caring only about a pleasurable meal or a paycheck?
16
@we Tp
"Can't we fix this because we care about the environment, instead of caring only about a pleasurable meal or a paycheck?"
Only if we can overcome millions of years of evolution, where we developed brains that value short term gratification over long range planning. One of the reasons that we have been so successful as a species is that we could always adapt to a changing or depleted environment, simply moving on to the next virgin territory.
"Use up all the resources, then move on" is pretty basic human nature, along with "I'll worry about that later."
20
@Ellen B Don't worry about dredging --your government is on the case: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/climate/trump-beaches-sand-protected-areas.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
4
ive lived part time on Little Peconic Bay for 60 years and remember as a kid walking thru the creek at low tide in october -back in those days the season opened in October - and "harvest" scallops by hand . it didnt take long to fill a bucket that when shucked provided the sweetest dinner. thru the 70' & 80' it was harder to do and now there are no scallops in my creek.
this is another sign along with degrading salt marsh and fewer weakfish -another local favorite- that show the dramatic change in the Bay. the only thing i notice getting better are the sea robins- a mollusk eating throw away fish- which have gotten huge.
28
As is becoming apparent to everyone, climate change and politics are intertwined from California to the east coast. If any of those folks affected by the end of scallop "season" voted Republican in the past few decades, they have only themselves to blame. Al Gore as president and we would be in a much better place vis-a-vis climate change. Alas, it is little comfort to folks who believed in science, in climate change policies to know we are and have been right for decades. Republicans who deny and denied climate change have killed us all as certainly as they have killed the scallops.
123
@Dean Hall I lived in Shelter Island for three years and know that most are Republicans. I could never understand how they could support a party that was helping to put them out of business
18
@Dean Hall Republican friends that have spouted climate change denial for decades seem to be free of introspection while finally accepting it is indeed happening. Their new schtick "nothing we can do about it" or "it's a natural process" is sickening.
Don't vote republican ever. That party needs to disappear from the face of the earth. At least a few years before the rest of us have to.
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I have spent my summers in Greenport since 1976. There were many years that the bay scallop harvest was beyond sensational.The article points out what happened with the brown tide blooms. Consider the famous Blue Point Oyster from the late 1800s. They were so prevalent, bars almost gave them away to lure customers. Today, true Blue Points are gone. Probably the last signs of them in top NYC restaurants occurred in the 1950s. Loss of species has been going on for a very long time. How the massive development of the East End has affected water quality is often not discussed. And the motorboats and yachts everywhere probably have an impact too. Turning the clock back is impossible. Bay scallops will most likely never be available in volume like they were many decades ago. This the unmeasured cost of population expansion in what was a rural area coupled with a hot summer.
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@Boat52
Oysters disappeared from Great South Bay after hurricane '38... possibly salinity shock. By 1960s the Blue Point Co lost hope in restoration, since newly transplanted immature oysters tended to get sick, I believe from a disease called MX (likely viral, and now an issue in Delaware Bay).
As recently as late 90s, some few knowledgeable baypeople could find some wild ones, but not a commercial source.
Some other folk are commercially growing oysters in cultured format in floating beds....
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@Boat52 Actually oyster farming on the east end has rebounded, as there are over a dozen growers in the Peconic Bay and Sound, including LIttle Creek, Widows Hole, Oyster Ponds...they are doing quite well.
Last year's bay scallop harvest was one of the best. To see it crash this year is a shame. Would've made sense to have a moratorium to give the remaining population some recovery time, but saw the boats out dredging up Orient Harbor on Monday, which doesn't help for next year.
8
Bushels! Bushels? Really?
Amazing. I had heard that in some parts of the US they still used feet and inches - but bushels?
Wow.
The rest of the world stopped using bushels around about the 1700s.
I remember a school history lesson in about 1965 that went over the medieval systems such as 'chains', 'pecks', 'furlongs' and 'bushels' but I never imagined that anyone still used them.
Hilarious.
4
That's your take away? Seriously? The collapse of an ecosystem, and its hilarious? Well, not to worry; they'll never use "bushels" as a unit of measurement again. That's all in the past now. Along with their livelihoods, and our being able to reliably count on the seas as a source of food. I don't think it'll be hilarious when you're grandchildren go hungry, but that's the nature of climate change; what's happening now is the result of carbon dumped into the atmosphere 10, 20 years ago. As we have only increased our folly, with corrupt leadership in the United States and Australia, just imagine the near future.
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@Leslie “Bushels” is a common usage term in agriculture in areas in the US which refers to a type of basket - a bushel basket - as in a “bushel of corn.”. “Feet” and “inches” have a different meaning.
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If we aren’t smart enough to grasp the metric system do you think we can figure out what we are doing to our oceans!!!!
13
99% of the scallops are dead and yet there is still a season?
Why are we harvesting the live one which may be the ones left who may be adaptable to the changing climate?
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@Ken Floyd
Great point! When limits are imposed the fishermen complain that the regulators are taking away their livelihood. It's already on the way out or gone.
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@Ken Floyd Our bay scallop only lives to about 20 months or so. If these adults, that only (for the most part) spawn once, aren't harvested, most will die by April/May of 2020. The juveniles (that are plentiful) aren't harvested (legally, at least) until they have gone through a winter and have spawned. So all of this talk about taking the last scallop is nonsense, as is the writer above who decries dredging: the dredges the baymen use (if used properly) do not destroy the bottom, even with eelgrass present- the eelgrass' roots are safe below the sand.
I'll also mention that this fishery has always been boom/bust, ever since records have been kept. The life history (spawning once per generation) is the cause. If next year's water temperatures are a little lower or the warmest water doesn't coincide with spawning, there are no harmful algal blooms (there weren't any this year) and predators don't have a party, it could be a great November 2, 2020.
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Comment continued:
This is not to diminish the fact that our waters are warming and that this species is at the southern end of its range- like lobster here on Long Island.
And by the way, the oyster farmers I work with are saying this is one of the best years for growth and survival of their crop, and that's from Islip to Montauk- different species entirely as are clams- both can close tight to avoid anoxia for days if necessary. Scallops can't.
I say all this from my office overlooking the Peconic Bay and who has been involved with this and other shellfish species here for over 30 years.
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Each child’s birth changes the world, adding to the world scene, but we have cut ourselves from nature, blindly denying our interdependence to all things. What will you teach your children and grandchildren of the world they will inhabit and inherit from you? Will you teach them the same dangerous behavior towards self-annihilation? This is no longer a hypothetical question. The effects of climate change are an evident struggle for millions of people worldwide. With ongoing mass extinctions of species, will people remember animals and birds as mythical beings — like a unicorn?
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An interesting question is omitted from the article... Do the FISHERMEN associate the disappearance of scallops with global warming? And if so, do they associate this problem with the current administration? It seems that these obvious questions were missed. I'm guessing that some Long Island fishermen are reading this article about their industry. I hope that they might comment on this.
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@ShenBowen
The current administration?? If it were only that simple. I hate Trump, but even the most dedicated environmental administration isn’t going to change much now.
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@T this is not true. there are many things we can do to help the future become more stable.
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@T I agree with Francine. People need to stop consuming, even in the "Blue States." After this ongoing mass extinction, the Earth and glory of the Cosmos will adorn the planet once again with diverse life.
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scallops too? many ecosystems seem to be collapsing, and many birds, bees, butterflies, bears, bats, big cats.... and so on are at risk, and its not just the big fool that says to push on, its all who drive and fly everywhere, eat lots of meat, have large families, turn up the AC all the time... and so far little change in politicians' policies or peoples' behavior even as things start to unravel
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You can avoid reality for only so long. When you vote for people who deny reality (human induced climate change), reality eventually catches up with you. Keep voting for the science deniers and reap what you sow. Empty shells, in this case.
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This is a sign of mass extinction on a scale that will devastate all life on Earth, including our own lives.
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There was a time that between striped bass and scallops, you could make a semester's college tuition.
" It's not fish ye're buyin , it's men's lives.
Sir Walter Scott
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And the beat goes on ....
4
I'm tempted to share this article with my extended family. All but two are for Trump, however, and mistake climate change for weather. They would tell me that this devastating news is only a temporary aberration. All will be right in a few years.
Interestingly, they have kids and grandchildren. I don't. Yet I mourn the passing of a halcyon age gone by, when our seas teamed with seafood and our shores sheltered abundant wildlife.
Our future generations will hate us for squandering their earthly heritage, and rightly so.
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@Vic
WHAT 'future generations'?
I must say I admire your optimism.
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@Vic I could have wrote your post as I also have no children and have family who are all in with Republicans and Trump.
I don't try to engage them anymore. They have been brainwashed by whatever news sources they use. I only wish they would write in journals as I do so their offspring will know where to direct their anger.
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@Vic Future generations will breed like rabbits, so they will contribute to their own end as well. Nothing can stop the breeding cults.
13
Two details in this article that are affecting shellfish as well as fish along the coasts (and inland as well).
"But New York’s bay scallops are living close to the edge, unable to tolerate water hotter than the mid-80s. They are particularly stressed by temperature spikes that also stimulate them to spawn."
This affects corals, too. Tropical shallow-water reef corals tend to live very close to the top of their temperature range - risky, but it had been worth it until temperatures suddenly began to increase in recent decades. Global bleaching events, once unheard of, are becoming common.
"Mr. Tettelbach believes the cause of the collapse from Flanders Bay to Orient Harbor is high water temperatures and the accompanying low oxygen levels."
Warmer water holds less oxygen. That's bad for everything in the water column, because it reduces what's living in the water, while the warmth speeds the metabolism of what's still there. So fish are stressed from low oxygen, yet need to eat more to support a faster metabolism.
One difference between fish and shellfish. Fish can, and do, migrate to where the temperatures and oxygenation are still healthy. But there's less ocean the farther north they go.
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When lobstermen and scallop men complain about climate change, you know it's real. By profession conservative, both they and their haul are proverbial canaries in coal mines.
(My paternal grandfather is labeled a "clam man" in an early 1940s census. He was the old guy behind the clam bar at Lundy's in Sheepshead Bay.)
Who can't tell the climate has already changed? Flowering trees budding weeks early, jellyfish in early July, a paucity of small birds once common in my backyard.
Darned depressing.
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@B. True, but also typical. Conservatives only care about global issues when they are directly effected.
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And like the canary in a cage who hasn’t a clue about what’s happening until it’s too late.
29
Not to sound like a broken record, but are they also Trump voters? His moves on climate change will devastate all their fishing plans
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@RP
Look, as much as I detest Trump's ignorant and destructive environmental policies, I have to point out that global warming is a result of human activity seriously underway since the beginning of the industrial revolution. And any reader of the NYT should have known since the 70s or at most 80s that this was the case. Yet we've all put the issue on the back burner, at the very least.
And as long as it pays to pollute the environment with CO2, we'll keep doing it. Because capitalism.
40
Yes
7
@Carlos Fiancé
Right: And since the 1970s, one political party in particular has been making the facts you note public knowledge and advocating for something to be done about it—while another political party has done all they can to prevent any change. I'll leave it to you to identify which is which.
35
This is just the beginning. Anyone that is happy about the birth of a grand child should realize that that kid will live in a dystopian world, hardly a reason to celebrate.
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@Paulie I'm thinking the same.
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@Paulie
Deliberately having a child in this day and age is just about the most selfish and irresponsible action any sane person could possibly make.
What are they thinking!
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@Leslie That maybe that kid will save us? I don't know. Not having a child is a way of giving up. There is hope - maybe the worship of mammon will become as scorned as deniers will soon be.
14
Wow. Back in the ‘80s at a dinner party my parents friends trashed about 15 bay scallops on Martha’s Vinyard during cleanup. We thought that was a tragedy.
14