Charity Robey

Sign me up!

The author shares her signature with us. (Credit: Charity Robey)

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter and the Suffolk Times on January 9, 2020.

OVER THE HOLIDAYS I found a writing assignment from my grade school years and saw that my 4th-grade signature was perfection. After years of struggling mightily to learn cursive writing (a form of torture, because I’m left-handed) I achieved the looping “h” and flat-topped “r” that had eluded me for so long.

What a waste of time! Now that email, thumbprint-scanning and facial recognition have replaced pen and paper, I don’t need to write legibly, and on those rare occasions of ceremonial signing, I can create a mark that looks like the flight path of a bumblebee, and no one cares.

Today, a person’s signature is less a mark of authenticity than of self-expression, and no one expresses himself more stridently than the current President of the United States, a man whose John Hancock has been described as looking like something that scrolled off a seismograph registering an 8.2 temblor.

The presidential signature is so distinctive that when the First Family’s 2019 Christmas cards arrived, recipients could not help noticing that the jagged peaks and valleys of Donald’s signature were exactly reproduced in Melania’s signature, just below her husband’s, at half the size. The similarity in style raised the possibility that Donald forged his own wife’s signature on their holiday greeting cards. Or that she copied his.

Most of us don’t have to sign things as often as the president, and when we do it’s often on a pad or electronic device, with a bare finger, a gesture that feels as ridiculous as being sworn into office with your left hand on a book of round-trip North Ferry tickets.

Shelter Island Historical Society Director, Nanette Lawrenson told me these days, most of her signatures are applied with a finger to the screen of an iPad, as she had done the night before when she paid for dinner. “The N was sort of recognizable, followed by blobs for the rest of my name.” She confessed that her lovely penmanship, once a source of pride, is now awful. “My hand and wrist don’t even remember the movement of writing.”

Julia Labrozzi recently signed a contract for her student-teaching practicum that she’s completing at the Shelter Island School this January, just a few years after having graduated from the same school.

She regrets that her signature is not more distinctive. “Frankly, I think I have a pretty bad signature because I never learned to write in script. I don’t know if this is a bad or a good thing,” Julia said. “It’s a little sad to older generations, as writing used to be valued much more than it is now, but technology progresses, and we must adapt.”

Gina Kraus says she lives in the dark ages and likes it that way. “I still pay my mortgage every month with a signed paper and pen check,” she said. “When I sign a keypad for a credit card it looks like a 2-year old signed it, so what’s the point?”

Not everybody is ready to let go of the signature as a valid form of identification. To Virginia Gerardi, an administrator at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, and a notary public, signatures are serious business. “It is vital to our personal security and autonomy that there be a foolproof way to identify ourselves when issuing directives and forming agreements.”

But Ginny (the name she goes by when she’s organizing wintertime volunteers to feed the Sylvester Manor chickens) is a pragmatist, so when she’s asked to sign something that is not notarized, she’s fine with e-signed documents like tax returns and real estate agreements, and she’s even made an image of her signature to insert into her emails.

Some have a wardrobe of signatures, to use as they deem appropriate. John Kaasik is preparing to start rehearsals for the school’s spring musical, which he directs, and says the last time he had to sign something was the royalty contract for Matilda, the witty, heartwarming show that is this year’s production.

“I have two signatures,” John said. “One which is legible for important documents and an unreadable scribble that I use when I’m lazy, or don’t want people to know it’s me signing.”

John says he’s O.K. with written signatures giving way to electronic identification. “The purpose of a signature is to substantiate intent — it makes sense to use a more reliable and scientific method,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of science and progress unlike many of our political leaders.”

I have no idea who John is pointing his quill pen at, but I can report that the president is also known for creating such a large signature that it takes up at least a half page of paper for the presidential moniker, thus increasing the presidential carbon footprint.

I say he should sign with his finger like the rest of us.

 

 

Bill Zitek, beloved vet and volunteer

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO   Dr. Bill Zitek

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter,  March 21, 2019

When Bill Zitek was growing up in New Rochelle, New York, a man named William Rodman Pell II came from Suffolk County every June to receive a fatted calf from the mayor.

The live calf was an annual payment due to the Pell family from the town under the terms of a land deal dating from 1689.

Years later, Bill became a friend of Rod Pell, after Bill had established a veterinary practice in Southold in 1967, and went on to care for animals on the North Fork for four decades. Rod was the owner of Pell’s fish market in Greenport and a local artist. Bill had learned that Pell (16th Lord of the Manor) did not slay the fatted calves as his forebears probably did, but took them to a nearby farm.

The recent donation of five of Pell’s historical paintings to the Shelter Island Historical Society by Bill and Mariel Zitek are just the latest of gifts they’ve given to Southold and Shelter Island in the years they’ve lived here. When they move to North Carolina at the end of the month, all creatures great and small are going to miss them.

Bill attended the Henry Barnard School and New Rochelle High School, public schools where he was an enthusiastic student. He played the clarinet and revered his music teacher, Harry Haigh, who led the school’s 140-piece orchestra. “He was demanding,” Bill said. “If I tootled off a little, he would stop and say, ‘Zitek, play that section again.’”

Bill entered Cornell to study agriculture and animal husbandry in 1952. His hands-on education included mucking out a chicken coop that contained so much manure that when his professor checked on him, he found Bill shoveling the pile of ammonia-scented chicken droppings while swearing loudly.

In 1957, Bill met Mariel Felton, a recent graduate of SUNY-Cortland, at a fraternity party at Cornell. Mariel was from Garden City and was teaching school there. When she and Bill married a year later, she taught 4th grade in Ithaca while Bill finished at Cornell, graduating as Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1959.

He started out in a mixed practice of large and small animals in Glens Falls, New York. After their first child, Craig, was born in 1960, the family moved to Rockville Centre where Bill worked mainly with dogs and cats.

The couple bought an existing vet practice in 1967, with three acres of land on the Main Road in Southold. There they lived and raised three children over the course of 32 years. When Bill started his Southold practice, the nearest emergency clinic was in Coram, so they — Mariel was wife, mother and medical assistant — began to take emergencies.

“If somebody’s dog got hit by a car in Southold, we couldn’t lie in bed while someone drives to Coram, so we started taking night calls,” he said.

One emergency was particularly memorable, a bald eagle found in a field in Mattituck, long before eagles were seen here. Two farmers driving a truck through the field found the enormous bird down, and fearing they had hit it, brought it to Bill, who saw that the animal’s mouth was badly infected. “You call the DEC with an eagle, you don’t mess with it,” he said.

By the time he got it into a carrier, a DEC agent armed with a revolver (the bird had a massive beak) had arrived to take it to Albany for treatment of the infection, which was likely caused by eating a dead pigeon. Bill heard later that the recovered eagle was transported back to the East End and released on Shelter Island.

Not long after he set up his practice in Southold, Bill joined the Rotary Club, an organization that became important to him. “We accomplished things together that we couldn’t do individually,” he said. The Ziteks hosted international exchange students sponsored by the Rotary, and Bill worked with the polio initiative, a successful effort that has helped wipe out a disease that was once a world-wide menace.

He participated in research on animal diseases at the government facility on Plum Island, serving on the animal care and use committee, inspecting the facility and the protocols for the care of the cattle, hogs and sheep that were studied there.

“That facility has done a lot for this country,” Bill said, remembering a time when hundreds of thousands of cattle had to be shot to control a virus that had infected large parts of the country. “We have to be constantly on guard,” he said. “It’s a good group and I was very happy to serve on it.”

When Bill hit 60, he hired a vet named Rob Pisciotta to join his practice, and by the time he was ready to retire, Dr. Pisciotta and Dr. Nancy Mullady had established themselves, so he could retire without leaving his patients lacking in care. In 1999, Bill and Mariel moved to Shelter Island.

He became a volunteer at Mashomack shortly after the move. In 2001, when Tom Damiani, who had been overseeing the bluebird nest boxes at Mashomack, mentioned that someone was needed to take the project forward, Bill rallied other community volunteers to effect a population boom for bluebirds and tree swallows on the East End. When he started, there were 35 nest boxes; now there are 61.

He applied his veterinary skills on the town’s Deer & Tick Committee, which works to manage health and safety issues around tick-borne diseases, including controversial policies on the use of 4-poster devices — feeding stands that brush deer with a tickicide, permethrin.

“It used to drive me nuts when people would argue against permethrin. This stuff, they rub it on babies’ heads,” he said. “This is what impedes progress, because it causes a moment of doubt in an otherwise wavering public.”

Craig Zitek, their son, lives in Jamesport and is the senior fire marshall for Riverhead. Their daughters, Leslie Smith and Gayle Lang, live in North Carolina, not far from Bill and Mariel’s place. Leslie’s daughters have recently graduated from college, and Bill proudly reported that both have jobs.

“Gayle’s kids are nine and eleven, so we’ll have a lot of fun with them,” he added.

What attracted him to the profession initially was the satisfaction of seeing a sick or injured animal get better. But the years practicing in Southold produced an even deeper satisfaction, “We lived in a community of people,” he said.

Bill and Mariel have been the guests of honor at more than one farewell surprise party in the last two weeks, including one by the Southold Rotary and another by family and friends on the Island.

After one of the parties, Bill said, “No matter what we had accomplished along the way, it was the wonderful people with whom we worked and shared time — our lives — who made our time here most precious, and their friendship was the greatest accomplishment.”

North Fork History Project: Raised in a small town, Joe Theinert died for his country

Five boulders stand outside the American Legion Hall on Shelter Island with plaques bearing the names of hometown soldiers, including 11 who died during conflicts in the 20th century.

When 24-year-old 1st Lt. Lieutenant Joseph Theinert died June 4, 2010, in Afghanistan, while disabling the second of two improvised bombs that threatened his men, he joined the ranks of local heroes who gave their lives to protect and defend.

In the collective memory of a small town, a soldier who makes the ultimate sacrifice is never forgotten. Joe joined Jimmy Wilson, Shelter Island Class of ’62, killed in Vietnam, and the seven fallen heroes from World War II; men who came from the Island and died in America’s wars. But Joe Theinert was a man, not a symbol. He was a son, a brother, a neighbor, someone his friends trusted, someone who left his dirty clothes all over the house, someone you’d look to in an emergency. And like the soldiers who died before him in other American wars, he left a legacy on the Island that transcends his death.

Joe was born in Hempstead, delivered at home by his grandmother. His parents, Chrystyna and James Theinert, brought him into a family with a long tradition of service and, as a child, when he played, it was with a military precision. His brother James remembers the two of them imitating the low crawl of a soldier when 10-year-old Joe yelled at him, “Keep your butt down; you’re going to get shot.

For a time, the family lived with Chrystyna’s father, a survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and although Joe’s older brother, William, didn’t remember much talk about his service, the Purple Heart license plate on his grandfather’s car said it all.

Joe was 4 months old when the family moved to Shelter Island. Mallory Wissemann Clark met Joe in nursery school, and they grew up in a tight circle of friends who were more like family. At 16, Joe took her on her first date. This milestone was arranged once Joe got his driver’s license, and showed up with his friend John Goodleaf at the local ice cream shop where Mallory was working. Mallory was in mid-scoop when John announced, “I think we are going to go out on a date. Joe and I are going to take you and Kim to Appleby’s.” Mallory informed Kimberley Atkins of the proposed date and a few days later the four rode to Riverhead — willing, but with little idea of how this dating thing was supposed to work.

Joe Theinert with his parents at his commissioning from the Siena College ROTC in May 2008.

Joe was a diligent, but not stellar, student at the Shelter Island school. History was an exception. He was fascinated with the study of armed conflict and well versed in the history of battles and wars. His father celebrated each son’s 10th birthday with a trip to a place of the boy’s choosing. Older brother William opted for camping in Maine, but when Joe turned 10 he asked to visit the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, a choice that struck his brother James as the equivalent of a school field trip.

Sean Clark was a few years younger than Joe, and their friendship was based on a shared calling to military service. Joe was headed for the Army and Sean dreamed of serving in the Navy, but in all the ways that matter, they saw eye to eye. They both loved basketball, and played for Shelter Island High School’s varsity team, but Joe was not a star. “We used to call it the Theinert hands,” said Sean. “You’d pass him the ball and usually he did not catch it.”

Joe was a man of few words, an observer who could tell when somebody was having a hard time. Mallory recalled a post–high school get-together at her house, not long after her mother and stepfather had separated. While everyone was laughing and having a good time, Joe noticed that Mallory’s mother had gone into the kitchen, and he followed to make sure she was OK.

“He was so quiet, he never made a fuss or brought attention to himself,” said Mallory. “He had a lot of empathy.” Joe’s own parents had split up during his school years, so he had some idea of the strain that separation can cause in a family.

“Joe was the big brother to a lot of people,” said Sean. “If you were going off the path, he was quick to use his moral compass to get you back on the right track. He always had an unwavering belief of what was right and he always acted on it.”

In high school, Joe’s instincts made him the self-designated escort, driver and security officer for his large circle of friends, whether they wanted protecting or not. “Parents definitely considered Joe more reliable than other kids, and they loved him,” said Mallory. “If Joe was going, my parents would always let me go.”

After graduation, Joe wanted to enlist right away but his parents insisted on college first. He graduated from a two-year program at Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania, joined his brother James at SUNY/Albany and impressed everyone with his ability to balance partying with military discipline — most notably when he disappeared on a raucous evening to get some sleep before early-morning training exercises. Joe graduated in 2009, enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, commanding a platoon. 

After Joe’s parents split up and his father moved to Sag Harbor, his mom married Frank Kestler. Chrystyna Kestler got to see her son with his men and witness the pride he took in his command. “I saw guys older than him salute him,” said Chrystyna, “[so proud] the buttons could have popped off his uniform.”

Just as Joe had always looked out for his friends growing up, as a platoon commander he took his responsibility for his soldiers very seriously. He agonized over the appropriate punishment for one of his men. “Joe was torn because the guy was a top performer, a great soldier, but he’d been involved in a serious DUI,” said Sean Clark. “Joe was trying to figure out the correct punishment. In the end, he recommended for separation [dismissal] which is by the book, but I know it weighed on him.”

In June 2010, Mallory was home on Shelter Island when word came of Joe’s death. It was a dark time, and she was grateful to be near people who knew and loved him. Mallory was looking for work, and soon she was helping out at the dental office that Chrystyna and Frank Kestler ran on the Island. “It was like therapy for both of us,” said Mallory. “To have that connection; I think we both needed it.”

Mallory and Sean also reconnected after Joe’s death. “Joe brought us together,” said Mallory. That’s when we started dating.”

Sean and Mallory married, and now have two sons: Colton, born in 2014, and Chase, born in 2017. Sean graduated from the Naval Academy in 2011, the year after Joe died. He served in Japan with the Marines, and has now completed his service and joined Mallory and their boys. “The plan is to bring them up on Shelter Island,” said Mallory. “I don’t know many people who have friends that are like family. I want that for my kids.”

For many of Joe’s friends and family, his death is still too painful to contemplate. The Strongpoint Theinert Ranch, established by his family in New Mexico, has honored his legacy by hosting almost 50 veterans over six retreats. The foundation also sponsors local veterans’ retreats, including one this fall on Shelter Island, co-sponsored and hosted by The Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve. 

Remembering the man Joe was, and the care for others that he stood for, helps those who knew him make sense of their loss. “I think that’s the most impressive thing about Joe,” Sean said, “the impact he had, and continues to have.”

North Fork History Project: The scallop industry has a rich history

One offshoot of running a company that’s been in the shellfish business for 90 years is aquatic and historical clutter. Ken Homan’s office at Braun Seafood in Cutchogue is an archive of shellfishing ephemera and Native American history, a collection that feels like a room at the American Museum of Natural History. 

Ken’s father, 90-year-old Jim Homan, who headed the company for over 50 years, is a firsthand witness to the 20th-century history of scalloping on the East End. Mr. Homan took over an oyster shack started in 1928 by George Braun and turned it into one of the largest seafood distributors on the East End. Peconic bay scallops had a lot to do with that 

“The oyster business was going to hell,” said Jim Homan. “I wouldn’t say we ‘got into’ scallops. You only get into scallops when the scallops are here to get into. There were a few in the late ’50s, and they really hit ’em in the ’60s and the ’70s,” he said. “We used to fly them out — a fleet of planes going up to New England, with 13 five-gallon cans on a single engine and 26 cans on double-engine plane.” 

Foraged food as economic engine

Bay scallops have been an important food on eastern Long Island as long as there have been creatures to gather and eat them. The archaeological evidence that Late Woodland period Native Americans ate scallops is extensive. Large numbers of scallop shells have been discovered in middens on Robins Island, Shelter Island, Orient and other sites.

The first evidence of commercial scalloping on the North Fork comes from newspaper accounts of local people in 1857 observing a boat from Connecticut harvesting scallops just northeast of Robins Island. By December 1873, commercial scalloping was local and a Southold newspaper reported that scallops from New Suffolk were taken to Port Jefferson by wagon and sold for 3 cents per quart. In the 1880s, a U.S. Fish Commission Report described scallop shacks in New Suffolk. “Piles to the height of 8 or 10 feet and covering a quarter of an acre were alongside the opening houses,” the report reads.

On Dec. 2, 1884, Charles Congdon of Shelter Island sold several gallons of scallops to John Elsey, a New York seafood distributor. The sale took place just after the railroad linked New York City and Greenport in July 1844, establishing a vital link in the supply chain. Now there was same-day delivery of bay scallops to the enormous New York market.

For the next 100 years, scalloping was an important factor in the East End economy. A newspaper account in the archives of Oysterponds Historical Society describes a bed of scallops found off Bayview in 1899, from which baymen took anywhere from 30 to 60 bushels a day. In February 1900, thousands of bushels of scallops washed up on the south shore of Peconic Bay. “The baymen shoveled them like pebbles and carried them off in double arm loads,” reads a handwritten account in the society’s CA Wood Collection.

Jim Homan remembers selling bay scallops to many New York restaurants during the 1960s, including Sardi’s, the 21 Club and Luchow’s. They were often fried, sometimes “half and half” — a mixed fry of oysters and scallops — or served broiled with bacon. On a Tuesday in February 1965, Luchow’s offered “Bay Scallops à la Poulette en Casserole with Long Grain Rice Pilaff” for $2.65, according to a menu in the collection of the New York Public Library.

Scallopers on Peconic Bay in the late 1970s or early 1980s. (NYSDEC photo)

How to get ‘a mess of scallops’

Gathering scallops decades ago involved a bayman pulling a dredge — an iron frame with a bag attached — along the bottom of the bay from a sailboat, at least until outboard motors became common in the late 1950s. 

Some baymen working today still use dredges handmade by Paul “the Blacksmith” Nossolik, who worked for 60 years near the waterfront in Greenport. Keith Clark of Shelter Island remembers visiting Mr. Nossolik in his shop. “His fingers were black and there was soft coal all around the shop up to your knees,” he said. “You came out of there smelling like a smoked eel.” 

Hoot Sherman, Shelter Island supervisor in the early ’80s, said the opening of scallop season completely dominated the life of the town in the days when the harvests were huge. “Every year for the first weeks after opening day, I couldn’t find anybody to work the ferry,” he said. “They were all out scalloping.” Children missed school to go scalloping and everyone who could hold a scallop knife spent afternoons opening at one of the many scallop shacks on the island.

Bay scallops have to be opened the day they are taken because, unlike oysters, their shells don’t close and they spoil quickly. “If we had scallops like in the ’60s, we wouldn’t have enough baymen to catch them,” Jim Homan said. “And there wouldn’t be any way to open them. Then, everyone had an opening shop.” 

A 1949 photo of Alfred Tuthill in a catboat, the scallopers’ vessel of choice at the time, on Peconic Bay. (Shelter Island Historical Society photo)

A brush with extinction

In 1985, a devastating die-off caused by harmful algae blooms signaled the beginning of a death spiral that brought the Peconic Bay scallop close to extinction. Since baymen take adult scallops at the end of their life cycle, overfishing has never been a significant factor in the decline of the bay scallop population. The problem was fueled by water pollution, an increase in predators and environmental changes that affected the scallop’s habitat. In 1996, the entire annual scallop harvest for New York State was nine bushels.

Scallop season, which had opened in September for as long as anyone could remember, was pushed back to the first Monday in October and then, in 2005, to the first Monday in November to allow the few remaining scallops more time to spawn. In 2006, a reseeding program headed by Stephen Tettelbach at Long Island University began to support wild bay scallop populations by planting millions of larval scallops in the Peconic estuary.

Jim Homan has a sure-fire method to assess the health of the bay scallop populations, based on the fact that the sweet morsels are as tempting to seagulls as they are to chefs. 

“When you go past the floating docks and you see them all full of scallop shells, you know there are scallops in the creek,” he said.

While not back to the bountiful harvests of the ’70s and early ’80s, scallop numbers have increased over the last decade, and bay scallops are still an important part of many a North Fork holiday table. Ken Homan, who has a keen interest in Native American history, said he likes to make a stuffing with bay scallops, a Thanksgiving tradition that’s probably a lot closer to what Native Americans and colonists were actually eating than roasted turkey.

Top photo caption: Ken Homan (left) and his father, Jim, at Braun Seafood in Cutchogue. (Charity Robey photo)

They're back: Peconic bay scallop season under way

BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO
Forever young. Skip Tuttle, 79, heading out yesterday morning for the opening day of scallop season

For East End families who fish, the first Monday in November — opening day for bay scallops in New York State waters — is a ritual not to be missed.

This year Shelter Island resident John Tehan was joined by his son Michael, who lives in Cutchogue. They left Congdons Creek on the east side of Shelter Island around 7:30 a.m. facing stiff winds and rain most of the day and fetched up on the other side of the Island nine hours later, wet and tired, but still speaking to each other.

They unloaded bushel bags of scallops in a parking lot on Bridge Street several miles away from their truck.

Shelter Island bayman John Kotula and his daughter Jillian left Congdons Creek before dawn on Nancy’s Devotion, which is usually one of the first boats to return on the morning of opening day. But this year, father and daughter didn’t pull up to unload until after 1:30 p.m.

As they lifted damp burlap sacks full of enormous scallops, Jillian helpfully pointed out that if her father had taken her suggestion to go to Noyack in the first place, they wouldn’t have wasted time in the northwest, and the low tide that was causing them to hoist the bags four feet from the deck of the boat to the back of the pickup would have been on their side.

The captain did not argue the point.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Jillian and John Kotula unloading scallops Monday at the Congdons Creek dock.

The Kotulas headed home, where they would be joined by the rest of the family, armed with scallop knives, ready to shuck for as long as it took.

Bay scallop harvests have always been cyclical, but were once worth over a $1 million to East End commercial fishermen, even in down years. Environmental factors, such as runoff from fertilizers and antiquated septic systems have hurt the fishery during some recent years. But with improvements in water quality and a successful and ongoing reseeding program, the scallop population has gradually rebounded. Last year accounted for $1.57 million of revenue, the highest value harvest in New York since the 1994 harvest of $1.76 million.

Discussing the lessons of the day in the late afternoon at the Congdons Creek town dock, the general consensus of the scallopers, including those who had ventured out as well as those who were gathering intel for later, was that Noyack had scallops.

Opening scallops, which must be done as soon as possible after they are caught, can be more work than catching them. Bayman Sawyer Clark, 20, who had his 10 bushels limit by 10:30 a.m., was grateful for an assist with opening from his grandmother Ann, who was pretty sure Sawyer knew how to open scallops before he got his license to fish as a preschooler.

“Just catching them is easy,” he said. “It’s standing there for 10 hours opening that’s hard.”

Charlie Manwaring would have liked to buy even more Peconic Bay scallops from baymen for Southold Fish Market on Monday, “The size of the shells, the meats, are beautiful,” he said.

He brightened when asked about his ace crew of scallop openers. “I actually got my old crew back from last year,” he said. “That’s the hardest part. It takes a lot of time to open them.”

Mr. Manwaring said it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the season based on a very windy first day. “It’s not a good account of what is to come,” he said. “A lot of guys didn’t go today.”

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
A blue-eyed scallop from John and Michael Tehan’s hard-earned bushels.

Since the number of scallops that made it into his store on opening day was down from last year, Mr. Manwaring set the price for the first day at $20 a pound, higher than last year.

He said scallop counts might be lower due to the wind that turned some scallopers back and drove seas that gave others a drenching.

“The east wind was not our friend,” he added.

Survey says scallop numbers trending up

For 14 years, marine biologists have inspected the same 20 underwater sites from Flanders Bay in the West to Orient in the East twice a year, counting and measuring bay scallops at each site to document population changes.

In the October 2018 survey, numbers of adult scallops were roughly the same as 2017, which was the most valuable harvest in two decades. Even better, the numbers for seed scallops were much higher than last year, and since these are the scallops that will spawn in spring, and be harvested next fall, there is reason to hope for a strong harvest in 2019.

Professor Stephen Tettelbach of Long Island University and his team made another positive observation during the October dives. They documented growth rings in some mature scallops that indicate they are the result of a second spawn in fall 2017, and could fuel more population growth if these middle-aged scallops live to spawn again in 2019.

Friends since 1652: Shelter Island's place in Quaker history

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
A sign on Route 114 marks the entrance to the Friends outdoor meeting place.

It was 38 minutes into the one-hour Quaker meeting before anyone said a word.

Gathered on the grounds of Sylvester Manor, seated on a jumble of rough-hewn logs fashioned into long benches in a wooded glade, there were six at the meeting, seven if you count the small white dog on Shelter Islander Jim Pugh’s lap.

They sat largely in silence, until Mr. Pugh gathered the group of Friends together in a circle of hands called the rise of meeting.

In a time when listening is out, venting is in, and most of your friends are people you never actually see, the Quaker approach to worship is distinct, even a bit strange. It must have seemed as strange to the 17th century Puritans of colonial New England, one reason why Shelter Island’s Quaker history, which goes back to the founding of Sylvester Manor in 1652, is relevant today.

The Quaker and Island connection

Quaker practices include plain speech, modesty, avoiding showy things such as flags and grave markers and an unwillingness to swear an oath. Activists for peace and social justice, Quakers have advocated for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
The Shelter Island meeting takes place in a grove near the Quaker monument at Sylvester Manor, as it has since the 1970s.

The Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, was established by George Fox in England in the mid-17th century, around the same time that Nathaniel Sylvester and Grizzell Brinley married in England and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become the first European residents of Shelter Island.

The Sylvesters brought with them Quaker practices and beliefs. When the passage of anti-Quaker laws in 1656 imposed punishments such as branding, ear-cropping, imprisonment and later banishment and death, Nathaniel and Grizzell Sylvester made the Island a refuge for persecuted Quakers.

The best known of these was the Quaker martyr Mary Dyer, who left her husband and six children in Boston in the early 1650s, moved to England where she became a Friend, and returned to Boston as a Quaker preacher in 1657 only to be arrested and banished on pain of death.

In spite of her banishment, Dyer went back to Boston, was sentenced to death, but was spared at the last moment in a bizarre public execution in which two fellow Quakers were hanged before her. She was made to stand on the gallows hooded, and then suddenly spared.

She made her way to Shelter Island where she spent the winter of 1659-60, a time the historian Mac Griswold describes in “The Manor,” her history of Sylvester Manor, as “the happiest, most dedicated, least fractured time of her life. Her actions embodied her faith; all the rest of life’s concerns had burned away.”

Ms. Dyer chose once again to return to Boston and her fate. She was publicly executed in June 1660.

Shelter from the storm

Nathaniel and Grizzell Sylvester also harbored Lawrence and Cassandra Sethwick, Quakers from Salem, after they were banished and two of their children ordered sold into slavery. The Sethwicks fled across Long Island Sound to Shelter Island.

Shattered physically and emotionally, they lived out their last days, both dying about a month after arriving. A copy of Lawrence Sethwick’s last will and testament, written on Shelter Island, and witnessed by Nathaniel Sylvester, is dated May 1659.

In 1661, King Charles II issued a royal order meant to stop the executions of Quakers in Massachusetts.

It was personally delivered to John Endicott, the governor of Massachusetts, by a London Quaker and ship captain named Ralph Goldsmith, who later settled in Southold.

Nathaniel Sylvester’s brother Giles, who was living in London, signed the petition listing the sufferings of American Friends, which prompted the royal order. Historians have posited a link between Grizzell Sylvester’s correspondence with her father Thomas Brinley who was in the court of King Charles, and the order to stop the executions of Quakers in Massachusetts.

As joyful as the Sylvesters must have been to see the end of Quaker executions, the arrival of the Quaker founder, George Fox on Shelter Island 10 years later was likely even more satisfying, as an indication of their prominent position.

COURTESY PHOTO
George Fox, a founder of the Quaker movement, who visited Sylvester Manor.

Mr. Fox had left England for a tour of America in 1671, and after two months in Rhode Island, finally visited the Island in August 1672. He wrote of preaching to hundreds of native Americans from the porch of the Manor House, and of trying to persuade slaveholders in America, such as Nathaniel Sylvester, to free the people he held in bondage. At the time, about 70 percent of American Quakers were slaveowners.

Nathaniel Sylvester died on June 13, 1680, aged 70. Grizzell, in settling the estate, followed Quaker practice by declining to swear, “being a person that cannot take an oath for conscience sake,” and instead testified to the inventory of her husband’s estate, which included 23 enslaved people.

Grizzell died on June 13, 1687 at 52. In keeping with Quaker practice, the Sylvesters’ graves bore no markers of any kind.

Noticed and remembered

For most of the 19th century and first half of the 20th, the 8th, 9th and 10th owners of Sylvester Manor were members of the Horsford family. They spent summers at the Manor, and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Eager to recognize the history of the Friends, and the Manor’s role as a refuge and haven, the Horsfords dedicated a monument on July 25, 1884 to their Sylvester forebears.

They made sure it would be noticed and remembered. A large crowd including most of Shelter Island, as well as friends and colleagues from Cambridge attended. A three-piece band and a choir performed.

The poet John Greenleaf Whittier, known for his dramatic poems about Quaker history, and a friend of Professor Eben Horsford, wrote a special ode for the event about The Friends’ ordeal and Island sanctuary, with the lines: “A peaceful deathbed and a quiet grave/Where ocean walled, and wiser than his age,/ the Lord of Shelter scorned the bigot’s rage.”

In 1952, Andy Fiske, the 13th owner of Sylvester Manor, and a direct Sylvester descendant, called on Henry Cadbury, who had recently accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, to conduct a Quaker meeting on Shelter Island. Cadbury not only came and conducted the meeting, but established a Shelter Island Friends meeting that is still active, albeit with occasional fits and starts.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Friends met at the Garr estate; during the 1960s, at Union Chapel in the Heights; and starting in 1970, outdoor meetings took place in the grove by the Quaker cemetery at Sylvester Manor.

And that is where six people sat last Sunday, with Friends past and present, in silent awe of all that was around them, and in search of all that is within.

Life lived and lost in the waves of opioid use, remembering Kirstin Zabel

Photo caption: Friends for life: Kirstin Zabel (left) with Stephanie McNicol in 2007. (Courtesy photo)

Published in the Suffolk-Times on July 26, 2018.  Also published in the Riverhead Review, Shelter Island Reporter, Sag Harbor Express and The Southampton Press.

 

When Kirstin Elizabeth Zabel was born in December 1986, her parents, Donald and Claudia, brought her home to Cartwright Road on Shelter Island. Thirty-one years later she was buried in the cemetery at Shelter Island Presbyterian Church. 

When friends and family describe how Kirstin lived, they speak of how she protected the people she loved, of her artistic flair and her enjoyment of classical music. She loved horses, dogs and cats, cooking, travel and Shelter Island. But Kirstin had only three decades to live a whole life, because in her teens she learned to love drugs as well. 

People die from drug use everywhere, even in idyllic, close-knit communities like Shelter Island. Suffolk County had 342 opioid deaths in 2016. The total for 2017, which is not yet finalized, is expected to be more than 400 — the highest opioid overdose death rate of any county in New York, according to data from the state Department of Health. 

From 2013 to 2017 there were 26 overdoses on Shelter Island, and seven Narcan saves, according to Police Chief Jim Read. When Chief Read and Det. Sgt. Jack Thilberg talk about Shelter Island’s opioid problem, it’s clear that this kind of policing in a place with a year-round population of 2,300 is intimate and personal. 

Chief Read confirmed that the deaths of two Shelter Islanders in the first part of 2018 have had a terrible impact on the community, especially coming after years in which there was one or none. 

Kirstin died in Falmouth, Mass., but her struggle with opioid use also played out on Shelter Island where she, like the other islanders who battle the disease, was well-known to local first responders.

LOST IN THE WAVES 

The federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention identifies three waves of opioid deaths in the United States, and Kirstin’s life was lived and lost in the pull of those waves. The first came in the 1990s, as a sharp increase in legal prescriptions for pain killers put highly addictive drugs in the medicine cabinets of many Americans. Kirstin was one of the teenagers who got her hands on somebody else’s prescription. 

The second wave, in 2010, saw deaths from heroin use spike among middle-class white Americans, and Kirstin was among those who developed an opioid use disorder during this period. 

The third wave began in 2013, with synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a deadly substance often combined with heroin to make it more potent and addictive. When Kirstin died in April 2018, numerous attempts to revive her with Narcan failed, an indication that it was likely fentanyl that ended her life. 

AN AMERICAN GIRLHOOD

When Kirstin was 3, the family moved from Shelter Island to Massachusetts, where her brothers, Blaize and Elliott, were born. The Zabels and the other kids on Carriage Shop Road in East Falmouth ran in a pack that called itself the Carriage Shop Kids. Their friendships became lifelong bonds. 

Leanne Amorim met Kirstin in fifth grade. “We’d sit around and talk and color on this special bench and call it ‘color fun time.’ She moved back and forth from New York and Falmouth, but we remained connected,” Leanne said. “It was a friendship meant to be.” 

When Stephanie McNicol moved to Carriage Shop Road before ninth grade, she and Kirstin became friends immediately. “The first night we met I ended up sleeping over,” she said. “We stayed up, and Claudia said she could hear us laughing all night, which was good because she said she hadn’t heard Kirstin laugh for a while.”

After Kirstin’s parents split up — her parents divorced when she was 10 — she began to spend summers on Shelter Island with her father and was in and out of the Shelter Island School. She had been diagnosed with depression and was struggling in school despite her intelligence and artistic gifts. By 16, she stopped going to school and got her GED. Kirstin’s first waitress job was at Pat and Steve’s, a popular Shelter Island diner owned by Pat and Steve Lenox. Pat remembers Kirstin as a talented artist as well as a good waitress. 

“She drew on everything, the checks, the back of the menus, and she had real talent,” Ms. Lenox said.

When Kirstin called Ms. Lenox to ask for the weekend off so she and her brother Elliott could audition for “American Idol,” Ms. Lenox couldn’t grant the request, since she was already short-handed. Kirstin and Elliott went anyway. “She believed in it so much,” Elliott said. “We were all ready to win, and everyone knew why we were there.” 

But Kirstin lost her nerve at the last minute — and lost her waitress job as well, although Ms. Lenox later rehired her.

Kirstin at age 11. (Courtesy photo)

CHAOS COMES 

Over the years, Kirstin worked at many Shelter Island restaurants, including 18 Bay, the Pridwin and Gardiners Bay Country Club. Her ability to make and save money gave her independence and the freedom to travel to Florida, California, Australia and Fiji. At the time she died, she was planning her next trip, to Europe.

Kirstin was godmother to Leanne’s 4-year-old son, Desmond, who called her Auntie Gaga because Kirstin loved Lady Gaga. Kirstin doted on Desmond. “I think if she had found the right person she would have loved having her own child,” Leanne said. “She’d tell me that she met someone and hung out, but she was very nervous about being with someone.”

Kirstin’s increasingly chaotic life made health insurance and consistent medical attention impossible. In the last few years of her life, she was in the grip of a serious addiction, having lost the ability to support herself, to work and to travel. Her life was unraveling and she was afraid of dying from an overdose, since she had come close many times.

According to Kirstin’s mother, Claudia Hendricks, two stints in a state-run rehab center in Massachusetts — one involuntary and one voluntary — didn’t help Kirstin get better. 

“They didn’t do anything with her other than not give her drugs,” Ms. Hendricks said. “They were focused on her illness and not on her mental state, and bipolar disorder runs in my family.”

Kirstin had been close to her father, and when a heart attack left him brain damaged and living in a nursing home, she felt she’d lost him, another blow she had to endure. Donald Zabel died in April 2017.

REACHING OUT

For much of the summer of 2017, Kirstin was jailed in Sag Harbor on drug-related charges and could not post the $4,000 bail and was held in the Suffolk County jail until October. Ms. Hendricks said this period was a kind of relief, since at least she knew that while her daughter was behind bars, she was less likely to die from an overdose. 

In what turned out to be her last days, Kirstin lived with her mother in Falmouth. They had a chance to talk. “With daughters, you go through a lot,” Ms. Hendricks said. “In the end I did get to hear her tell me she loved me.” 

On the day she died, Kirstin, who used to make hot dog roll-ups for Leanne when they were kids, texted her friend that she had made steak au poivre for dinner. A little while later, Ms. Hendricks found her daughter dying from an overdose in the home they shared. Kirstin died after paramedics tried repeatedly to save her with Narcan. 

Two weeks ago, on the three-month anniversary of her death, a group of Kirstin’s family and friends got together on Shelter Island to visit her grave and remember her. As they drove past Camp Quinipet, someone spotted a large Slip ’n Slide stretched out on the hilly front lawn of the day camp. 

“We all laughed because we knew if Kirstin were with us, she would have been on that Slip ’n Slide in a second,” Leanne said. 

Ms. Hendricks agreed. “She could make anything into an adventure.” 

Shelter Island Police Chief Jim Read and Det. Sgt. Jack Thilberg spoke with Times Review recently about opioid addiction on Shelter Island and how the police department is responding.

“I’m not saying this is a massive problem for Shelter Island, but for those families, it is a massive problem,” Chief Read said. “It tears up the lives of everybody around them.”

“It becomes all of our problem,” said Det. Sgt. Thilberg. “There is an impact across the community.”

Shelter Island police and emergency medical services volunteers carry Narcan, a drug that, when administered promptly, can block the effects of an opioid overdose. Since 2013, there have been seven Narcan “saves” on the Island. Using inhalers to administer the life-saving drug, rather than injections, has made it easier and more efficient to bring people back from death’s door. Shelter Island EMS, as part of a pilot program run by New York State, became one of the groundbreaking EMS units in the state to employ the inhalers.

When people struggle with addiction, they may go through periods of sobriety only to relapse. “It becomes cyclical,” Chief Read said. “We make arrests to try to break the cycle. Often the family is hoping that we can arrest the person because, in custody, at least they can be monitored. We will make every effort to make an arrest, to try to get the person going in a better direction.”

The police department now administers a prescription drug dropoff program, initiated by the Shelter Island Pharmacy, as a way of removing leftover prescription opioids from homes where they could get into the wrong hands, or find their way into the aquifer if disposed of improperly.

Det. Thilberg said the police department took in 160 pounds of drugs this year, or about 10 banker’s boxes full of prescription medication over the course of a year. The program has been in place for two years and the volume of drugs turned over has increased year to year.

 

Herbal medicines foraged fresh from Sylvester Manor

Nick MacAskill gathers sage leaves during the foraging at Sylvester Manor Saturday. (Credit: Charity Robey)

Published on  northforker on June 19, 2018

On Saturday afternoon at Shelter Island’s Sylvester Manor Farm, herbalist Dawn Petter knelt before a fuzzy-leaved plant and asked permission to pull off a leaf.

Permission from the plant.

“Plants are our spiritual allies,” she said. “We should treat them with respect.” 

Petter grew up in London and got her start in herbalism as a lover of nature and a hiker, interests she later married with an urge to make things. The daughter of a pharmacist, she was familiar with flower essences as a child, which were sold at her family’s store, and her first foray into herbs was through flowers. At a class in Scotland, she studied how to heal the body with flower essences, which led her to formal studies on how to use wild plants in daily life for both food and medicine.

Petter was at Sylvester Manor to lead a workshop on medicinal herbs, which she began by offering everyone a taste of pesto made with stinging nettles.

Dawn Petter speaks during the session at Sylvester Manor. (Credit: Charity Robey)

“Herbal pestos are a really nice way for people to take their medicine,” she said. Apparently everyone agreed, as the pesto was quickly consumed.

Petter led the group along the edge of a farm field, and through a shady wooded area in search of weeds as she demonstrated they were actually useful plants. The going was slow because along the way there was so much to taste, smell and feel.

She warned the group that the foraging walk would be, “a really sensual experience.” She pointed out comfrey, sage, fennel, plantain, rose, mugwort, dandelion and clover, and explained how each plant was useful. The shady, wooded land on the edge of the Windmill Field was particularly fruitful ground for foraging, due in part to the fact that pigs, chickens and goats have all lived there, and contributed personally to its exceptional fecundity.

She pulled at the stem of a plant growing on some fencing, tossed a piece of it onto the shirt of a participant and everyone laughed when the stem stuck its landing.

“It’s a galium, also known as cleavers,” she said. The cleaver or stickyweed made the rounds of the group, from one sleeve to the next.”

A forager inspects a stem of galium, aka stickyweed. (Credit: Chariy Robey)

“There are plenty of teachers offering very serious classes,” she added. “I teach in a spirit of play. I want people to feel that they can expand their limitations.”

When the group returned to the shady picnic table where the walk began, a large mound of weeds took up one end of the table. They set about turning the pile of mugwort into medicine by means of a tincture, or extract which they made after much snipping, stuffing and a liberal application of grain alcohol.

Ms. Petter was a lively and passionate guide to the beautiful plants in yards and woods that can improve digestion, calm nerves and promote healing. Within an hour, the group had gathered a variety of medicinal herbs, and made teas, extracts and oils they would take home with them, perhaps saving themselves a stop at the drug store for the manufactured kind of medicine.

All washed up

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

 

Published in the Suffolk-Times and Shelter Island Reporter on June 7, 2018

 

Last week my dog Mabel found a starfish on a Shelter Island Beach. I measured, Googled and identified it as a knobby starfish, native to Malaysia.

It was so perfect, and so far from home that it either fell off a seashell truck or was left as a prank. (You got me!)

Mabel was in favor of eating it.

I like beachcombing and rarely return from the beach without something in my pocket.

It’s a practice I share with Mabel, who frequently accompanies me, although what she finds rarely makes it home. We walk between the low and high tide lines, noses down, searching the sands for stories. And we are not the only ones who find interesting stuff on Shelter Island beaches.

Thrift is one thing that motivates PJ Lechmanski to beachcomb. “Almost all my fishing lures come from the Ram Island causeway,” PJ said. “I haven’t bought one in 15 years.”

In 2010, PJ found a television on the first causeway to Little Ram Island just after Hurricane Igor but did not attempt a salvage.

Since PJ is an expert at dealing with animals in places where they shouldn’t be (he works in pest control), a friend called him after discovering a four-foot long pinkish fish with a distinctly prehistoric look washed up at Big Ram. They identified the beast as an Atlantic Sturgeon, an endangered deep-water species rarely seen in these parts.

Where did it come from? How did it end up here?

Paul Shepherd thinks the reason people love finding things on the beach is “the mystery of the journey.” Mystery indeed. He’s taken home two sets of stairs from the beach (which he installed and used) and a very large, well-made plastic container with a ring lock top that once held olives.

Some people beachcomb for esthetic reasons. A friend who visits me every summer is so enamored of the jingle shells on Shell Beach that she’s redecorated her bathroom to match and displays her collection in a glass dish next to her toothbrush.

As a child, Tim Purtell collected scallop shells in shades of orange, yellow, brown and white, including tiny, perfect ones he would fit on the tip of his finger. “I kept a collection of the best ones in an old black velvet jewelry box,” Tim said. “I loved holding them up to the light.”

John Pagliaro is an artist who started looking for arrowheads on Island beaches to use in his ceramic pieces. The handful of Dalton point arrowheads he says he found here — tools used about 10,000 years ago — turned his beachcombing into a way of documenting thousands of years of Islanders who called this place home long before Nathaniel Sylvester showed up.

Meryl Rosofsky prowls Wades Beach and Reel Point on the lookout for symmetrical stones. “If I see a heart-shaped stone that catches my eye, I keep it for good luck,” she said. Meryl also looks for jingle shells, which she refers to as “grandmother’s toenails” a name that may explain why so many grandparents keep their shoes on.

The primary difference between finding an antique of historical interest and beach trash is a hundred years. Some of the bottles from Prohibition-era drinking binges, collected by Lawson Brigham from the Island shoreline, are so rare and beautiful that it’s easy to forget they are evidence of the same impulse as today’s pile of crushed beer cans and empty bottles of Jim Beam.

One thing that has changed over time is the variety of creatures found by beachcombers. There are fewer. Vicki Weslek used to look for frogs living near the walls under the white fence at Crescent Beach.

She recalls that she and her mother would stay at the beach until prime frog-finding time near the end of the day. It’s one joy of the beach that Vicki can’t share with her own youngsters since she hasn’t seen a frog at the beach in years.

Dulcinea Benson grew up on the Great South Bay and now does her beachcombing on Silver Beach, where she keeps an eye out for mermaid’s purse, “little black horned pods with a magical creature inside.” As a child she learned that those egg cases contained fertilized skate embryos waiting to hatch. “As I get older there is still a romantic possibility I will find something special on the beach from far away,” Dulcinea said. “Sometimes treasure is a little egg sack waiting to hatch.”

Some people find the idea of beachcombing disgusting, and JoAnn Sherman admits she is one of those.

“I’m not a beach person,” she said. “I enjoy standing in chlorinated water with people. And the feel of concrete under my feet.”

JoAnn gets her beach glass from a store.

Julia Labrozzi, home for the summer after her first year at college, remembers childhood dreams of finding buried treasure on the beach, fueled by outings with the family metal detector.

She’s still a beachcomber. “I’m fascinated with things I find on the beach because each has its own story,” Julia said. “Even beach glass, once hard and sharp, has been transformed into something soft, dull and beautiful. Finding creatures on the beach is fascinating because their lives are so unknown to us. And it’s a great way to get out and appreciate our Island.”

DEC decides against extending the scalloping season

Published in the Suffolk-Times on Thursday, February 15, 2018 and the Shelter Island Reporter on Feb. 22, 2018.

The last time Peconic Bay scallops were this plentiful was the winter of 2015, just before six weeks of hard weather put what should have been a five-month harvest on hold. Back then, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation responded by extending the season for commercial scalloping in state waters by a month to make up for lost time, but this year, the season will end in March, right on schedule. 

In a statement on Monday, the DEC announced it would not extend the 2018 season which began on Nov. 6, 2017. Spokesperson Erica Ringewalde said although ice had clogged creeks, bays and harbors for several weeks in January, they are now clear and baymen have the opportunity to harvest scallops until the season closes March 31.

The decision — made with the long-term health of the Peconic Bay scallop population foremost — affects the bottom line for baymen, seafood distributors, and restaurants. Baymen and fishmongers have been speculating about the possibility of an extension ever since the January freeze made it impossible for scallopers to get boats out.

One bayman who would have liked to see the season extended this year is Sawyer Clark of Shelter Island. “With the ice, it’s dangerous work. A lot of people went out early in the season this year, now there are only 35 or 40 real baymen still out there scalloping. We lost several weeks of revenues with the ice.”

At Braun Seafood Company in Cutchogue, Keith Reda said no one from the DEC contacted him about extending the scallop season, “If they had asked me, I’d have told them not to do it. Demand has lessened, retail and wholesale.”

Once the bays froze, the restaurants Mr. Reda supplies in New York and Long Island saw the prices rise and the supply dry up, disrupting the stream of local scallops that had been strong and steady throughout the fall. Now that scallops are available again, he has little demand.

According to Mr. Reda, scallop retail prices over the course of the season told the story; starting with the first weeks after the early November opening, when bay scallops went for as little as $15 a pound. “At that price, a restaurant was crazy not to choose the premium product, Peconic Bay scallops, over cheaper bay scallops from elsewhere.”

Gradually the price climbed through the fall, to a high of around $23 a pound before they became unavailable for part of January. Shucked scallops are now back down to about $18 or $19 a pound as baymen have found plenty of large ones still alive under that cold water.

Mr. Reda pointed out that the quality of the bay scallops late in the season is different than in November, since scallops have a very short lifespan and by spring will die of natural causes if they are not caught. As for the ones he’s seeing now, “They are very large and very old.”

The DEC spokesperson said the decision not to allow commercial scallop fishing in state waters to extend into April was based on the weather, not the economic climate, and not concerns about the upcoming spawn. “DEC’s decision is based on the number of days of ice-covered embayments,” Ms. Ringewalde said.

The DEC and local commercial fishermen are on the same page when it comes to the long-term viability of the Peconic Bay scallop. The collapse of the scallop population in the late 80s was a calamity that brought the DEC and the baymen together in agreement that scalloping season had to be changed to maximize the chances for scallops to spawn.

“We used to start in September,” recalled bayman John Kotula of Shelter Island in a 2015 interview. “But we were finding scallops with roe in October, and we all really wanted this industry to come back.”

The people who sell and distribute the local delicacy agree.

“I can only hope for a good season next year,” Mr. Reda said.

Photo: Blue-eyed scallop on the culling board. (Credit: Charity Robey)