Oyster Bay plans $7M hatchery to restore oysters, clams to town waters

Bill Gouse has been pulling shellfish for decades from Oyster Bay's waters.

"Any commercial fishing has its highs and lows," said Gouse, 68, a longtime bayman of Oyster Bay. "I don’t think we’ve ever seen it this bad for this many years."

The community's waters were once so abundant with oysters that in the 1600s, the Dutch were inspired to name the town Oyster Bay.

By the late 1800s, Long Island had become a powerful force in the shellfishing industry. But over the past century, threats emerged: pollution, predators and overfishing.

In the 1990s, around 90 baymen harvested Oyster Bay for oysters and clams.

These days, the town's waters hold a mere fraction of the once-plentiful shellfish stock. Fewer than two dozen baymen regularly gather shellfish there. Many primarily harvest elsewhere, including farther out on Long Island Sound. And across the Island, a burgeoning shellfish farming industry is pulling in millions of dollars in annual sales.

But now, the town is moving to scale up oyster production in its own waters. The plan is to build a $7 million hatchery capable of supplying tens of millions of baby oysters annually that grow, reproduce and bear a population that is self-sustaining.

In doing so, Oyster Bay is placing a bet on a resource that for centuries was a central part of its identity. 

It's coming at a pivotal time.

Nearly two years ago, the town ended its longtime relationship with a private harvester that, each year, filled the harbors with up to 100 million oysters and clams. Some of those waters have been returned to the public. Parts are sectioned off to allow baby shellfish to grow and later, reproduce.

Baymen are eager to access the once-restricted waterways. But the former hatchery operator, Frank M. Flower & Sons, stopped seeding the bay roughly seven years ago, according to court filings contained in a dispute between the town and company. 

There's not much left to dig for.

The town has employed piecemeal efforts to bring shellfish back, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to release oysters and clams into the harbors. But the new focus — breeding and raising baby shellfish through a multimillion-dollar hatchery — is intended to fill the waters on a much larger scale.

The strategy comes with the risks and challenges of running a hatchery — a delicate, scientific process likely to take years to yield substantial results.

"We're looking at the long game at how to make a huge impact," Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino said in an interview. "I have grandchildren, and I want them to be clamming and oystering the way I did as a child.

"This hatchery is key to getting there," Saladino said. "It's part of our culture, it's part of our economy. It was when the town was founded in 1653, and it continues to be."

The problem of shrinking shellfish numbers isn't exclusive to Oyster Bay. Across the Eastern Seaboard, major regions like the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Maine have seen declines. Experts attribute the drops to aggressive harvesting, warming temperatures, and predators such as oyster drills and moon snails.

Managing a successful operation will be difficult, according to fisheries experts. Factors such as food supply, water temperatures and acidity must be perfected to a science.

"There are demons around every corner," said Raymond Grizzle, research professor at the University of New Hampshire. "There are all kinds of mistakes you can make."

Boom and bust

Shellfish digger permits, required to harvest and sell oysters and clams in New York, have dropped considerably over the past half-century.

In 1976, the state issued 9,762 digger permits on Long Island, according to state Department of Environmental Conservation data. Last year, the figure was 1,365, the DEC said. 

Statewide, oyster harvests have fluctuated. There were 106,688 bushels of oysters hauled in 1990, according to the DEC, but the total dropped to 19,935 in 2000. Bolstered by the thriving aquaculture industry, the figure swelled to 25,574 bushels in 2010, 43,419 in 2023 and 53,619 in 2024.

The largest hauls of wild oysters that year were in Suffolk County, with 1,315 bushels coming from Mecox Bay in the Town of Southampton, according to state data. Other waterways with high tallies include Stony Brook Harbor, Lake Montauk, Port Jefferson Harbor and Mount Sinai Harbor.

The hatchery is proposed for TOBAY Beach, on the South Shore. The idea is to grow the baby clams to size there and distribute them among the town's waterways. The town runs a small hatchery near Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park in Oyster Bay, on the North Shore, that's capable of producing 12 million shellfish seeds per year. 

Frank M. Flower & Sons had exclusive rights to harvest a 1,400-acre stretch of Oyster Bay and Cold Spring harbors. Each year, the company replenished the waters through its privately run hatchery. The town declined to renew the company's 30-year lease after it expired in 2024.

The town then divvied up those waters, expanding public access considerably. Still, it has restricted hundreds of acres, some temporarily and others permanently, to protect the shellfish while they spawn. 

Last year, a town-commissioned study detailed the lack of clams and oysters in the harbors.

The study collected shellfish samples from 72 stations. Live oysters were found "in poor condition" at just two of the stations, their shells drilled by boring sponges. 

Mechanical harvesting and a lack of new clam plantings "severely depleted the resource to very low levels," the report from the consulting firm, Cashin Associates, of Hauppauge, stated. 

"They’re horrible," said Mitch Kramer, vice president of Friends of the Bay, of shellfish numbers in the harbors.

Farm industry thrives

While baymen are seeing meager hauls, commercial aquaculture is booming in other parts of Long Island.

Matt Ketcham, owner of Peconic Gold Oysters Inc., has two 10-acre leases in the Peconic Bay and grows oyster seeds to market size. The process takes about 18 months. After a winter that caused widespread damage to commercial operations, he said this summer the oyster business is booming.

"The demand is insane," Ketcham said in a phone interview. 

The collapse of the wild shellfish population in Oyster Bay can't be attributed to one single factor, said Ryan Wallace, an assistant professor of environmental studies and science at Adelphi University in Garden City.

Increasing temperatures of waters beyond the town’s borders are making conditions inhospitable, allowing harmful algal blooms to spread and consume oxygen, choking marine life. Acidification is another threat that can weaken oysters' shells and leave them vulnerable to predators. Overharvesting and mechanical dredging have also diminished oyster and clam population numbers, he said.

The DEC said the specific causes of the decline in Oyster Bay Harbor are unknown but consistent with wider trends across the eastern United States.

'Many years' away

Restoring shellfish populations isn’t a quick process, said Barry Udelson, aquaculture specialist for the New York Sea Grant, a state program that connects coastal communities with research and education.

The goal, he said, is to get enough shellfish in the water to maximize the chances that they naturally reproduce. 

Eventually, he said, "you start to get to this exponential growth."

Construction on the new hatchery is expected to begin next year, Oyster Bay officials say.

The process of restarting a flourishing shellfish population could take years, said Colin Bell, deputy commissioner of the town's department of environmental resources.

"It’ll be time before we achieve that," he said.

In the meantime, smaller efforts aim to build up the supply.

This spring, Friends of the Bay, an environmental nonprofit, bought back clams initially collected by baymen and sold to wholesalers. Then, the nonprofit returns the mature clams into protected areas so they can spawn the next generation. 

Gouse, who is among about a dozen diggers who still regularly harvests shellfish in Oyster Bay, said the work is difficult. He said he discouraged his son from entering into the profession.

"It’s stressful not knowing what you’re going to run into," Gouse said. "To make your living as a bayman is beyond difficult."