East Hampton Town waters open to bay scallops on November 8. The Trustees see Napeague’s missing second inlet as the larger issue.

Every fall, Amagansett gets the same question about scallop season. People ask whether there will be any scallops. This year the more useful question in Napeague is why the harbor stopped producing them, and the Trustees have an answer that runs through a channel most people driving out to Lazy Point have never seen open. I’m Matt Breitenbach, and this is opening week on the water closest to home.

A few weeks ago, a bayman who asked not to be named gave the East Hampton Star’s Jon M. Diat a wink and a hint. “There may be a few good pockets of scallops around from what I’ve seen,” he said, and he wouldn’t say where. In the Star’s column, Diat describes scallopers as “a most secretive clan even when scallops are bountiful,” scouting before the season with 36-inch iron dredges.

Two Openings, Six Days Apart

New York State waters opened to bay scalloping on Monday, November 2. East Hampton Town waters always open on the Sunday after the state does, so they open this Sunday, November 8. Under the Trustees’ announcement, mechanical harvesting is still banned on Sundays. Opening day in town waters is a hand-harvest day.

The forecast is poor. The Star reported on October 1 that this would likely be the seventh season in a row with extremely light catches, after adult scallops died off in late summer across much of the Peconic Estuary. Harrison Tobi of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Southold monitors 21 dive sites, and he called this year “pretty much a repeat of what we saw last year.” The adults spawned in spring. Few “bugs,” the juveniles that would reach harvest size next year, turned up, and the adults began dying a few weeks after spawning.

Tobi also ruled out a suspect. Some baymen blamed cownose rays, especially in Three Mile Harbor. His team is in the water almost every day and hasn’t seen one. They have found “plenty of cluckers with no sign of damage,” meaning the empty, still-hinged shells of scallops that died from disease and weren’t eaten. That points to conditions in the water, which brings the story back to Napeague.

Napeague Has One Door

Napeague Harbor used to have two entrances, and today it has one.

The east channel used to be the important one. In a history cited by the East Hampton Star, Richard Whalen, the Trustees’ interim attorney, wrote that for most of the town’s recorded history the inlet between Hicks Island and Goff Point was the main boating entrance into the harbor. The Trustees want it reopened to improve water circulation in a harbor that has lost eelgrass and, like other East End waters, seen its scallop population collapse.

At the Trustees’ November 10, 2025 meeting, Deputy Clerk Jim Grimes made the point that sticks with anyone who has waded off Lazy Point. The Star reported his words:

“Napeague Harbor is the cleanest saltwater body on Long Island, yet we can’t reliably grow scallops in there, when 40 years ago we could.”

Grimes compared the harbor’s gradual decline to Lake Montauk’s. In the Trustees’ view, Napeague’s problem is the way water moves through it.

What $25,000 Starts

The Trustees have authority over most of the town’s waterways, bottomlands and beaches outside Montauk. At that same meeting they voted to spend up to $25,000 on Drew Bennett of D.B. Bennett Engineering to prepare an application to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The approach is modest on purpose. Grimes described meeting with Bennett and Kim Shaw, director of the town’s Natural Resources Department. The plan is to file an action plan that will probably be deemed incomplete, so the agencies have to respond with what they would require.

The $25,000 is a small first step against the full cost. The Star described an actual reopening as a multimillion-dollar project that would almost certainly need money from several agencies, partly because it involves state property. The Trustees have talked about covering part of it with money from the South Fork Wind host community agreement, which sends almost $29 million to the town and the Trustees over 25 years.

The project faces opposition from people who also want a healthy harbor. Deputy Clerk John Aldred told his colleagues that the Peconic Estuary Partnership “may not think kindly of this project,” because it is concerned about eelgrass and doesn’t see water quality as the issue. In 2011, the partnership commissioned a report with its own conceptual plan for the east inlet, which also called for closing the west inlet. Aldred expected the DEC to require a full environmental impact statement and the county to commit to keeping a new channel open. “There’s a lot of huge lifts,” he said. Grimes summed up the timeline: “We’re really talking about trying to get something together that, in our lifetimes, gets built.”

Nearly a year later, the channel wasn’t on the Trustees’ October 16 or October 26 agendas. The October 16 meeting covered Georgica dredging and Lazy Point lease business. The project is still at the application stage, and the harbor still has one inlet.

Where This Season’s Scallops Come From

The scallops that are doing well this year live far from Napeague. Tobi told the Star about “a very nice rebound” in Moriches Bay and Great South Bay, as far west as Captree. That comes partly from scallops introduced from Martha’s Vineyard stock, which resists the parasite that weakens local scallops during their spring spawn. He is also starting a site near Robins Island with Capt. Matt Ketchum of Peconic Gold Oysters in Cutchogue.

An earlier opening week showed what that means at the fish counter. In 27east’s opening-week report, written after a seventh straight summer of die-offs, East Hampton baymen said they found only a few scallops, and many stopped going out after opening day. Brookhaven baymen working western Moriches Bay supplied most of what East End shops sold. Shops were getting a few bushels every couple of days and charging $55 a pound or more. Chris Dubritz of The Clamman Seafood in Southampton Village told the paper, “They’re getting more and more expensive every year.”

In Amagansett, Stuart’s Seafood Market is at 41 Oak Lane, 631-267-6700, and says it sells local fish and shellfish harvested daily by East End baymen. Off-season hours change, so call ahead. Out on the Napeague stretch, Amagansett Seafood Farm at 429 Cranberry Hole Road lists daily hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for pickup and East End delivery.

Before Going Out on the Flats

If you plan to scallop yourself, the Trustees’ shellfish guide asks harvesters to leave the east side of Napeague Harbor alone. That area is set aside as an eelgrass-recovery sanctuary, the same eelgrass the channel debate is about. Rain closures also happen in the fall. The Trustees posted the state’s September 27 closure of normally certified town waters, including Accabonac Harbor and Napeague, and the October 1 reopening. The state posts current closures on the NYSDEC temporary closures page, and it’s worth checking the morning you go out.

Permits come through the East Hampton Town Clerk at 631-324-4142, according to the Trustees’ permit page. The full rules are on the East Hampton Town Shellfish Ordinance page. Under the town code, the permit year runs April 1 to March 31, and personal permits for people 65 and older are fee-exempt. This is general information, not legal advice, so confirm your own eligibility with the Town Clerk before you go out.

The Rest of November, Dated

1. Monday, Nov. 2: State waters opened to scalloping.
2. Sunday, Nov. 8: East Hampton Town waters open. No mechanical harvesting on Sundays.
3. Wednesday, Nov. 18: Last day to preorder Thanksgiving from Amber Waves, 367 Main Street.
4. Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2 to 5 p.m., and Wednesday, Nov. 25, noon to 3 p.m.: Amber Waves Thanksgiving pickups. The market is closed Thanksgiving Day.

The Lobster Roll on Napeague closed for the season on October 25 and reopens April 23, 2027. That leaves the Napeague stretch to the baymen, the seafood farm and whoever walks out to Lazy Point on Sunday.

I’ll be watching Trustees meetings this winter for the D.B. Bennett application and the DEC’s response. Until then, the only water moving through Napeague Harbor comes through the west inlet Suffolk County dredged in December 2024.

If you own property near the water around Napeague or Accabonac and want to understand what decisions like this one mean for it, the Breitenbach Advisory Team keeps track of these harbor issues meeting by meeting. Request Private Access, and we’ll share what we’re hearing.

Matt Breitenbach Founder, Breitenbach Advisory Team at Compass