Oyster Bay Extends Shellfish Moratorium for 6 Months

By Nolan Cleary

Oyster Bay’s current moratorium on shellfish harvesting has been extended. A resolution to continue the current moratorium for the next six months throughout the formerly leased underwater land in Oyster Bay Harbor and Cold Spring Harbor. The new resolution was approved on Tuesday, March 25.

The new moratorium is set to go into effect immediately.

The approval follows a hearing that occurred on Tuesday, March 11, to discuss the plans. William McCabe of the Town Attorney’s Office and the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Resources Colin Bell were both present at the meeting.

The original resolution covered 1,850 acres of underwater land in the town harbor. The resolution said that the seabed had to be tested and repopulated for environmental purposes. Frank M. Flowers & Sons previously privately owned the land for 30 years.

“The study has concluded that the harvest... by mechanical means over the past four years with no compensatory seed planting has severely decreased the... population to extremely low levels with a serious lack of seed stock,” McCabe said about the tests. “There’s a presence of good habitat with potential restoration of the clam population, so we now need this additional time to ascertain and map out which areas of this habitat can be set aside as sanctuaries where seed shelters can be planted over the next several years.”