Jeff Vickers, along with customers who rented his boat this summer season, pulled buckets of scallops out of the Gulf.
“This year was the best scallop season I’ve ever had here,” said Vickers.
But that kind of success in scallop snorkeling along the coast could soon be on the wane, with Hurricane Debby possibly getting some of the blame.
When a big temperature change occurs in a scallop’s habitat, it’s a signal for them to start spawning. The breeding process often leaves them weak and frail, and they usually die shortly afterward, said Eric Plage, who has led Tampa Bay Watch’s annual scallop search for more than a decade.
Spawning usually occurs in the fall, when the ocean waters cool, but sometimes similar temperature drops can occur during heavy rains, such as when Hurricane Debby hit the coast this weekend.
Vickers, a captain-for-hire for shellfishing expeditions, saw low numbers along the Gulf Coast last year after similar heavy rains from Hurricane Idalia and other summer storms. It was sad for residents to find only a handful of shellfish, instead of gallons close to the bagging limit, Vickers said.
However, the rainfall from Hurricane Debby, combined with the closure of the Pasco County scalloping zone due to harmful algal blooms in the area, could make for a tough end to the scalloping season, Vickers said. Nearly all other zones are open until Sept. 24, with the exception of the Keaton Beach and Steinhatchee area, which will be open until Labor Day.
That wasn’t always the case, Plage said. The scallop hunt has been scheduled for late August for decades, as shellfish studies showed that scallops in the area reached peak maturity in late summer and spawned in mid-fall. But Tampa Bay Watch and the Tampa Bay Estuary Program have seen that change as storms have become more intense and come earlier in the year.
“As many of us have noticed, the climate is changing,” Plage said.
It’s hard to predict now when scallops will spawn and then decline, Plage said. It all depends on when events like Hurricane Debby occur.
For as long as Plage can remember, fishing has been prohibited in Tampa Bay due to declining numbers. Still, Tampa Bay Watch and the Tampa Bay Estuary Program continue to work together to count the scallops there each year, because they are a critical indicator of the bay’s health, Plage said.
Scallops tend to congregate in areas where they can get the most nutrients from the environment. They also like to live in areas with high seagrass densities. If one part of the bay has a lot of scallops compared to another, that can be an indication of good water quality and healthy living conditions for all types of marine life, Plage said.
“They’re pretty picky,” Plage said. “You can always see their presence in a habitat as a positive thing. Something’s happening there.”
Tampa Bay Watch’s scallop hunt yielded one-fifth of the bay’s usual total in 2023. But there are a number of factors beyond rainfall that can affect scallop populations both along the coast and in the bay, said Maya Burke, assistant director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.
Last summer, there was a red tide in the bay, which can kill scallops. But sometimes low numbers are a sign of a healthy shark and stingray population, since they eat scallops. And the estuary program will release young scallops into the bay to boost the population in some years, which can help the otherwise naturally low numbers.
The amount of variables can make it difficult to determine whether a certain number of scallops is an indicator of water quality, Burke said. But she usually considers it a good sign when the numbers are high.
“I can’t remember a time or instance where too many scallops was bad,” Burke said.
This year’s scallop hunt will cover three locations: St. Petersburg, Tierra Verde and Palmetto. Volunteers on boats and snorkelers will be searching for scallops on August 24.
