Where have all the shellfish gone?

Where have all the shellfish gone? In the closing days of the 19th Century, the streets of Sayville and West Sayville were paved not with gold, but with oyster shells. “America’s Friendliest Town” once reigned as the world’s largest producer and shipper of oysters. That famed Blue Point Oyster population was decimated by a combination of overharvesting, contaminated runoff and the Great Hurricane of 1938, but an abundance of hard clams ultimately replaced the oysters and brought droves of baymen back in the 1960s and 1970s. It was at this time when hard clams filtered 40% of the entire volume of the Great South Bay each day. Today, due to overfishing and continued pollution, there are only enough hard clams to filter 1% of this vast body of water each day. Shellfish act like the filter in an aquarium — they help keep the water clean. When shellfish aren’t there to filter the water, the quality can suffer for everyone and everything.