Paul Bagnall, a shellfish biologist, checks seed scallops at a nursery run by the Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group. Lat year the group planted 600 thousand seed scallops in the harbors, bays and ponds around the island. He wants to protect the scallop fishing in Sengekontacket Pond, a two-mile saltwater embayment shared by Edgartown and the neighboring town of Oak Bluffs. Over the last year, he placed more than a quarter million seed scallops in the pond from the town's small shellfish hatchery. He hopes most of those scallops are caught by fishermen rather than green crabs.
Bounty programs are somewhat controversial as a predator control technique.
Opponents to bounties argue that crab populations in a tidewater pond reach a steady state equilibrium. Every time you catch a crab, you simply open up space for another crab to move in. The bounty is wasted money and effort. The arguments for and against are largely theoretical, the evidence mostly anecdotal. As a result, a number of New England towns have sporadically tried bounties in hopes of protecting their shellfish beds.