In the 1920s, the bay scallop fishery in Virginia was booming, hitting a peak harvest in 1929.
Then, in the course of a few short years, the bottom fell out of the fishery — almost literally.
A hemisphere-wide wasting disease began attacking eelgrass, a primary habitat for young scallops growing in high-salinity coastal bays. As a result, Virginia's scallop harvest dropped in 1930. It dropped even more in 1931and even more in 1932.
Then, calamity struck in 1933 when a Category 1 hurricane slammed the state, wiping out what was left of ailing eelgrass beds in the coastal bays.
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