Posted on December 17, 2025
A second dredge has arrived at Lake Montauk Inlet to relieve the beleaguered Oyster Bay, which has now broken down twice in a little over a month.
The dredge Oyster Bay arrived in the inlet last month as part of the $11.6 million operation, which was 14 years in the making and would see the inlet and harbor deepened to 17 feet, allowing commercial fishermen to pass in and out of the harbor safely.
But as it towered over Gosman’s Dock, Oyster Bay suffered two setbacks – one brought on by a broken main shaft, the other a hydraulic failure – that took it out of commission for several weeks and brought forth questions about the future of the operation, which was funded via a partnership between the local and federal governments.
Looming over those failures was a shot clock: The winter window for dredging ends in January, so the operation had to be completed within that window. Had more mechanical issues or inclement weather caused more delays, then officials would have started talks about what to do about the rapidly approaching deadline.
An excavator is on the west side of the inlet shaping the slurry of dredged material into the shape of an engineered dune that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed.
So, a much smaller second dredge, Scrod II, arrived at the behest of H&L Contracting and took over.
“It is an extremely hard dig, anything past 17 feet, to a point where it’s terminally damaged the dredge Oyster Bay,” Councilman David Lys said on Tuesday. “On Friday, a new dredge was brought into the area called the Scrod II that actually has helped dredge Lake Montauk in the past. Luckily, it was available. The contractor brought it in, and it’s been working for about the last 72 hours.”
A suction dredge, Scrod II lacks the maximum power capacity that Oyster Bay could reach once it got going, but Lys said the backup will still get the job done, and despite the sudden change, the timeline remains intact.
“They’re not going to try to dig deeper because the material down there is very hard,” Lys said. “They’re going to try to remove it. Until anything changes on that, there is a second dredge in the location, and the Oyster Bay will be removed at some point upcoming.”
