Fishing for Scallops: From the Sea to Your Plate

Three of the top US ports hauling in sea scallops include New Bedford, MA; Cape May, NJ; and Norfolk, VA. Each seaboard state has its own regulations on catch methods and the limits on scallops.  Most sea scallops are landed by large offshore “trip boats.” Scallopers from New Bedford, Massachusetts, will go out fishing for 10 days or more at a time. Commercial scallop fishermen use dredging nets, also called drags, which sweep the grassy beds to catch several dozen at a time. Seaweed, mussels and starfish can be dragged up from the ocean floor. The smaller bay scallops are closer to shore and are harvested in bays and estuaries by nets, rakes as well as dredges.

As sea scallops have a short shelf-life out of water, they must be removed from their shell immediately after harvesting. Shucking scallops is the toughest work in scalloping and often happens on board the boat at sea. The scallops are cut by hand and washed in clean salt water, put into muslin bags and then held on ice or flash frozen at sea. The shell, black gut or stomach sac, including the roe, are usually discarded.

Day Boat Scallops

Scallopers also make day trips; hence, the catch is called “day boat” scallops. Day boat scallopers use smaller boats and harvest within 3 miles of the shore. Diver scallops are active off Maine’s rocky coast. Scallops can also be caught with a small hand net or even by hand, but take care as scallops will pinch to defend themselves. They can swim by flapping their shells (although this looks more like a hopping motion and is not very fast) as well as blowing air from either side of their mouths.

Half the battle when catching scallops for a seafood dinner is finding them. Bay scallops camouflage themselves in thick beds of grass that are about 4-8 feet of water close to the shoreline. They can be difficult to find, but have three characteristics that stand out:

            They swim…or jump…or something: Scallops are the swiftest of the bi-valves. By quickly opening and closing their shells, their meaty “eye” or abductor muscle works like a jet engine to propel them through the water. If you get close enough to a bed of sea grass underwater, you can watch bay scallops pop up and flitter off. This quick YouTube video by Boris CCRCam is worth a watch.

            Open wide: Often referred to as filter feeders, their mouths are usually open to catch food particles and plankton filtering through.

            Stunning blue eyes…and lots of them: Another scallop trait is its eyes, which look like a series of bright blue and turquoise gems along the edge of its shell. There are about 50 on the average scallop, but they can only detect movement and light.