Scallops

Scallop Cuisine

Sea scallops are popular seafood items. Prized by cooks and diners, they are considered by many to be the most appealing of the shellfish. The premium products among scallops are the largest specimens, which have a delicate flavor and tender texture. Scallops are at their peak flavor when fresh, but may also be frozen.

Cooking Scallops

Scallops are prepared in a variety of ways. Their delicate flavor and texture allow for a variety of cooking methods. They can be easily breaded and fried, sautéed, broiled or used in seafood soups, stews, chowders or salads. One of the most popular recipes calls for scallops to be wrapped in bacon, then broiled.

The scallops' versatility in taste lends itself well to various cuisines from around the world. In addition to American dishes, sea scallops are a frequent ingredient of Asian, Mediterranean and South American cuisine. Japanese cooking utilizes scallops in sashimi and sushi dishes as well as using the scallop roe as an ingredient.

Scallops are bivalve mollusks. Various members of the scallop family are found worldwide. The edible portion is the adductor muscle of scallops. The muscle is larger and more developed than most shellfish because they are active swimmers. Scallop shells are symmetrical, attractive and highly collected by sea shell enthusiasts. Scallops can swim by rapidly opening and closing their shells. This method of propulsion is used as a escape technique when threatened.

Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus) are distributed in the Northwest Atlantic from Cape Hatteras to Newfoundland and also occur in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They live on the ocean bottom, generally at depths from 30 to 100 meters (about 100 to 300 feet) and can live up to 20 years.

Atlantic sea scallops are the largest scallops sold in the U.S., averaging 10/40 count per pound. By comparison, bay scallops typically consist of 80/120 meats per pound; calico scallops, average 50/250 per pound.

Commercial Scallop Harvesting

The sea scallop fishery is the largest and most valuable wild scallop fishery in the world, and in 2007 was the most valuable single-species fishery in the United States. Recent landings have been worth about $400 million dock-side, with major landing ports at New Bedford, Massachusetts, Cape May, N.J., and Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Scallops are trawled or dredged, and quickly returned to port or shucked at sea and kept on ice for the trip ashore. The commercial scallop fishery in the USA is heavily regulated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

New Bedford, Massachusetts is world famous for its sea scallop fishery. In 2008, the port of claimed the top spot for value of landings, primarily due to sea scallops, with gross landings reaching $241.3 million. The port's total landings were down 3.6 million pounds and the value declined by $27.6 million from 2007 primarily due to a significant drop in the landings of scallops. 2008 was the ninth year in a row that the port of New Bedford was ranked #1 for value of landings.

Bay Scallop Facts

Bay scallops (Argopecten irradians) inhabit higher salinity shallow areas of bays and estuaries along the North American East and Gulf coasts from Massachusetts to Texas.

* Bay Scallops are farmed along the USA East Coast. They are available as fresh shucked meats, frozen products and even fresh, live in the shell.

* Bay scallop shells are lightweight, thin, but strong with symmetrically radial ribs originating from central point (umbo) of shell.

* Shells have marginal wings or ears at are slightly different in size and shape, the bottom shell is more convex than top valve.

* Shell color can be dark grey, black, or brown; occasionally with yellow, orange, or red highlights; ribs sometimes mottled or banded.

* Adults can grow as large as 3.5 inches.

* Bay scallops are found near eelgrass beds. When a blight wiped out the grass beds in the 1930's, scallop populations plummeted and completely disappeared in some areas. Young scallops attach to blades of eelgrass with thin threads.

* Adult scallops live on the bottom, unlike many other bivalves such as clams which live buried in the sediment.

The calico scallop (Argopecten gibbus) supports a small but locally important commercial fishery in Florida. Calico scallops are harvested from the Florida panhandle and the southwest coast of the state. The majority of scallops come from the calico scallop beds occupying the continental shelf between Ft. Pierce and St. Augustine.

In Florida, the harvest of calico scallops is not allowed if the average number of adductor muscles ("meat") in the catch exceeds 250 per pound (550 per kilogram), an amount equivalent to a minimum average shell size of about 1.5" (38 mm) maximum disk diameter.

During 1998, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council completed a calico scallop management plan that addressed concerns of overfishing and habitat destruction for the fishery in federal waters of the south Atlantic region. The federal management plan did not address calico scallop size limits as limits were set by Florida for all calico scallops landed in state ports.