From Japan to Maine: The story of scallop culture in Maine

Dana

Once upon a time, there were three bears.

Corinne

Hello, and welcome back to the Salty Talks Podcast. I'm Corinne Newfie, the communication specialist with the Aquaculture Research Institute. And today, I'm joined by Dana Morse from Maine SeaGrant. Dana, will you please describe your background a little bit and also your role at Maine SeaGrant?

Dana

And so I kept looking, and in: 1998

Corinne

kind of like a jack of all trades. And sounds like you get to do a lot of different stuff in your current job.

Dana

We do, which I really like. So, for example, through some of the work in scallop production, we made a link with an equipment producer in Japan who and their company also produces equipment for squid fishing. And so in service to him, I've been asking some colleagues about the potential for a squid fishery here in Maine and the potential for a different kind of fishing equipment to access that resource. So it kind of puts me back in commercial fishing stuff, which is exciting. So these sorts of weird opportunities, or this variety of opportunities perhaps comes up pretty regularly in extension, which I very much enjoy.

Corinne

Squid fishery in Maine would be super cool. I love squid. Let's see. Okay, so you mentioned scallops. 2s Scallops. Dan is for sure cringing at my pronunciation right now because I'm from the West Coast, and that is how I learned to pronounce it. Scallops. 2s Yeah. Okay. Scallops, which is, I think, maybe one of the less thought about shellfish when it comes to aquaculture in Maine. So scallops have been harvested and picked by divers in Maine for quite a while. But in more recent decades, with climate change and other threats, farming sea scallops offers an opportunity to diversify a gap within the seafood sector. So is scallop farming unique to Maine, or is it going on in other states as well?

Dana

The aquaculture industry for sea scallops right now is pretty much unique to Maine. The species that we have in our region, the giant sea scallop or Atlantic sea scallop, is Placopectin magellanicus, and it's different than the base scallop that some people think about. 1s Placopectin is much bigger. The shell looks completely different, and there's a whole variety of characteristics that are different than the base scalp. And it's a pretty temperate species. It can definitely get too warm for good, healthy conditions for scalps. And although there have been efforts, certainly in Maine going back at least to the 90s, actually more like to the least, there have been a little bit of work done in New Hampshire and a fair bit going back a number of decades in Massachusetts. Right now, Maine is the only place in the country that's focusing on sea scallop production through farming at the moment.

Corinne

Before getting into the nuances of all the scallop farming, I think it's a little bit easier to kind of imagine how oysters are grown. But can you briefly describe the process of farming scallops?

Dana

getting between, say, one and: 3000

Corinne

So these scallops that are being grown are then being sold to consumers. What is the scallop market like in the US. Right now?

Dana

Huge. Do. Scallop fishermen. And the biggest scallop fishery, 1s actually, I think it is either the first or the second most valuable fishery in the United States, which is the scallop fishery. It's mostly offshore. It's centered in New Bedford and Fair Haven and a little bit to the south there. So all of those wild scallops that we collect or catch in our federal fishery are worth between four and $600 million annually. And then United States, because we like to eat scallops here, we import another, say, $250 to $400 million worth of scallops. So the scallop market in the United States approaches a billion dollars a year.

Corinne Where are they being imported from?

Dana

Japan, China, South America. Little bit from Europe, some from Canada. Farming of scallops seems to be a little bit trickier than farming other shellfish. To my understanding, they're more I don't know if sensitive is the right word, and they need a lower stocking density. But despite that, there's definitely what it sounds like a high market demand for scallops in the US. And I think I read maybe it was in one of the papers you sent me that people would be willing to pay a premium for domestic products. Right. Which is where some of your research comes in, trying to improve scalp growth and survival, as well as looking into ways to maximize profitability. Yeah, all the above.

Corinne

Okay. Which I want to touch on. But before we get into main scallops, we should take a little trip to Japan.

Dana

Let's go. I wish

Corinne

Dana

The power of radio with the podcast. Yeah, teleportation. Someone needs to get on that. So you've been to Japan a couple of times, learning about scalp culture, and something I found really neat while reading through some of the papers you sent me, the story about how Maine came to have a sister state relationship with Almarie Prefecture. Yes. Nice.

Corinne

Do you want to give a quick little history lesson about that? Sure.

Dana

ath. And I think the year was: 1887

Corinne

1889

Dana

So close. Fail. 1s It wrecked off the coast of Valmore Prefecture, and I think the crew was about 19. And of those, four survived. And they survived in large part because the people who were on the shore saved them. And the intervening part here is fuzzy to me, but that experience of saving lives and connecting Maine and Almore was part of what eventually led to a formalized relationship between the state state of Maine and the prefecture of Almor. And a prefecture is essentially a state in Japan. Or it's analogous to a state. Here and there is Maine, Almori sister state advisory council, for example. And they meet regularly. And there are groups that go back and forth between Maine and Almore on all kinds of different things. Of course, my end of things has been sculpts and commercial fishing and aquaculture stuff. But it's been a very interesting and enduring relationship over the years.

Corinne

Did you know that a relay race also resulted from that? That happens every August. Yeah, it's a swimming and running race, and it's called the Chesborough Cup, or whatever the name of the ship was.

Dana

Cool. Yeah. Where does that happen?

Corinne

In Japan, I think. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. You should fact check me on that. But I think I think I read that.

Dana

I will say that there is at least one plaque that I've seen there dedicated to the Chesborough. I think that's right. I think I'm having a real recollection there, which was sort of odd to be in a place so distant from Maine and then have that sort of thing be present.

Corinne

And if I remember early on, they were using onion bags and cedar branches to collect scallop spout, which is pretty interesting. And kind of now, obviously, with more technological advances, that's not how we do it anymore, but this is pretty similar to, like, pearl nets or lantern nets that we're using now.

Dana

k it was, again, a fisherman,: 1953

Corinne

He's holding up his fist. For those of you that are not here with us, which is all of you.

Dana

All of them. 1s And that also turns out to be a nice stable platform. And neither pearl nets nor lanternets are particularly efficient to use. They take a lot of labor. They get fouled quickly with kelp or algae or tunicates, so they take a lot of care. But scallops seem to be happy in them and they're relatively inexpensive to purchase, so that's why a lot of people use them.

Corinne

You mentioned that scallops. I think I've been using scallop and scallop interchangeably. Maybe scallops don't like crowding. So when they're in pearl nets or lanternuts, how many are in each? I guess in each pearl net or within the lantern nets? Each level of the lantern net?

Dana

Yeah, good question. So if we're thinking about a pearl net, those are, I think, 13 inches square on the bottom. So if you've got a box that's 13 inches square, when the scallops are small, 5 mm or so, you might have 200 in that perlnet. And then as they grow, it's the job of the farmer to thin them out. And by the time they become two inches or so, you might have 15 in one of those, maybe 20.

Corinne

So they get pretty a lotless than I would have expected, because to put that into perspective, when you're farming oysters, you can have like hundreds of oysters in a bag or in a cage. Wow, 15. It's not much.

Dana

And you're exactly right. You can put a lot of oysters into a container. So if. Completely cover the bottom of a container with oysters. You can still get good survival and growth with scallops. Usually it's talked about in the framework of bottom coverage. So if you've got a pearl net and it's got a certain number of square inches for the floor of that net, if you count each scallop as a circle, you can calculate how much surface area they cover. And really, only percent to 30% of the bottom available to you should be covered with a scallop. So there's much more free space than there is scallop.

Corinne

Is that because of resource competition? Like the nutrients in the water and too many scallops overcrowding it, then not enough are getting the proper nutrition that they need?

Dana

Yeah, that's part of it. And if they are robbing nutrition from one another, then they don't have those food resources to grow. And the other thing is, with scallops being so mobile, if they don't like where they are and I'm kind of speaking in human terms, but if the conditions for oxygen or food are not right, they can get up and leap down if they want to.

Corinne

I would do that.

Dana

And so what happens is, as a scallop starts to clap around in the net, they'll encounter another scallop, and they do what's called knifing or biting or clasping on one another. And so the shells might meet, they might clasp on one another, and the edges of the shells are really sharp. So if I'm a scallop and I've got my mouth open, as it were, and another skull comes along and swims, and that shell kind of gets into my mouth, that can damage my tissue, my mantle, adductor muscle, or it can kind of chip off a bunch of my shell, all of which slows growth and increases mortality.

Corinne

Have you seen those elephant seals in California? They're, like, huge. 1s Kind of what I just started picturing with these dueling scallops, which is totally not really that close, but it's kind of a funny image.

Dana

Yeah, I like that.

Corinne

Okay, so going back to learning culture methods from Japan, you mentioned ear hanging, which was the drilling holes in the scallops and then scallops, and they're kind of, like, strung along on a string. Is that something that's happening here in Maine also?

Dana

is probably started in about: 2017

Corinne

is biofouling or like, predation problems since it doesn't sound like they're in any sort of net or protection?

Dana

Yeah, predation not so much of an issue. Sometimes you get a starfish set, but usually it takes a while for the starfish to grow big enough for them to eat the scalps that are hanging from these strings. Because you can't really hang a scallop until it's about two inches. Shell height predation is not an issue, unless your flotation in your lines is bad and your dropper lines hit the bottom, in which case the green crabs will run up there, the starfish will run up there, and they will eat all your scalps. That will definitely happen. We've been lucky. Well, maybe it's not luck, but it's a good thing that either ducks or other diving ducks do not eat ear hung scalps, or at least they haven't so far, and they've had plenty of opportunity. So biofouling is definitely an issue. Everything will grow on these scallops in the line, so you do have to manage that. But predation, if you're doing your job right as a farmer, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Corinne

And then is the point of ear hanging. Well, I guess there's probably a few points of ear hanging, but is one of them to reduce labor costs so you're not constantly dragging nets in and out of the water and thinning out the scallops.

Dana

That's exactly right. Yeah. The machinery that's been developed is pretty specialized for this method of growing scallops, but it does a really good job of cleaning off the biofouling like muscles to some degree. A little bit barnacles lot of. Luna kits or different kinds of algae will grow in there. And the machinery, some of which we do have here in Maine, does a really good job.

Corinne

So these scallops, once they are grown to an appropriate size, which to my understanding, can vary, right. You can sell them at smaller or larger sizes. When I think about scallops, I think of, I think, what most people are picturing, like a circular piece of meat that's either raw or grilled or seared, however you want it, which is not the entire animal, it's just the shucked portion of it. So are we in the US. Selling whole scallops? And is there a market for it like there is in Japan or elsewhere?

Dana

Yeah, and that was a really good description. The answer is yes, there is a market for a whole scallop or other scallop products than just the shucked meat, which is the adductor muscle of the scallop. And if you go to France, for example, I have it on good authority I've never been there.

Corinne

I have been to France. You have been to France? Yeah.

Dana

So let me ask you, do you ever see a scallop in the market there that is not attached to the Row, for example? Or 1s can you buy just a scallop meat in France?

Corinne

I don't remember. I can't remember if I've been in a seafood market where I was looking at scallops in France.

Dana

Okay, well, from what I've heard, the the scallop cuisine in France is such that everybody eats it with the Row on, or at least it's always sold with the Row on. And the Row is the go net either male or female?

Corinne

Is it kind of orange?

Dana

It can be orange and white at the same time. They're hemaphroditic that species over there. So it's kind of half and half.

Corinne

Okay, I think I have seen that.

Dana

Oh, cool. Yeah. There is a thing that I should say here, though, and I'll try to be concise about it. Red tide and biotoxins is a huge issue. It's not an issue if you're just eating the meat. The adductor muscle doesn't really pick up those toxins which come from algae very much at all. So you can have red Tide happening out in the Gulf of Maine and the fishery can still happen because those adductor muscles will still be safe to eat. That's not the same or that's not true of the other tissues, the mantle tissue, the gill, the digestive gland, sometimes the Row, those can become very dangerous to eat. Like they will put you on a ventilator or kill you. Yeah. So listeners should understand that the only time that you should ever eat a whole or live scallop is when it has come through an approved fishel process, if you will. For example, a reputable restaurant, a reputable retailer, never, if you're happening along to, I don't know, you catch a scallop at the end of your cod fishing line, a scallop kind of comes along and grabs a coding. And you bring it up and you say, oh, man, I'm going to eat this whole thing. Don't be. Because that could be a very bad idea. So all of which brings me to say that scallop farmers are working closely with the Department of Marine Resources. And this has been part of my work over the years to do the required testing needed so that the grower and the department and the consumer, frankly, everybody can understand the safety of the product. So anything coming through that process from Maine, through these farms and through our retailers and outlets have been through this kind of process. But as a consumer, if you see whole scallops, you should absolutely ask where they come from, what the process was to get them to that point, to the plate or to the retail counter, because it's really important.

Corinne

So if I as a consumer wanted to eat a whole scallop in Maine, where would I go?

Dana

I will probably miss some of the retailers here, but glenn Point Oyster Company, I think sopo seafood? I think Island Creek might be sourcing. Some of these as well. Those are the three groups that I can think of at the moment. The farms that are selling whole scallops that I know of at the moment are Penn Bay Farm Scallops. That's the Brewer family out of Stonington and Vertical Bay, which is Andrew and Samantha Peters, and they are out of Belfast, although the farm for Vertical Bay is on the east side of the bay. So there are really only two producers in the United States right now that are putting live whole scalps on the market. And I should say here too, there are a couple of good things. First of all, our fishery for wild scallops goes from say, December to March or maybe early April. So that's the only time that you can get fresh dayboat quality scallop adductor muscles. Farms have the benefit of being able to supply year round, and also they can supply different sizes. So if you prefer kind of a petite scallop, maybe two inches in shell height, well, that's a great product right there. Or maybe you'd rather have a three or a four inch scallop because you want to do things differently as a consumer or a chef, we can provide those different sizes as well. And I say we, it's really the industry during the growing year.

Corinne

I was at the Boston Seafood Show last week and 1s it was so fun. It was maybe the biggest scallop I have ever eaten in my entire life. This was like four or five inches. It was humongous and it was just raw and it was so that's not the adductor muscle that was the scallop

Dana

No, just the muscle.

Corinne

Yeah, it was like a burger. Yeah, it was literally like a burger. It was like close to baseball size. It was ridiculous. It was so good. So I think in some of the papers that you sent me, I remember reading that also selling the whole product is better for making a profit than just the adductor muscle. So do you think that is sort of necessary for the scallop farming industry in Maine to continue and grow?

Dana

I don't know the answer to that question, but you're right on the money, because that question about profitability is kind of playing out right these days, the Penn Bay Farm scallops and Vertical Bay, to the best of my knowledge, are pursuing different models, and they are both equally good Penn Bay Farm scallops. The Brewer family focuses on whole live animals. I just ate some of those petites the other day at an event in Portland that are just fabulous on up to, say, three and a half or a four inch whole animal. And they have clients who use those products in a whole variety of ways. Andrew and Samantha Peters are pursuing a business model where it's focused more on the doctor muscles. And it's unclear to me. I have not asked them the details about their books, but I think both business models can be successful, and I hope they are and profitable. The one thing that I would say is that nobody knows. Certainly I don't know how big the market for a whole live scallop is right now. The market is gobbling up everything that our producers can produce for whole scallops. There has been no steady supply of whole scallops. So that we don't know. It's impossible to know how many tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of scallops we could put into the US. Market or ship overseas. No clue. But we do have some sense of how big the adductor muscle market is. That was the nearly billion dollars that I was talking about earlier. So when I think about business profitability and opportunities for other companies to come into the picture, if the business model to sell just meets and be profitable, if that pans out, we have an enormous opportunity here because the market is so huge. So you were recently in Japan in December, January, January, and you brought back well, I'd love to hear just some highlights of the trip overall, but you brought back a couple of different scallop products. And one thing you brought back that I thought was great was like they were like really chewy. Yeah. What were those?

Dana

I don't know what they're called. They were great. Yeah, I think they were, and I'm totally guessing here, they were cooked and slightly dehydrated scallops, and they came individually packed. If this is the same thing that we're talking about.

Corinne

It's not. But all of those were great. I was calling those pocket scallops.

Dana

Yeah. Pocket scallops. Yeah. What was the other thing then?

Corinne

They were like it kind of sort of looked how dried squid looks when you buy it, and they were, like, sweeter, and maybe it was like pieces of the mantle.

Dana

That was dried squid.

Corinne

Oh, that was squid. Yeah. Well, the pocket scallops were great. Squid was also really good.

Dana

Yeah. Well, here we are talking back to squid, because if we could develop a dried squid product here, t would be so for that.

Corinne

Yeah, that would be great. But anyways, what were some recent highlights of your most recent trip to Japan?

Dana

Yeah, there are a lot. The people are great. So we got to see folks who we've met a few times got to develop professional and personal relationships with. So it feels like going back to well, it is going back to see friends, and we get to talk a lot of shop. So the people that we met at the gear manufacturers and the scientists, all those folks and the fishermen were really nice to see again, kind of catch up and share some news. We saw some new machinery. We saw some upgraded machinery, and those are of material benefit, because that's just going to help us hopefully do our collective jobs better. You can't go there without eating. Just fabulous, beautifully presented food everywhere, just all over the place.

Corinne

That's what I've heard from my dad every time he's been to Japan.

Dana

Really? Yeah. Like, what's his favorite area? Where is he talking about?

Corinne

He's a big sashimi guy. Also really likes eel.

Dana

unch, you can see scallops in: 4011

Corinne

I'm intrigued by the scallop ice cream and the freeze dried scallops. Yeah, that could be great for backpacking or something.

Dana

Yes. 1s So there are just this enormous spectrum of products that can be made with scalps that we have only just the faintiest foggy idea about, because all we normally eat here is non seafood eating. Americans generally is the adductor muscle, usually paired with bacon, which is which is delicious. I love it. But there are also other delicious things to do with scalp.

Corinne

This is maybe a bit of a hard question to answer, but what do you hope to see or what do you envision for the scallop farming industry in Maine moving forward in the future?

Dana

A bunch of things. First of all, I am and again, I haven't asked them for their books, but I'm I'm eagerly awaiting, like, clear signals that the two farmers that we have who are selling whole products right now really have their financial feet under them. And I think that's happening. As the old saying goes, when someone starts to pull up at the dock with a new pickup truck and the new pickup truck was bought with proceeds off the farm, people take notice. Right? So if there are tangible outcomes that these farms are profitable, good going concerns, then I'm looking forward to others kind of joining the pack. And we probably have another 20 farms that have a few, maybe several thousand to a couple of tens of thousands of scalps on them. We only have a few farms, maybe three, that have in the hundreds of thousands of scalps on them. So that's kind of the range we're at right now, as opposed to millions of scalps on a farm in a typical Japanese arrangement. So I'm looking forward to more scallop producers. I'm looking forward to better understanding the lifecycle of the scallop and how it interacts with oceanography, helps us have both a better fishery and a farming industry. Because what I really want is for us to produce more scallops. Some of them are going to be caught, some of them are going to be grown. And what we can do is we can shout from the tree tops, hilltops, rooftops, all of them, all of those. 1s We can really talk about this fabulous quality product that we have, whether you catch it or grow it. And we can do that because we do. So I'm looking forward to more of that. And this work that I mentioned earlier with the spat collectors, that is a really cool way to look at the links between where scalps originate as fertilized eggs, where they drift to or from, where they settle out. And understanding things like the role of oceanography on larval movements and all that kind of stuff is just a fabulous opportunity to inject some science in the air. And a lot of it is made possible just because of this new techniques. Back collectors. It's now 20 years old, but 25 years ago, we didn't have this option to understand what was going on. Now we have this tool that allows us to peek into the secret lives of scobs much more effectively. I'd say,

Corinne

do you cook?

Dana

I do.

Corinne

So I must ask, what is your favorite way to cook scallops?

Dana

The easy way. Meaning? Get a pan really hot, put in a little oil, sear your scallops for, I don't know, two, three minutes either side. Do not overcook your scallops.

Corinne

Yeah. An overcooked scallop is the worst. It's so rubbery.

Dana

Yes, it's a travesty. It is. Your scallop should be kind of undercooked. A little bit in the middle there. Put maybe a little salt and pepper on it. And eat it. And if you are lucky enough to get some petite, whole scallops, steam them just like the way you would do for a mussel or a steam clam, the scallop shell will open. You'll see, at sort of the back of the shell towards the hinge, there's a little dark spot, and that's the digestive gland. I can recommend just kind of pulling that off. And then maybe you want to dip it in butter. Maybe you just want to eat it like that. It is so good. Just plain without any kind of sauce on it. And then the best part, you take those two inch scallops and you keep the shells together because they'll be nice and clean. And then you take some Led lights or something like this, and you make Christmas lights out of them. That's awesome. They are beautiful.

Corinne

Oh, wow. I want to do that. Thanks for making the long trek up from your office. Dana's office is like, half a mile down the hill trudged way up here. You did? And those look like nice hiking shoes that you got on. Yeah. I appreciate you taking the time to talk about solids and me.

Dana

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.