January 10, 2023 — When you work on the water in Maine, the cold months make for hit-or-miss days.
For Andrew Peters and his three-person crew, undocking from Buck’s Harbor Marina in Brooksville to tend to their scallops is a year-round venture.
It takes about 45 minutes by boat to get to the scallop farm. Along the way, Peters’ crew counts and cleans small scallops. The ones he was monitoring in in December were about an inch or so and needed another two years to grow to market size.
“All my life I wanted to work on the water and make a living working on the water, and when I was younger, I wanted to be a lobsterman,” Peters said while steering the boat through islets on Penobscot Bay.
Peters, who grew up in New York, said he lived near Portland and worked as a sternman on a lobster boat. He wanted to be a captain himself.
“I’ve been on a waitlist for eight years, and within the last 10 years I’ve realized there are other ways to make a living on the water and one day is to scallop farm,” Peters said.
But when you eat a scallop from Maine, chances are you are eating a wild caught scallop. The harvest of wild scallops happens normally in winter. Scallops also take a long time to grow, sometimes two to three years to reach a marketable size.