August 27, 2018 — Scallops are among the most valuable and beloved seafood items in the U.S., and a group of Maine firms thinks farming them might be a way of keeping up with increasing demand.
The Atlantic sea scallop is a New England mainstay, but unlike oysters and mussels, they’re almost exclusively harvested from the wild on the East Coast. A loose consortium of aquaculture businesses off the Maine coast is looking to change that by making scallop farming a viable option here. It’s one of the first serious attempts to farm Atlantic sea scallops in the United States.
One of the groups, Bangs Island Mussels of Portland, is using the largest amount of Japanese scallop farming equipment ever used by an American scallop farm. The Japanese have farmed scallops for decades, and Bangs Island hopes to learn from their example, said Matthew Moretti, the company’s co-owner.
Bangs Island began growing scallops at its farm in Casco Bay three years ago, and could have a few thousand scallops to market as soon as this fall, Moretti said. Maine scallops sometimes sell for $25 per pound, but the fishery only takes place in the winter, and farming represents a chance to bring the product to customers year round, he said.
“Scallops are higher value, and there’s a traditional fishery here,” he said. “It would be great to expand it.”
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Sioux City Journal