If you’ve got a yen for succulent, right-off-the-boat Maine sea scallops, now is the time to get them.
Most consumers can’t get scallops that really are “right off the boat” unless they live in the Midcoast or Downeast and, perhaps, know a fisherman. For those with the opportunity, it’s well worth a drive down to the harbor to buy a gallon or two of freshly shucked scallops when the boats come back from fishing.
Even if they’re not right off the boat, good, fresh scallops are readily available, if expensive. In Portland, the waterfront Harbor Fish Market was recently offering fresh “dayboat” scallops at $32.99 per pound for “mediums”—a mix of 10-20 per pound—and $38.99 for “jumbos” all weighing in at fewer than a dozen per pound.
A little farther up Commercial Street, Browne Trading Co. offered Maine diver-harvested scallops, rare as hen’s teeth and comprising only a tiny portion of the state’s total scallop landings, for $64 per pound, size 10 to 20 per pound, and jumbo scallops “wild caught in the Gulf of Maine,” for $82 per pound.
Safety is related to matching the size of the boat to the size of the dredge used and making sure the towing gear is in good order.
Portland isn’t the only source for dayboat scallops. Many local markets, especially along the coast, carry these delicacies which usually sell out quickly, and even Hannaford, had fresh Maine scallops for $32.99 per pound.
So, why are Maine scallops so expensive? It’s really a matter of how they’re harvested.
While Atlantic sea scallops are available pretty much year round, the vast majority are harvested by boats, most home ported in
New Bedford, Mass., which make days-long fishing trips far offshore. The scallops they land may have been sitting on ice soaking up water in a fish hold for a week or more before reaching the market.
By contrast, the fishermen who participate in Maine’s near shore state waters scallop fishery—“dayboat scallopers”—leave harbor in the dark to start fishing at sunrise and return home around mid-day with a load of shucked scallops that can go to market as soon as the same day they are harvested.
Dayboat scallopers have a short harvest season. Starting usually during the first week of December, the season extends until about the middle of April. Scallopers are restricted to fishing only 50 to 60 days during that four-month period, when the weather along the coast of Maine is often windy and bitter cold. And they face a daily landings limit of just 15 gallons of shucked scallop meats (10 gallons in Cobscook Bay).
Shucked meats must be no smaller than 35 to the pound, though most Maine scallops are two or three times larger than that. The state Department of Marine Resources advises scallop fishermen that, as a rule, one and a half bushels of scallops in the shell will yield a gallon of scallop meats.
Thanks to the weather and the equipment used, the dayboat scallop fishery can be risky.
Cutler fisherman Kristan Porter has gone lobster fishing and scalloping for decades and just stepped down as president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. He acknowledges the dangers in scalloping while noting the fishery’s safety record has been reasonably good in recent years.
“All fisheries are dangerous,” Porter said. “That’s what we deal with and that’s what we sign up for.”
Most of Maine’s scallop fleet are lobster boats, perhaps 30 to 45 feet in length, that are “rigged over” for winter scalloping. That process involves adding a heavy winch wrapped with hundreds of feet of steel cable and a tall boom or gallows frame rising high above the deck for towing an iron and chain scallop drag over the side or the stern of the boat and along the sea floor at a speed of three to five knots (three and a half to six miles per hour).
In most state waters, the drag, or dredge, can’t be wider than 10 feet 6 inches (5 feet 6 inches in Cobscook Bay) and it is heavy. The larger dredge can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds empty and, Porter said, that weight can easily double “depending on what you haul up in it.”
That’s maybe a ton-and-a-half of iron, chain, rocks, and scallops swinging in the air over the side of a boat that may be rolling around in rough seas. When the bottom of the dredge opens, the contents are spilled onto the washboard or deck of the boat to be sorted by the crew with the scallops set aside for shucking and the detritus pitched back over the side.
In large part, Porter said, safety is related to matching the size of the boat to the size of the dredge used and making sure the towing gear is in good order. Nowadays, the winches on a well-rigged boat are set up so that the cable will be released if the dredge hangs up on an obstruction on the sea bottom.
In the past, hangups were not uncommon in the scallop fishery. They were blamed, at least in part, for the loss of several boats, and a few fatalities, while dragging for scallops or sea urchins in Cobscook Bay during the 1990s and early 2000s.
“Some ways to do it are better than others. It all depends on your boat,” Porter said. “It’s a matter of common sense. If you’re not rigged for what you’re doing, that’s when it goes bad.”
There are other factors as well, such as weather conditions and whether a boat is fishing in relatively sheltered waters up a coastal bay or river, or farther offshore in the unsheltered Bay of Fundy where Porter often fishes. Though perhaps it all comes back to common sense.
“It depends on the operator,” said Porter. “If you have good experience and good equipment, you get yourself out of it.”
On Feb. 28, DMR announced at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum that scallop meat landings in 2024 totaled 514,187 pounds worth some $8.76 million with a boat price paid to fishermen of about $17 per pound. By contrast, in 2020, landings totaled some 675,487 pounds and the boat price was $10.34. What the current fishing season will bring remains to be seen.
