Here you see the Fishing Vessel Long Set dredging for Atlantic sea scallops in Blue Hill Bay on a sunny day last week.
Below, you see FV Tarrfish, entering Naskeag Harbor with a load of scallops on the same day:
The next day, in the rain, FV Dear Abbie: came home to her mooring in the Harbor with a load of scallops:
The halos of seagulls over the fishing vessels indicate that they still have some shucked scallop shells on their decks.
Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus) have complicated bodies inside their shells. Among other things, they have stomachs embedded in digestive glands, nerves, gills, ganglia, gonads, and – most important to gourmands – an abductor muscle that opens and closes their shells.
The fishermen remove those abductor muscles and store them in containers on the vessel to take ashore and refrigerate. Those muscles are the “scallops” that we eat. The rest of the mollusk’s body parts (or, as fishermen say, “the guts”) are thrown overboard with their attached shells. Opportunistic seagulls usually can catch them before they sink too far and become fish food. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 15 and 16, 2021.)