The Atlantic Sea Scallop “dragging” (dredging) season ends this month and our all-season fishing vessels will then get a rest until they go out for lobster trapping in June or July. Here you see a shucked sea scallop shell.
That hard housing is more about camouflage than color. It looks somewhat like the living and operations area of TV’s famed Starship Enterprise, but it is a shape that helps the mollusk “swim.”
Sea Scallops swim by slowly opening their shells and rapidly closing them. They look a bit like a skipping stone, but underwater, not above. They have up to 200 miniscule eyes along the edge of a “mantle” just within the shell rim to see where they’re going.
These bottom-resting animals can live up to 20 years. Their shells usually are not much longer or wider than six inches, but there is a report of one that was about 9 inches long. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 4, 2024.)