July 29, 2014 — A recent article in Nation’s Restaurant News calls the scallop “the mollusk of the moment,” but just 20 years ago, the U.S. fishery for Atlantic sea scallops was unsustainable, with the population near record lows and fishing at a record high.
Fortunately, the industry underwent a complete turnaround in the late 1990s through the collaborative work of scallop fishermen, scientists, fishery managers, and environmentalists. Now, a research set-aside program, funded entirely by proceeds from selling a portion of the annual sea scallop quota, is helping to ensure that the fishery remains healthy.
Art Trembanis, associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware, is one of more than 30 researchers from 14 organizations to be awarded a research grant through the 2014-15 set-aside program, which is administered by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Trembanis leads the Coastal Sediments, Hydrodynamics, and Engineering Lab (C-SHEL) at UD.
Collaborators on the two-year $1.6-million project, which is addressing incidental mortality in sea scallops exposed to commercial dredging, include Doug Miller, a benthic oceanographer and ecologist in the School of Marine Science and Policy at UD, David Rudders from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and brothers Arthur and Kenneth Ochse, captains of the F/V Christian and Alexa.
Dredging it up
Atlantic sea scallops are the nation’s highest-valued single species commercial fishery, with the industry valued at more than $500 million a year.
Trembanis explains that the popular mollusks are typically harvested by dredging, with rings on the equipment designed to catch mature scallops and allow small ones to fall through.
Some are inevitably lost to the process. For example, smaller scallops that pass through the rings may get raked over and crushed by the dredge. Others that are too small to keep may get caught by the dredge anyway and then die after they’re returned to the ocean.
“While scallops are one of the most lucrative fisheries on the East Coast, dredging can be a destructive sampling method that damages much of the seafloor and leaves many animals compromised,” says Danielle Ferraro, a master’s candidate in oceanography who is part of the research team.
By using a combined research platform consisting of a commercial scallop dredge and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), the researchers hope to quantify the incidental mortality of scallops as a result of dredging so that the fishery can be more effectively managed.
Read the full story from the University of Delaware