September 11, 2018 — Bangs Island Mussels’ farm manager Jon Gorman heads out on Casco Bay, off of Portland, Maine, in a blue and white fishing boat named Le Cozze (Italian for mussels). He motors past one of the rafts where the company is growing mussels and on to a more unusual venture: Bangs Island’s new sea scallop farm.
Gorman cuts the engine and drops the anchor, under the watchful eyes of harbor seals lounging on a nearby island. Scallops need cold, nutrient-dense water to grow, and Maine’s protected bays provide the ideal environment.
Cranking a winch, Gorman and his crew pull up a taut, algae-covered rope from the depths of Casco Bay’s gray water. Leaning over the side, they haul out a lantern net, a long, box-shaped structure that serves as a scallop nursery, onto the deck. Gorman reaches into one of the lantern net’s 10 compartments and pulls out a handful of golden-brown scallop shells, about the size of old-fashioned silver dollars.
Eyeballing them, he looks pleased. When his measurement confirms they’re 65 millimeters across, Gorman nods. “These are ready for ear hanging,” he says.
Gently dropping the lantern net back in the water, the crew motors further out, where 2,000 larger scallops are hanging on 26 longlines. The crew hauls up a line with dozens of larger scallops, hanging in pairs by their “ears,” the flat wings that fan out from the base of the shell. The animals that emerge from the water are lively; they’re snapping and gurgling, coated with algae and a smattering of barnacles.
Gorman measures again. These scallops are on target for harvest in the fall, which means that Bangs Island Mussels will be one of the first companies to bring a mature, environmentally friendly, farmed sea scallop to market in the U.S.