Around Port O'Connor, the beaches are covered with Scallop shells. One would think that means that the living version would lurk close by. But I never hear of anyone gathering these tasty shellfish like they do in NW Florida. What's the story?
shrimpers catch them in their nets, but there a smaller version of what i guess is commercially worth anything... have gotten some off the boats, but by the time you shuck em the meat is only the size of a nickle or dime, but its still scallop meat.
Some years they are really abundant here in the ULM and you can pick up a bucketfull in no time. They are bay scallops and as previously said, quite small. Easiest way to get them open is to steam them for a few minutes and the shells open right up. They taste great. We like them in a cream sauce over linguine. I haven't seen many this year, but they seem to be more abundant during the heat of the summer.
They get biggest in August before the season closes, and supposedly live only two years, in Florida. The daily boat limit is 5 gallons of uncleaned shell. You need about 80, just for a small batch of linguini for four people. That's a lot of shucking. A dull butter knife scraping works good, while the animal is still alive. You don't want to slice off any meat.
I always fig that bay scallops looked a lot like cleaned rays that someone had put a cookie cutter to the wings causing small roundish pieces of scalloped meat.
We use to harvest Scallops in front of my house in Santa Rosa Sound. ( Pensacola ) We snorkled and used small hand nets to gather them. It's really funny to watch them swim off by clapping their shells together. Mom and Dad loved them. To me they taste just OK.
I have not seen them on the upper coast but at certain times they can get plentiful on the lower coast. Of coarse being a shellfish to be legal your going to have to harvest them from waters approved by the state department of health. You can get the shellfish harvesting maps online and updates by calling 1-800-685-0361.
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