10 Sep Scalloping Steinhatchee
On land the town of Steinhatchee offers visitors little more than a food mart, gas station, and a smoked mullet stand, but on the river things are different. Marinas are well-equipped, the public boat ramp runs like clockwork and every accommodation is booked from June through September. Lines of trucks toting boats stretch several blocks, past street-side tents with hand written signs offering scallop cleaning services, men in lawn chairs selling boiled peanuts and even a food truck-style souvenir shop boasting rows of clothing racks in a restaurant parking lot. Summer scallop season is clearly a booming time of year for this little town along the Gulf coast in northwest Florida. This isn’t my first time here, but it’s been several years since my last visit and I don’t remember the town being quite so busy and enterprising. I find myself wondering if there will be enough scallops to go around as our boat putters down the river, one in a parade of what seems like hundreds.
We’re in a 16’ flats boat, a fine vessel by most standards but slow and shabby compared to the souped up fishing boats that zoom past us in the channel. One is metallic orange with seats raised high above a stereo system that would make any hot rodder drool. Another has stadium seating atop the center console, filled with blond-haired boys in rash guards and board shorts. Yet another has so many holders filled with fishing rods that it looks more like a Chinese junk than a powerboat as it leaves us in its wake. We leave the channel to explore the marshy grass islands that interface the mouth of the river as it spreads into the Gulf of Mexico. A cluster of white birds in the distance prove to be a flock of white pelicans, an unexpected sighting in July. Apparently, this flock decided not to migrate north this year. We’re intrigued, but our true goal is further off-shore in the seagrass beds.
We approach a cluster of boats displaying dive flags, a potential sign of bay scallops in these parts. We send a scout into the water. He returns to the boat several minutes later empty-handed. We move on, heading to a GPS point where we’ve found scallops in the past. There are already 20 or 30 boats at our destination when we arrive. We anchor nonetheless and in jumps our scout. Nearly instantaneously, his fins break the surface. This is a good sign, a possible dive to the bottom to collect a scallop. He comes up grinning, three scallops in hand. I pull on my mask and snorkel, grab my gathering net and jump into the water.
My view turns from white clouds meandering across a blue sky to green. All green. The water is green, the seagrass is green, and I wonder if even the sand is green. Yet unlike some years, visibility is good. I can clearly see the bottom 8-feet or more away. I follow a rut through the grass, possibly a prop scar. My eyes dart from one side of my narrow trail to the other, scanning for scallops. My trail opens to a sandy basin. I swim along the edge. A school of silver fish flash by. A sea star sidles into the sand. I see a shell, but it’s not a scallop. I pass the mollusk untouched. A wake sends the grasses into a synchronized wave and at last I see my quarry tucked between the blades, two rows of cobalt eyes defying the green palette.
I take a deep breath, dive down and reach for the scallop. As I wrap my fingers around the grooved surface, it slams its shell shut, blinking out the blue indicators too late. I see another scallop nestled among long strands of turtlegrass. I take another breath and dive down, collecting this and one nearby that I hadn’t seen from the surface. A scallop rises from the grass, clapping its shells together to swim several feet. I catch it before it settles back into vegetative tentacles. This is a good site. Every few feet, another scallop. I collect five at a time in a single dive, a record for me. I fill my net within half an hour, another record. With four of us working the area around our boat, the scallops become sparse but not before we reach our harvest limit, a generous quota we rarely approach.
As a fisherman, I’m pleased. We’ll eat well tonight and have plenty to freeze for later. As a conservationist, I’m baffled. There are so many boats, so many people and the collecting season keeps getting extended because it’s good for tourism and clearly for Steinhatchee’s economy. Bay scallops used to range continuously along the Florida coast from West Palm Beach on the Atlantic side to Pensacola along the Gulf side. Today their distribution is limited to a few isolated populations that could easily collapse if not sufficiently replenished with offspring during spawning.
Most survive no more than a year, two at most, and reproduce in the fall following changes in water temperature. I wonder whether it wouldn’t be more sustainable for harvest to occur in the fall rather than summer, allowing time for spawning and greater population replenishment. I for one prefer swimming in warmer summer waters, but I’d make the sacrifice if it meant that I could return to Steinhatchee for scallops indefinitely. There are no sweeter scallops than those freshly shucked.
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