Most scallops sold at restaurants in Maine are wild caught, but there is growing interest now in farming scallops. Along Maines, Mid Coast and down east areas. Scallops act much like an oyster or mussels, cleaning the oceans water as it grows. But in our ongoing series on means changing climate. The warming ocean water temperature could jeopardize an otherwise rapidly growing scallop farming industry. Bucks Harbor Marina in Brooksville as Maine's coastal communities settle into a freeze, the crew aboard Andrew Peters boat warms up and sets out. Everybody likes scallops. Just no one knows how to grow them. Peters started his fishing career in Portland. He thought he would go the traditional route. Pretty much all my life I've wanted to work on the water, make a living from working on the water and. When I was younger, that was always to be a lobsterman, and but growing up out of state, becoming a fisherman for wild caught seafood proved difficult. The ability to get a lobster license is really challenging and it's quite a long process and I've been on a wait list for eight years. And. Within the last 10 years I've definitely realized there are other ways to make a living on the water. So that's exactly what Peters did. One of those ways was was to start a scallop farm. Now he has a crew of two paid employees working out of their home base in Belfast. Yeah, this is the farm right here. Peters is just one of the few farms harvesting scallops on a commercial scale. He hopes more will join him. I think growing the number of scarlet farms in the state in Maines waters is is an incredibly. Positive thing you're, you know, increasing the viability of a of a coastal economy. According to the Department of Marine Resources, the number of Commercial scallop farm licenses has gone up from 34 to 43 from 2019 to 2021. I wasn't doing this then. We all be out of a job. We're doing something else maybe. I don't know. On the surface the scallop farming doesn't look like much, but under the water we see what looks like an upside down forest. With harvestable size, scallops hanging on lines and juvenile scallops free to swim around and enclosed Nets. And that's where we find Christopher Norris, who is a researcher with the University of Maine. He's looking at the rise of aquaculture, including scallops with similar natural traits like oysters and mussels. So they're what we call filter feeders. They take in water, filter out nutrients, particularly in the water column integrated into their body, and then shoot out. Cleaner water than before. Noran tells us that while oyster farms thrive in southern areas like Freeport, they have a hard time growing further north along Maine's Midcoast and in some of the down Eastern region. That's because Maine is one of the northernmost regions that oysters grow. It's also one of the most southern regions that scallops grow, leaving a new frontier of ocean space for potential scallop farms. It could be massive, essentially, because scallops tend to grow more. Further offshore, in sort of the temperature range we see in Maine, particularly northern Maine, so the down East region, Norman says that more of these scallop farms could help clean oceans offshore and further down east, critical to combating the effects of climate change from storm surges and warming waters, filtering out particularly in the water. And that can be a number of different things. It can potentially be toxins, but it can also be just a lot of excess excess runoff. But while that climate changes, warming ocean. Water can threaten the growth of scallops. If you get to about 22 degrees Celsius, that's when they actually start to die, and that's around 71 degrees Fahrenheit. The data shows the threat is increasing as the Gulf of Maine Research Institute shows that in 2021 it was the warmest year for the Gulf of Maine on record. We see those temperatures, which we see in southern Maine in the summer, kind of moving N that could be a problem potentially, but even in the face of a changing climate, there is an increasing number of farmed scallops. Providing a stable way of life amid the turbulent state of wild fisheries. That's a big question. I've got a one year old son and I want him to have something to do when he's my age. That's on the water and and positive for our community and positive for the environment. And with Peter's crew cleaning up for the day, they push forward as one of the state's largest commercial scallop farms and hopefully setting an example for future farmers. In Brooksville, Jack MoMA, new center, Maine.
