THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 7, 1995 TAG: 9503070282
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: GLOUCESTER POINT LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
After five years of tinkering and testing, researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science think they've perfected the farm-raised bay scallop.
They've taste-tested their product at selected raw bars and restaurants. They've shown how it can be marketed - as scallops to be served in the shell - to compete with frozen scallops now brought to local seafood counters mostly from China and Mexico.
Now they need some scallop farmers.
Bay scallops are the smaller cousins of sea scallops - the white, half-dollar-size meat most people get when they order scallops in a restaurant.
Though native to the lower Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore, bay scallops all but disappeared from Virginia waters in the late 1930ssaid Mike Oesterling, a commercial fisheries specialist at VIMS.
VIMS researchers began exploring a niche, in 1989, in the scallop market - selling the whole animal, shell, guts and all.
Wild bay scallops are still found in New England and the Carolinas, but fresh ones are hard to come by in Virginia.
Out of water, bay scallops have a short shelf life - three to five days, Oesterling said.
``If you're growing bay scallops in Chincoteague and only had a three- to five-day shelf life, that limits where you could sell your product,'' he said.
Freezing prolongs the shelf life, of course, but VIMS researchers decided that Virginia would be hard pressed to compete in the frozen bay scallop meat market, primarily because of the labor cost involved in shucking them.
So VIMS decided to bypass the shucking process and market the whole scallop, to be steamed and served like mussels, clams or oysters. To combat the spoilage problem, they began freezing them in the shell last fall.
The VIMS bay-scallop research goes beyond the water. The institute provides its bay scallops to restaurants free of charge, in return for feedback from customers and chefs.
Berret's Restaurant and Raw Bar in Williamsburg began serving VIMS bay scallops four years ago. They proved so popular, said executive chef Richard Carr, that bay scallops are now a permanent part of the menu.
``People are very receptive to them,'' Carr said.
Berret's serves between 70 and 80 steamer platters with bay scallops a week They're currently using bay scallops, frozen in the shell, from New England and New Zealand, Carr said.
``If you could get them fresh, it would be ideal,'' he said. ``But their shelf life is minimal. They're very, very fragile.''
The Dining Room at Ford's Colony serves bay scallops steamed or poached, either with salad greens as an appetizer or in bouillabaisse-type dishes. Executive chef Dave Everett said the response has been good, though some customers have said they didn't expect to get the whole scallop.
``We had to win the crowd over a little bit,'' Everett said. ``They're real cute in the shell and all, but they have to create a market for a product like this.''
That, said DuPaul, takes time. He and Oesterling hope the steamed whole scallop moves from upscale restaurants down to middle America, to the point where it becomes a staple in seafood restaurants, like steamed clams.
``These things don't happen overnight,'' DuPaul said.
There is some disagreement over whether bay scallops and sea scallops differ in taste. DuPaul and Oesterling say they can't tell a difference; Carr would agree.
Another benefit of farm-raised bay scallops is that they can be planted and harvested in a year's time, like corn or soybeans. The animals naturally spawn in April and, after a monthlong larval stage in tanks, they're transferred through a series of nets that hang either in tanks or just off shore. They reach market size by October or November.
Chincoteague Shellfish Farms Inc. has been growing bay scallops for three years and ships them fresh as orders come in. Ken Kurkowski, a biologist for Chincoteague, said the real challenge to Virginia bay scallop farmers will be getting people to buy their product at the same time they're fending off competition from farmers in other parts of the country, particularly New England.
``Growing them has been the least of our problems,'' Kurkowski said.
VIMS has been doing research and development for Virginia's fledgling aquaculture industry for many years, studying how to hatch and raise oysters and clams before scallops.
Oyster aquaculture remains a small industry, but cultured clams accounted for $11.4 million in sales in 1993, according to the state Department of Agriculture, more than twice the value of wild clam harvests in the state, Oesterling said.
DuPaul and Oesterling expect bay scallops would be a sideline for people who already raise clams or oysters, the way a dairy farmer might keep chickens or a few sheep.
``I don't think we're going to see a huge bay scallop farm the way we've seen huge clam farms,'' Oesterling said. ``It's a rather easy transition from clams to oysters, but as a stand-alone business? Not yet.''
KEYWORDS: SCALLOPS AQUACULTURE by CNB