Diver-caught scallops are a premium item on some Nova Scotia restaurant menus, but until now the shellfish served often came from as far away as Mexico.
That’s about to change.
Beginning Saturday, a team of commercial divers will be permitted to hand-pick scallops from the floor of the Bay of Fundy, between Digby and Digby Neck. The federal Fisheries and Oceans Department recently approved the commercial project.
“These are commercial scuba divers who usually fish for urchins. What they’re basically doing is they are going out on a dive boat to … scallop beds, jump in the water with full scuba gear includes a dry suit because it is mighty cold down there and they basically just hand-forage them, one at a time and put them into dive bags,” Justin Cantafio, sustainable fisheries campaigner with the Ecology Action Centre, told CBC’s Information Morning in Halifax.
The divers will bring the scallops to the boat, shuck them and take them back to shore, he said.
The program will permit the harvesting of 2.5 tonnes of scallops until the end of September. The quota is under an existing allocation of someone in the industry, Cantafio said.
It’s a good time to launch the initiative, he said.
There were Mexican diver-caught scallops in Nova Scotian restaurants, “which is kind of blowing our mind,” Cantafio said. “So it was kind of interesting that demand was out there for diver-caught product we happen to have the best product in the world. And it just so happens that very recently in Baja, Mexico, a virus has wiped out a significant portion of the scallops so the time is pretty ripe.”
He acknowledged the practice is about quality, not quantity.
“It certainly takes a lot more time, it’s labour-intensive, it’s relatively environmentally benign, that’s nice. It’s hands on, the guys can usually haul in somewhere around 50 pounds each on a really good day,” he said.
“So if we’ve got three or four guys out there … then you’re getting a couple of hundred pounds. That’s a decent amount of catch per day. At least for the divers.”
Cantafio said diver-caught scallops are aimed at a specific consumer.
“It’s not one way of fishing or another. It just happens to be a very interesting way of fishing that lines up with some emerging values in the seafood-purchasing world,” he said.
“So people are really starting to look for community-based fisheries, small-scale fisheries, and they really want to have a community connection, know who caught their fish and how.
“We just so happen to have these urchin divers, who have a limited diving season, who have boats and crew, ready willing and able to go, so it’s just a perfect kind of opportunity. We’ve been working on this for about four or five years, so really excited that it is going ahead.”
The Ecology Action Centre said it consulted with the inshore scallop advisory committee before the project was approved by Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
2016 CBC/Radio-Canada