Maine’s scallop season’s opening is staggered with licensed divers getting first crack at the lucrative resource starting in mid-November and last week in the state’s three fishery management zones.
Unlike farmed finfish, seaweed aquaculture is regenerative, meaning it does not require fresh water, pesticides or antibiotics, and actually improves ocean conditions by removing carbon and nitrogen from the water column.
“I hope they do open it,” said James West, a scalloper from Sorrento who shrimped in the past. Even if it was only for a month, from February to March, he just wanted a chance to see what was out there.
The event was last held in person in March 2020, just days before the pandemic caused much of the world to shut down.
Blue Hill company Downeast Maine LLC developed the new product this year, testing its pain balm, recovery stick and hand scrub with commercial fishermen in mind.
The crew improvised with old credit cards to cull through and extract live survivors from the Gouldsboro Shellfish Resilience project’s inaugural batch of 105,000 seed clams.
As eye candy, the tumblehome design means the hull tips in instead of flaring out, giving the boat a more rounded look from the back, a design more common to yachts than work boats.
“When [people] line up and pay $34 for a lobster roll, it goes beyond the imagination,” he said.
The special town meeting, moderated by Rudman Winchell attorney Tim Pease, drew around 250 voters, only four of whom raised their hands in opposition to the ordinance.
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