By Jennifer Granneman:
Do you live on St. Joseph or St. Andrew Bay and have a privately owned dock or a way to get out on the bay (e.g. kayak, boat, paddleboard)?
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is looking for volunteer willing to take the role of a scallop-sitter. FWC staff will provide you with juvenile scallops and a predator-exclusion cage. We ask that you either hang your cage with scallops from your dock or place your cage in the bay. Additionally, volunteers will be asked to clean their scallops once a month from April 2018-January 2019. We will provide cages, scallops and training to you during our Florida Sea Grant-sponsored scallop restoration workshops taking place in April 2018.
This project is part of an effort that began in 2016 by FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute to restore bay scallops in Florida’s Panhandle.
Bay scallops play a big role in the economies of many coastal Florida towns, and this project is intended to increase scallop abundance and recreational fishing opportunities in the Florida Panhandle. The goal is to both increase depleted scallop populations in some bays and reintroduce scallops in other suitable areas from which scallops have disappeared.
While we only ask volunteers to participate for a period of nine months, the project itself will last until 2026. It is funded by restoration money set aside after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
This project will boost other restoration efforts already in place. Prior to the 2016 and 2017 scallop season, FWC staff enlisted the help of community members in Port St. Joe to collect scallops prior to the opening of the scallop season and place them in cages in a no-entry zone in St. Joseph Bay. In addition, each year FWC collects adult scallops from St. Joseph Bay and brings them to a hatchery, which provides juvenile scallops the following year. There are currently about 50 cages holding both wild and hatchery-produced scallops in the no-entry zone in St. Joseph Bay. Placing scallops in cages protects them from predators and from people harvesting scallops and increases the likelihood scallops will successfully produce offspring during spawning season.
Although we have made progress in our efforts to restore scallops, we think this project would be more successful with additional help from the communities around St. Joseph and St. Andrew Bays.
To summarize, the only requirements to participate in this program are:
- Live near St. Andrew or St. Joseph Bay from April 2018 – January 2019
- Have access to the bay: either a private dock, boat, or kayak
- Be willing and able to care for and clean scallops once a month from April 2018 – January 2019
- Attend or view via webinar our scallop-restoration workshop in April 2018
We hope that partnering with the community on this project will increase our chances of successfully restoring scallops to St. Joseph and St. Andrew Bays. If you are interested in volunteering, email us at BayScallops@MyFWC.com.
Jennifer Granneman, an Associate Research Scientist at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, can be reached at Jennifer.Granneman@MyFWC.com.