New shellfish hitting Canadian stores
Scallop lovers in New Brunswick will soon have a new type of the tasty shellfish to enjoy reports the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC);
The bay scallop is gaining popularity in New Brunswick's aquaculture industry. It is smaller than the Atlantic sea scallop and doesn't reproduce naturally in New Brunswick waters. The farmed scallop has already been introduced at a few locations on the Acadian Peninsula, such as Shippagan. Now growers are looking at expanding to Caraquet Bay.
Michel Poitras farms oyster in the Caraquet Bay and he's the first person to introduce bay scallop farms into the bay. He thinks the tiny mollusk has big potential. "Well, they taste very good, that’s one thing for sure. This enables us to introduce another product to our farms," he said. "It’s very important for sales, for revenues as well, and it introduces a whole new aspect for this particular animal for the consumer." It can take up to five years for oysters to reach maturity, but bay scallops can reach their full size in just six months, he said.
Thomas Landry, a research biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, has studied bay scallops for about 30 years. "It went through a very, very long process to make sure that there weren’t any disease implications, test implications or genetic implications. Or on the ecological level, that it wouldn’t be a competitor that would have an impact on native species," Landry said.
The department will monitor the bay scallops to see how they function with increased production. A new hatchery in Shippagan is the first place in New Brunswick to spawn them. It will officially open this week.
