6,000 Miles of Scallops to make Sea Food Cheap.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 21 August 1914, Page 8

6,000 Miles of Scallops to make Sea Food Cheap.

In these days, when the cost of living is so hi<rh, no little importance attaches to the discovery of an entirely new source of food supply almost as one might say, at our very doors. It is just a matter of scallops. But these shellfish are mighty good to eat—and just think, if you please, of a vast and continuous bed of them 200 miles long and averaging thirty miles in width. Such beds have been found not far off the Atlantic coast on our side and oversea. One exploring " vessel, the Grampus, came across one bed—a molluscan deposit undreamed of— while hatiling a deep-sea net along the bottom just to see what there might b« to catch. A quantity of scallops was brought to the surface. This excited immediate interest, and the net —a kind of dredge on runners—was lowered again and again, fetching up on each occasion from one to three bushels of the bivalves. The bed seems to contain more scallops than ever were known in the world before. Now, 6,000 square miles of scallops ought to furnish a practically inexhaustible supply for all time to come. One reason for gladness over the discovery is that these molluscs had begun to be rather scarce. Wherever found, fishing for them has been so actively prosecuted that they have been threatened with extermination, for something like 60,000 gallons annually have been eaten by folk outside England, who know a good thing, and of late the price has risen very much. Another important point is that the newly discovered bed seems to be composed entirely of the species known as the "giant" scallop, which is of greater food value and greater commercial value by reason 'if its superior size. A giant scallop is something like four times the size of the common scallop. When full grown it is as big as a fairsized oyster. The scallop is our only locomotive bivalve. An oyster, when only a few days.old, settled down, attaching itself to a rock or some other convenient object, and devotes the rest of its life to a sedentary existence. Hut the scallop is a lively swimmer, by which fact there hangs a tale. Some years ago a Frenchman who was extremely fond of s'-allops bought several thousands of them and planted them in beds in what

no tnought was a suitable place— a shallow,. 'tide-swept area, in an estuary on the coast. Next day, at low tide, he went to take a look at them and found, to his great astonishment, that they had all dis- ' appeared. In fact, they had taken a notion to swim away and the scallop farm was thus wiped out of | existence between two tides. I The scallop swims by opening! ' and shutting its pair of shells energetically, thus expelling the water from between them and driving itself backward. They often travel in this way in shallow water with such rapi !ity that the eye can hardly follow them. Sometimes they make considerable journeys in large companies. One can scarcely imagine a lovelier sight than that of a flock of these pretty creatures, with shells of every hue, darting about in ' clear.water—the flight-like movements i vertical, horizontal, and zig-zag, bej ing more suggestive .of a flock of little birds than of bivalve molluscs. It is not without appropriateness that the scallop shell is used in '> heraldry to indicate that the bearer of a coat-of-arms has made long voyages at sea. The scallop has been the badge of several orders of ■ knighthood, especially those of the Crusaders. Only the big muscle, by which the valves of its shell are held together, is used for food. Speaking of " locomotive " molluscs, there are many univalve kinds (snails) that are habitual mountain- ■ climbers. Only the other day the Smithsonian Institution, U.S.A., received a collection of shells representing no fewer than 2,500 species of such creatures gathered by one enthusiastic scientist in the Philippine Islands, many of them being obtained from the very summit of Mount Apo, the highest mountain in the archipelago. How did they get there ? Why, they walked up, of course. Snails are notoriously slow pedestrians, and it is by no means to be supposed that these made their way from the bottom to the top of the mountain in a week or even in a year. To accomplish the journey must have taxed the climbing powers ( of many successive generations. That they climb mountains—some kinds of them, that is to say—is a fact admitting of no possible doubt. Their shells are often found at very lofty elevations, and, until science found out how they got there, the matter seemed a good deal of a puzzle. Inasmuch as they do not walk on land, the solution of the problem is simply that in the course of many generations they have made their way up the slope by way of streams.