about dipping into the younger beds is 

 the waste of tomorrow's catch. Many 

 small scallops from each haul, too 

 small to process, go to the dump after 

 being sorted from the catch that is 

 trucked to North Carolina or 

 processed in Florida. "Since Christmas 

 we have been bringing in today's catch 

 and throwing out tomorrow's," says 

 Ronald Earl Mason, Carteret County 

 seafood processor and boat owner. 

 "That's one thing that offends me 

 right now is that we should be leaving 



those small scallops at sea." 



Mason, whose 88-foot steel-hulled 

 boat, the Carteret Pride, is fishing 

 the Canaveral waters now, says he 

 would like to outfit his boat to prevent 

 the waste. He wants to install an on- 

 board separater to cull out the smaller 

 scallops at sea, where they can be 

 deposited alive back into the ocean. 

 Mason would also like to devise a way 

 to store the scallops in his boat's 

 refrigerated hold so the boat could 

 make longer trips. 



But Tillett feels the boom of calicoes 

 is almost over. Already part of the fleet 

 (about 17 boats) is planning to pull out 

 to give sea scalloping a renewed try, he 

 says. "I expect that we'll clean it up 

 down here before the summer's over," 

 Tillett says. "Things are going to hap- 

 pen the same way here they happened 

 in New England. Mother Nature can 

 make plenty of something but when 

 enough of mankind is out there after it, 

 they can wipe her out in no time." 



—Kathy Hart 



Nematodes threaten calico market, but not health 



There are nematodes everywhere — 

 in the soil, in the sea, in plants and 

 animals, and in food. So nobody in the 

 seafood industry was especially sur- 

 prised when nematodes turned up in 

 processed calico scallops this winter. 



The telltale sign — a small, brown 

 spot on the adductor muscle, where the 

 parasite was encysted — was hard to 

 detect. If there were nematodes visi- 

 ble, they were tiny and hairlike. 



The affected scallops came from 

 huge beds off Cape Canaveral. By 

 mid-December, nematode levels were 



running so high that the Florida 

 Department of Agriculture stepped in 

 and began monitoring scallops as they 

 landed at Canaveral. Some of the sam- 

 ples showed 60 out of every 100 

 scallops were infested. Several ship- 

 ments were embargoed, and the state 

 of Florida, which had an interest in the 

 reputation of its product, asked the 

 U.S. Food and Drug Administration 

 (FDA) to help monitor shipments into 

 North Carolina processing plants. 



Daniel Sitko, supervisory in- 

 vestigator with the FDA office in 

 Raleigh, says that his agency tested 

 samples and advised North Carolina 

 officials of infested calico shipments. 

 The agency set a standard requiring 



that no more than 20 percent of the 

 scallops in any one lot could be in- 

 fested with nematodes. North Carolina 

 officials seized several truckloads of 

 scallops when higher numbers of 

 parasites were found. 



"It was a patrol-type activity," 

 Sitko says. "There was no danger to 

 health, but aesthetically the 

 nematodes are objectionable in high 

 levels. If you're paying for scallops, 

 you should be getting a reasonably 

 clean product." 



Sitko says the 20-percent standard 



helped ensure a good product without 

 imperiling the scallop fishery. He ex- 

 plains that many of the nematodes in 

 scallops can be eliminated during 

 routine processing. Setting a tougher 

 standard would not necessarily have 

 improved the quality, but it might 

 have made fishing scallops too costly 

 for fishermen to harvest, he says. 



Sam Thomas, a Sea Grant seafood 

 specialist at the North Carolina State 

 University Seafood Laboratory in 

 Morehead City, says that the 

 nematodes are "totally harmless" as 

 far as human health is concerned. 



"These parasites are killed by low 

 cooking temperatures, or by freezing," 

 Thomas says. "Even if you consumed 



a raw scallop, any nematodes in it 

 would be killed almost immediately by 

 your gastric juices. It is not a parasite 

 to man and it could not live in the 

 intestine." 



Thomas points out that nematodes 

 are not new to the seafood industry, 

 and that they are getting more atten- 

 tion now because of the great increases 

 in scallop production. 



"In any kind of food product, you 

 have defects of this kind," Thomas 

 says. "The idea is to keep the defects 

 to a minimum, for the sake of the con- 

 sumer." 



The South Atlantic Fisheries 

 Management Council is considering a 

 plan for managing the calico-scallop 

 stocks. Proposed regulations would ad- 

 dress the nematode problem and also 

 attempt to decrease the harvests of 

 juvenile calicoes, which have been 

 taken in great numbers from the same 

 beds as older, nematode-infested 

 scallops. 



Meanwhile, officials in Florida and 

 North Carolina report that the trouble 

 with parasites may have corrected it- 

 self. Since the crackdown this winter, 

 they say, fishermen have been sam- 

 pling beds first, then moving on if the 

 parasites are there. 



"We haven't had a call on this in 

 about three or four weeks," Sitko says. 



Thomas says that even though the 

 nematodes problem seems to be under 

 control, processors are afraid some in- 

 accurate reports and misinformation 

 have already cooled the public's love 

 affair with the scallop. 



"It would be a shame," he says, "if 

 this took away from any of the joy 

 people get from eating scallops." 



"There was no danger to health, but aesthetically the nematodes 

 are objectionable in high levels. If you 're paying for scallops, you 

 should be getting a reasonably clean product." 



— Daniel Sitko 



