Scallop

The Puget Sound scallop fishery is designed to manage and targets the harvest upon two principle species of scallops, the Pink Scallop (Chlamys rubida) as well as the Spiny Scallop (Chlamys hastata). The abundance of the resource is not fully understood and limited commercial and non-commercial fisheries have occurred over the past 20 years. Efforts to harvest economically viable volumes of scallops require commercial dive gear and many of the landings to date have occurred as a result of non-treaty recreational fishing as well as bycatch landings associated with commercial sea cucumber fisheries. One of the issues with scallops, and a couple non-commercial clam species (butter and varnish clams) is that scallops are thought to pick-up dangerous levels of Paralytic Shellfish Poison (PSP) that requires laboratory sampling prior to commercial harvest. The low abundance and high cost to harvest and sample limit the viability of the commercial fishery.