Dwayne Osmond, age 12, of Portland, Me., for his question:
WHERE DO WE GET SCALLOPS?
Scallops are related to clams, and both belong to the sea. The clam that ends up in a delicious chowder is the soft body of an animal who lived inside a pair of sturdy shells. The scallop we eat is merely the muscle used to open and close a pair of much fancier shells.
A clam is a stodgy old shellfish who lives in the silty sand at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes he buries himself in the mud or wet sand by the shore. In any case, he is a drab creature, classed as a bivalve, or two shelled mollusk. But the scallop is living proof that bivalve mollusks can be glamorous, frisky and quite smart.
His handsome shells are shaped like rounded fans, usually creamy white or tinted with pink or yellow. On one side of the circle there is a small flat platform, and from here a lot of ridges radiate out toward the edge. These ridges form waved or scalloped edges around the rims of the shells. In most species, one shell is rather flat and the other is a humped dome.
Unlike the stay at home clam, the scallop is an expert swimmer. He travels by opening his shells to take in water and squirting it out in a jet as he snaps them shut. He often uses this jet propulsion to hop around and flip himself over. What's more, he also has tentacles which he uses to cling to floating seaweed or to walk on the floor of the sea.
But his most remarkable feature is a series of little blue eyes, placed all around the edge of his body, just inside the shells. When he loses an eye or a number of eyes, it takes him only a couple of months to grow new ones. The remarkable scallop can peep out in all directions, and his tentacles can sense the odors of his enemies.
Like the clam, he depends on muscle power to open and close his shells. However, the clam has a hinge of two stringy muscles. The scallop's hinge is one large muscle very tender and tasty. This is the part of his body that ends up on a plate of seafood.
Scallops are gathered along most of the world's shores. Some are found at depths of 300 feet and even farther out to sea. Different species live in different oceans, and most of them are about 2 inches wide. But the shells of the giant scallop, found off our northern Atlantic shores, are 5 or 6 inches wide.