When celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall donned scuba diving gear for his recent Fish Fight broadcast and inspected the seabed where a scallop dredger had just fished, he declared in shocked tones that all that was left was “desert”.
His coverage prompted ire among not just scallop fishermen but the wider fishing community, and provoked a host of vitriolic comments on websites such as The Real Fish Fight.
But both the programme and the reaction from the fishing industry left unresolved the question of how sustainable dredged scallops are and how extensive the scallop dredging is.
On the face of it, scallop dredging is a destructive form of fishing that tears up the seabed and leaves little else able to thrive apart from the scallops themselves. Physically, the dredges have metal ‘teeth’ that tear into the seabed and rip up anything in their path as they are pulled by a boat.
Such destructiveness is regarded by some chefs, scientists and environmental campaigners as an unacceptable price to pay for scallops, which in the UK are either king or queen scallops.
However, there are many other factors that also need to be taken into account, such as what sort of ground is being dredged. Storm and tide-tossed sands, for example, make a good habitat for scallops and the other creatures found there are adapted to disturbance.
The Marine Conservation Society is currently reviewing its advice on scallops but in the absence of this guidance, Fish2fork believes that they can continue to be put on menus.
