Scouting for Scallops

One of Tasmania’s gems - well worth the effort

Grant Wilson

Tasmanians have been stuffing scallops into pies, and then into their mouths since the early 1800s. But first, a diver needs to stuff them into a catch bag. There is a joke about SCUBA diving that teenage boys love, and teenage girls roll their eyes at. “Why do SCUBA divers fall backwards out of the boat”? I ask my nieces and nephew. “Because if they fell forwards, they would still be in the boat.” The reaction was as predicted. On a beautiful day in early July, as I stare over the side of the boat and a mate drops the anchor, I wonder to myself if I should fall forward this time. In the lead-up to this trip, we had a string of frosts, minus two and three-degree types of frosts. The sounder was giving me a surface temp of 10 degrees, but I was more concerned about what was down deeper. No SCUBA diving isn’t a glamorous sport; picture four dadbod types flailing around in their undies trying to squeeze into wetsuits. Hairy backs, smelly feet and plenty of plumber’s crack. It takes a bit of time to get all the SCUBA gear organized and strapped to your body, in fact, my entire kit weighs in at 45Kgs. Sitting on the gunnel and waiting my turn to enter the water, feeling exhausted from fighting with my wetsuit and carrying enough lead to build a keel. So, it is a relief to finally fall backwards off that boat and be neutrally buoyant.

Going deep to get the goods

As I hit the water, my 9mm semidry suit does a great job of holding the icy water at bay, apart from the few holes from where the dog chewed it once. Good gloves, a hood, mask and boots complete the outfit as far as being protected from the water goes. To sink to the bottom we need some help, and that help comes in the form of lead and steel. A belt full of lead, a steel air cylinder and a bit more lead in the pockets of my (BC) buoyancy compensator vest for good luck and you would think I’d sink like a stone. Nope, that just gets us neutral buoyancy. The perfect balance of sinking and floating. A big breath in and we float, breath all the way out and we’re sinking. Using your lungs to control depth creates a relaxing diving experience. Instead of flapping around burning up precious energy and oxygen, slow your breathing and use your breathing pattern to set the pace of your dive. I’m six feet, well over 100 kilos and prefer eating to exercising, but by letting my breathing set the pace I can get up to an hour out of one air tank.

Where to find scallops

Sinking through the water column, equalising my ears as I go and making any final adjustments to my gear, I reach the bottom. A quick look at the dive computer tells me I’m at four meters, the water temp is eight degrees, and as I look at my surroundings it is easy to tell I’m not in scallop country. It’s a sandy bottom but has a fair bit of weed and sea grass, so I point my compass North and start swimming across Wedge Bay. White Beach on the Forester Peninsula has become very popular for scallop diving in the last 10 years, with the closure of D’Entrecasteaux Channel due to low scallop numbers I fear Wedge Bay might go the same way. When you have no form of defence, live 100m from the boat ramp and taste delicious you don’t stand much of a chance. On my way to deeper water, I swim past a Giant Spider Crab. At the sevenmetre mark, I start to see holes in the sand, holes where scallops once lived. Another minute or so and I start to see the Horseshoes, the unmistakable shape of a scallop sitting under the sand. It’s the same excitement you get when you see a huge bait ball on the sounder or a trout tailing in the shallows. It’s action time.

I start plucking scallops from the sand like they’re toilet rolls in a pandemic; they’re not going in the catch bag quick enough! I do my best to count out 50 that I’m confident are size and this takes less than 10 minutes. I check my dive instruments and must ask myself why I’ve used so much air, down about 50 bar pressure from where I thought I’d be. Sure, I got excited harvesting those juicy molluscs thinking about all the ways I was going to cook them. Sure, once I got started I threw all controlled breathing out the window. And sure, I did as any good diver is taught – never hold your breath. But still, I’d used a lot of air. Looking at my dive computer and the answer is right in front of me, or above me depending on how you look at it. I was in 17 metres of water, down here everything is being squeezed, most notably your air. At 10 metres deep, you will use twice the air that you would at the surface. I once got very excited trying to get a crayfish out of a hole at 25m deep and sucked my air down so fast I was back at the boat fully dressed and halfway through my lunch before the other divers had even surfaced. To make matters worse I was empty-handed. My advice, stay above 10 metres, it is where all the action and scenery are. Abalone, crayfish, scallops and any number of fish to spear are all in that zone. Not to mention all the colourful seaweed and soft corals, colour fades fast after 10 metres deep. So unless you need to, stay in the fun zone. I’d solved the mystery of the missing air pressure, but I soon forgot about that when I noticed the water temp at six degrees, “that can’t be right” I mumble through my regulator. Giving my dive computer a tap on the screen, like it’s some oldschool barometer hanging in my grandparent’s kitchen and I’m wishing for the digits to change. But nothing does, and that’s when I realize. Crikey, I’m bloody cold. Because not only does the water pressure reduce your air quantity, it reduces the thickness of your wetsuit. My usually warm and comfy wetsuit feels nothing more than a cheap rashie. Time to head to the boat.

Returning to the top

I have no idea where the boat is, and I’m not going to surface here because I know I’m a long way out in the bay. I swam north to get here so the best bet is to aim south and swim back to the four-metre mark and surface then. As I start the swim home, I notice how heavy my catch bag is. It is dragging me into the sand. A quick press of a button and I inflate my BC a little, just to keep me from kicking up silt and make it look a bit less like an injured seal. You don’t want to look like one of those if you can help it (insert jaws theme music). As I come to shallower water everything brightens, more seagrass comes into view and I even stop to play with a baby octopus. I hear a beep coming from my wrist and check to see what is going on, my computer is telling me to have a decompression stop. It’s a three minute stop at the five-metre mark, it allows any nitrogen that might be in your system to be expelled.

If we rushed to the surface the nitrogen can form bubbles and cause decompression sickness. If you think isolating with COVID is bad, imagine a week in a hyperbaric chamber. If I was to swim to the surface after the dive I just had, the chance of getting decompression sickness is low. I have already tried tapping the thing on the screen to check it’s not mistaken once this trip. I know it is not, so I just wait it out. I’m more than happy to listen to the dive computer, mostly because it cost a lot of money and I need to get some value out of it. The minutes pass and it’s a good time to relax and reflect on what was a good dive, it’s a long drive towing a boat from where I live in the southern midlands right to the bottom of the peninsula. Taking a moment to remember that the prize is well and truly worth the effort is a nice way to finish the dive. Times up, so I hit the inflate button on my BC and surface about 40m from the boat.

Heading for the ramp

Remember me talking about SCUBA diving not being a glamorous sport? Well, picture those same four guys back in the boat in their undies. Wringing wet, goosebumps, blue lips and shrinkage that may need medical attention. In the corner there is a pile of wetsuits that smell a lot like a urinal at a dodgy nightclub. What can I say? It’s cold down there. So why on earth would anyone go through all of that when for 30 bucks you can get a plate of scallops and chips and a large glass of beer at the pub? I’ll tell you why.

Imagine inside that shell is a scallop as round as a beer can and so thick you can barely get your chompers over it. Add to that a roe the size of a 16oz sinker and the fact that you have 50 of these things. That’s more than enough reason for a grown man to pee his pants.

Heading back to the boat ramp and we’re intercepted by the Marine Police in their little rubber duck, a quick check of licenses and safety gear then it is onto the scallops. They’re quick to throw the new guy on board and get him counting out the scallops, a bit of friendly banter later and were on our way again. The police were interested in making sure we had enough dive gear for each person on board, harvesting scallops for your mate who is hanging out on the boat is a NO NO even if he is licensed.

All the gear - but please be safe

So, you’ve just purchased a secondhand hookah that old mate dragged out of the back of the shed and let you have for 250 bucks including the dust. You and your mates are now ready to bag out on scallops all winter, what’s stopping you? Well, hopefully, some common sense. It doesn’t matter if you’re diving SCUBA or from a compressor, the first and foremost thing you need is a PADI open water dive accreditation. It makes me very uneasy hearing about mates going thirds in a dive compressor, or Hookah as they’re known, and just jumping in the water and working it out for themselves. Let me run a few scenarios past you. Imagine you are upside down between two large rocks, with your arm shoulder deep in a hole fighting a crayfish. Suddenly you bump your mask, and it fills up with cold salty water. You’re blinded and in a very difficult position. Or what if you are working your way through the shallows looking for abalone, fighting the swell and the kelp. Getting thrown around in this washing machine of rocks and weeds only to find kelp has wrapped around the neck of your dive bottle and you are trapped. Both situations would cause panic in almost anyone. A rapid ascent to the surface, most likely holding your breath. Rupturing your lung, or your ear drum if you’re lucky. Or if you’re trapped in the weeds, thrashing around using up your air in a matter of minutes. To a trained and confident diver, these situations are no more than a small hiccup. A quick clearing of the mask by tilting your head back, pressing your finger between your eyes and blowing your nose has the mask cleared and its back to the crayfish. Or removing your BC underwater, untangling the kelp and you have lost a couple of minutes of diving at best. A real emergency is finding a rock covered in abalone only to realise you left your dive knife on the deck of the boat.

The correct training gives you the skills and know-how to handle a multitude of situations underwater, I say situations and not problems because they are only problems if you panic. Now you have a new little white card to stick in your wallet along with your Flybuys and all those loyalty cards you can never find when you are at the counter, it’s time to look at the rest of the equipment. Were talking about SCUBA (Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) so to get us started we need a Weight Integrated Buoyancy Compensator (BC). It’s the vest that straps our air cylinder to our back and has pockets to place lead dive weights in to spread the load around instead of it all being on our weight belt. It has a bladder that can be inflated or deflated to compensate for our buoyancy, hence the name, and it has pockets for any accessories. Things like a torch or knife and places to clip catch bags or underwater cameras. Look at it as the chassis of your diving system. On our air cylinder we have the first stage regulator and second stage (mouthpiece), this takes the air from a massive 3000PSI and delivers it to our mouth at ambient pressure. There is also an ‘Octopus” this is your spare hose and mouthpiece should the primary fail. A third hose takes air to our BC and finally is your Submersible Pressure Gauge to check your air pressure.

Under this is your wetsuit, there are three main options. A 2-piece wetsuit made up of pants and a jacket. A semi-dry suit is a one-piece wetsuit with seals on the arms feet and neck to prevent water from getting in. Finally, a dry suit. If you want to use a dry suit then there is another training course for that. Not commonly used by your average recreational divers looking for lunch, mostly commercial divers and the crazy people who like to go down deep. Gloves, boots, a mask and a hood are all essentials along with a set of good fins. A dive belt full of lead weights is the last piece of the puzzle. But like any good hobby, there are enough accessories and upgrades to spend your entire week’s pay on, every week for quite some time. I would recommend a LED torch, catch bag, a knife you can strap to your leg or upper arm and a dive computer - either integrated into your regulator or a wristwatch type. One thing to keep in mind, your air cylinder and regulator needs to be serviced every 12 months.

Future thinking

Things still don’t look good for the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. From 1995 until now, the fishery in the channel has only been open a handful of times, and with special catch and size limits in place when it did open. IMAS (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies) conduct dive and camera surveys of the scallop beds every year or two, and with the current closure being over a decade long you would think the stocks would be on the rebound. But they are just not. Only low densities of scallops are being reported and until the numbers are up and there is a range of size classes distributed throughout the beds, you better look elsewhere. But where you ask. Remember when you were walking along the beach and picked up that scallop shell and tried to skip it across the water? Chances are you threw it in the exact direction of where it came from.

The best thing you can do is get your head under the water and have a look, don’t be scared to use a few bottles of air scouting around on the bottom at your favourite beach. If it’s got a sandy bottom and there’s good tidal flow then give it a shot. I’ve even heard of people getting towed slowly behind the boat with their snorkel on prospecting along the beach. To put it bluntly, White Beach is getting hammered, and it’s going the same way as the Channel I fear. While it’s nice to return to grounds that have been fruitful in the past, I feel the next trip should be on new territory. Just to spread the load.

Ocean to plate

On a lighter note, let’s get these scallops cleaned and cook a few up. You can’t beat YouTube for learning how to tie knots, wire in power points or clean scallops. It’s a one-stop-shop, so all I’ll say is I like the butter knife and spoon method. That goes for wiring in power points as well. Just open the shell with the knife and scoop out the flesh with the spoon, by the time you clean the last one it should all make sense. Be sure to keep a dozen shells, because Scallops Kilpatrick served in the half shell are very hard to beat.