The Problem With Scallops (and why we're trying to fix it)

For centuries, fishing seems to have had one direction of travel: efficiency. Bigger boats, longer trips, heavier gear, more sea covered, more taken out. The logic was seductive in its simplicity: maximise yield, maximise profit. The problem is the ocean doesn't work like a spreadsheet. And we're all starting to see the bill.

The result of this intensification is fisheries that are less resilient, marine habitats that are less able to recover, and a sea that is quietly, incrementally, being asked to give more than it can sustain. Scallop dredging sits squarely within this patter; heavy chained gear dragged across the seabed, taking everything in its path.

We think there's another way. In fact, we think scallop potting is a test case for something much bigger than scallops.

Can you build a fishery that takes less and damages less (and still makes money?)

That's the question we've been trying to answer for the last five years. It turns out the answer is yes. But it isn't easy. The supply chain wasn't built for it. The market wasn't built for it. Most of the infrastructure doesn't exist yet. Every link in the chain has to be constructed from scratch — new markets, new buyers, new relationships, new ways of thinking about what seafood is worth and how it should be caught.

The technology alone took three years to develop and test. We now have a small but growing number of fishermen on the south west coast of England making a genuine living from pot-caught scallops, working within and around Marine Protected Areas where trawling has been banned for over a decade. The sea in these areas has had room to recover. The scallop populations are healthier. The difference is visible, measurable, and real.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about the supply chain.

The entire scallop industry, processing, transport, export, was built for dredged scallops at volume and at low price. Pot-caught and diver-caught scallops currently represent a tiny fraction of the overall market (less than 5%), caught and transported in much smaller quantities. Consumers who know about them are willing to pay more, because the quality and environmental credentials speak for themselves. But awareness is low, supply is fragmented, and the system has no particular interest in changing.

Which means Disco Scallops isn't just a different way of catching shellfish. It's a different way of thinking about what a fishery can be.

So what do we actually want our fisheries to look like?

It's a question the government has been notably reluctant to answer clearly. A small number of enormous trawlers and dredgers? Or a diverse network of smaller fishing businesses, spread around coastal ports, embedded in local economies, connected to the communities they operate within?

Markets naturally tend toward the former — scale, efficiency, consolidation (see beginning of blog). We're arguing, with some conviction, for the latter. Not out of sentimentality, but because the social, economic and environmental case for small-scale fishing is overwhelming if you're willing to look at it properly.

Recent research has confirmed what many coastal communities already know: the number of small-scale fishing vessels is declining. Family-operated boats selling into local economies are a vital part of the social fabric of coastal Britain, and they are among the most economically vulnerable players in the entire seafood chain. The fishermen who rely on crab, lobster, pollack and mackerel are seeing declining catches and shifting seasons. They have the least ability to adapt, and the least protection when things go wrong.

This is the context in which Disco Scallops exists.

Not as a niche product for fancy restaurants( though we'll take that too) but as a genuine attempt to demonstrate that fishing can be done differently. That a less intensive, less destructive method can be commercially viable. That the fishermen who do it right deserve a market that rewards them for it.

It's hard work. There are weak links in the chain at every turn. But the alternative — aka. continuing as we have, extracting more from a sea that has less and less to give — isn't really an alternative at all.