Does anyone know of any good areas where me and a friend could go dive for scallops. I've found them alot in Alaska but have yet to find an area here in the puget sound that has them in decent numbers. I will be out in the anacortes region so something around there or in the san juans would be best. I'm hoping to add some more meat to bbQ I plan on having with all the blackmouth we catch this weekend.

Honestly, there's no real good spots for big scallops in the Puget Sound.

Most of the scallops you'll find are, at the largest, around a silver dollar. Once you actually get to the hinged muslce, you're looking at a dime sized bite.

I don't know about you, but after cleaning a hundred or so of those and still only having a cup of scallop meat just isn't worth it.

I don't recommend to anyone to harvest the much larger rock scallops. Those are not a plentifuly and easily renewable resource. These are the big scallops fused on rock/cliff faces. One some of the more easily available sites, you'll still see the fused half-shell of rock scallops the size of a dinner plate that were harvest many years ago. Very seldom can you actually find a living scallop that large these days.

Oh yeah, make sure you call the PSP hotline, as scallops *really* hold the toxins...and they hold them for a really long time. For that reason, I won't eat a Puget Sound scallop.

I've heard that the Bellingham area has big weathervane scallops. Only problem is they are relatively deep - start at 200 feet and go down from there.

Feel free to browse my collection of dive site reviews. I don't recall, but I may or may not talk about scallops on some of the WDFW marked sites.

staff.washington.edu/parker/scuba

Parker