Foodie

GASTRO TRIVIA

FACTSHEET

Saturday February 18 to Sunday February 26 2017 is Rye Bay Scallop Week, and to celebrate, we’ve rounded up 10 fascinating facts about the delicious seafood favourite. Read on to find out more about this succulent shellfish, and discover some of its little-known secrets and trivia gems

The scallop is a mollusc and the only bivalve that can swim. Scallops are fully mature at around three years old. Like the oyster, the scallop is an excellent source of protein, calcium, iron and vitamin B12.

There are more than 300 species of scallop in the world.

The orange roe in a scallop is called ‘coral’. You can tell the age of a scallop by its shell – one ring forms each year.

The scallop isn’t considered an aphrodisiac in the same way as an oyster. However, Botticelli’s famous painting of Venus rising from a scallop shell is an example of the symbol being used in fertility imagery.

Scallops can be traced back 300million years in fossil form.

The scallop shell contains both the female and the male gonad, as well as a gill, foot, mouth, digestive gland, eye spot, tentacle, mantle and hinge ligament.

Most spawning occurs from April to September, and most growth occurs between April and June.

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10/10/2016 16:27