Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Diving for Scallops on The Channel Islands
Fresh Scallops from The Channel Islands
Mike Skurko
The Channel Islands. I’d been thinking about diving here for years, but just never got around to it. After picking up a book called ‘50 Places to Dive Before You Die,’ I found there was only one dive site in California they recommended and that was The Channel Islands. The book mentions everything from ice diving in Antarctica to cave diving the sonotes of Mexico. From the Maldives to Wakatobi in Indonesia… Yep. Yet only one site in California? I find this amazing and I find this somewhat hard to believe after all the diving I’ve done in San Diego, Monterey and in the kelp beds of the Sonoma coast hunting for abalone and sea urchin… So, Wallin’s Dive shop is arranging a trip out there and I am quickly locked in for a three-night live a board on The Truth, based out of Santa Barbara. Perfect. Now, a bit of research…. They have lobster. They have scallops. Oh, this is going to be excellent! Typically dive boats take me to marine preserves. Beautiful, but you can’t gather anything for dinner. Tragic. I see all kinds of tasty things out there while diving amidst many of my favorite (and unwilling) participants in the Tsukiji Fish Market of Tokyo. All of my years of diving for abalone I have often thought about scallops. Nothing quite as exciting for me than rolling into an excellent restaurant and seeing scallops listed as the specials of the day. Day boat scallops. Diver scallops… Nice. Perfectly pan-fried in butter at Blackbird in Chicago… Memories of Hayashi Tempura of Tokyo and the freshly shucked live scallop held by Saito-san before he smacks it and presents the incredibly fresh scallop, alive and moving in his hand moments before dipping it in batter and then quickly into the oil before it’s served moments later. The best scallop memory of late…
I am thinking of this while loading my dive gear on to The Truth. Will there be scallops? Can I realistically grab some lobster as well? I’ve been told grabbing lobster is not easy. It also requites a separate fee and some additional gear. I opt out and purchase a simple “ocean enhancement” tag, aka the scallop stamp so that I can legally harvest ten scallops per day on our three day dive trip. We are all on the boat the night before our 4am departure. I find my bunk and am soon dreaming of panko and fresh, fresh scallops.
The next day I am up before the dawn and in the galley while the two deck gals begin to prepare our breakfast. It’s dark out there and impossible to see anything outside of the brightly illuminated cabin. I fumble with my new dive computer and it’s one hundred page manual. I was told this computer was “intuitive. “ I am having a hard time believing this. Coffee. I have, of course, brought my own. Pre-ground at home and now steaming in a plastic Melita filter. The smell of morning coffee is one of the best smells I know. That lightly acrid smell the assurance of a warm welcome to the day ahead. The day where I will be gathering scallops among the sea lions and towering kelp beds of the Channel Islands. Nice!
Soon we are well into the day after a full, and surprisingly tasty, meal on The Truth. Our group of divers struggles into wetsuits and dry suits. Tanks are attached to BCs and gear is checked and re-checked. I am in a two piece neoprene wetsuit. It’s a 7mm and is my standard suit for abalone diving. I am a bit concerned that diving with tanks in deeper waters will chill me to the bone. Oh, well… I am stoked! We are at Wilson’s Rock somewhere off the tip of Santa Cruz Island. We drop into the choppy waters. Seems to be a good current at the surface and I wait at the anchor line for my fellow divers to get in the water. They take way too long and I am pulled up and down by the anchor line. Finally we decend and into these jade green waters we go, now breathing bottled air. The sound of the regulator, almost pneumatic, hissing in and out with each breath. Into the fuzzy green depths. Down the anchor line into the waters. Visibility is not great. Certainly not the “upwards of 60 feet…” that the book had promised for this time of year. Nope. It was closer to ten to fifteen. Similar to what I am used to this time of year on The Sonoma Coast in Northern California. Soon I am at the bottom diving with boulders and schools of fish. Sea urchin are everywhere. Incredible. I’d like to bring some ‘uni’ home as well… Still, I am looking for the perfectly camouflaged scallop. Between rocks and, while filter feeding, a mouth of orange should be visible. The idea is to clean them under water with a butter knife. You slice the muscle and the shell opens for a quick cleaning. The deck hands assure me this is “easy” and let me take a kitchen knife from the galley. “Just don’t lose it.” I quickly lose it. Now that I’ve lost my knife I am starting to see scallops everywhere. Similar to hunting for wild mushrooms in the forest there is this magical moment where you really begin to see them everywhere…
I return to the boat with one purple uni, spines moving, and a scallop in it’s shell. This is only the first dive of what will be ten dives around the Channel Islands. I see harbor seals and sea lions and dive with ling cod, vermillion (red) rock fish. There are fish and the towering kelp that rise 70 to 100 feet from the rock bottom to the shimmering surface. It is beautiful here. I am focused on the scallops. After losing one butter knife I go with ‘old faithful,’ my abalone iron, and spend the bulk of my dives with my head under rocks looking for scallops. I don’t find many of them, but when I do, then the challenge of prying them off the rocks begins. It is not easy. Abalone are really pretty easy to pop off the rocks. The only challenge there is that you can only get them while free diving and so, well, you do tend to need to return to the surface quickly. With scallops they are wedged in and even with a tank of air it took a real effort. Each dive. Every dive. I went down there to see cool and beautiful things and to bring back scallops. Some dives I would come up with none and on others maybe two or tree. Back on the deck I would pry them open with skills I learned shucking oysters from Tomales Bay. Careful, very careful… If you slip it is pretty clear that the dive knife will stab into the hand that holds the scallop. The shells are also razor sharp on the inside and I did manage to cut my hands a few times from the shell…
After three days of diving and rooting around the rocks for hours I came home with eleven plump and beautiful scallops. Ahhhh….. Dinner plans with my parents. Dianthe and I roll over to their house with scallops in a zip-lock baggie. I’ve had these so often in restaurants, but never this fresh. Never from scallops I went out to get myself. This is the best. I pan fry some of them in oil with a bit of garlic. The others are breaded in panko and quickly fried in canola oil with a splash of sesame oil. Fresh scallops from the Channel Islands. Rare on the inside and incredibly tasty. It is amazing that it’s taken me this long to get to the Channel Islands off the California Coast. Abalone taste incredible, but these scallops? They are so fresh and so good… I really need to get out there again. I need more scallops!
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1 comment:
It's great to read this entry as I am also diving with Truth Aquatics next month and plan to look for scallops. If I can finish the trip having found one (our dives aren't going to be all about scallops as my husband isn't interested in them) I will be quite pleased. I plan to bring it up in the shell for help getting it out of there :)
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