Sea Scallops Farmed in Maine Aren’t Just Sustainable. They’re Helping Their Habitat.

There are only a handful of these farms in the United States, most run by fishing families in Maine. But their number is growing.

STONINGTON, Maine — On a damp, cloudy morning in April, Marsden Brewer drove his 38-foot lobster boat out into the middle of Penobscot Bay. Other than a few buoys and the occasional gull, the water was calm and empty — a vast, gray expanse leading to pine-topped islands in the distance. You certainly couldn’t tell that, just below the waves slapping against the hull, there were hundreds of thousands of sea scallops, swimming, squirting and cavorting in a series of nets, all part of Mr. Brewer’s aquatic farm. Mr. Brewer and his son, Bob, pulled up a long algae-covered net and scooped scallops into a bucket of seawater, where they zipped around, moving a whole lot faster than you’d think bivalves could. Most would go to Glidden Point Oyster Farms. The rest were about to become lunch.