Florida Scallops with a hitchhiker... fresh from the bay.

We arrived in Horseshoe Beach on July 1 as scheduled. The rest of our crew arrived on time and the great scalloping adventure of 2010 was about to begin. We had our three grandsons with us for the summer and showed them all the wonders of the great outdoors here in sunny Florida. They learned how to sail, catch and release sharks, beach metal detect, and now … scalloping!

Last year we were catching our daily limit within an hour or so at this spot, so we were hopeful. The first day showed us that we were going to have to work a bit harder at filling our five gallon buckets. We ended up going north of Steinhatchee where we ‘slammed’ them. Everyone was limited out in under an hour, no oil either.

Before you head out make sure you know what YOUR daily limit is. Check with the FWC website for the official rules and regulations as they change by the number of people you are scalloping with. The maximum daily limit per boat is 10 gallons of whole scallops, regardless of the size of your crew. Check the per person regulation, too. The youngest grandson, who just turned 5, counted towards the daily limit the same as the adults.

We noticed fewer scallops in this area. I’m not sure if they migrated to someplace different this year or if the early season opening depleted the stocks already, but we were working hard to get our limit.

Teaching my youngest grandson how to 'look' for scallops

If you have never been scalloping before, it’s very easy. Just snorkel along and pick up the tasty little critters as you spot them. It may take a bit to develop an eye for them, but you will quickly get the hang of it.

Sometimes the white part of the shell is turned upwards which makes them really easy to see. Generally though, the darker side is up and it matches the grass beds very nicely. With the sun shining into the water, you can sometimes see their sparkling blue eyes along the entire opening of the bi-half shell as they are filtering water.

As you approach they will generally snap shut and remain still. This makes them easy prey. Sometimes you get a swimmer and they are fun to catch. They rapidly open and close the halves of their shell which propels them through the water in an attempt to escape, usually with out success. I’ve seen them swimming along and I’ll hold open my collection bag and let them swim right in. Volunteers, you got to love them.

Watch out for the OUCH! Scallops can snap shut on your fingertips and they really pinch. If you’re picking up a scallop with Attention Deficit Disorder (the one that forgot to slam his big mouth shut as you are reaching for him), grab it from behind along the hinge side. It will keep you from getting pinched.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pU6L_BCwjw

Some folks I know are going scalloping for the first time and have requested a detailed explanation of this fun event. So then, here it is.

BASIC ITEMS NEEDED

A good mask and snorkel. Essential. You will have your face stuck in the water most of the time. The snorkel really makes breathing underwater much easier. When you get your mask home, wet the inside lens in the sink. Take some toothpaste, just a tad, and use the tip of your wet finger to very gently clean the inside lens. Trust me on this … it will really make a difference. Rinse the mask well. If you have some anti-fog drops (recommended), apply as directed before swimming. The drops can be obtained where you got the mask or at any dive shop. Don’t forget to dip your mask in the salt water to give it one last rinse before putting it on your head.

If this is all I got, I'm gunna starve here!

Being able to clearly see the scallops is the key to success. A poorly fitting mask, or one that fogs up constantly, makes for a less fun day. Hint: To find a properly fitting mask, stick it on your face without the strap on the back of your head. If the suction created by the mask holds it in place for a few seconds after you let it go … it fits. Then go for a nice stylish look.

I do suggest going to a dive shop or expedition outfitter type store for the mask and snorkel. Discount stores sell discount merchandise. It won’t fit or last. The professional stores have qualified sales people to help you with your selection.

Fins. Necessary. Quality fins will last years and years. I have a set of Rocket fins that still work well. I’ve owned them for over 20 years now. I highly recommend some sort of bootie or wet sock to wear with your fins. This will prevent chafing and the occasional blister.

Dive Flag: Required by law. The dive flag is red with a diagonal white stripe and must be flown when you are in the water. You are required to remain within 300 feet of the flag. Flags are available at all dive shops.

Collection bag: Necessary. This can be any kind of mesh type bag that will hold your catch.

Five gallon bucket(s): Necessary. You need some place to put all your scallops as you collect them, and the bucket gives you a good gauge of your catch to keep you within legal limits. The scallops NEED some place to chill out (in salt water) until such time as the cleaning process begins.

Scallop knife: Necessary (maybe). It all depends on how you like to clean scallops. Some folks use a spoon, I like the knife. You can buy these at the dive shops as well. They are not particularly sharp and only three inches long. The tip of the knife is curved to fit the inside of the top half of the shell. This is important when cleaning scallops.

Ice cold frosty adult beverage: Necessary, for our crew anyhow. Got to keep hydrated!

Scallop parts, double click for large view

CLEANING SCALLOPS

We generally set up an assembly line for cleaning. This consists of one person splitting the shell open with the scallop knife. You hold the scallop, white shell down, in the palm of your left hand (reverse this for southpaws). Put the back, or hinge part of the scallop facing your fingertips and the bivalve opening of the hinge towards your wrist. The goal here is to use the curved portion of the blade to scrape the upper inside of the shell. This cuts the muscle and membrane free from the top (dark) half of the shell . Peel this half of the shell away. Save the shells if you are crafty … they make lots of neat things.

The next person cleans out the guts (kids love doing this part). Use a spoon or the curved edge of a scallop knife to scrape out the membrane. Practice makes perfect here. The only thing remaining in the lower half of the shell when you are done should be the white muscle. The last person cuts the meat from the remaining bottom shell. This is the easiest job.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=76D5w2Qzcag

Store your scallops in salt water in a good zip lock type freezer bag. A good fresh water rinse before cooking is all you will need after you thaw them out.

Lined up for cleaning..... yummmm

So there you have it … go out and enjoy some of nature’s bounty. Just don’t forget the sunscreen.

The link below has  more detailed information about cleaning, with photos!

http://www.southerncrosses.com/2009/07/15/florida-bay-scallops-the-how-to-guide/

By the way… have you read my novel yet?

First of all, when you hear the work ‘Key’ you immediately place a tropical paradise scene in your head. Visions of swaying palm trees, beautiful beaches, serene settings and sunsets…

On the waterfront

Driving to Cedar Key is easy. From hwy 19 located smack dab in the middle of the west coast of Florida, drive west on Hwy 24. When you find Gainesville Florida on the map, just look to the left. Travel west on Hwy 24 until you come to Otter Creek on hwy 19. Still having relatives living here I must temper my views as they just might read my blog. Otter Creek will be the subject of it’s own entirely different story one day as soon as I pick all the ticks off…

Anyhow, keep traveling west on 24. You are going to go through some of Florida’s old country woods. Listen out for gunshots and hunting dogs if you travel off the main highway. Cedar Key appears to be a great destination of the motorcycle enthusiast. I saw large flocks of motorized machines heading both ways all weekend. It’s a nice ride on a cool autumn afternoon. The thick of summer may be a bit different though.

One of my big surprises was Rosewood. I recall bits and pieces of the story, but did not realize that it happened here. You won’t see much of Rosewood from the highway, and I suspect it resembles nothing of the story any longer. Time continues to pass and structures change as days and events fold into the pages of the history books. This page was a terrible bit of history. In 1923 there was a massacre here in which innocent people were lynched, homes burned, and people murdered.The Wikipedia link has the story with photos and additional information. For you geocachers, look up GC1AHE9. ( I guess this means I’ll have to do a post on what geocaching is… )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre

Keeping to the westbound direction you will pass a turn off for someplace called Shell mound.The GPS coords are on the page attached along with more of a description.

The shack on the water

http://seenorthflorida.com/destinations/shellmound.php

You will be entering Cedar Key when you pass over the first bridge on hwy 24. Slow down, no need to upset the local policeman in town. I saw him with a radar gun, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Stay well within the posted speed limits. Its easy to creep over 30, so a word to the wise!

Cedar Key rail road bridge trail

Prior to entering town you will pass Grove st. on your left. It’s not very well marked, but just about 75′ down the street, and on the right, is a nature trail. It’s about a half a mile walk to the end where there are remnants of an old railroad bridge. For the Letterboxing hobbyist (I suppose now I’ll have to explain that as well ) there is a letterbox on this trail. I’m the geocacher of the traveling duo and my wife letterboxes. If you use the subscribe feature on this web page you will automatically get the geocaching and letterboxing posts when I get a few minutes to write them. (Signing up is free, no spam, you simply get the updates when written)

Anyhow, its a nice little trail if your up for a short walk in the woods. Otherwise, keep heading into town and you will eventually find the main protion of town, pretty much one street. There is not much here sans the obligatory tourist trinket shops. My wife, having spent her pre-teen years here, has some fond memories of what everything once was.

http://www.tonyschowder.com/about.htm

I realize that all restaurant web sites claim to be the best, have the best food and such, but this place has a lot of local recommendations. Maybe this is were all the motorcycle riders were going… There is also one particular recommendation that supersedes all other reviews, critiques, or opinions. This, from a seafood expert, an acclaimed critical critic of clam chowder, and lover of tasty seafood, my wife. She has given this restaurants clam chowder the highest of praises and ‘golden clam’ award.

I did manage to stop at the waterfront on two separate occasions for lunch. We went to a couple of places that were on the water. I guess it was the potential for the view overlooking the water that originally drew me to the businesses. It’s probably something you might want to check it off your list of been there done that, just to say you did. The water of Cedar Key is somewhat depressing. Its dark and muddy and boasts a viscosity factor of muck. I did see a couple of dolphins working a little bit off shore feeding on presumed schools of mullet.

The restaurant fare was ordinary. Okay, extra-ordinary. Nothing special, an okay value for the money if your hungry. I can not imagine that one restaurant on the block long waterfront is much better than any other. The seafood is trucked in, with the exception of mullet and clams which is local, or so said the waitress. There is nothing spectacular about the view other than it is water and your seated in a seafood restaurant overlooking said water. That about sums it up.

Restaurant row on the waterfront

My wife, and her family grew up here and she described it to me so that it made sense. She told me that she never knew you could see the bottom through the water until she went to the Florida Keys as a teenager. Her brother said he was so impressed with the amazing site of such clear water in the Florida Keys, that he moved there. If you hit the link on the left of the blog’s main page he is the fishing guide in Key Largo…

Granddad fished here when it was a fishing community. Scallops, mullet, red fish, clams, oysters, sponges… it was all here at one time. A time in the past. It provided his family with food on the table and a good means of income. It was an honest and good living while raising children in a small fishing village.

Something happened along the way that changed the flavor of Cedar Key. My brother in law said it was when Carrol O’Connor built the first large set of condo’s on the end of present day Cedar Key. I’m not sure why they are there. The beach is short, muddy, and covered with oyster shells. You will cut your bare feet…

Others say it was the fishing net ban in the 1990′s that put a halt to fishing in the area. There are still oyster fishermen working here, albeit a fraction of what once was. An old family restaurant/bar is now a laundromat. The old school is still there, and the State of Florida built a museum which cost’s a buck to walk into. The museum was depressing. There were a few trinkets pertaining to the railroad, a collection of common shells, a cleaned off rusty axe head, some cedar pencils and metal boxes… just an odd collection of junk. The State of Florida archeology division should be embarrassed. I know that they have vaults full of neat historical artifacts from this era and locale locked away in some Tallahassee building. Most of what is here was donated by local citizens. There is a copy of an old maritime navigation chart or two, nothing special though.

The old railroad bridge crossing, oyster shells

http://www.floridastateparks.org/cedarkeymuseum/default.cfm

The museum embodies my Cedar Key experience.     Extra-ordinary, bland, like a mayo sandwich.

The Key is stuck in-between dimensions, a sort of sideways time-warp between the past and the future. Some folks were as friendly as could be, others gave you that ‘get the hell out of here this is private property’ gaze. Once a very private out of the way locale struggling to become part of the future, while not being openly inviting, creates an odd mix of emotions. There is not much to do here really. One afternoon pretty much exhausts all the creative potential the island has to offer. The prices of real estate and taxes here are in line with what you will find anywhere in the Florida Keys. I’ve not discovered what gives the land here the oppressive monetary value placed on a shack, circa 1960. Some say it’s the artistic community moving in, some say it’s for the rustic appeal. I don’t get it. Should you visit here?

If your driving by, sure, why not. Check it off of your life list of things to do. If your sailing or boating this way… probably not. The water is dark and shallow. You should probably turn your water maker off if your anchored here. I did see one lone sailboat anchored off shore, and presume there is a spot to tie your dinghy to on the dock. Don’t pull onto the beach, the oyster shells will cut your dink up. There is one grocery store in town to walk to where you will pass a bank and a post office, if that is what your looking for. If your in the area for a resupply, take the time to go up the Crystal River and anchor in the basin. Crystal River provides good holding and protection from bad weather.

Tiki tree

Cedar Key… ~yawn~ been there.

I’m certain that once someone on the city council reads my review, I shall have the honor of having my photo placed prominately upon the dashboard of the city police car.

The Cedar Keys were used by Seminole Indians, and by the Spanish as a watering stop for ships returning to Spain from Mexico and by pirates, such as Jean Lafitte and Captain Kidd. There are several know shipwrecks in the area from the 1600′s all the way up to the Civil War. There were some ferocious battles fought here during the era, along  with present day Civil War re-enactments not too far away.

Cedar Key 1884

Followers of William Augustus Bowles, self-declared “Director General of the State of Muskogee,” built a watchtower in the vicinity of Cedar Key in 1801. The tower was destroyed by a Spanish force in 1802. There were native Indians here dating back to 500 B.C. Some of you will recognize some of the names as infamous pirates! My kind of history!

My first visit to Cedar Key was about 20 years ago as a student pilot on a cross country flight. I recall landing at the little airport, on runway next to the water, and wondering about getting into town which appeared to be about a mile away. I was going to stop in at one of the restaurants for some lunch and then continue the flight.

I pulled the airplane into a parking spot and was greeted by an old woman in a wood paneled station wagon. She was salty and weathered, spoke matter of factual, and chain smoked the entire time I got to know her, which was very briefly. If I would have been able to spend time going through the multitude of odds and and ends, scraps of paper, small booklets and a various assortment of other little objects totally concealing the dashboard, her entire life would possibly been revealed. If one were to brush away the years of dashboard accumulation I’m certain the original vinyl dash would have seen the first sunlight in an entire generation of kin folks.

I was simply told to hop in quickly placing my life into her hands at the mercy of the blue smoke filled station wagon. In under two miles she had my entire life story, yet I knew little about her. Pulling to the side of the street I found that I was at the waterfront, downtown Cedar Key, if there was such a thing. She said, “Be at this pole in 2 hours if you want a ride back to the airport,” driving away.  I dared not disappoint her for fear of having myself keelhauled for not properly following directions.

There were a couple of waterfront restaurants, some boats, a seaplane, and the assorted smattering of tourists. I went into the restaurant I was dropped off at, sadly I don’t recall the name. Taking a seat on the outside balcony the waitress brought me an ice tea without being asked. She sat it down with a menu, “No beer if your flying.”

Small town, nothing goes unnoticed.

It was quiet back then. Very unnoticed and unassuming. This will be my first trip back to Cedar Key in many years. I’ve seen the price guides on land, so this is no longer unnoticed and unassuming. Quaint may not be part of the description any longer. My expectations are minimal, and I don’t think I’ll see the wood panel station wagon again.

There was a seafood festival here last weekend, but I was traveling to other parts of the world and unable to attend. There is next year to look forward to!

I found a small RV park in the bustling metropolis of Otter Creek, population 127, possibly less as when we were setting up yesterday evening there were several gunshots in the nearby woods. Perhaps it is deer season…

Were parked about 15 minutes east of Cedar Key, and just as soon as the rain stops I will be off to my exploriations… further reports to follow…