French scallops break abundance records

Well managed and less fished, scallop populations have reached new abundance records in 2024 in the two main French deposits, with exploitable biomass even jumping by 56% in the Seine Bay, Ifremer announced on Tuesday. In the Seine Bay deposit, "the abundance of scallops has reached a new historic record this year," the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) said in a press release. The total exploitable biomass, i.e. the quantity of scallops measuring 110 mm or more, is estimated at more than 137,000 tonnes, a level that shatters the previous record set in 2022 at 105,000 tonnes. This exploitable biomass is thus up by almost 56% compared to last year. "These results demonstrate the success of the management measures implemented in the Bay of Seine since 2016," Ifremer emphasizes. "The introduction of a rotating fallow has not only allowed a significant increase in the scallop population over the past 8 years, but also a relatively homogeneous distribution ...