Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your waitress who just innocently upsolds you
Speaker 1: to the bucket of garlic fries. Ali Ward, I'm back
Speaker 1: with a fresh episode of Ologies. Scallops. You're asking scallops,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, but also I'm saying pec pectinodology, which is
Speaker 1: difficult to say. But I found it exactly one time
Speaker 1: in the literature. It was an online forum for fossil collectors.
Speaker 1: But it's a word, Okay, it comes from the Latin
Speaker 1: word pectin for comb or rake because of scallops, ridgie shells.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into it. But yeah, scallops not
Speaker 1: only are they iconic on everything from mermaid attire to
Speaker 1: gasoline company logos, but also you may have eaten one
Speaker 1: and they can flippy flap swim. We're going to get
Speaker 1: into all of it. But first, thank you so much
Speaker 1: to everyone at petron dot com slash Ologies for supporting
Speaker 1: the show for a dollar or more a month and
Speaker 1: submitting your questions. Thanks to everyone who shares episodes with
Speaker 1: friends and the folks who rate and leave reviews. I
Speaker 1: read them all every week to brighten my days, such
Speaker 1: as this one from Sadie Jane, who said that Ologies
Speaker 1: got them through so many long days and nights during
Speaker 1: their daughter Rosie's first year of life, and also said
Speaker 1: that I have golden retriever energy, which I appreciate. Also,
Speaker 1: congratulations to Audrey Burnham. And yes, I'd love a photocopy
Speaker 1: of your PhD. Doctor Burnham. Send it to pobox twenty
Speaker 1: one to twenty one, La California nine double oh seven eight. Also,
Speaker 1: I'll take postcards from anyone's summer adventures. Send it my way, kiddos. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into it with a guest who
Speaker 1: was highly recommended by your favorite urban rodentologist, which was
Speaker 1: a fan favorite episode and it made me cry about
Speaker 1: sewer rats. I'm going to link that in the show
Speaker 1: notes for you. But this expert for this episode did
Speaker 1: their undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Speaker 1: in biology, got a master's in biology while belonging to
Speaker 1: the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and then went
Speaker 1: to Rutgers for a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Speaker 1: So we're going to ask the not smart questions to
Speaker 1: learn all about the gossip of scallops versus oysters, why
Speaker 1: they have so many dang eyes. Wait, they have eyes.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about shell ruffles, Disney bras, months without ours,
Speaker 1: bass gallops, sea scallops, filter feeders, shellfish volunteering, curious baby bivalves, seagrass,
Speaker 1: red tides, free buffets, and even check in with the
Speaker 1: James Beard Award nominated chef Miles Thompson with some cooking
Speaker 1: tips with a fair warning right before if you're a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: and also things like changing career paths and theft on
Speaker 1: the brackish tides with pectinidologist doctor Samantha Lynch.
Speaker 2: Samantha Lynch, she her, and I go by Sam. If
Speaker 2: you want to go into Sam that I answer to
Speaker 2: that just as easily as Samana.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, we can get casual about scallops, Shelle.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: And now, from what I understand, you had dinner with
Speaker 1: doctor Bobby Corgan, who is an urban rodentologist. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yes? It is.
Speaker 1: Where did you meet him? I'm so jealous because I've
Speaker 1: never met him in person.
Speaker 2: You never know who you're gonna have dinner with in
Speaker 2: New York City, and I ended up at a business
Speaker 2: dinner with a group of those folks. A couple of
Speaker 2: times I've met doctor Corgan over dinner on a couple
Speaker 2: of occasions, and I always have the pleasure of sitting
Speaker 2: next to him and we get to chat science for
Speaker 2: a little while.
Speaker 1: Oh he's the best. He's the best. I honestly cried
Speaker 1: recording his episode just because talking about rats. I was like,
Speaker 1: I've never felt this way about rats before. He's so great.
Speaker 1: So she met doctor Bobby Corgan through her husband. And
Speaker 1: when did they meet?
Speaker 2: I met him while I was working on my master's
Speaker 2: degree specializing in environmental toxicology. So at the time I
Speaker 2: was looking at the impacts of metal nanoparticles on oyster
Speaker 2: and sea urchin embryonic development.
Speaker 1: So if you'd like a whole episode on sea urchins,
Speaker 1: we got it. It's linked to the show notes, alongside
Speaker 1: ones on corals and shells and snails and squids and fish.
Speaker 1: We got covered. Also linked some colonology episodes. Do you
Speaker 1: guys eat scallops? I got any?
Speaker 2: You know what's so funny? That question has followed me
Speaker 2: throughout my entire career, and it's okay, No, It's one
Speaker 2: I always anticipate and the answer is no, okay, and
Speaker 2: then everybody goes, oh, no, should I not eat them,
Speaker 2: none of my business. I'm allergic to shrimp, and this
Speaker 2: is not based on anything scientific. I just then avoided
Speaker 2: a most all shellfish like creatures. I just avoid them all.
Speaker 1: You're kind of a friend to them, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Definitely one of their advocates.
Speaker 1: So doctor Lynch is studying the health and well being
Speaker 1: of scallops and advocating for their populations. But studying some critters,
Speaker 1: whether it's bugs or bivalves, means really studying them, getting
Speaker 1: in there, and in this case also because some people
Speaker 1: eat them, and the research helps make sure people don'tate
Speaker 1: too many of them, or they don't eat them not safely.
Speaker 1: And as I've mentioned on some other episodes, part of
Speaker 1: just living on planet Earth as a human means impacting
Speaker 1: other creatures, some big, some teeny tiny, just walking on roads.
Speaker 1: It sucks. It's tough ethically, no matter how hard you try.
Speaker 1: But theologists studying the ecology are looking to improve the
Speaker 1: bigger picture, either locally or globally. Now, did you grow
Speaker 1: up on the East Coast. You have a little bit
Speaker 1: of maybe an East Coast accent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, so I am originally from South Florida, but
Speaker 2: when it was very young, made my way to Charlotte,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, then moved to New Jersey, and I'm back
Speaker 2: now in southern Florida.
Speaker 1: Are there a lot of scallops in southern Florida?
Speaker 2: No, there aren't any.
Speaker 1: Okay, we do.
Speaker 2: Actually, they'll have a nice population of base gallops on
Speaker 2: the Gulf Coast of Florida, and actually one of the
Speaker 2: I believe it's one of the only remaining recreational fisheries
Speaker 2: here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that there were scallop fisheries.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, there used to be, actually quite abundantly, but
Speaker 2: that all ended around somewhere in the nineteen seventies. The
Speaker 2: populations just declined to the point that it was just
Speaker 2: not sustainable.
Speaker 1: So in Florida there are regions where recreational divers can
Speaker 1: catch a few dozen scallops measured by the gallon with
Speaker 1: the shells, and these are the base gallops, a little
Speaker 1: other ones, and that all has to be done by hand.
Speaker 1: You got a snorkel, you got sunscreen, you got a boat.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a seafaring easter egg hunt, really.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the bigger ones, the sea scallops, though,
Speaker 1: boats from Massachusetts and New Jersey and Virginia as well
Speaker 1: as some from Maine are out there. They're looking for
Speaker 1: the goods in the sea. And the US, fun fact,
Speaker 1: has the largest sea scallop fisheries on the planet. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what about just growing them? What if you want
Speaker 1: to farm them? So the good news is is that
Speaker 1: ecologically scientists are into this. They're on board that boat
Speaker 1: because aquaculture has its benefits, but there's also some considerable
Speaker 1: side eye, according to several papers such as the legendary
Speaker 1: two thousand study Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies.
Speaker 1: So this was published in the journal Nature, and it
Speaker 1: called out fish farming for being a bigger environmental burden
Speaker 1: because people had to go out and catch a shitload
Speaker 1: of wildfish to feed the farmed fish. But then they're
Speaker 1: scallop farming, which relies on a food source that's already
Speaker 1: floating in the water. So it can improve water quality
Speaker 1: having things like scallops filter feeding, but it's not cheap,
Speaker 1: especially since sea scallops, which can live up to twenty years,
Speaker 1: can take three years to become adults, and also the
Speaker 1: labor can be costly, so some farmed sea scallops have
Speaker 1: to get a little hole drilled in their shell to
Speaker 1: hang on a line, and they put those sometimes in
Speaker 1: depths of seventy five to one hundred feet below the surface. Now,
Speaker 1: as for base scallops, they're much smaller. They're found in
Speaker 1: shallow waters, but of course with either type, their meat
Speaker 1: is prized as a delicacy. Well, how did you end
Speaker 1: up as someone who with a shellfish allergy? How did
Speaker 1: you wind up being a scallopologist? Which is a I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe a little bit of a rare niche
Speaker 1: to hold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it kind of fell into its sideways
Speaker 2: a little bit like a lot of ten year old kids.
Speaker 2: I fell in love with dolphins, wanted to study dolphin
Speaker 2: behavior or whale songs like all those marine mammals, And
Speaker 2: after doing a little protting, I realized I needed to
Speaker 2: become a marine biologist in order to do some of
Speaker 2: those things that I wanted. But growing up in Charlotte,
Speaker 2: North Carolina doesn't put you in a very good place,
Speaker 2: at least geographically to study whale song.
Speaker 1: Charlotte, North Carolina is about a three and a half
Speaker 1: hour drive from the beach, but the draw to dolphins
Speaker 1: is understandable. Just ask doctor Justin Greg of the recent
Speaker 1: two part Dolphinology episodes about dolphins. I'll link them in
Speaker 1: the show notes. But yes, with that long a journey
Speaker 1: to the beach, Sam took a detour into an undergrad
Speaker 1: position studying honeybees, which provided kind of the animal behavior
Speaker 1: excitement that she wanted. Fewer weird research scandals than dolphins,
Speaker 1: trust me, but still a thrill.
Speaker 2: It was just so cool to just be standing outside
Speaker 2: and to watch a honeybee sworn just take off, suddenly
Speaker 2: take off in mass and fly out to their new
Speaker 2: nest site, and just they're flying all around you. The
Speaker 2: sound was so loud, the buzzing of their wings, and
Speaker 2: it was just so cool to sit there and go,
Speaker 2: how this has nothing to do with me, but I
Speaker 2: get to see it. You know, they don't care that
Speaker 2: I'm standing here. They definitely paid us no mind whatsoever.
Speaker 2: They were on a mission. But it was just so
Speaker 2: cool to realize that I just got to witness something
Speaker 2: that not everybody gets to witness and be a part of.
Speaker 2: So that definitely opened my eyes to how cool research
Speaker 2: was and is. But it also through that experience I
Speaker 2: realized that I did not want to study honeybees for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Are to them at all? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh no?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I realized after a couple of run ins
Speaker 2: with them, unfortunate run ins, that I do I swell.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of localized swelling wherever they may
Speaker 2: sting me. And if I wanted to see out of
Speaker 2: both my eyes for the rest of my life, honey
Speaker 2: bees and I should probably go our separate ways.
Speaker 1: Go waggle dance that direction verally. Well, yes, and so
Speaker 1: how did you end up dipping back into the water. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then I participated in that lab as an undergraduate student,
Speaker 2: but at the same time I was doing the honeybee research,
Speaker 2: I was also working just as a student lab tech
Speaker 2: in an oyster research lab. They're on campus, and I
Speaker 2: really didn't get to interact with the oysters or a
Speaker 2: lot of the science at all. I was just mostly
Speaker 2: preparing gels for gel electrophoresis and kind of doing a
Speaker 2: little bit of like grunt undergrad lab work.
Speaker 1: So she was approached by a faculty member who was like, heyes,
Speaker 1: you want to work with some oysters over here.
Speaker 2: And so I thought, wow, well, this now can check
Speaker 2: off my other box and get me back into the
Speaker 2: water and they don't sting.
Speaker 1: Me safe from tiny little animals that stapped her with
Speaker 1: their butts. Sam indeed got aquatic at the University of
Speaker 1: North Carolina at Charlotte, where she did her master's thesis
Speaker 1: Comparative developmental sensitivities of sea urchin and oyster embryos and
Speaker 1: larvae to metal nanoparticles, because.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask questions regarding the impacts of utrification. Sure, sorry,
Speaker 2: what so? Utification is basically like the nutrient loading of
Speaker 2: a bay or a coastal water body to the point
Speaker 2: that you see some really measurable, observable impacts such as
Speaker 2: algal blooms, you kind of micro algal blooms, macro algal blooms,
Speaker 2: fish kills as a result of those algal blooms. And
Speaker 2: then what I really wanted to hone in on was
Speaker 2: seagrass bed die offs as a result of those algal
Speaker 2: blooms by way of utrification.
Speaker 1: And so that's when things get out of balance, and
Speaker 1: this kind of delicate balance and the ecosystem gets thrown
Speaker 1: off and then you see big dieoffs in certain parts.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly. So you have these submerged aquatic vegetation.
Speaker 2: These seagrass beds that in a healthy estuary will oftentimes
Speaker 2: you know, cover a very large area. These seagrass beds
Speaker 2: are critical habitat. They provide a refuge from predation for
Speaker 2: multitudes of different species in what would otherwise be almost
Speaker 2: a barren landscape, you know, just bare bottom sand mixed
Speaker 2: with a little muck and mud, place for say a
Speaker 2: small fish to hide or a base gallop to hide.
Speaker 2: So your seagrass beds provide that spatial refuge. When you
Speaker 2: have these algal blooms that just get out of control,
Speaker 2: they block the sunlight from penetrating into the water. And
Speaker 2: so sea grass is a plant, so just like the
Speaker 2: plants in your backyard, they need sunlight to grow and survive.
Speaker 2: And so when these algal mats block that sunlight, the
Speaker 2: seagrass beds die off.
Speaker 1: So in the big chain of things, these giant algal
Speaker 1: blooms keep things shady. So shady sea grass is like
Speaker 1: you have killed our food are light, And these sea
Speaker 1: grasses said goodbye to Earth and they go to heaven.
Speaker 1: And then the critters down in the sea have nowhere
Speaker 1: to live, and then they get gobbled up so it's like,
Speaker 1: thanks Algae, you're having such a good time. You ruin
Speaker 1: thinks for everyone, and now great, Okay, we got to
Speaker 1: hold the phone here because you're like, there's no place
Speaker 1: for ust to hide. And it just occurred to me
Speaker 1: scallops are like free ranged chickens and mussels and oysters
Speaker 1: are hanging on to something. Yes that, okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: never even thought about that. I never even thought that
Speaker 1: scallops are like buddy and like they don't need to
Speaker 1: hang onto a rock. Okay, take me back, What is
Speaker 1: a scallop? What are they? Who are they related to?
Speaker 1: What are they doing with the big coin full of
Speaker 1: delicious in the middle? Why aren't they using little threads
Speaker 1: to hang onto rocks?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to kind of talk here specifically about
Speaker 2: bass scallops and base gallops are bivalves, so they're in
Speaker 2: the same class as your oysters and your muscles and
Speaker 2: your clayoms. But as you mentioned, they are mobile. They're
Speaker 2: kind of like the charismatic species of bivalves. They look
Speaker 2: at you with those little blue eyes and they're pretty.
Speaker 2: They're pretty darn cute.
Speaker 1: Cute and fast.
Speaker 2: They are totally mobile as adults, So as you mentioned oysters,
Speaker 2: they submit themselves down and so they don't really care
Speaker 2: about the seagrass bed. They form their own reefs and
Speaker 2: they're not, you know, an oysters not hiding. It just
Speaker 2: closes up a shell real tight and hopes that somebody
Speaker 2: doesn't come along and you shuck it off the clump. Oh,
Speaker 2: and your muscles they're attaching using those little hairy bistle threads.
Speaker 2: Your clams are mobile, but they're usually just kind of
Speaker 2: going up and down in the sediment. They can occasionally
Speaker 2: use their little foot to crawl around, but they're definitely
Speaker 2: not swimming like we see bass gallops do and other
Speaker 2: scallops as well. But at what point in a base
Speaker 2: gallops life history they do kind of use bistle threads
Speaker 2: to attach to the seagrass blades.
Speaker 1: Oh do they do that when they were tiny little babies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually when they're a little bit bigger than tiny
Speaker 2: little babies. So bass scallops they start out their life
Speaker 2: in the water column as free swimming pelagic larvae. So okay,
Speaker 2: kind of floating around there in the water column. And actually,
Speaker 2: can we talk about how base gallops reproduce because that's
Speaker 2: kind of wild.
Speaker 1: Yes, We're definitely going to get to scallop fucking because
Speaker 1: people have questions. Yes, let me tell you so, Yes,
Speaker 1: put a pin in that, because for sure I'm still like,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a base scallop and a sea scallop?
Speaker 1: But we're also going to get to.
Speaker 2: That, okay.
Speaker 1: So first off, there are over three hundred species of scallop.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Neither did I? But only one
Speaker 1: of them is argo pectin Iridians, the base scallop. Again,
Speaker 1: base scallops, they're much smaller if you've eaten them. They're
Speaker 1: like kind of like the size of a macadamia nut,
Speaker 1: depending on how poorly you cook them. So in my
Speaker 1: case they get small, I do it wrong. But they
Speaker 1: live in shallow coastal waters and they have a shorter
Speaker 1: lifespan too. Now, sea scallops them the bigger boys, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more on their sex later, but they live
Speaker 1: from the tide to about one hundred meters deep, but
Speaker 1: some species and subspecies have really specific and even deeper niches. Also,
Speaker 1: sea scallops tend to live much longer, but probably not
Speaker 1: as long as ming, who was a clam found in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six off the coast of Iceland that
Speaker 1: scientists estimated was over four hundred years old. This clam
Speaker 1: until they did more analysis and they discovered that Ming
Speaker 1: was actually five hundred and seven. And a headline about
Speaker 1: Ming read scientists discover world's oldest clam, killing it in
Speaker 1: the process, the world's oldest clam. They're like, let's check
Speaker 1: the date. Oops, And if you feel like crying, you
Speaker 1: can please enjoy a free ticket to the Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: list of Longest living organisms, which tells the tales of
Speaker 1: number sixteen, a forty three year old spider, or the
Speaker 1: still alive Bobby, which is a Portuguese dog who is
Speaker 1: on the cusp of millennial and gen Z, having been
Speaker 1: born in nineteen ninety two. Now, I accidentally clicked on
Speaker 1: Bobby's page because I needed serotonin and dopamine, and I
Speaker 1: found out that he was the only one of his
Speaker 1: litter to survive because the man who owned the woodpile
Speaker 1: he was born on did not want to care for puppies,
Speaker 1: so he did something terrible to them. But Bobby was
Speaker 1: wood colored and survived that incident, which was carried out
Speaker 1: by the father of Bobby's current owner. So Bobby's owner's
Speaker 1: dad killed all of his siblings, well Bobby's siblings, not
Speaker 1: his own son siblings that would be his own son's.
Speaker 1: But at Bobby's last birthday, his owner said, Bobby is
Speaker 1: special because looking at him is like remembering the people
Speaker 1: who are part of our family and are unfortunately no
Speaker 1: longer here, like my father, my brother, or my grandparents
Speaker 1: who have already left this world. Said, but I like
Speaker 1: to think that Bobby has existed longer than any other
Speaker 1: dog on earth. Is this simple and faithful fuck you
Speaker 1: to that guy who didn't even want him to live
Speaker 1: as a palette cleanser. Though, I read about a beetle
Speaker 1: that took a forty seven year nap as a baby
Speaker 1: larva and then emerged from a some staircase in England
Speaker 1: being like mourning. But we're not here for beetles. We're
Speaker 1: not here for Bobby, or even for five hundred year
Speaker 1: old clams, which, unlike scallops, cannot swim. So base scallops,
Speaker 1: they're swimming tiny little babies, yes, like larva.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, yeah, so they're swimming little tiny baby larvae
Speaker 2: they're actually called and this is true for oysters as well,
Speaker 2: and a lot of your bivalves. They call them d
Speaker 2: like das and dog villager larvae.
Speaker 1: So a villager is a planktonic larva and it means
Speaker 1: sale bearing. And if you are desperate to know how
Speaker 1: different groups of the same species have regional wiggles, you
Speaker 1: can see the nineteen ninety six paper villagers from different
Speaker 1: populations of sea scallop have different vertical migration patterns.
Speaker 2: They look like a capital d oh okay, or you
Speaker 2: can call it like a straight hinge larvae, and they
Speaker 2: have shells. They have shells by forty eight hours after fertilization.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, so fast. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they have these little shells and they have like
Speaker 2: a little vlum that sticks out with celia on it,
Speaker 2: and that allows them to swim and eat and explore
Speaker 2: the water column and try not to get eaten. So
Speaker 2: they're they're kind of getting moved along mostly by water currents,
Speaker 2: but they do have a little bit of control of
Speaker 2: their vertical orientation, so they can swim up or swim
Speaker 2: down or sink down really fast.
Speaker 1: Do they have an elevator or something?
Speaker 2: And they do this by moving in like a clockwise helix,
Speaker 2: So this a little like spiral as they're going up
Speaker 2: and down in the water column and they do that
Speaker 2: for about two weeks until finally, hopefully they land in
Speaker 2: a patch of sea grass, and then they receive different
Speaker 2: environmental cues that say, hey, this is a good spot,
Speaker 2: settle down here, and they go through a settlement process
Speaker 2: where then they become juveniles. They've grown, they're a little
Speaker 2: bit larger. There may be like fingernail size at this point,
Speaker 2: and they crawl up on the blades of eel grass
Speaker 2: or turtle grass or whatever seatgrass you have. They're in
Speaker 2: that particular ecosystem, so.
Speaker 1: They're able to shuffle up to safety when they're young,
Speaker 1: so they don't get snacked upon by snails or crabs
Speaker 1: below the grass.
Speaker 2: They don't want to go too high because goals could
Speaker 2: come down and eat them, so they orient themselves kind
Speaker 2: of in the middle, and they use bissele threads to
Speaker 2: hold on to those seagrass blades.
Speaker 1: And so do they do that until they have a
Speaker 1: bigger shell, Do they shed their shell or do they
Speaker 1: just keep building on top of it?
Speaker 2: They just keep building. They just keep growing, and they
Speaker 2: stay on those blades as long as they can, until
Speaker 2: eventually they just get too heavy for their little bissele
Speaker 2: threads to hold them up, and then they fall down
Speaker 2: to the bottom.
Speaker 1: And then are they kind of swimming in the mud?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Where do they spend most of their time under the sand?
Speaker 1: Are they popping up every couple of days or every
Speaker 1: couple of minutes?
Speaker 2: So no, they're usually right on the surface, so they
Speaker 2: don't bear it. They don't dig or bury down in.
Speaker 2: You'll find them just right there on like the benthic surface.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, I didn't know what ben think
Speaker 1: meant either, and I looked it up. So it means
Speaker 1: something at the bottom of a body of water, and
Speaker 1: it comes from the Greek for the deep of the sea.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, that's a cool word. It
Speaker 1: turns out it was coined by the same guy who
Speaker 1: made up the word ecology. This guy's full of hits.
Speaker 1: Who was he? He was a German nature lover and
Speaker 1: a zoologist and a doctor, a marine biologist, as well
Speaker 1: as a great artist. Wait, I have one of his books.
Speaker 1: It's full of gorgeous biological illustrations of diatomes. It's on
Speaker 1: my coffee table looking into it. He was also what
Speaker 1: some people call a proto Nazi, and for more on that,
Speaker 1: you can see the book Ernst Haeckel's Monism and the
Speaker 1: Birth of Fascist Ideology. So now I have this book.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this guy was awful, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with this big, beautiful book. But
Speaker 1: I urge anyone working on a Marvel or a DC
Speaker 1: franchise to make a supervillain who lives in Atlantis and
Speaker 1: is named Benthos. But yes, Sam says that scallops don't
Speaker 1: dig themselves under the mud too much. They're usually on
Speaker 1: that ben thic surface, you know, just hanging around.
Speaker 2: And most of the time they've got their shells open,
Speaker 2: filtering water, trying to get as much as they can
Speaker 2: to eat until something comes along that would cause them
Speaker 2: to swim away on the blody.
Speaker 1: What are they eating, especially if they need to be
Speaker 1: making a shell out of calcium, like what is their
Speaker 1: diet like algae?
Speaker 2: So they're filtering the water for different algal species that
Speaker 2: are present.
Speaker 1: All that calcium from tiny bites of algae. Yep, according
Speaker 1: to research like microalgae for human and animal nutrition, tiny
Speaker 1: alogy can pack a ton of minerals including potassium and
Speaker 1: iron and magnesium and calcium and for more on this.
Speaker 1: You can see the biomeneralogy episode. So the point is,
Speaker 1: there aren't any kids scallops out there like fiending for
Speaker 1: a glass of milk for their bones. But how big
Speaker 1: do base gallops get in comparison to sea scallops? Which
Speaker 1: ones are the quarter sized ones and which are the
Speaker 1: dime size or what size is what when we're used
Speaker 1: to eating them? And again that's not the whole scallop
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you can eat both based gallop and sea scallops.
Speaker 2: Bas gallops can be sometimes I think a little bit
Speaker 2: harder to obtain. If you are eating based gallops, they
Speaker 2: likely came from China. China actually has the largest aquaculture
Speaker 2: fishery for bas gallops. We don't here in the United States.
Speaker 2: So if you're eating a base gallop, it most likely
Speaker 2: came from China. And when you're eating a base gallop,
Speaker 2: you're not eating the entire scalop. You're that little like
Speaker 2: always reminds me of like a banana slice. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: that's the adductor muscle. So in a scallop, whether it's
Speaker 2: a bay or a c scallop, that's what's usually served
Speaker 2: is just the adductor muscle they're that little coin shaped
Speaker 2: piece of tissue.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that keeps them slammed shut when
Speaker 1: they need to protect themselves. Yes, what about the rest
Speaker 1: of the scallop, because we eat the whole frickin' muscle
Speaker 1: and oyster, what do they do with the rest of it?
Speaker 2: Right, with an oyster, you just you eat the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I think maybe it's a European thing to eat more
Speaker 2: of the scallop. I've heard it referred to as like
Speaker 2: the coral, and what that is is just its gonads.
Speaker 2: So the rest of the scallop is kind of just
Speaker 2: some peripheral parts and then that big orange spot, the
Speaker 2: big orange tissue is their gonnadom material.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting. If you're like scallops are orange inside, you
Speaker 1: can count yourself among the many individuals who have never
Speaker 1: seen a scallops junk. So picture a tiny crescent shaped
Speaker 1: little pillow, kind of like the one that you'd sling
Speaker 1: around your neck for a red eye flight. The male
Speaker 1: variety his creamy white, and the female or the egg
Speaker 1: bearing gonad, ranges from pinkish to bright orange thanks to
Speaker 1: a carotenoid pigment called xioxanthon, which also makes gojiberries and
Speaker 1: egg yolks just blaze like sunsets. And for more on eggs,
Speaker 1: you can see the recent Chicknology to partner or the
Speaker 1: classic Uology episode. Oh and if a scallop has a
Speaker 1: lot of that pigment, then that fleshy coin that you
Speaker 1: see on plates might be kind of a warmer orange
Speaker 1: hue too. Now, what else is crammed in there under
Speaker 1: that shell? So obviously we see a beautiful scallop shell,
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are to look inside one. What
Speaker 1: exactly is going on in there? What kind of organs
Speaker 1: do they have? Do they have lungs, do they have
Speaker 1: a stomach, do they have a do they have a butthole? Like?
Speaker 1: What's in there? Such a mystery?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So when you open one up, the first
Speaker 2: thing that is going to catch your eye is probably
Speaker 2: that at ductor muscle, because it's it's pretty large, relatively large,
Speaker 2: and when you've opened it up, you've had to kind
Speaker 2: of saw through it so you know where it is.
Speaker 2: And then you'll also notice that orange, that bright orange tissue.
Speaker 2: And as I mentioned, that's their their gonnadal material, So
Speaker 2: that's where they're making their sperm and their egg cells.
Speaker 1: Yep, them's their crotch and in some parts of the world,
Speaker 1: particularly Japan, people eat the row too, and the mantle
Speaker 1: or the skirt, which is kind of the stretchy tissue
Speaker 1: at the edge of the shell.
Speaker 2: They have like a little stomach, and that also leads
Speaker 2: into tissue called the hepata pancreas oh okay, sounds fancy, yeah,
Speaker 2: and that functions as a little bit of like a liver.
Speaker 2: It's it's not a liver, but it's kind of analogous
Speaker 2: to a liver. For scallops. Oysters have them too, and
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of like detoxification occurring in their
Speaker 2: hepatapancreas well.
Speaker 1: They're filtering so much. You've got a figure they need
Speaker 1: a pretty good cleaning organ, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly, And actually we use that organ quite
Speaker 2: a bit when assessing like the physiological health of the scallop.
Speaker 2: So shellfish are just really great sentinel species. So when
Speaker 2: you're monitoring the health of an ecosystem, it's really helpful
Speaker 2: to have kind of go to species that you can
Speaker 2: use to kind of canary in a coal mine. The
Speaker 2: situation and shellfish are kind of stuck where they are
Speaker 2: I mean even base scallops that can swim away, they're
Speaker 2: not going to be able to go from Barnica Bay,
Speaker 2: New Jersey and just swim away to Saint Joseph's Bay
Speaker 2: in Florida for a better conditions. So they're really really
Speaker 2: good monitoring systems, and we use the hepatopancreas to do that.
Speaker 2: You can run different antioxidant assays on it to determine
Speaker 2: if their antioxidant levels are elevated or perhaps depleted.
Speaker 1: And according to the twenty twenty paper antioxidant defenses of
Speaker 1: flame scallop exposed to the water soluble fraction of U
Speaker 1: used vehicle crank case oils, some antioxidants were found in
Speaker 1: wonky concentrations in the digestive glands. There were decreases of
Speaker 1: antioxidants in other parts of the body. Just trying to
Speaker 1: cope with this stuff. Now, some of you, I hear you.
Speaker 1: You're so mad right now, You're so mad because the
Speaker 1: crimson face fingered flame scallop isn't a true scallop, and
Speaker 1: you know that most people don't. But it's not even
Speaker 1: closely related to scallops. It looks like a scallop. It's
Speaker 1: called a scallop. It's not a scallop, So what does
Speaker 1: this have to do with scallops? Don't worry. I spent
Speaker 1: some time chilling with the twenty twenty one paper Temporal
Speaker 1: changes in physiological responses of bas scallop performance of antioxidant
Speaker 1: mechanism in arcopectin iridians in response to sudden changes in
Speaker 1: habitat salinity. That's from the Journal Antioxidants, and it said
Speaker 1: that not even accounting for water contaminants, but even just
Speaker 1: the stress of changing salinity due to recent trends and
Speaker 1: glows warming, it produces oxidative stress that cannot be resolved
Speaker 1: by the scallops antioxidant mechanism, suggesting that excessive generation of
Speaker 1: reactive oxygen species can lead to cell death aka apoptosis.
Speaker 1: So all that chaos is happening inside the calm of
Speaker 1: their shell, in addition to that pock of brainy string
Speaker 1: cheese meat that you may have seen on a menu.
Speaker 2: So all that's kind of going on in there.
Speaker 1: Do they have a mouth?
Speaker 2: Do they have a mouth? So not a mouth as
Speaker 2: in you and I have a mouth. So they have
Speaker 2: along the outer edge they have their gills, which is
Speaker 2: going to help with gas exchange, and along that same
Speaker 2: area they've got cilia that are bringing in and funneling
Speaker 2: in the water and doing a little particle extraction and
Speaker 2: concentrating those particles down to get into the gut.
Speaker 1: And they also have tentacles around the ridge that look
Speaker 1: like a mustache made of fingers. Sometimes these things are
Speaker 1: so long and feathery that we have no idea because
Speaker 1: we just see their shell bones wash up on the beach,
Speaker 1: or we're just eating its one big muscle, but irl,
Speaker 1: some of them look like they have teeth made of
Speaker 1: hairs that can move. Do you think that they have
Speaker 1: a preference for certain types of algae or do you
Speaker 1: think that they're just sucking stuff in and being like
Speaker 1: this is organic plant matter and I'm going to eat it.
Speaker 2: So they definitely have a size preference. And there has
Speaker 2: been some really extensive work done on maybe not so
Speaker 2: much what base gallops eat, but definitely what oysters eat
Speaker 2: because they're just such a huge aquaculture organism. I guess
Speaker 2: species use so frequently in aquaculture that everybody wants to know,
Speaker 2: you know, what's the optimal food to feed these guys
Speaker 2: so that we can get the best oysters we can
Speaker 2: out of it. There's a lot of work on that,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of times it falls down
Speaker 2: to size of the algae. They can be a little
Speaker 2: picky on that.
Speaker 1: May I offer you a gander at the paper Food
Speaker 1: of the Oyster, which notes that eighty eight percent of
Speaker 1: the oyster's food supply is composed of diatomes. But they
Speaker 1: also eat kind of slim margins of spores, they have
Speaker 1: some particles of seaweed, they need some small animals. But
Speaker 1: recent studies echo that diatomes are just a big yum
Speaker 1: yum for them, and that some oysters can filter up
Speaker 1: to fifty gallons of water a day just digesting what
Speaker 1: they like and just booting the rest out their poop shoot.
Speaker 1: So why are people like whispering to oysters like fine
Speaker 1: dining waiters in lap coats, being like, what can I
Speaker 1: get you? Because according to Global Newswire, oyster farming made
Speaker 1: nearly eight billion dollars worldwide in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: the demand just goes up every year now. By comparison,
Speaker 1: the Atlantic sea scallop market was valued at six hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy million in twenty twenty one. How should you
Speaker 1: feel about all this well. In the Oceanology episode with
Speaker 1: doctor Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, she said, no, that's real.
Speaker 4: And I think with aquaculture where that kind industry kind
Speaker 4: of got a rough start, but they are figuring out
Speaker 4: sustainable practices. There's a lot of the most exciting work
Speaker 4: in that space for me is around integrated farming or
Speaker 4: vertical ocean farming, or called three D ocean farming, and
Speaker 4: it's about growing oysters and muscles and clams and all
Speaker 4: these different kinds of algae together in a simplified ecosystem
Speaker 4: that kind of creates habitat for other things to swim
Speaker 4: through as well. Algae is super super healthy and underrated
Speaker 4: sea vegetables as they are now sometimes called in hip spots,
Speaker 4: So eat more algae. Farmed shellfish you can eat with
Speaker 4: impunity as much as you want those oysters, muscles, clams,
Speaker 4: because they actually just filter the water so we don't
Speaker 4: have to catch wildfish to feed the farmed fish, which
Speaker 4: is a problem with some other species, although they're also
Speaker 4: innovating feeds from like plant proteins and insect proteins to
Speaker 4: feed fish now, so that industry is coming along well.
Speaker 4: What I personally eat is those things.
Speaker 1: Okay, but what about fashion? Now? Scallops have shells that
Speaker 1: are very distinct, right, Little Mermaid is coming out with
Speaker 1: a new version. I always wonder do people who study
Speaker 1: bivalves do they ever say like, you're not going to
Speaker 1: find scallop shells of that nature this deep in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Do you ever notice like mermaid bras and say like that,
Speaker 1: I don't come into that size.
Speaker 2: Actually, I mean I think some of these well I
Speaker 2: don't know what size a Little Mermaid, I don't know
Speaker 2: what her bra size is, but some of your sea
Speaker 2: scallops can get to be a little bit larger, but
Speaker 2: definitely not a base scallop. That might might prevent a
Speaker 2: little like nip slip. That's about as far as those
Speaker 2: little base scallops are gonna do.
Speaker 1: And if you ever hear the term divers scallop, that's
Speaker 1: just a sea scallop, but it's hand harvested by divers
Speaker 1: in scuba gear rather than by rawling the seabed floor
Speaker 1: to gather them all up. So the diver's gallops they
Speaker 1: tend to be bigger, they tend to be harvested better,
Speaker 1: and these diverse gallop shells can be up to nine
Speaker 1: inches in diameter, just in case you're in the market
Speaker 1: for a bra. And why is Ariel from The Little
Speaker 1: Mermaid wearing scallops on our boops? I don't know. Ask
Speaker 1: Glenn Keen, the legendary Disney animator who first sketched and
Speaker 1: created her whole Look, let's talk about him. So he
Speaker 1: has a condition known as afantasia, where he can't picture
Speaker 1: things in his mind. He can't picture them. He's a
Speaker 1: Disney animator who created Ariel and so many other characters,
Speaker 1: and he can't imagine things. And yes, we definitely need
Speaker 1: an episode on this, And yes, that is amazing and
Speaker 1: inspiring that he's had this career. And he modeled Ariel
Speaker 1: off of his beloved wife, Linda, who he met in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five in line for the movies. They were
Speaker 1: both waiting to get in to see The Godfather. They
Speaker 1: got married eight days later and they've been together for decades. Also,
Speaker 1: Glenn's dad created the comic The Family Circus. Back to scallops,
Speaker 1: I realized I forgot to ask a not smart question.
Speaker 1: Is it really different living in fresh water or a
Speaker 1: bay is in freshwater? Are there freshwater scallops?
Speaker 2: No? No, So They're an estering species, which means that
Speaker 2: you find them in somewhat brackish water, so lower salinities
Speaker 2: than ocean water, not full strength, but definitely not fresh.
Speaker 2: Somewhere there in the middle where you have rivers mixing
Speaker 2: with oceans kind of coming together and swarming that mix,
Speaker 2: and these bay gallops as well as their other estering neighbors,
Speaker 2: they've had to adapt to what is essentially a constantly
Speaker 2: changing environment. The salinity changes rapidly with incoming tides, outgoing tides,
Speaker 2: big rainfall events. They can experience temperature swings, a lot
Speaker 2: of tidal exchange, you know. So one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why oysters can shut up so tight is because twice
Speaker 2: a day they can just get totally exposed to air
Speaker 2: and has to wait out for the next tidal exchange.
Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense. They're left high and dry pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I also imagine that brackish water where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of freshwater coming out of river sources and things, that's
Speaker 1: got to be a lot of concentrated pollutants or am
Speaker 1: I making that up?
Speaker 2: No? No, you're definitely not. We do see a lot
Speaker 2: of either contaminants like metal contamination or your PCBs or
Speaker 2: your PAHs.
Speaker 1: So those stand for polychlorinated by females, which are human
Speaker 1: made chemicals that were banned from manufacturer in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: but there's just still leaking from a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: And if fish eat fish who have eaten pcbes, then
Speaker 1: you're eating pcbes if you eat that fish. Now, Polycyclic
Speaker 1: aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs, those occur naturally. They're in things like
Speaker 1: coal and crude oil, and some can contribute to cancer.
Speaker 1: For more on this stuff, you can see the Environmental
Speaker 1: Taxology episode we did a few months back after the
Speaker 1: East Palestine train derailment. And I'm so sorry this episode
Speaker 1: happens to have an unusual number of bummers. I don't
Speaker 1: know how this has magnetized so many bummer asides, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sorry that they're in here. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that the world has an unusual number of bummers.
Speaker 1: But scientists like Sam are trying to figure this stuff
Speaker 1: out and fix it.
Speaker 2: Like all those kind of nasty things coming into your
Speaker 2: coastal water bodies. The other thing that these coastal water
Speaker 2: bodies have to face, and I kind of touched on
Speaker 2: it before with the utrification. You know, oftentimes these bump
Speaker 2: right up to golf courses and people's backyards, a lot
Speaker 2: of places where fertilizer is used extensively. And that's just
Speaker 2: like prime algae food. I love it.
Speaker 1: Oh So, then does that feed algae that can block
Speaker 1: the sunlight for that seagrass.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly, or it can feed algae that produced
Speaker 2: toxins that can result in fish kills and even shellfish kills.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why we have such a declining
Speaker 2: base gall population was from some really really big brown
Speaker 2: and red tides that came through in the seventies and
Speaker 2: just kind of really wiped out the North Carolina populations.
Speaker 2: The New Jersey populations were hit hard by that as well.
Speaker 1: So I went back to the annals of the Disco era,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, so many studies on this, such as
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy five paper in the Journal of Environmental
Speaker 1: Letters titled Effects of the nineteen seventy one Spring Summer
Speaker 1: red tide upon mid Eastern Gulf of Mexico patch reef communities,
Speaker 1: which mentions that under the appropriate environmental conditions, red tides
Speaker 1: may result in near complete extirpations of shallow water reef
Speaker 1: biotas and can significantly alter the flora and fauna there
Speaker 1: for years to come. So down on the reefs, Ecolie,
Speaker 1: a big red tide event like that sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit like our apocalypse movies, but on shore it can
Speaker 1: look a little like spring break. Have you heard of
Speaker 1: the term a jamboree? Is that what a jamboree is?
Speaker 1: I feel like I heard this and like the Gulf
Speaker 1: that there are these events where there's like an algae
Speaker 1: bloom and it kills off so many shellfish that they
Speaker 1: just come running up to the beach, and so people
Speaker 1: will hear of one coming and then they'll just go
Speaker 1: to the beach and just scoop up so many crabs
Speaker 1: and other things that like come up to the surface
Speaker 1: to eat them, Yeah, to eat them because they're just
Speaker 1: like out running, uh like a lack of oxygen. But
Speaker 1: it ends up being just like a buffet for locals essentially.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I got to look into that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll put that in aside. The best of times,
Speaker 1: the worst of times, you know, Okay, I got this
Speaker 1: word wrong, all right? Are you happy I got it wrong?
Speaker 1: It's a jewbilee Now, a jamboree apparently is an old
Speaker 1: timey word and it means a carousel or a noisy
Speaker 1: drink thinking about some merrymaking. But a jubilee is an
Speaker 1: anniversary or a rejoicing, and it comes from the word
Speaker 1: for tooting up a ram horn for party times. And
Speaker 1: according to a widely trusted etymological source, the original Jubilee
Speaker 1: was a year of emancipation of enslaved people and a
Speaker 1: restoration of lands. That is a biblical thing, which reminds
Speaker 1: me also that Juneteenth approaches and that too is a
Speaker 1: celebration of emancipation. Now, June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five, Union
Speaker 1: soldiers announced in Galveston, Texas that anyone still enslaved was free,
Speaker 1: and that was the last place in the US to
Speaker 1: get this news. And on that note, we have a
Speaker 1: great episode with doctor Psyche Williamsforsen on Black Magnrology, which
Speaker 1: is all about race, culture and food, and that came
Speaker 1: out a couple of weeks ago. It is a fine
Speaker 1: way to prep for acknowledging that holiday. But a jubilee
Speaker 1: can also mean in some Gulf Coast states a seafood
Speaker 1: buffet at the beach.
Speaker 4: Each New tonight at six what appears to be a
Speaker 4: jubilee on the eastern shore.
Speaker 1: Look at this.
Speaker 2: Jubilees occur when oxygen levels drop, driving fish and other
Speaker 2: sea life to the surface, making for an easy catch.
Speaker 1: Some people are like, sign me up, these things are
Speaker 1: still alive and about to go anyway. Other people not
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: I don't know if i'd want to eat those, if
Speaker 2: they've been filtering these toxic algal species, I'd be a little,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, hesitant. Yeah, well, you would also need an EpiPen.
Speaker 1: You would need like five EpiPens also, so you're good,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, thank you, I'm not into it. Go
Speaker 1: for it, have at it. And yes, I looked into this.
Speaker 1: And while there may be thousands of flounder and white
Speaker 1: trout and crabs and shrimp at the water's edge about
Speaker 1: to expire in more ways than one, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be not careful. So in the wake of a
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen red tiede jubilee, the director of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Department of Marine Resources, Matt Hill, told the local newspaper
Speaker 1: outlet that quote, currently, our samples don't indicate there are
Speaker 1: toxins present in the water, so the seafood is likely safe. However,
Speaker 1: the seafood should still be handled, stored, and cooked properly. Also,
Speaker 1: if any of the seafood is dead and looks like
Speaker 1: it's been dead for a while, it's best not to
Speaker 1: eat it. Matt, you're a real one. Thanks for that warning.
Speaker 1: So yes, should you encounter a rare jubilee, you've got
Speaker 1: to check in locally to see about safety and fishing limits.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had diarrhea? It's never worth it. When
Speaker 1: you're talking too about what they're filtering. What about these tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny metallic particles. I didn't even think about that. Are
Speaker 1: they precipitates in the water or are they just metal
Speaker 1: shavings from industry?
Speaker 2: Silly come from a couple different sources. One of it
Speaker 2: is we actually just manufacture metal nanoparticles. Titanium dioxide is
Speaker 2: in a lot of your sunscreens directly relevant to our
Speaker 2: critters that live in the water, because you put it
Speaker 2: on hop in the ocean or the bay and there
Speaker 2: it goes right in the water directly.
Speaker 1: Are the titanium dioxides the ones that are reef safe
Speaker 1: or no?
Speaker 2: You know what? It's kind of like out for debate
Speaker 2: still some of that stuff came out, as things do,
Speaker 2: came out, perhaps a little faster than the ecological research
Speaker 2: to keep up. An interesting thing about like the titanium
Speaker 2: dioxide nanoparticles is that they look one way when they're manufactured,
Speaker 2: but when they're exposed to UV light like sunlight, they change,
Speaker 2: they change a little bit. So a lot of that
Speaker 2: early testing was done with kind of like pristine titanium
Speaker 2: oxide nanoparticles, and they failed to acknowledge and evaluate what
Speaker 2: happens with the altered particle post UV exposure. But I
Speaker 2: think the research is catching up, so I don't want
Speaker 2: to I don't want everybody to throw out their sunscreens. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I looked into this and the answer is kind of
Speaker 1: a defeated just a whimpering sigh. So titanium oxide. There
Speaker 1: was a twenty fourteen study in the journal Environmental Science
Speaker 1: and Technology, and it was titled sunscreens as a source
Speaker 1: of Hydrogen peroxide production in Coastal waters, which found that
Speaker 1: the inorganic oxide nanoparticle content in one gram of commercial
Speaker 1: sunscreen was enough to increase hydrogen peroxide and water and
Speaker 1: it directly affects the growth of vital plankton and thus
Speaker 1: titanium dioxide nanoparticles caused direct ecological consequences. Now the same year,
Speaker 1: the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published the study Effects
Speaker 1: of Titanium dioxide nanoparticles on Caribbean reef building Coral, which
Speaker 1: said that exposure to tiny titanium dioxide particles caused significant
Speaker 1: zooxanthala expulsion in all the colonies. And if you're doing
Speaker 1: a big huh, I got you, or rather the eco
Speaker 1: friendly sunscreen company Reef Repair does and explained it a
Speaker 1: blog post to lay persons with the following statement in
Speaker 1: really non scientific terms, that means the coral threw up
Speaker 1: everything in its stomach. Corals don't actually have stomachs, but
Speaker 1: if they did, it would be like one of us
Speaker 1: hammering three bottles of cheap tequila by ourselves and trying
Speaker 1: to digest that amazing garlic burrito we ate just before
Speaker 1: calling an uber or an ambulance for home. You've put
Speaker 1: your body under extreme stress and you're about to pay
Speaker 1: dearly for it. Thank you Reef for pair. So word
Speaker 1: on the reef is that zinc oxide is the safer
Speaker 1: and better choice because it blocks harmful radiation better and
Speaker 1: it causes less ecological impact, but titanium dioxide is cheaper,
Speaker 1: so it persists. Now, what about other metallic teeny tinies.
Speaker 2: I looked at silver nanoparticles. That's another one that we
Speaker 2: manufacture in large amounts because it's kind of like an
Speaker 2: anti microbial property. So like your antimicrobial clothes or antimicrobial coatings,
Speaker 2: those a lot of times are coated with a silver
Speaker 2: nanoparticle complex. And that's all finding good until you wash
Speaker 2: your clothes up in the water system, and then by
Speaker 2: way of water runoffs, it enters our coastal ecosystems.
Speaker 1: So yeah. For more in this see Silver Recovery from
Speaker 1: laundry washwater Roll of Detergent Chemistry, which was a twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen Dartmuth study published in the Journal of American Chemical Society,
Speaker 1: which concluded these silver nanoparticles can be toxic to many
Speaker 1: aquatic organisms and can impact the effectiveness of bacterial processing
Speaker 1: in wastewater treatment plants. So, hey, be stinky, just be stinky.
Speaker 1: I love it, the scallops love it. And then what
Speaker 1: happens when those nanoparticles get caught by that hepatic pancreatic
Speaker 1: organ What happens when they wind.
Speaker 2: Up there Yeah, Well, so you can see evidence of
Speaker 2: them in oyster tissue. They kind of ingest them, and
Speaker 2: then sometimes they get kind of stuck within the oyster.
Speaker 2: So that's one potential cause for concern. If it's enough
Speaker 2: to start inducing a response in the oyster or the scale,
Speaker 2: then you might begin to see elevated levels of antioxidants,
Speaker 2: you might see signs of tissue damage through lipid peroxidation,
Speaker 2: and then eventually if the scallop or the oyster system
Speaker 2: just gets totally overwhelmed, then you begin to see like
Speaker 2: cell apoptosis and then the animal dies.
Speaker 1: Lipid peroxidation side note is when a free radical, which
Speaker 1: is a particle with an unpaired electron, grabs an electron
Speaker 1: from a nearby fat and it degrades the cell, which
Speaker 1: creates something called lipid peroxides, which can cause mutations that
Speaker 1: affect the ability of an organism to survive naturally. And
Speaker 1: scallops aren't having a boom time, but Sam says that's
Speaker 1: largely because of a habitat decline when red tides decades
Speaker 1: ago knocked out a lot of the sea grass, and
Speaker 1: scallops are just still down there. Talking about the Great
Speaker 1: Sea grass Bust of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: And from then on, these populations have just really struggled
Speaker 2: to regrow themselves. They just cannot get together and make
Speaker 2: enough make enough babies to get the population back up.
Speaker 2: So they kind of follow a little bit of like
Speaker 2: a boom and bust population dynamic growth dynamic there, and
Speaker 2: so we're we're in the bust phase and they just
Speaker 2: can't quite get enough going to increase their population numbers
Speaker 2: in any significant manner. And so some places have some
Speaker 2: really great restoration efforts underway. Virginia over at VIMS, they're
Speaker 2: working with space gallops to try to give them a
Speaker 2: lake up. Cornell is doing the same, trying to either
Speaker 2: set up things like they call them spawner sanctuaries, where
Speaker 2: you put out the adults in a good spot and
Speaker 2: hope that they survive and reproduce. Other times, they'll grow
Speaker 2: the larvae up to a certain stage in an aquaculture
Speaker 2: facility in a hatchery and then release them into the
Speaker 2: water and hope that they get distributed to a good
Speaker 2: spot and grow up to be adults.
Speaker 1: So pecronologists are essentially just throwing scallop orgies and crossing
Speaker 1: their fingers that these bivalves get a leg up even
Speaker 1: though they do not have legs. Okay, how are they mating?
Speaker 1: Are they seeing each other from across a bay and
Speaker 1: being like, I've noticed your fifty thousand eyes, which I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you about later, But how are they
Speaker 1: getting together?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So scallop sex is always fun. It's an interesting one.
Speaker 2: So probably the coolest thing about base scallops are they
Speaker 2: are simultaneous hermaphrodites.
Speaker 1: Oh love. Yeah, so they.
Speaker 2: Are both male and female at the same time, which
Speaker 2: is not something you see often. Hermaphrodites are common in
Speaker 2: the bivalve world, but usually at different times. It'll be
Speaker 2: separated on a temporal scale, so they'll either start out
Speaker 2: as male and then in a couple of years turn
Speaker 2: female or vice versa. Base scallops they do it all
Speaker 2: at the same time time efficient. Yes, and they are
Speaker 2: broadcast spawners.
Speaker 1: I'm horny and this water now has my reproductive cells
Speaker 1: in it in case anyone wants.
Speaker 2: Them so, which means they release their eggs and their
Speaker 2: sperm into the water column and hope that they intermingle
Speaker 2: and fertilization occurs.
Speaker 1: And so they just hope for the best. So is
Speaker 1: it a competition of like who can put out more
Speaker 1: game meats.
Speaker 2: You want to put out as many gamuts as you can,
Speaker 2: and you want your neighbors to put out as many
Speaker 2: gam meats as you can as well, because you don't
Speaker 2: really want self fertilization. I mean, not that the scallop
Speaker 2: wants anything, but yeah, anthropomorphizing here a little bit. But
Speaker 2: they they do have really high reproductive output. An individual
Speaker 2: scallop can make and release over five million eggs in
Speaker 2: one effort and one go and this is important because
Speaker 2: they have a relatively short lifespan. They only live for
Speaker 2: a year to two years.
Speaker 1: Maybe, Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they usually only reproduce once, just one.
Speaker 1: Go at it. So is that one reason why they're
Speaker 1: having a tough rebound?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. It definitely contributes, and so they get one shot.
Speaker 2: The thing about broadcast spawning, and this is again a
Speaker 2: really common way to go about it in the shellfish world.
Speaker 2: Oysters and muscles, they're broadcast spawners as well. But in oyster,
Speaker 2: you know, they have attached to a reef, so they're
Speaker 2: with all their friends. So when they spawn, their neighbors
Speaker 2: spawn at the same time, and they're all there together.
Speaker 2: But base gallops a little less lucky because they're mobile,
Speaker 2: so they need to congregate. There needs to be a
Speaker 2: large enough population size so that even just by chance,
Speaker 2: you have enough adults in a given area to release
Speaker 2: their gam meats into this pool.
Speaker 1: If anybody out there.
Speaker 2: And then they eggs are fertilized by sperm and cleavage
Speaker 2: c your division happens very quickly, and by forty eight
Speaker 2: hours you have a shelled de villager swim larvaeh just.
Speaker 1: Out in the world and hoping for the best. Right,
Speaker 1: You're like, find that blade of sea grass, stay away
Speaker 1: from seagulls, watch out for snails. You got the right.
Speaker 1: And their eyes, their eyes, their eyes, their eyes, their eyes.
Speaker 1: I have a thousand questions about eyes because they seem
Speaker 1: to have a thousand eyes. What are the eyes? What
Speaker 1: are they looking for? How many do they have? What's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the base gallops beautiful blue eyes are just
Speaker 2: amazing and a little creepy when they're looking at you know,
Speaker 2: but they're very cool. Their eye spots are. An interesting
Speaker 2: kind of factoid about them is that they use mirrors
Speaker 2: instead of a lens. Wow, I do know that we
Speaker 2: use a lens in our eye. But base gallops I
Speaker 2: think are the only organism that we know of that
Speaker 2: use that mirror. It's a protein mirror in the back.
Speaker 2: They also have two retinas overlaid along each other, and
Speaker 2: so one of them provides like a frontal view for
Speaker 2: the scallop and the other retina provides peripheral vision, so
Speaker 2: they can kind of see all around. And that's in
Speaker 2: just one eye spot, and as you mentioned, they have many.
Speaker 2: They have that chain, that blue chain of eyes all
Speaker 2: along the front of their mantle there, and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It allows them to detect dark moving objects. So their
Speaker 2: visual acuity is not what you and I see. I
Speaker 2: think I've read that it's about one hundred times worse
Speaker 2: than the average humans eyesight, But compared to other shellfish,
Speaker 2: their view of the world is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Ye do are there other bivalves that even have eyes
Speaker 1: or eye spots?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so most of your bivalves do have eye spots,
Speaker 2: but they are capable of kind of detecting the presence
Speaker 2: or the absence of light. So they have these photoreceptors
Speaker 2: and so they can respond sometimes to some light cues,
Speaker 2: and that can be especially helpful when you're in that
Speaker 2: larval stage, swimming around in the water column. It's a
Speaker 2: very helpful adaptation to have, given that you are mobile
Speaker 2: and you have the opportunity to escape predators, you know,
Speaker 2: So then tying that in with the ability to detect
Speaker 2: those predators, I could see where those two things could
Speaker 2: go hand in hand. You know. It doesn't help an
Speaker 2: oyster to detect a predator coming. It doesn't matter. Can't
Speaker 2: go anywhere, she says.
Speaker 1: An oyster doesn't need to know if a predator approaches
Speaker 1: because it's glued to a rock. What's it going to do?
Speaker 1: But is that why scallops have so many eyes because
Speaker 1: those eyes are stuck along the rim of the shell.
Speaker 1: I guess they have a shell, so they can't really
Speaker 1: move them around on stocks, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, they are on they are a little bit on stocks. Yes,
Speaker 2: they can move them around a little bit. And then
Speaker 2: they're also accompanied by other structures that are movable that
Speaker 2: can detect chemical cues in the water. And they're able
Speaker 2: to wiggle these around a little bit to get a
Speaker 2: more precise understanding of their environment.
Speaker 1: And do they have a brain to process that or
Speaker 1: what's the closest thing to a brain? Escallop has, so.
Speaker 2: They kind of have this ganglia that wraps around the adductor,
Speaker 2: so they're able to process these cues that are coming in.
Speaker 2: But it's not like a cephala pod brain.
Speaker 1: Is it a little bit simpler?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh yes? Can I ask you questions from listeners? Yeah? Oh,
Speaker 1: they've got good ones. Sam also says that community science
Speaker 1: has helped her research so much, and that she has
Speaker 1: worked really closely with a volunteer group in Barnegut Bay
Speaker 1: and they're called Reclam the Bay, So hello to all
Speaker 1: of you out there. She says, a lot of the
Speaker 1: volunteers are retirees and folks who are local who just
Speaker 1: want to keep that body of water clean and healthy
Speaker 1: and have helped Sam by taking her out on boats
Speaker 1: for her work and letting her grow some scallops and
Speaker 1: they're just fantastic, she says, and their mission is to
Speaker 1: involve and educate the public about the estuary's water quality
Speaker 1: and the care feeding life cycles and the importance of shellfish.
Speaker 1: Also Reclam the Bay's banger name, So a donation is
Speaker 1: going to Reclam the Bay dot org in Sam's honor.
Speaker 1: If any of you are listening to this episode, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that I swear so much. Thank you to sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show for making that donation possible. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: crack into these queries for Sam a pictenodologist, Okay Elder Zamora,
Speaker 1: Emily Kreiger and Kaylesy want to know what's what the ridges? Essentially?
Speaker 1: Do the ridges in the shells have a purpose? Why
Speaker 1: don't clams or oysters have them?
Speaker 2: No purpose that I'm aware of. I think it is
Speaker 2: just a phenotypic characteristic of base scallops by other scallop
Speaker 2: species as well, But no advantageous or deleterious adaptation that
Speaker 2: I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: Ahh okay, good to know.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Of course, folks have argued and debated over the years
Speaker 1: what role shell shapes play, and there was a twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen paper titled anti Predator Adaptations in a Great Scallop
Speaker 1: a Paleontological Perspective, which put forth the theory that this
Speaker 1: shell structure of the scallop improves the mechanical strength and
Speaker 1: it allows them to swim away from any mollusk crunching predators.
Speaker 1: Although although and I love a good fight, other shell
Speaker 1: experts say that those ribs increase weight a bunch, but
Speaker 1: they do give the shell more robust anti predator benefits.
Speaker 1: But others could argue that swimming faster is their finest
Speaker 1: anti predator strategy. Depends on who you ask. Also speaking
Speaker 1: of asking, Kaylea Pilcher, Telia Dunyak, Evan Davis, Gordon, Haas,
Speaker 1: Ali Brown, Alex Ertman, Jessica Krunshank, and Asha Durmer. First
Speaker 1: time question asker wanted to know how they get from
Speaker 1: A to B in the sea. A ton of people
Speaker 1: asked about their movement, and in Astradermer's words, first time
Speaker 1: questionsker says, I completely love how they bounce through the
Speaker 1: water like pac Man when they're startled. Are they the
Speaker 1: only creature that behaves like that? In Talia Dunyak's words,
Speaker 1: how do they flap flap around the ocean?
Speaker 2: Flap flap? That's cute, thank you. They are the most
Speaker 2: mobile of the bivalves, for sure. They're the old swimming
Speaker 2: by valves and they do this through jet propulsion, so
Speaker 2: not totally unique to the animal world. But they draw
Speaker 2: in water. They use that really strong adductor muscle there
Speaker 2: to plamp down that shell and it pushes the water
Speaker 2: basically out their back end and uses jet propulsion to
Speaker 2: move forward.
Speaker 1: And by their back end, do you mean their butt
Speaker 1: or do you just mean the back end of the.
Speaker 2: Back end of the shell?
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm like, that's so much water to take in.
Speaker 1: I'm like, are they getting calonics like daily? Okay, good
Speaker 1: to know, so just out the back end of the shells.
Speaker 1: A ton of people, including for some question askers Marine
Speaker 1: Putts and Laser Interligator, as well as Katie Hopeman and
Speaker 1: Tina Hwang asked, in Laser's words, is it true that
Speaker 1: scallops can't close their shell completely? Can they clam up essentially?
Speaker 1: Can they shut it all the way so they can.
Speaker 2: Shut it fairly tight? But it is true that they
Speaker 2: are not as water tight as an oyster. Okay, but
Speaker 2: they can fairly well if they don't want you to
Speaker 2: open them. It's not like you can wed your finger
Speaker 2: in when they're closed. They got a strong muscle and
Speaker 2: they're closed. But for example, oysters can be exposed to
Speaker 2: air for a relatively long time. You can leave an
Speaker 2: oyster out in air for a day or more and
Speaker 2: it will be a little stressed after a while, but
Speaker 2: it'll be okay. A base scallop. However, you've got maybe
Speaker 2: an hour timeline there before you need to get them
Speaker 2: back in water because they aren't as tight and so
Speaker 2: they are drying out over that time.
Speaker 1: Is that because of their smaller adductor muscle or no,
Speaker 1: just the way that their shell is.
Speaker 2: I think it's just the way that their shell is.
Speaker 2: Their aductor muscle isn't necessarily smaller, They're just smaller proportionally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. This next question was asked
Speaker 1: by Becky the sassy seagrass scientist, who I'm thinking is
Speaker 1: going to love this episode and Connor as well as
Speaker 1: in Sam Burnett's words, how contaminated are scallops with microplastic, pesticides,
Speaker 1: heavy metals, et cetera. Are they safe to eat or
Speaker 1: should consumers avoid them? And Lee Horton says, how are
Speaker 1: they doing? Cool to eat them? Please say yes, but
Speaker 1: it's okay if you say no.
Speaker 2: No. I think they're definitely cool to eat as long
Speaker 2: as you're getting them from a reputable source. Scallops and
Speaker 2: oysters and your edible bivalves, when they are being marketed
Speaker 2: for human consumption, they are coming from very carefully regulated
Speaker 2: and monitored water, and hopefully they're also coming from sustainable sources,
Speaker 2: sustainable aquaculture, so I think they're safe. I would just
Speaker 2: pay attention to where you're getting them from, and if
Speaker 2: you trust the source, then they're fine.
Speaker 1: Good advice from an expert on this, which is good.
Speaker 1: Are most of the ones that people eat? Are they
Speaker 1: mostly farmed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, base scallops are. Yes. Like I said, they're all
Speaker 2: coming from China, and they've got a really robust aquaculture system.
Speaker 2: They grow them in these like lantern nets, so they're
Speaker 2: in these nets suspended right up off the bottom of
Speaker 2: the water, and they're able to pull them in with
Speaker 2: minimal destruction to the environment.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the base gallops, which aren't harvested much
Speaker 1: in the wild unless you're out with a snorkel in
Speaker 1: Florida scooping up a few in a bucket when they're
Speaker 1: in season, although there are a few hatcheries in New
Speaker 1: England that are breeding managed populations after this big dip
Speaker 1: from pollution and algal blooms. Now, what about the bigger scallops,
Speaker 1: the sea scallops, your sea scallops.
Speaker 2: However, I think those are largely still harvested via dredge,
Speaker 2: so not so sustainable definitely carries with that a lot
Speaker 2: more destruction to the local environment there. So again I
Speaker 2: would just think carefully about the sources and if they're
Speaker 2: using sustainable fishery practices.
Speaker 1: That's good to know. Heather Horton Wheden wanted to know, said,
Speaker 1: back when I ate mea many years ago, I had
Speaker 1: a scallop and there was a small crunchy bit in
Speaker 1: it and that was it. I was doll with scallops
Speaker 1: and all meat for that matter, no regurgitations. If you
Speaker 1: eat a scallop in the crunchy, is that a baby
Speaker 1: or is that just part of the shell.
Speaker 2: That's probably just part of the shell. It's definitely not
Speaker 2: a baby, Okay, it's probably just part of the shell.
Speaker 1: Given that the babies are out there as larvae and
Speaker 1: they take forty eight hours out in the ocean, there's
Speaker 1: never any baby scallops inside a scallop.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, very true. Yeah, but other organisms might eat
Speaker 2: the babies, true, true, true, but the babies are never
Speaker 2: going to be large enough that they're gonna crunch Okay.
Speaker 1: Good to know, Good to know. Scott Hanley and Ashley
Speaker 1: say er Da Rivas wanted to know a little bit
Speaker 1: about the dry pack versus wet pack debate or explanation,
Speaker 1: or about frozen Do you have any idea what that's about.
Speaker 2: I think it's a culinary thing and I don't know
Speaker 2: much except for usually when you buy these things, you're
Speaker 2: paying by the weight, So I would imagine if it's
Speaker 2: wet packed, you're paying for some extra water. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: might not be the most cost effective way, but I
Speaker 2: don't know if who tastes better or who's safer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll look into some culinary aspects of it. So
Speaker 1: I called in a favor from the Miles Thompson, which
Speaker 1: if you're in the know about big deal chefs, you
Speaker 1: might recognize the name of this James Beard nominated chef.
Speaker 1: So he came up in the Lle kitchens of Son
Speaker 1: of a Gun and Nobu and Animal. He had his
Speaker 1: own restaurant. Now you met, and he is the most
Speaker 1: accomplished yet humble person I have ever encountered in my life.
Speaker 1: This man is a boss. So he's been busy launching
Speaker 1: a new restaurant. It's called Baby Bistro. It's in Koreatown
Speaker 1: here in LA You can actually follow him at Miles
Speaker 1: cooks on Instagram and you have to dm Baby Bistro
Speaker 1: on Instagram to get a table booking. Jarrett and I
Speaker 1: are going this week. I'm losing my mind, but anyway,
Speaker 1: eating scallops it's been done for thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: years by humans and according to traditional animal foods of
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples of Northern North America First nations like the
Speaker 1: Mikamach populations and Pacific Northwest Coast diets have included scalps
Speaker 1: for millennia, as well as many East Coast indigenous populations.
Speaker 1: So humans have been eating scallops for a long time.
Speaker 1: But we're now going to chat about selecting, harvesting, and
Speaker 1: preparing scallops for the next eight minutes or so. So
Speaker 1: if you're vegetarian, you can go on skip ahead. If
Speaker 1: you have accidentally cooked scallops incorrectly, keep listening. Also, everyone
Speaker 1: be careful with the knives, all right, Okay, here is
Speaker 1: Chef Miles Thompson doing me a favor.
Speaker 3: Scallops are fascinating creatures, fun to work with, and even
Speaker 3: more fun to cook. So when we talk about scallops,
Speaker 3: there's essentially three types that we can talk about. There
Speaker 3: are base scallops, or are the small kind of baby
Speaker 3: sized scallops, and then diver scallops, which are the larger
Speaker 3: scalps in the shells. And then there's also frozen scallops.
Speaker 3: Now those are not in the order of preference are cooking,
Speaker 3: but I will say that the one I prefer to
Speaker 3: cook the least are frozen scallops, typically because they're treated
Speaker 3: with a chemical that causes them to weep out a
Speaker 3: milky liquid when they're thought and that makes it harder
Speaker 3: to sear them.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about sodium tripolyphosphate or STPP for short.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it goes by a pen name on food labels
Speaker 1: as E four fifty one, and it's used to bulk
Speaker 1: up and increase the weight of seafoods. It's also used
Speaker 1: in leather tanning and flame retardants. So it's understandable why
Speaker 1: Miles is not into that shit and he prefers the
Speaker 1: freshest seafood possible.
Speaker 3: I would say probably my favorite type of scalp to
Speaker 3: work with is a live scalop, either a bay's scallop
Speaker 3: or a diver's scallop. And when you're buying these, if
Speaker 3: you can find them in a store or from a
Speaker 3: fish monger. It is very important to find out where
Speaker 3: they're coming from. Ideally you'll be getting wild scalops so
Speaker 3: that they'll have the most flavor, and honestly, wild scalps
Speaker 3: will have the least impact, hopefully on the ecosystem if
Speaker 3: you're getting it from people that have responsible picking practices.
Speaker 3: So how do you deal with these live scalps once
Speaker 3: you have them home in your shell? Well, first thing
Speaker 3: to do is to have all of the equipment that
Speaker 3: you need. So what you'll need is a small palet
Speaker 3: knife or offset spatula, or a thin bladed knife that
Speaker 3: is not sharp on one end, basically a thin button
Speaker 3: knife that's a bit flexible. What you want to do
Speaker 3: is grab the scallop. There's a light side and dark side,
Speaker 3: one being flat and one being rounded. You want to
Speaker 3: put the flat side up and slowly eake your knife
Speaker 3: in and shave off the scallop muscle from the top.
Speaker 3: At this point, shell that will pop open and then
Speaker 3: expose a beautiful scallop its row, it suggestive track, and
Speaker 3: its eyes or the skirt. The next thing you're going
Speaker 3: to want to do is scrape underneath the scalop with
Speaker 3: contact with the shell with your knife or offset spatula
Speaker 3: and remove the full scallop in its entirety from the shell. Now,
Speaker 3: what you're going to want to do is remove the
Speaker 3: four parts from each other. You're going to remove the
Speaker 3: central scalop up quote unquote the big.
Speaker 1: Guy that's the adductor muscle, by.
Speaker 3: Putting your thumb between the small side muscle of the
Speaker 3: scalop and the skirt and running your finger around the
Speaker 3: scalp to remove the scalop from everything else. Then you
Speaker 3: can pull off that small, little chewy muscle. I don't
Speaker 3: really use that unless I'm making an exo sauce or something,
Speaker 3: but that's a little more in depth kind of thing
Speaker 3: to talk about then. For right now, then what you
Speaker 3: can do is snip off the black digestive track an
Speaker 3: orange or light colored roa sack individually. The road sack
Speaker 3: is very nice if brined, then grilled, or can be
Speaker 3: used to make sauces. And then the last, perhaps my
Speaker 3: favorite part of the scalp, controversially or not, is the
Speaker 3: skirt or the actual eyes. They are about forty eyes
Speaker 3: around the scalop skirt. And what I like to do
Speaker 3: with this is I had to put in a basin
Speaker 3: of lightly salted water and scrub between my hands to
Speaker 3: remove any of the silt and the sand from the
Speaker 3: where the scalp lives. Do this two or three times.
Speaker 3: This is beautiful. Wrap around a stick and grilled like
Speaker 3: Yackatori style, or you can make delicious sauces with it.
Speaker 3: But we're here to talk about the scalp itself, the thing.
Speaker 1: That is actually the adductor muscle of the scallop, which
Speaker 1: before this episode you just called the scallop because we
Speaker 1: all did. Everyone does that meaty little puck. But let's
Speaker 1: start with the little ones, the base scallops, macadamia nuts.
Speaker 3: What you'll need is a cast iron fan, neutral oil,
Speaker 3: find kosher or fine sea salt, and a tray lined
Speaker 3: with a piece of paper towel. After they're cleaned and
Speaker 3: rinsed to remove the grit, you want to dry them
Speaker 3: with a paper towel and lay them on a plate
Speaker 3: to temper so they're closer to room temperature, so that
Speaker 3: when you cook them they don't seize up so much,
Speaker 3: a little more relaxed. They get a nice seer, but
Speaker 3: they don't get so rubbery and tough. Then you'll seize
Speaker 3: them well, and by well, I mean salt them with
Speaker 3: more salt than you think you should. I let them
Speaker 3: sit on a plate for about twenty minutes and so
Speaker 3: that the salt will absorb. Then we want to get
Speaker 3: your cast iron and very hot and put a nice
Speaker 3: screen of neutral oil in there. Also again more than
Speaker 3: you think you need, and get that smoking hot. Make
Speaker 3: sure you put on the exhaust fan in your kitchen
Speaker 3: and open a window when it's smoking hot. Lay your
Speaker 3: seasoned scalops in on any side you don't need to
Speaker 3: put them, particularly on the flat side, and just let
Speaker 3: them see her for a solid thirty seconds until you
Speaker 3: start seeing a light brown line. Pump the side of
Speaker 3: the scallop. At this point, roll the scalops as if
Speaker 3: you're rolling a popcorn pan around on the top of
Speaker 3: the stove so the exterior sides get a light sere
Speaker 3: on them, and then dump them out into the tray
Speaker 3: line with parching paper and paper towel. Remove them so
Speaker 3: they don't sit in their own grease. Put them on
Speaker 3: a plate, serve with a lemon wedge beautiful. You can
Speaker 3: also serve them with a saucer, ah balsamic or any
Speaker 3: of those kinds of things. Now, for the larger scallops,
Speaker 3: the diver scallops, the way you're gonna want to cook
Speaker 3: those is similar but different, same, same, but different. You're
Speaker 3: gonna still want a cast iron pan or a harbon
Speaker 3: seealpan and the same neutral oil, same type of salt.
Speaker 3: You're gonna start with the same principles here. You're gonna
Speaker 3: temper the scalop, then season allowed to sit for about
Speaker 3: twenty minutes to lightly cure, and then get your pan hot.
Speaker 3: The only difference here is that while your scalp is curing,
Speaker 3: you're gonna turn your oven onto two hundred and ninety
Speaker 3: degrees fahrenheit. We're gonna finish the scalp in the oven
Speaker 3: to ensure an even and more perfect cook in my mind,
Speaker 3: so what we're gonna do is we're gonna get that seasoned,
Speaker 3: cured scalop, sear it hard again as we did the
Speaker 3: base scalps, and.
Speaker 1: Mile says that unlike the smaller bay scallops, the sea
Speaker 1: scallops are diverse scallops. You want to see on the
Speaker 1: flat side, not along any round edges, maybe two minutes,
Speaker 1: but really use your eyes before you flip them.
Speaker 3: This one will go a little longer because it's a
Speaker 3: bit of a bigger piece of protein. But once you
Speaker 3: see that brown line creeping up on the side of
Speaker 3: the scalop, you should at this point have a beautiful
Speaker 3: seal on the scalp. If you're using cast iron and
Speaker 3: have a thick enough screen of oil, well it will
Speaker 3: basically look like a seared hamburger. Crazy. So take the
Speaker 3: scallop out, flip it onto a small tray like a
Speaker 3: fajita size tray, and all the scalps you've see it,
Speaker 3: flip them onto that tray and let them raster for
Speaker 3: about two minutes to kind of equalize in temperature. Then
Speaker 3: put them directly into the oven on the tray and
Speaker 3: cook them for a few minutes until a thin bladed
Speaker 3: knife or cake tester, thin skewer that's metal inserted and
Speaker 3: held there for about ten seconds, and then put onto
Speaker 3: the bottom lip of your mouth feels nice and warm,
Speaker 3: and then take them out and serve them lemon, wedge,
Speaker 3: urblanc whatever you want enjoy.
Speaker 1: You can find out more about him on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Miles Cooks. His food is art and his new restaurant
Speaker 1: again is Baby Bistro. With underscores after Baby and bestro
Speaker 1: in case you want to check it out. Also, the
Speaker 1: samlier and wine pairing's top notch. Again, I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about going this week. Just a quick question, how did
Speaker 1: I get a literally world famous chef who's pretty much
Speaker 1: like the guy from the Bear to send me a
Speaker 1: voice note about scallops? He's share It's best friend, and
Speaker 1: Miles officiated our wedding.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: He co officiated with Dylan Rodriguez from the recent Field
Speaker 1: Trip WGA Strike episode a few weeks ago. So we
Speaker 1: are very lucky to have such good friends, we know. Also,
Speaker 1: first time question asker Judy Lawler said that the large
Speaker 1: scallops I've been told are actually eel any truth to this,
Speaker 1: and then another patron Judy Judith Wessell said, my dad
Speaker 1: insisted that the tiny base scallops were the only ones
Speaker 1: worth eating, and that the larger ocean scallops were really
Speaker 1: made by punching holes in the wings of skates. And
Speaker 1: then another patron chimed in Kate Tilda's said, actually the
Speaker 1: skate wings thing can be true. I live on Cape
Speaker 1: Cod and one of my best friends, Fisherman, said this
Speaker 1: does happen so I fact check that, and yes, this
Speaker 1: can happen. One website said to look for cookie cutter
Speaker 1: like roundness in fake scallops because natural scallops won't be
Speaker 1: perfectly circular. And also scallops should be a uniform height
Speaker 1: because skate wings naturally taper. I guess it can happen.
Speaker 1: There are also fake scallops made from fish paste. So
Speaker 1: what if you're like, no one's going to hoodwink me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna catch myself. Mackenzie King says, omg cowboy hat emoji.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a small town on the west
Speaker 1: coast of Florida, Crystal River that goes nuts the first
Speaker 1: week in July when scallop season opens. I always wondered
Speaker 1: about their migration and what scallop season really means.
Speaker 2: Yes, so scallopsies. That means that the population is open
Speaker 2: to harvesting. So it's not necessarily a season for them,
Speaker 2: it's a season for us. It's where, Okay, the fishery
Speaker 2: sciences have decided at this point in time it's safe
Speaker 2: to harvest a certain number over a certain period of time.
Speaker 2: They don't really migrate, so it's not like the scallops
Speaker 2: came into the bay at this particular time, and you're
Speaker 2: allowed to fish for them. They are there year round.
Speaker 2: Depending on the water body and the currents within that
Speaker 2: specific water body, you can have larval dissal I guess
Speaker 2: as a way of migration. So sometimes larbie can be
Speaker 2: dispersed relatively long distances, just depending on how the water
Speaker 2: is flowing and where they are. So for example, there's
Speaker 2: a pretty strong hypothesis that the populations off the coast
Speaker 2: of North Carolina have mixed and mingled with the local
Speaker 2: populations off the coast of New York, perhaps even replacing
Speaker 2: them at times.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, but I'm.
Speaker 2: Hesitant to call that a migration.
Speaker 1: It's more just dispersal, and just for funzies, those teeny
Speaker 1: tiny babies in the water are called spat and etymologists
Speaker 1: think that that word came from just the past tense
Speaker 1: to spit in the water. It's a disrespectful name for babies.
Speaker 1: But a few folks, including Lee, Horton and Connor, want
Speaker 1: to know about their habitat range. If you needed a
Speaker 1: scallop friend, where could you find one? Are scalops found
Speaker 1: around the world.
Speaker 2: They are found around the world, but not all around
Speaker 2: the world. Bay scallops are largely found or historically found
Speaker 2: along the east coast of North America. But as I
Speaker 2: mentioned before, they are now in China, and that's because
Speaker 2: we brought them to China.
Speaker 1: Are they farming base gallops that are native to North America? Yes,
Speaker 1: oh wow, But I'm sure they just do. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: doing business differently over there or something.
Speaker 2: Yes, China has put in a vast amount of resources
Speaker 2: into aquaculture, more so than we have, just in terms
Speaker 2: of development of different aquaculture practices. But yes, they have
Speaker 2: argopectin Iranians. So that's the base gallop. It wasn't an
Speaker 2: accidental invasion. It was introduced to China purposely, and in
Speaker 2: the eighties, I believe. I think that went over in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Would you say that you have found, like Slayer would
Speaker 1: like to know, do they have personalities? Slayer asked, do
Speaker 1: scallops have families and feelings and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Well, they don't have families because they're broadcast spawners, so
Speaker 2: they never know what happens to their eggs and their sperm.
Speaker 2: What comes of that. Do they have feelings? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've never spoken to a scallop and had one answer, me, Okay,
Speaker 2: so I don't want to discredit something that we have
Speaker 2: no way of evaluating scientifically. They are really funny little
Speaker 2: like I said, they're kind of the charismatic bivalve. I
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 1: A few people had word questions. Nick A specsowl and
Speaker 1: first time cross jasker Julia Shepherd. Jillian wants to know
Speaker 1: what's the actual correct way to pronounce scallops. Some say scallops,
Speaker 1: some say scallops? What is it? You've lived in Florida,
Speaker 1: you've lived in North Carolina, you've lived in Jersey. How
Speaker 1: do you say scallops?
Speaker 2: Scallops?
Speaker 1: There you go? There it is? Who's saying it scallops?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never heard that in my life.
Speaker 1: So in a nineteen eighty one article by the publication Yankee,
Speaker 1: they trying to settle this score. But it was published
Speaker 1: again on New England or dot com in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two because apparently this controversy has a longer lifespan than
Speaker 1: even a sea scallop and a lot of humans. So
Speaker 1: in it, the writer Catherine A. Powers quotes an ancient
Speaker 1: friend of hers. She says, who declares beware the person
Speaker 1: who says scallop, they don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're Inlanders. It's squall up. But you need not live
Speaker 1: in the briny air of New England to feel this way.
Speaker 1: Just ask the English in America. You says Scara, we
Speaker 1: say scollup each get over, or at least Michael wang
Speaker 1: on TikTok, who was launching into that dismissal while chewing
Speaker 1: on a kitcat that he had bitten through first without breaking,
Speaker 1: just like it was a chocolate sandwich and not like
Speaker 1: a holy tradition of snappable bars. He was out to
Speaker 1: get goats. But speaking of representation, have you ever seen
Speaker 1: a good movie, A good a good character that's a scallop?
Speaker 1: Are there any in children's cartoons?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, you know what, I take that back,
Speaker 2: but I don't know what it's from. My master's advisor
Speaker 2: used to use this little esop cartoon and they had
Speaker 2: like bows on their head. They might have been like babies.
Speaker 2: But I don't know where she got that from.
Speaker 1: I don't know where she got that from either. So
Speaker 1: I looked, y'all, I looked for hours. I googled scallops
Speaker 1: baby cartoon by Valve Bows. I went on research Gate
Speaker 1: and I found Sam's master's thesis. I tracked on the
Speaker 1: co authors and I found her advisor, doctor Amy Ringwood.
Speaker 1: Then I watched several YouTube videos of doctor Ringwood interviewed
Speaker 1: in her lab to see if there was an errant
Speaker 1: poster or like a faded inkjet print out tacked the
Speaker 1: wall featuring baby scallops. Then I emailed doctor Ringwood. Then
Speaker 1: I found an instagram for the University of North Carolina
Speaker 1: and at Charlotte Marine Sciences Program, and I looked for
Speaker 1: photos of the facilities. Then I followed and messaged people
Speaker 1: who recently I studied there. A few of them were
Speaker 1: already following me. Hey, and I want you to know
Speaker 1: I had to pee during a lot of this research.
Speaker 1: But I was like a German shepherd with a tri
Speaker 1: tip locked on this and I got so desperate that
Speaker 1: I finally opened Twitter, and within sixteen minutes after asking,
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Allie Hankel casually tweeted back,
Speaker 1: is it these little dudes from Alice in Wonderland animated
Speaker 1: mollusk babies snuggled into their shells and singing. This imagery
Speaker 1: is from the nineteen fifty one Disney movie Alice in Wonderland,
Speaker 1: and it features these baby little bivalves being cautioned by
Speaker 1: their older mother who points to an underwater calendar tuned
Speaker 1: to the month of March, urging her offspring to stay
Speaker 1: home lest they be devoured by this wiley walrus. And
Speaker 1: they're like later days, mom, and they follow the walrus
Speaker 1: anyway to their own peril. I'm sure you can imagine
Speaker 1: how this ends. But this vignette is called The Walrus
Speaker 1: and the Carpenter or the Story of the Curious Oysters.
Speaker 1: Oysters the fuck? Okay? So I emailed Samantha the YouTube
Speaker 1: blank and I asked, wait, was this it? And I
Speaker 1: got a thrilling response right away. She wrote me right
Speaker 1: back and said, oh my gosh, yes, that's amazing. You
Speaker 1: were able to track that down based off my terrible description.
Speaker 1: But I guess they were oysters after all, although running
Speaker 1: across the sand bed, she says, is very unoyster like
Speaker 1: and is the scallops claim to fame. She concludes, and
Speaker 1: now we know that there is no maternal guidance. A
Speaker 1: mom might have two million babies via an orgy. She
Speaker 1: doesn't give us single shit what they're doing. This is
Speaker 1: a numbers game. Oh what about that calendar? Why do
Speaker 1: oysters have a calendar underwater? Okay, so that was just
Speaker 1: a letters game. There's this long held adage used to
Speaker 1: be to only eat shellfish in months with an R
Speaker 1: skip it May, June, July, and August. And a lot
Speaker 1: of experts are like that advice predated things like refrigeration
Speaker 1: and ice machines and like the FDA. But yes, Samantha
Speaker 1: also said that she can now use that clip in
Speaker 1: her teaching and said, nothing like an ambiguous cartoon shellfish.
Speaker 2: They should be a scallop movie. They should just make.
Speaker 1: There should with that many eyes and those ridges and
Speaker 1: the way they hop around, are you kidding me? It's time.
Speaker 1: The way that their mouth can go blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah and look like a talking puppet, like Hello,
Speaker 1: get in touch with Samantha Lynch something.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: They're so cute, but something's gonna suck. What's the worst
Speaker 1: thing about scallops? What do you hate about them? Or
Speaker 1: the job?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, they can cut opening scallops. Their shells can
Speaker 2: be sharp if you get it in just the right way,
Speaker 2: or if there's a little slippery and you're trying to
Speaker 2: get it open, and you kind of get yourself with
Speaker 2: the scalpel instead slipper the little suckers. I do have
Speaker 2: a couple of little scars on my hands from I
Speaker 2: guess poor shucking.
Speaker 1: For you should wear gloves for those who do partake.
Speaker 1: Do you have any good shucking? Got any good shuck
Speaker 1: and advice?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just wear gloves and wear wore. Gloves are helpful
Speaker 2: and a sharp knife, but definitely the gloves because their
Speaker 2: shells do harbor a lot of bacteria, just like oysters.
Speaker 2: And if you do get cut, you want to make
Speaker 2: sure you clean out the cut very well. Nobody wants fabrio.
Speaker 1: I don't want fibrio and I don't even know what
Speaker 1: it is. Oh, look, it's an infection, Okay. So the
Speaker 1: Center for Disease Control says that in the US this
Speaker 1: seawater bacteria causes eighty thousand illnesses per year. And there
Speaker 1: are many different strains of Vibrio and several can cause
Speaker 1: food borne illnesses. But another superstar in the Vibrio genus
Speaker 1: has a little number we like to call cholera. But yes,
Speaker 1: these little saltwater Fibrio buggers, they can give you all
Speaker 1: kinds of watery emissions from holes you don't expect it from.
Speaker 1: And let's just say, if you have a cut also
Speaker 1: and you go in the ocean or you have a
Speaker 1: fresh tattoo, you could pick it up there. However, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of non cholera vibrio infection from seafood just
Speaker 1: comes from eating it, and the CDC says that most
Speaker 1: infections occur from May through October, when water temperatures are warmer. Wait,
Speaker 1: those are the months. A lot of those are months
Speaker 1: with no RS oh dear, Okay, So maybe just take
Speaker 1: that into the account if you are eating or slinging
Speaker 1: back the sea creatures such as mushroom. Morgan and Liz
Speaker 1: Peralta Reed who had questions about watching scallops get shucked
Speaker 1: like straight from the water into the belly wilrus style.
Speaker 1: Do you pop it where the shell meets the shell
Speaker 1: or is there a trick to it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to kind of go in close to
Speaker 2: the hinge, so where the shell meets the shell, and
Speaker 2: the goal is to get in and slice that aductor
Speaker 2: muscle because that's what's holding that shell close. So once
Speaker 2: you slice through that muscle, then it just falls open.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about your favorite thing about them?
Speaker 2: So it's kind of twofold, because I think scallops are
Speaker 2: really fascinating creatures in that they have their mobility and
Speaker 2: they have their eyesight, and they're able to use those
Speaker 2: two things together and maneuver through the seagrass beds, and
Speaker 2: I think that's fantastic. But the other thing that I
Speaker 2: think is really fantastic are the seagrass beds. I love
Speaker 2: their home. I really enjoy working in these coastal water
Speaker 2: bodies that you can access with a kayak. You don't
Speaker 2: need a lot of resources. There's nothing like an early
Speaker 2: morning low tide and you're the only one out checking
Speaker 2: on your scallops or checking on you know, whatever you've
Speaker 2: got going on in the field, and that to me
Speaker 2: is really cool.
Speaker 1: Does a lot of your work involve kind of like
Speaker 1: solitary kayak field work out out on the walls.
Speaker 2: It can, it's not necessarily solitary, like you'll have another
Speaker 2: member of the lab or an undergraduate with you to help.
Speaker 2: But a lot of a lot of my dissertation work
Speaker 2: really was just me out in the field trying to
Speaker 2: do what I needed to do, and then actually, because
Speaker 2: research is research, A lot of my field work actually
Speaker 2: did not go as planned, and I had a large
Speaker 2: part of one of my experiments I think stolen.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, yeah, what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, it was there one day and gone the next,
Speaker 2: and I suspect that local crab fisher people had taken
Speaker 2: them thinking that they were crab traps, and I was
Speaker 2: encroaching on their turf even though I wasn't pitching their crabs.
Speaker 2: So as a grad student, like, that's just devastating because
Speaker 2: that's like the whole year just like, oh no, but
Speaker 2: that kind of removed that so solitary kayak and the picture.
Speaker 1: Ah, what was that like that day that you discovered that?
Speaker 2: It was heartbreaking. It was really heartbreaking and panic inducing
Speaker 2: and just all sorts of anxiety. But thankfully I had
Speaker 2: two really great advisors for my PhD dissertation, and they
Speaker 2: helped me very quickly pivot, get my feet back underneath
Speaker 2: me and moving forward. So it was okay, It all
Speaker 2: worked out okay in the end, but that was a
Speaker 2: really rough day.
Speaker 1: How many times in your life have you been through
Speaker 1: something terrible but you've been like, well, it's not as
Speaker 1: bad as a day I realized my research was stolen
Speaker 1: by crab fishermen.
Speaker 2: Oh, that should be like an inspirational poster.
Speaker 1: Right, It's not as bad as having someone who thinks
Speaker 1: you're trying to steal their crab steal your scallops. Did
Speaker 1: you learn anything about resilience through that at all? I
Speaker 1: mean there are bus times and there were boom times.
Speaker 1: Did you have to apply anything ecological to it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It ended up being a bit of a blessing
Speaker 2: because it required me to expand my professional network a
Speaker 2: little bit. I needed to get more scallops from other sources.
Speaker 2: And the more people you know and the more people
Speaker 2: you have connections with only helps you. So it did it.
Speaker 2: It helped me to expand that network. But at the
Speaker 2: time it was it was hard.
Speaker 1: It is amazing how much community really factors into science.
Speaker 1: So much of being able to ask someone a question
Speaker 1: that informs your research, or someone's looking for a lab
Speaker 1: and you happen to know someone like I think that
Speaker 1: it's understated so much in a lot of academia and
Speaker 1: just life. How much helping other people out is really
Speaker 1: just part of the ecosystem of doing anything in life.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I couldn't agree more, and just speaking
Speaker 2: from my experience in coastal ecology, research, which is perhaps
Speaker 2: compared to some other avenues of science, can be underfunded,
Speaker 2: and so you really end up relying on each other.
Speaker 2: You know, it can cost a lot of money to
Speaker 2: get a boat out on the water, and I've found
Speaker 2: that we help each other out. If somebody is going
Speaker 2: out on a boat and your research site happens to
Speaker 2: be nearby, you need something collected, most people are more
Speaker 2: than happy to go ahead and pick up what you
Speaker 2: need while they're out to save you on that boat time.
Speaker 2: Or you know, in my case, I needed scallop babies
Speaker 2: and I didn't have the resources at the moment to
Speaker 2: spawn my own scallop babies, and I had a couple
Speaker 2: of hatcheries provide those for me free of cost, just
Speaker 2: in good faith for research and things like that. Like
Speaker 2: it just really helpful, and I think the community is
Speaker 2: a strong one.
Speaker 1: And then of course here we are talking because of
Speaker 1: Bobby Corgan, so it's great help. I'm so glad I
Speaker 1: got to ask you all of this. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm going to eat scallops in the future. I
Speaker 1: love them, but I love them differently now so we'll see.
Speaker 1: But it's good to know that one can look for
Speaker 1: sustainable fisheries and can just marvel at them for the
Speaker 1: creatures that they are. Yes, thank you so so much
Speaker 1: for doing this. This is a joy.
Speaker 2: See this is so fun, like so much fun. My
Speaker 2: first podcast. It's like a great one. I love it.
Speaker 1: So ask generous people shellfish questions because look at how
Speaker 1: much you can learn. And doctor Samantha Gilbert Lynch is
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Her handle is linked in the show notes,
Speaker 1: as is this week's charity, Reclam the Bay. We are
Speaker 1: at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward
Speaker 1: with one L on both And if you have kids
Speaker 1: or you know people who do, we have shorter kid
Speaker 1: friendly edits of these episodes called smologies, and those are
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes where you can go directly
Speaker 1: to aliward dot com slash smologies. Thank you Zek Rodriguez
Speaker 1: Thomas and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio for working on those.
Speaker 1: Thank you Aaron Talbert for admining the oologies. Pot cast
Speaker 1: Facebook group with the system, Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch.
Speaker 1: Emily White the Wordery makes our transcripts. Susan Hale runs
Speaker 1: so much of the show, including your merch orders at
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com. We do have bathing suits. We got
Speaker 1: bucket hats, tots shirts and you can tag yourself in
Speaker 1: them with Ologies Merch and we'll repost you. Noel Dilworth
Speaker 1: helps with that and schedules guests and my whole life.
Speaker 1: Kelly ar Dwyer tweaks the website. Mark David Christensen and
Speaker 1: Jarrett Sleeper are instrumental editors, although I'm married to only
Speaker 1: one of them, and lead editor is one of the
Speaker 1: many aductor muscles that keeps this show together. Mercedes Maitland
Speaker 1: of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. And
Speaker 1: if you stick around until the end of the show,
Speaker 1: I tell you a secret. And if you listen to
Speaker 1: the mega encore last week about fire ecology and indigenous
Speaker 1: fire ecology, there was a special secret at the end
Speaker 1: about some medication and some mental health stuff going on
Speaker 1: here with your friend Ali Ward, hence the need for
Speaker 1: that last minute encore. And thank you to everyone who
Speaker 1: was so kind and sent sweet notes about my getting
Speaker 1: off of this medication. I've been on effectser for years
Speaker 1: because I have wonky ovaries and it can help with
Speaker 1: hot flashes and mood stuff that comes from having wonky,
Speaker 1: unpredictable hormones. And don't get me wrong, like such a
Speaker 1: good drug helped my anxiety so much. But I'm tweaking
Speaker 1: some things to try to tackle some ADHD stuff, and
Speaker 1: word are the wise taper off effects her slowly? Do
Speaker 1: not think because say you came from a lineage of
Speaker 1: strong stoic farm people, you can just barrel your way
Speaker 1: through a rapid withdrawal or else you will cry a lot. Also, hormones, people,
Speaker 1: get your hormones checked. I have that ovarian failure. It
Speaker 1: happens to about one percent of people, so lucky early
Speaker 1: and because my ovaries just hung a gone fish and
Speaker 1: sign they pieced right out. I am receiving all kinds
Speaker 1: of gender affirming care via hormones from estrogen and progesterone
Speaker 1: so that the unopposed estrogen doesn't give me cancer. And
Speaker 1: then I found out after years of this, I have
Speaker 1: like no testosterode and you need that. Everyone needs to
Speaker 1: have some of that, no matter what gender you are.
Speaker 1: So I have to put a testosterone cream on daily.
Speaker 1: And guess what if you have ADHD without knowing it
Speaker 1: for a handful of decades, you might not remember to
Speaker 1: put that cream on every day. Anyway, I am tweaking
Speaker 1: some things and trying to take better care of myself
Speaker 1: because we all deserve it. So I took a few
Speaker 1: days off, I did some crafting, I glued some magnets
Speaker 1: to rocks, and I got my molecules back in better
Speaker 1: balance with some of the right prescriptions. So thanks to
Speaker 1: the patients. That's what's been going on. I just I
Speaker 1: love making the show so much, and it's been three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six weeks in a row of being
Speaker 1: on deadline, except for a few handfuls when I was
Speaker 1: sick or burying my dad, and I would just like
Speaker 1: to keep doing it for as long as I can.
Speaker 1: I like to keep making the show, not being sick
Speaker 1: or bearing my dad. Also, Happy Father's Day from a
Speaker 1: dad you will always have, even though I'm a lady
Speaker 1: and I'm on the internet. But I hope the show
Speaker 1: gives you a little bit of what my dad gave me,
Speaker 1: which was curiosity for just all the wonders around you
Speaker 1: every day and all the cool people who get excited
Speaker 1: about things, and we'll share that. And also just the
Speaker 1: knowledge that You're loved, and you're lovable no matter how
Speaker 1: weird you are. You smart, fun, little goblin. Okay, bye
Speaker 1: bye pacadermatology, homeiology, cryptozoology, lithology, andechnology, meteorology, old pathology, anthology, seriology, skylinology.
Speaker 1: I dated a nice scala for a while, but that's fascinating,