STEINHATCHEE, Fla. — The thought of crude oil mixing with bay scallops has been making folks more than a little nauseated in this coastal town of no stoplights in Florida’s Big Bend region.
Yet when state officials agreed to open the scallop season two weeks early, well ahead of the oil slicks and tar balls spreading across the Gulf of Mexico since late April, the queasiness briefly worsened.
The area’s economy hangs each year on a summer frenzy of recreational snorkelers who search this stretch of the Gulf for scallops - marine mollusks that squirt and clack when they’re snatched from clumps of sea grass. Opening the season early increased the risk that these seafood delicacies would be too small and in short supply and that word would spread that the scalloping season was a bust.
“It’s a good 70 percent of our business, a major part of our revenue,” said CharlieNorwood, 45, owner of Sea Hag Marina in Steinhatchee, which is 60 miles west of Gainesville. “I was really worried whether an early start would be a good thing or would backfire on us.”
As it turned out, so many snorkelers were paddling about in the Gulf waters on opening weekend that it was like “Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve,” Norwood said last week. Most important, the scallops were abundant and well-developed.
Among Florida’s outdoorsporting opportunities, some of which can be pretty pricey, scalloping is possibly the oddest and the cheapest. It is strictly recreational, requires little in the way of equipment - a boat isn’t needed in some areas - and can be done witha standard fishing license.
Yet for many coastal communities between Mexico Beach, near Panama City, and Arepika, which is 70 miles west of Orlando, the scallop is king.
On weekends during the season, several hundred boatsease down the Steinhatchee River to Gulf waters.
Fiddler’s Restaurant in Steinhatchee can seat 500 to 700 diners. In late winter it might serve 10 people a day,but for two months beginning July 1, the usual start of scallop season, waiting customers are summoned to dinner with the flashing red lights of pagers.
One reason they come is to have the freshly shucked scallops that they collected earlier in the day marinated in citrus juice and served asceviche.
Owner Jim Hunt refuses to believe crude oil from the broken BP PLC well off the Louisiana coast will ooze into the far reaches of Florida’s Big Bend and spoil his menu.
“Of anybody along Florida’s coast, we have the best chance the oil will miss us,” Hunt said.
Steinhatchee resident Richard Dickey, 15, worked the waterfront last week near the Shuck ’N’ Shack selling T-shirts emblazoned with “Ain’t no oil here except suntan oil.”
The Big Bend is Florida’s most thinly populated piece of coastline, stretching from south of Tallahassee to nearthe mouth of the Crystal River.
A short trip out into the Gulf with marina owner Norwood showed a fragile environment far less capable of withstanding an oily assault than the sugar-sand beaches of the western Panhandle.
The knee-deep water was as clear and flat as glass, making a lush carpet of sea grass almost perfectly visible. The aquatic wonderland went on for miles beyond Steinhatchee.
Two firefighters, Bob Horne, 55, of Miami-Dade County and his friend Tom Brechtel, 65, of Sumter County, had filled their mesh bags with scallops by early afternoon.
“Tell everybody Steinhatchee is alive and well,” said Horne’s wife, Marilyn, 47. “There’s no oil in the water.”
Business, Pages 73 on 06/27/2010