ISBN:  Unavailable

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Page count: 26

The purpose of this report is to describe seasonal changes observed in the body organ weights of cultured sea scallops which may impact upon the marketability of cultured scallop products. The report considers coincident physical and biological environmental dynamics which may act as spawning triggers and, indirectly, of body organ weight variations related to the spawning cycle. The scallops studied originated from stock collected in spat collectors in western Newfoundland and transferred as year-old spat to a commercial mussel and scallop farm for subsequent growing. Investigators took and pooled scallops from two separate year classes to obtain scallops of a wide size range (30-118 millimetres shell height) over the entire sampling period. Separate regression equations were developed for two size classes (under and over 70 millimetre shell height) since body organ weights of smaller scallops were affected differently by seasonal changes compared to larger scallops.