For years, the scallop shell has been a symbol of Kiwi summers – its meat golden-seared on a barbecue, skewered at a bach, or piled high at Whitianga’s famous Scallop Festival. But beneath the nostalgia lies something far less celebratory: New Zealand’s wild scallop populations have collapsed, their once-abundant beds dredged, degraded and, in many cases, destroyed. Much of what we believed about scallops, from spawning behaviour to habitat preferences, is incomplete, borrowed from work overseas, or only partially tested in New Zealand conditions. “We’ve taken a species we barely understood,” says Dr Jenny Hillman - a marine scientist at University of Auckland, “dredged it…
