Scallop diving season is February and March in Chilean Tierra del Fuego

Did you know that scallops can swim? I had always pictured scallops underwater as attached to the sea floor, like mussels. Talking to scallop divers in Chilean Tierra del Fuego, I learned that some attach themselves to rocks, but some swim around. They have valves that push water through, effectively moving by jet propulsion. Gathering them, therefore, can be like chasing small frisbees underwater.

 Scallop divers in the Almirantazgo Fjord, in southern Tierra del Fuego, can spend eight to ten hours underwater a day. Rather than a scuba tank, they use a long tube to breathe air pushed through the tube by a compressor on their boat. I was surprised at how amateur the whole system looked. The compressor was a rusty old engine that probably filled the tube with oil along with the air.

 Even worse, the diver sent full net bags of scallops up to the boat tied on the same tube he used to breathe. There was no separate rope and it seemed too easy for the bags to cause a kink in the tube, cutting off the diver’s air supply. He did tell me that he was usually only a few meters down and could easily surface quickly if needed. I didn’t think that was so reassuring.

 Diving for scallops doesn’t have to be so risky. In some coastal communities, divers have scuba tanks and go out for an hour or less to gather scallops off the sea floor.

For the divers I met, the benefits outweigh the risks. Gathering scallops is very lucrative. The small boats that support a diver generally stay in the fjord, gathering as many as possible and selling to larger boats that come to buy their catch.

 The men on the boat we visited didn’t want money in exchange for the scallops they gave us. We traded a bottle of fernet, an Italian type of amaro, and another of Coca Cola for a bag of shelled scallops and another of scallops still in the shell. Days from any town where they could buy supplies, money wasn’t very useful but fernet could make the isolation easier.