Scallop Sorting Sunday

My birthday yesterday was perfect, turning 17 was just fabulous! However, do the snowy/icy weather today my horse show was cancelled. So I'm staying at home and sorting my scallops right now!

Here are all my different scallops- I'm still not done sorting them, but after finding specimens of four different species today, I decided to take a break and write a blog post!

Here are some Atlantic Bay Scallops! For this species the paler, lighter colored valve is the lower valve. There are two subspecies, one that Los found from Maryland to western Florida and another that is found from Louisiana to Mexico. Now I'm gonna have to go through and see if I can separate the two subspecies! 😳 While young specimens can be pretty colorful, older ones are more drab.

Next is the Sentis or Scaly scallop, as far as I know these are two names for the same species. Scaly scallops love attached to rubble at pretty shallow or medium depths.

There are so many Atlantic Calico Scallops on Sanibel Island that you stop noticing their bright, colorful shells! 

Here's a comparison of the Atlantic Calico Scallop (top) to the Atlantic Bay Scallop (bottom). You can easily, or not so easily 😉, tell them apart because the Bay Scallop has more distinct ridges than the Calico Scallop.

Finally, here is the Rough Scallop. Most specimens of this mollusk are bright colors- yellow, orange, red, but some can be purple.

Here's a closeup of one of the Rough Scallops so that you can see the tiny "scale-like" projections that give the shell its rough texture and name.

And here is a comparison of all the four species of scallops that I have identified so far- Atlantic Bay Scallop (top left), Atlantic Calico Scallop (top right), Sentis or Scaly Scallop (bottom left) and Rough Scallop (bottom right).

And that's all for today sheller friends! See ya soon,

Yaroshelllava 😄