On Friday, December 9, Cannons Marina participated in a very cool project – the release of baby scallops into Sarasota Bay. The project was headed up by Sarasota Bay Watch and its co-founder, Rusty Chinnis. He and his group have been working so hard to bring our Bay back to health and one way to do this is to monitor the amount of scallops that are in our waters. Local scallops from along our shoreline have been disappearing for the last 50 years.  The increase of pollution in the water and the disappearance of sea grass has depleted our scallops population to practically zero.  The presence of these little guys means that our Bay waters are healthy, and that’s exactly what we want to see. Cannons is excited to be a community partner with Sarasota Bay Watch and assist on this spectacular initiative.
Sarasota Bay Watch raised money to purchase four millions bay scallop hatchlings from a hatchery in Terra Ceia.  On Friday, Cannons provided two Grady-White boats that took Rusty and his crew out to release the scallops in shallow water from Cortez Key to City Island. Cannons’ owner, David Miller, was pleased that he got to ride along and assist with the release.
This was an awesome project and we are so proud to be a part of it.  We want to see a healthy bay and we’ll do anything to make it happen. We hope those baby scallops reproduce and start the beginning of a healthy colony of scallops!