Downeast Dayboat
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Why are our scallops so different?
Most scallops in this country come from large boats that fish offshore for 6 days or more at a time. Those scallops soak up melt water from the ice they’re stored in, adding weight and diluting flavor.
Our scallops come ashore within hours of harvest, not days. And they NEVER touch fresh water, so the unique flavors they develop in Maine’s pure, clean waters shine through.
Meet Togue Brawn
“Let me show you what scallops SHOULD taste like”
As the daughter of a commercial fisherman, I’ve worked in Maine’s commercial fishing and seafood industries for over 30 years. As a fisheries manager for Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, I helped to bring Maine’s scallop fishery back from the brink. Passive management had led to overfishing and the commercial fishery was barely hanging on.
Scallops were almost completely gone
I spent a lot of time in wheelhouses and at kitchen tables working with fishermen to develop a plan to help the resource and the fishery recover and thrive. Because of the work we did, I’m proud to say Maine fishermen are now sustainably harvesting more than 10 times what they did a decade ago.
Enter Downeast Dayboat
At the same time I recognized another problem: Maine’s vastly superior scallops weren’t being differentiated in the marketplace. Our cold, rich inshore waters produce the best-tasting scallops in the world, and our strict regulations ensure they’re landed within hours of harvest. But our delicious premium scallops were being trucked to out-of-state processing centers to be mixed in with weeks-old, waterlogged commodity scallops from the Federal fishery.
So I left my job as a fisheries manager and started Downeast Dayboat. I was on a mission to show the world just how amazing Maine scallops are when they’re given the treatment they deserve: shipping or freezing them soon after harvest and NEVER letting them touch fresh water or chemicals.
An honor and a pleasure
I started this business as much to help Maine fishermen fish more profitably as to help Americans enjoy better scallops. But I have to say, it’s such a delight and such an honor to be able to introduce people across the country to such amazing seafood. To be honest, I didn’t realize how difficult it was to get truly great seafood until I started getting all the “OMG” e-mails from people trying my seafood for the first time.
I absolutely LOVE what I do. So thank you for being a part of it.
