What Is a Scallop Festival?

A scallop festival is a celebration of scallop fishing and the scallop season, and it involves different activities depending on where it is held. Scallop festival attendees might participate in collecting scallops and learning local techniques and recipes for cooking with scallops. They might attend various cultural performances, exhibitions or competitions as well as listen to live music, view displays of local arts and crafts and enjoy other foods and beverages. At the very least, a scallop festival usually will include the preparation and consumption of scallops.

Usually held once a year, a scallop festival can be large or small. The first festivals were smaller and more local than many of today's large events. These smaller local festivals were often celebrated exclusively among scallop fishing communities that depended on scallops for their livelihood. Celebrations might evoke community gratitude for the abundance of scallops in the sea while expressing hope for another year of successful fishing. Although these small festivals still happen in some parts of the world, many scallop festivals have grown larger, with such range of activities that scallops might no longer be the actual focus.

Large and small scallop festivals are held in many countries, including Great Britain, France, Japan, New Zealand the United States. The festivals usually last for more than one day and might go on for weeks. In almost every case, an abundance of food and local celebration generates interest in the festivals and boosts local commerce and tourism.

Some festivals attract people from all over the world. For example, the Bourne Scallop Festival on Cape Cod in the U.S. has attracted more than 55,000 people to the three-day event, necessitating large-scale organization, financial planning and corporate sponsors. A scallop festival of this magnitude might include hundreds of vendors, food courts and even small amusement parks, with some attendees planning an entire vacation around the event.

The scallops that are celebrated at a scallop festival range from small to large, and they have different seasons in different parts of the world. Among the most popular varieties are sea scallops, bay scallops and calico scallops. World scallop populations have undergone many changes over the years as a result of overfishing and other environmental factors, and sometimes commercial fishing or the scallop season is placed on hold for a time. Collecting scallops originally was a larger part of many scallop festivals, but coastal development and fluctuations in the world's scallop populations have made this activity less common. In some cases, local scallops might no longer be a part of certain festivals, and the scallops are brought from elsewhere.