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Hundreds of volunteers gathered Saturday at Fort DeSoto for the Great Bay Scallop Search, a program to monitor and document the status of the bay scallop population.
The search aims to prove that the Tampa Bay scallop population is on the right track. The bay scallop population completely disappeared in the 1960s from Tampa Bay's polluted waters.
"Every year we see more and more, so I think you can say that everything that we're doing is -- they're coming back -- the water is much improved ever since we've been measuring the clarity," said Debbie Kraujalis, who participated in the scallop search.
The Great Bay Scallop search has been an annual event since 1993. Volunteers found only one live scallop in 2005 due to the severe red tide, then in 2006, a little improvement with 17 scallops. And last year a whopping 555 were found, which shows Tampa Bay's water quality is indeed improving.
Saturday's search yielded more than 600 scallops.
Scallops are filter feeders and highly sensitive to changes in water quality. That's why they're considered a good barometer of an ecosystem's health.
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