Live Bay Scallop (August 2008)

The bay scallop grows to 3".  One valve is white, the other dark.  Once common in Tampa Bay, they then vanished.  This is the first one Dave Bulloch saw in Sarasota Bay in eleven years of seining.
We hope that Sarasota Bay Watch's 4th Annual Great Scallop Search  found  a few scallops today. 

 

Note the blue scallop eyes in the close-up above. (Above photos by Dave Bulloch)

The closer-up photo below is from a Duke University Physics website.

"Scallops have eyes (the blueberry-like object on right) that instead use reflection of light by a curved spherical mirror to form an image."  --http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/54/