Proust and Scallops

This past weekend I went on a trip to Crystal River with my family, Jonathan, and some of our family friends. The purpose of our trip was to go scalloping, and I had no idea what that meant.

We made our way out to the Gulf of Mexico from our beautiful hotel, The Plantation Resort. It undoubtedly reminded me of Cross Creek, by the way (comment intended for all of those in the American Identity Honors class last Spring) - the scenery seemed identical, until the nuclear power plant came in to view (AWESOME, but not at all Cross Creek-ish). When we reached the gulf, it seemed to be a vast expanse of dark water and I couldn't help but think to myself - how are we going to snorkel in this? I'm used to the water at home in Jupiter, bright, clear blue - go 10 feet out from the shore of the beach and you're already in over your head, the dropoff without any intention of stopping. We went about 2 miles off shore and were somehow, miraculously, in only about 4-6 feet of water. Needless to say, the gulf has a channel.

Before we plunged into the water with our snorkel masks and scallop bags (aka laundry bags) in hand, we were told to look for the bright blue eyes of the scallops. They sit on the sandy bottom or among the seagrass and, in a moment's notice, can pop up and swim away from you (it's quite funny, actually). As we snorkeled along, we slowly learned how to spot the scallops. It was like I was on an underwater Easter Egg hunt - except for that, on occasion, the eggs could decide to swim away from you. Most of the time, though, they just snapped shut when you went to reach for them and resigned themselves to being caught. As elusive as they seemed, our team of 13 people, including myself, caught four 5-gallon buckets full of scallops. It took us 2 1/2 hours to clean them all!

One of my goals of the weekend was to spot a starfish - out of all my years of snorkeling at home and in the keys, I have never actually seen a starfish in the wild. They were apparently abundant in all the spots that we were snorkeling, but I couldn't find one. After a few hours, I finally saw one in a bed of seagrass and was super happy! Hence these pictures:

My cousin Cara and our starfish

When reading Proust, I couldn't help but think about our scalloping trip, especially since Proust's petites madeleines bear an uncanny resemblance to scallop shells. Scallops and memories are a lot alike, both elusive and unpredictable... but when uncovered can spark excitement!