The
pressures of modern society and greater population have altered the quality
of the habitat and decreased the number of the scallops. If it seems hard to
put a dollar value on the various pleasures Nantucket offers, as well as their
costs to the environment, that is because there is no real way to measure it.
But it is easy to put a dollar value on a scallop. As Kenneth Holdgate Jr.,
told his daughter Linda when she was a little girl, a typical Nantucket Bay
Scallop is probably worth about a quarter. But how much would the last remaining
Nantucket Bay Scallop be worth?
Photos
and text copyright Jim Patrick and Rob Benchley, 2002
