Great scallops are harvested by dredging in UK and European waters, with welfare considerations around dredge injury, air exposure, and the debate about bivalve mollusc sentience.
Great scallop welfare under the precautionary principle warrants attention despite uncertainty about bivalve sentience. Dredge fishing causes measurable physical damage including shell breakage and soft tissue injury that leaves animals vulnerable even if they survive immediate capture. The alternative — hand diving — significantly reduces physical damage and post-capture mortality, suggesting that even without certainty about scallop sentience, preference for less damaging harvest methods is justified by welfare uncertainty. Developing market incentives for diver-caught scallops over dredge-caught would simultaneously improve welfare under precautionary reasoning and reduce damaging seabed impacts.