The queen scallop (Aequipecten opercularis ) is a medium-sized species of scallop, an edible marine bivalve mollusk in the family Pectinidae, the scallops. It is found in the northeast Atlantic and is important in fisheries.
At about 7 cm (3 in) in size, this is one of the smaller scallop species which are commercially exploited. The shell of this species is sometimes quite colourful, and it is also thin and brittle. It has about twenty radiating umbones. The left valve is slightly more convex than the right one. One auricle of the right valve is larger than the other which creates a notch near the hinge used by the modified foot in young scallops to spin byssal threads. Older scallops are free swimming.
The queen scallop feeds on a diet of plankton, and is commonly found up to 40 m (130 ft) below mean sea level, although it has been known to exist up to 400 m (1,300 ft) below sea level.This species is distributed from Norway south to the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean and is common in the North Sea on beds of sand and gravel.
