Our organization not only develops sea scallop resource enhancement practices, but we are also enhancing sea scallopers by developing technologies to improve health and safety offshore. Shucking sea scallops is a high-repetition, high-force job that requires sea scallopers to perform the same fine-motor action thousands of times per shift while standing in awkward, constrained postures, handling wet products, and gripping narrow tools. Prior to our research, the cumulative musculoskeletal demands of shucking were poorly characterized. This fisherman-led research-to-practice project supported by the NEC’s Ideas that Work incubator, aimed to objectively quantify muscular loading during scallop shucking and to evaluate a worker-designed hand-tool modification intended to reduce that load.

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A repeated-measures, field-based study was conducted with 20 professional scallopers in Massachusetts during their normal offshore working shifts. Participants shucked scallops under two conditions: a standard stock shucking knife and a knife with a taped handle developed through a fisherman-led initiative. Surface electromyography (EMG) was used to measure muscle activity in the dominant hand’s extrinsic finger flexor (flexor digitorum superficialis) and extensor (extensor digitorum communis). Across participants, scallop shucking with the stock knife required sustained muscle activities exceeding 25% of maximum voluntary contraction in extrinsic finger muscles, a level associated with elevated risk for work-related musculoskeletal disorders in highly repetitive tasks. Use of the taped-handle knife significantly reduced median and peak muscle activity in both flexor and extensor muscles and was associated with lower perceived hand and wrist fatigue and higher usability ratings. These findings demonstrate that simple, fisherman-generated modifications to hand-tool design can meaningfully reduce muscular demands during scallop shucking. More broadly, the study illustrates the value of incubator models that connect researchers and practitioners to translate worker experience into evidence-based ergonomic interventions for injury prevention in commercial fisheries.