PORTLAND, Maine (AP) A group of Maine aquaculture firms are looking to scale up one of the first serious attempts to farm Atlantic sea scallops in the United States.

The scallops are a New England seafood staple, and the shellfish are the source of one of the most valuable fisheries in the United States. Unlike oysters and mussels, they’re almost exclusively harvested from the wild on the East Coast.

A loose consortium of aquaculture businesses off the Maine coast is looking to change that by making scallop farming a viable option here. One, Bangs Island Mussels, is using the largest amount of Japanese scallop farming equipment ever used by an American scallop farm.

Bangs Island Mussels says it could have scallops to market as soon as this fall.