ROCKLAND – Jay Trenholm bet his future on scallops, and so far he’s come up a winner.

His Oak Island Seafood business will be honored today as Exporter of the Year by the Maine International Trade Center at the organization’s meeting at the Samoset Resort in Rockport.

Trenholm has been in the fish and shellfish processing and shipping business for 20 years.

He named the business after the mysterious Oak Island in Nova Scotia, where a shaft dating back about 500 years was discovered, prompting business venture after business venture aimed at finding the treasure believed buried there. No treasure has been found, causing many to call the shaft a money pit.

“That’s what this is – a money pit,” Trenholm said of his business during an interview Wednesday.

But with 34 people on the payroll and an annual volume of 3 million pounds of scallops shipped to Europe, Asia, Canada and points in the U.S. each year, the business is clearly a success.

A native of Prospect Harbor who grew up in a family in the sardine and lobster fishing business, Trenholm is fish-savvy. His first 10 years in the business focused on buying all sorts of catch from boats and boat owners, but he saw the future of groundfish.

“We ran out of fish,” he said. So Trenholm dropped groundfish from his repertoire and focused on scallops.

In the early days, Oak Island bought scallops from boats that landed in Rockland, but now most of the product is landed in North Carolina and Virginia, Canadian ports and elsewhere around the world.

“We buy as many [scallops] as we can from Maine, but most of it comes from all over the world,” he said.

Trenholm laughed when asked if the business was based in Rockland because of its centrality to the fishery.

“We’re in Rockland because we like living here,” he said.

Though nothing is predictable in the fish business, scallops have proven to be a safe bet, with a fairly stable supply due to well-regulated resources and a solid market.

“Demand is pretty good for the product,” Trenholm said, and the price fluctuates less than with other seafood. Still, with the economy in a less than vibrant mode, he sees less disposable income in the market for what is, in a sense, a luxury food purchase.

Scallops sell for $7 to $7.50 per pound, he said.

“We buy them from the vessels or vessel owners,” Trenholm explained, “and then we sell them to large wholesalers.”

Inside Oak Island Seafood’s building in the Rockland Industrial Park, the crew unpacks, grades and freezes some scallops and repackages other loads of fresh product for the market. Everything is trucked in and then trucked out.

Trenholm estimates 75 percent of his business is in frozen scallops, and 25 percent is fresh.

“We’re building up our European business over the last four or five years. It’s a big item in Europe,” he said.

A daily truck run takes scallops to Boston. They are flown each night to Europe, where they are sold in France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and Italy. There are some aquaculture ventures in Japan where scallops have been raised, and a different species of the shellfish is harvested in the United Kingdom, but Trenholm has found a strong demand for the U.S. scallops, which he believes are better tasting.

Since scallops are the muscle from the shell and not the innards of the creature, the product is relatively easy to ship.

“It’s a muscle,” Trenholm said.

The scallops are four or five days old when Oak Island purchases them, he said, and they are processed and shipped out within a day-and-a-half and spend a day in transit. The scallops then have a shelf life of eight to 10 days.

“It’s one of the most durable seafoods,” Trenholm said.

He credited the Maine International Trade Center with helping Oak Island Seafood develop its international markets, offering assistance in the ins and outs of duties, tariffs and logistics.