RI Oysters Making a Comeback

The conference, sponsored by NRCS, included 3 tours. The Southern RI Tour included Matunuck Oyster Farm where Perry Raso discussed aquaculture efforts on a local and global scale. The oyster restoration projects improve water quality throughout Rhode Island coastal waters, including its many salt water ponds. Participants toured the 7-acre shellfish farms in Potter's Pond and then sampled locals oysters at Perry Raso's restaurant, Matunuck Oyster Bar. Attendees also visited Perry's land farm where he grows vegetables and herbs for use in his restaurant.

Oysters once proliferated throughout the Bay, according to a recent book by Robert Geake, A History of the Providence River. You can read in a Providence Phoenix article that in the nineteenth century, "...oysters plucked from Narragansett Bay were harvested, packed, and shipped by the tens of thousands here. 'At the foot of Washington Bridge, on either side, there were oyster [companies],' Geake says.... 'There was another one at the foot of Gano Street.'"

In the past 20 years, Rhode Island oyster farming has revived on the pay and in coastal ponds. Hatcheries provide oyster seed that grow in farms' nurseries. We are now seeing that areas described as "dead" in coastal ponds are now teeming with species such as black sea bass, tautog, and lobsters. Read more about the history of oysters in Point Judith, Rhode Island.