Scalloptown Really Was Here

Earlier this spring, when Water Street was dug up to replace the sewer line, I saw something in the dirt piled up beside the trench – a dirty scallop shell.

And it came to me: Scalloptown.

This shell – shells, because now I saw bits and pieces of scallop shells all over the mounds of dirt – was a voice from the past,  a reminder that this very ground I stood on was, and is, Scalloptown. (Not the eponymous park, located to the south.)

I started picking up some of the shells – I couldn’t stop myself. I’ve always been partial to scallop shells, but these were something more. I took them home, cleaned the dark dirt away, and starting trying to imagine a time when scallops were king in East Greenwich.

What happened? Where did they go?

“When I was a kid there was a big pile” of scallop shells, said local writer and historian Alan Clarke. “The shell pile used to be 20 feet high,” he said (see the pictures attached here). “Some kids would crawl up on it but the shells would fall down.”

The named Scalloptown dates back to Colonial times because Greenwich Bay was so full of scallops and oysters and the East Greenwich waterfront was considered the scallop capital of Rhode Island. Scalloptown in its time was considered to be that area of the shore front running from just south of the "Old Jail" (at King Street) to the foot of London Street. Fishing shacks were built on piles above the water all along the waterfront in a solid row.

From the looks of old photos, the shell pile sat to the south of the Rhode Island Clam building, in the parking lot that floods during high tides.

According to Clarke, the scallop trade died in the 1950s. “The scallops, they dredge them. They used to pull up huge piles of them. They just overfished them,” he said. Traditional commercial operators would use small dredges, three feet across, usually towed behind a boat.

East Greenwich quahogger David Drew said the scallop fisherman would bring in with their catch but that was only part of the job. “Opening houses” lined the cove in those days, he said.

“You had people who came in, they opened scallops,” he said. The houses had benches on either side and the openers would stand there and open as many scallop shells as they could.

“You’d catch them but if you couldn’t open them, you couldn’t market them,” Drew said. “The money was in open scallops. A friend of mine, his mom and his sister were openers. He remembers sleeping on a pile of new burlap bags” while they worked.

Drew, who is 58, was born too late for the scallop trade. He was in his 20s before he got to go scalloping.

“The first time I got to go was 1978 because the Cape had an abundance of spat, of juvenile stock,” he said. “They planted them down at salt pond and my dad took me because I’d heard all the stories but had never been. It was a lot of work. You’re pulling a drudge. It has a bag on it. You fill it up. You dump it on the culling board and then you have to sort through them because you can only take second-year scallops.”

Drew agreed that overharvesting played a role in the disappearance of scallops from Narragansett Bay, but he also wondered if more fresh water coming into the bay had played a role. 

"There’s always something about salinity. We can go out on my boat and quahog in different parts of the Bay and the quahogs will actually taste different, as you get more salty water," he said.

According to Dale Leavitt, a regional aquaculture extension specialist who teaches at Roger Williams University, the scallop population in Narragansett Bay declined due to several factors, including overharvesting. 

Leavitt also pointed to pollution and loss of habitat, in particular, the loss of eelgrass.

“When the scallops are really small, they are very vulnerable to predators. They would attach themselves to eelgrass blades to get away from predators. But eelgrass is in bad shape too.”

Save the Bay’s Tom Kutcher, whose (very fun) title is Narragansett Baykeeper, said the decline of eelgrass was due to increased turbidity – cloudiness – in the water.

It turns out eelgrass needs a certain amount of sunlight in order to grow, so as the water became more polluted, the eelgrass moved to shallower – more light-filled – waters. But since eelgrass is a subtidal species, Kutcher said, it doesn't do well in shallow waters.

He does not think fresh water from sewage treatment plants is a problem in Narragansett Bay. 

"We have a very small input of fresh water, less than 1 percent per day," Kutcher said. 

Perhaps the biggest problem with scallops is their brief lifecycle, Leavitt said.

“Scallops are really a unique shellfish. They only live two years. They grow up, produce once, and die,” he said. Alternatively, “quahogs, oysters live 20, 30 years and produce multiple times.”

So, it doesn’t take much to have a profound impact on the scallop population.

But the tide might be turning for scallops here in Rhode Island.

Save the Bay has been working on scallop and eelgrass restoration projects around Narragansett Bay. You can watch a Save the Bay video here about scallop restoration.

And there’s anecdotal evidence that scallops are making a comeback.

"I’ve caught more scallops this year, in my bull rake, then I can remember," said Drew, referring to the rake he uses to catch quahogs. "Other guys too."

“During Hurricane Sandy and the Nor’easter that took place shortly after that, scallops washed up on Bristol Bay, Point Judith and Ninigret,” said Leavitt. He said there’s even a possibility that scallops are using a micro-algae called codium, an introduced exotic, much as they use eelgrass. “It’s a bush-like plant that may be providing habitat for small scallops,” said Leavitt. “Usually exotics are detrimental but, in this case, maybe scallops are using them to adapt.”

Save the Bay's Kutcher, who grew up in Warren and has lived in Rhode Island his whole life, said he never saw scallop shells on the beach when he was a kid. He too thinks things are changing. While no one's been tracking it officially, he said there's been an increase in scallops in the last year. 

"It’s an excellent sign," he said. 

Those 20-foot scallop shell piles along Water Street probably won't ever be back, but perhaps someday "Scalloptown" could refer to more than just a park on the site of an old landfill.

My thanks to Ray Huling, author of Harvesting the Bay: Fathers, Sons and the Last of the Wild Shellfishermen, and the others quoted here, for their help with this article.