The bay scallop once thrived in Narragansett Bay and the salt ponds, with Rhode Island one of the top suppliers of scallops to New York in the 1880s. But generations of overfishing, pollution and a catastrophic brown tide in the 1980s wiped out the scallop population.
A program led by Save The Bay, which started in 2007 and is being expanded to include Point Judith Pond this summer, could change things.
The state Coastal Resources Management Council this month approved a plan by Save The Bay to install 70 cages in Point Judith Pond loaded with a brood stock of 20,000 scallops. They will be deployed in May and dive teams will check artificial spat collectors later this year to see if spawning has occurred.
Similar efforts have shown positive results in other salt ponds, including Ninigret and Quonochontaug ponds, according to Save The Bay’s application with the CRMC. Point Judith Pond was chosen for its available habitat, water depth, water quality and an abundance of dissolved oxygen.