Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Initiative looks to restore Rhode Island’s quahog populations

March 2, 2026 — A reseeding initiative from researchers, state, and industry leaders is looking to strengthen Rhode Island’s quahog fisheries in Narragansett Bay.

Led by researchers at Roger Williams University’s (RWU) Center for Economic and Environmental Development (CEED), the project integrates aquaculture, disease testing, and hands-on student training to support wild shellfish populations and the state’s seafood economy.

The project is funded through a Partnership for Research Excellence in Sustainable Seafood (PRESS) grant, and will be done in partnership with the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association (RISA).

Read the full article at Aquaculture North America 

Roger Williams University Heads Reseeding Initiative to Strengthen Rhode Island’s Quahog Fisheries

February 23, 2026 — Roger Williams University’s Center for Economic and Environmental Development (CEED) is guiding a research-driven initiative to strengthen Rhode Island’s quahog fisheries in Narragansett Bay. The project integrates aquaculture, disease testing, and hands-on student training to support wild shellfish populations and the state’s seafood economy.

Funded through a Partnership for Research Excellence in Sustainable Seafood (PRESS) grant at the University of Rhode Island’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences and supported by NOAA, the initiative supports research that advances sustainable seafood. Through the program, CEED is studying wild quahog populations in partnership with the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association (RISA).

“The aim of this work is to address commercial and recreational harvester concerns about the declining clam population in Narragansett Bay,” said Robert J. Holmberg, a Shellfish Aquaculture and Hatchery Specialist, and RWU Assistant Professor of Marine Biology and CEED’s Shellfish Aquaculture and Hatchery Specialist. “They’ve declined over decades due to several factors, but this project specifically focuses on understanding how disease and reproductive health impact quahog populations.”

Read the full article at Roger Williams University 

The seal population is growing in Rhode Island. Does that mean fewer fish and more sharks?

April 25, 2025 — July Lewis of Save The Bay sees seals as an indicator of environmental health, so she was encouraged when her organization recently counted 755 in Rhode Island waters.

“It tells us the bay is really healthy, and the coastal waters are as well,” said Lewis, Save The Bay’s volunteer and internship manager.

On March 27, forty-three volunteers fanned out along the shore and water at low tide to count seals in Save The Bay’s annual effort. They counted 551 in Narragansett Bay and 204 at Block Island. Save The Bay is a nonprofit organization, which defines its mission as promoting a healthy Narragansett Bay that is accessible to everyone.

The bay’s seal population has been steady over the past several years, while the Block Island population has increased, according to Lewis.

Fisherman: Seals have “voracious” appetites

Chris Brown, 57, who fishes out of Point Judith on his 45-foot Proud Mary, said, “I’ve never seen so many seals in my life.”

“Seals don’t eat potatoes,” Brown said. “They have voracious appetites.”

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

NOAA cuts come to Narragansett Bay and Woods Hole facilities

March 4, 2025 — Multiple employees for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working in the agency’s Woods Hole and Narragansett Bay facilities had their positions eliminated by the agency on Thursday, according to 10 current and former employees of those labs and offices. The employees affected worked across the agency, including several in facilities and fisheries management.

The cuts affected people in their probationary periods of employment, which last one to two years at the agency. NOAA would not confirm the number of people whose jobs were cut at the two facilities, but several employees from Woods Hole said that branch provided the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with a list of 23 names of probationary employees back in January. National news outlets like CBS and The New York Times have estimated the number of employees affected across the country is in the hundreds.

Sarah Cierpich was among the employees terminated from one of the campuses in Woods Hole after working for the agency for 19 years – first as a contractor, and then, since September 9 of last year, as a federal employee. She said she had called out sick yesterday, fell asleep, and then woke up to the bad news.

“I woke up to my boss calling me, saying, ‘Can you check your email?’” she said.

The termination email that came from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, the new undersecretary of NOAA, made Cierpich feel “disrespected and disgusted,” she said.

Read the full article at CAI

RHODE ISLAND: U.S. Coast Guard investigates report of diesel spill from vessel that ran aground in Narragansett

November 19, 2024 — The United States Coast Guard is investigating the report of diesel in Narragansett Bay around Austin Hollow after a vessel ran aground Monday morning.

Virginia Wave, a commercial fishing vessel, ran aground 1 nautical mile north of the Beavertail Light, and was reported listing, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Motor vessel Deep Cygnus responded and aided in the rescue of all four of Virginia Wave’s passengers, and the Jack M commercial fishing vessel took the passengers on board.

Later that morning, the Virginia Wave was able to successfully float due to the incoming tide and the crew was transferred back to the vessel.

During the Jamestown Police Marine’s initial response, units reported it noticed the smell of diesel and a visible sheen coming from the Virginia Wave.

Read the full article at ABC 6

Long-term ocean sampling in Narragansett Bay reveals plummeting plankton levels: impact uncertain for local food web

May 16, 2024 — URI researchers estimate that in Narragansett Bay, the level of tiny plantlike creatures called phytoplankton has dropped by half in the last half century, based on new analysis of a long-term time series study of the bay.

That’s what a new paper published by the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) reports — news, recently uncovered, that is both surprising and concerning.

Analyzing the full time series of the bay, the research team found that phytoplankton biomass in Narragansett Bay declined by a stunning 49% from 1968 to 2019. The intensity of the winter-spring bloom, which starts the annual cycle of productivity in the Bay, decreased over time and is also occurring earlier each year.

URI’s new study in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) shares information from one of the longest plankton time series in the world. The subject of study is not only a destination for generations of Rhode Islanders and tourists but a fruitful site of research for oceanographers at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus.

“A lot of people live, work and play on the shores of Narragansett Bay,” Oceanography Professor Tatiana Rynearson says, providing key goods and services for the nearly 2 million people who inhabit its watershed. Even in the dense Northeast, Narragansett Bay stands out as a well-used body of water. The bay sits between regions of cold winters and warm summers, Arctic waters to the north and warm waters to the south, existing at a bit of a scientific sweet spot that offers researchers a dynamic environment to study.

Read the full article at the The University of Rhode Island

Tracking trends and ocean temperatures could give R.I. fisherman an edge

July 27, 2021 — Tony Eliasen and Brian Amaral, the co-founders of Newport, Rhode Island-based Ocean State Sensing, are focused on sensing and mapping temperatures in the water to be able to observe and track events. (Amaral is not related to the Boston Globe reporter.)

In real time, they are able to measure and plot water temperature from the sea bed to the surface, a tracking system that they say reveals connections within the biosphere that are otherwise unknown.

Q: What does Ocean State Sensing do?

Eliasen: We are a temperature sensing services company focused on the maritime environment. We provide high-resolution, continuous, in-situ sensing services. Our goal is to improve the understanding of the dynamic shifts in our climate and oceans to affect positive change and stewardship of the marine industries and the planet.

Q: Are you conducting sensing and mapping temperatures just off Rhode Island’s coastline, or elsewhere?

Amaral: At the moment we are [focused on Rhode Island], but we have plans to conduct data collection events in multiple places. We are actively seeking collaborators, partners and funding to help us grow our services and applications. One event we are excited about is partnering with a local fisherman to tow our gear behind the boat and measure the entire water column temperature at once as the boat drives up and down Narragansett Bay.

Q: What is the difference between satellite and point-based measurements?

Amaral: Satellites provide temperature data of the surface of the ocean which for many places in the world is accurate only for the first few feet of water. It does not provide data beyond the surface. To get this data, a temperature probe is lowered into the water, and the probe records the temperature of the water touching it. This is a point-based measurement, because it is measuring the temperature at a single point in water depth, at the latitude and longitude it was lowered into the water.

We are able to measure the entire water column at once, and when we tow the equipment, we can measure swaths of data, all of which is measured continuously and in real time.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Warmer ocean means changing fish populations in Narragansett Bay

January 27, 2020 — It will come as no surprise to local anglers that different fish species are now found in Rhode Island waters. In some cases, these fish are displacing ones traditionally found here, and scientists are trying to understand which species pose the greatest threat to the native marine populations of Narragansett Bay.

Students presented some of the findings Thursday at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. The talks on the bay’s marine food web were part of the monthly Bay Informed series sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and open to the public.

“It gets more complicated when you start realizing that there’s a lot of different predators for any given species,” said Maggie Heinichen, a master’s degree candidate. They’re not just eaten by one thing. And it gets even more complicated when you look at an entire ecosystem.”

Scientists have looked at changes at both the bottom and the top of the food web, analyzing fluctuations in populations of organisms at the bottom, like plankton, and of fish at the top level such as striped bass.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Inside Rhode Island’s Quahog Industry, A Shrinking Workforce

April 8, 2019 — “What I’m trying to do is I’m trying to get underneath all the shells and try to get to the quahogs,” says Dave Ghigliotti. He’s been a shellfisherman in Rhode Island for over 30 years. I went with him to dig for quahogs just off of Rocky Point State Park in Narragansett Bay.

There’s some debate over the name quahog. Some people use it to talk about the biggest clams. But basically all the hard shelled clams we eat here in Rhode Island are one species: the Northern Quahog. Other names you might have heard — like littlenecks, topnecks, cherrystones or chowder clams — describe the different sizes.

When Ghigliotti got into the business, there were about 2,000 licensed commercial quahoggers in the state. Now, the number is less than half that.

Some left the industry because the money isn’t great. Ghigliotti says clam prices have barely gone up since the ’80s. And, he adds, quahoggers have to compete for space on the bay with the growing number of oyster farms.

“That industry’s growing, so they’re always looking for space. And the problem is, once they lease a piece of real estate we can’t fish it anymore. We’re really pretty migratory. You see these guys here today, but once this place has had kind of its day, we move on to another place,” Ghigliorri says.

Read the full story at WBUR

Rhode Island: Narragansett Bay’s Ecology Changes Worry Fishermen

December 11, 2017 — NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Narragansett Bay has experienced dramatic changes during the past century, from being a dumping place for sewage and industrial pollutants to a near paradise for recreational swimming and boating. But changes continue to occur, whether from the warming climate, invasive species, fluctuating wastewater effluent, or other factors.

As University of Rhode Island oceanography professor Candace Oviatt recently told an audience of fishermen, scientists and students, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an average day on Narragansett Bay. The bay is always changing. Every year is different. Whether we like it or not, the bay is going to keep changing.”

Oviatt’s comments on Dec. 6 were part of a daylong symposium sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and aimed at creating a dialogue between fishermen — many of whom are worried that the bay has gotten so clean that there is little food left for fish to eat — and scientists whose research tells a sometimes confusing story of how the bay’s changing ecology might give that erroneous impression.

While most of the scientists claim their research suggests that the biomass of fish and other creatures living in Narragansett Bay has changed little through the years, almost all said the composition of species that call the bay home has changed dramatically.

A weekly fish trawl survey in two locations in the bay conducted since 1959 illustrates those changes. According to Jeremy Collie, the URI oceanography professor who directs the trawl, in the early years of the survey most of the species collected in the nets were fish and invertebrates that live on or near the bottom, such as lobster, winter flounder, tautog, cunner and hake. Those species also happen to prefer cooler water.

In recent years, the species that prefer warmer waters and that live higher in the water column have dominated the trawl surveys, including butterfish, scup and squid.

Read the full story at ecoRI