September 25, 2020 — Nearly 20 years ago when Perry Raso leased a 1-acre piece of Potter Pond in South County to farm oysters, aquaculture was in its infancy in the Ocean State.
Raso, then in his early 20s, was only the 15th person to obtain a lease from the state and called himself a stockholder in the pond where he spent part of every day.
Today, the entrepreneurial owner of the Matunuck Oyster Farm and the Matunuck Oyster Bar nurtures 16 million oysters in different stages of growth on 7 acres in the saltwater estuary a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.
His farm is now one of 70 similar aquaculture operations across the state.
The farmed oysters mature slowly under about 4 feet of water in polyethylene bags that are open to the sea at one end of the pond.
The oysters extract algae from the water that flows through the baskets on the rising and falling tides, said Raso, 39.
He has about 2,000 bags of oysters growing in the pond at any one time. The farm crew tends the operation daily and passes the oysters through a tumbler apparatus frequently to separate them by size in the growing process.