Groton Shellfish Commission: Years Of Overseeing A Favorite Coastal Pastime

Each town has the ability to form a shellfish commission as is the case with Groton.  The Groton Shellfish Commission, started in 1980, was an expansion of the Oyster Ground Committee established around the early1900’s.

The shellfish commission is currently a group of 8 volunteer members who patrol and propagate Groton’s coastal shellfishing areas, sample and test water quality and sell seasonal permits. 

“During the 1880’s the state set up a procedure for regulating the waters,” says Shellfish Commission Board Member, author of the book "Working In Waters" and Avery Point professor Steve Jones, who compares shellfishing to farming but with a bit more complexity because of water rights. 

According to Jones, the Oyster Ground Committee originally had three members with limited terms. The committee settled property disputes and set the taxation rate for deeded property, much the way the Shellfish Commission does today, but with fewer regulations and less science. 

 In 1881, the famous Poquonnock oyster case involved Groton oyster bed owners Nathan S. Fish and Thomas W. Noyes. At a time, Scarlet Fever had ravaged the village of Poquonnock, and Fish and Noyes were held responsible for the spread of the disease. 

The two men placed over 6,000 sticks of white birch into the river, which multiplied their oyster yield by providing more surface area for growing.  The vile stench of the decaying sticks was found by the town to be the central cause for the spread of the disease and the two were ordered by local authorities to remove the sticks.

“When the Indians harvested, they would walk in ankle deep and just pick stuff up.  Quahoag is what wampum was made of, so the economy was based on shellfish,” says Jones.  “During the industrial revolution, overpopulation, dumping chemicals and sewage became a problem.”

Now, with more advanced science and technology, guesswork is a minimal part of the equation.   

“We sample the water and count the colonies of bacteria. If the count is too high, we make sure recreational and commercial shellfishing is shut down,” says Shellfish Commission Chairman Ed Martin. 

The coastal waters of Groton in the 1800’s and prior were plentiful with scallops, oysters, clams, mussels and quahoags until around the late 1940s, when development and sewage escalated bacteria counts. 

“Everybody had given up around 1940 to 1960. The commission said it’s not safe to shellfish.   People would shellfish at their own risk - they would have a half-baked notion of what was safe,”  says Jones.

Without adequate science to mark the fluctuation of contamination, the commission kept the waters shut down. The river’s health fluctuated over the years but became heavily polluted again in the 1980s to the 1990s. 

After the early 1980s, scallops, which densely populated the coastal waters of Groton. declined and now are virtually obsolete.  The Shellfish Commission attempted to replenish the waters, but scallops are temperamental and never took.    

“Oysters have had a lot of problems in the 90s.  The oysters developed two diseases which originated in Norwalk and they took a hit.  The whole population was lost but they are coming back now,” says Martin.

In the last year, the Groton Shellfish Commission has started a program monitoring and charting the saltwater estuaries with the hopes of identifying patterns and gaining more knowledge of source contamination. 

Martin says there are few recreational shellfishing areas downstate because of contamination due to over development.  Fortunately for our sake, the Groton Shellfish Commission continues enlisting great local minds to keep our waters clean and our shellfish healthy.