Shellfish Seeding The Nianitc River Aims To Restore, Replenish

EAST LYME, CT — More than 20,000 scallop seeds were placed in the Nianitc River last Thursday, the minutes from the Waterford-East Lyme Shellfish Commission meeting show.

And according to The Day, owner of the Niantic Bay Shellfish Farm Tim Londregan and commission chairman Peter Harris, said the program to restock and refresh the Niantic, is an effort to help restore the river to its days of being home to a bountiful scallop population.

Also last November, the commission approved a scallop season, only the third since 2011 and before that, going back a decade, no permits were issued.

In 2006, the Niantic River Watershed Protection Plan noted that historically, the decline in the bay scallop population was related to a decrease in eel grass and at the time, said that the sharp decline in the delectable shellfish Argopecten irradians led the Commission to "no longer issue shellfishing permits for them."

In addition to scallops, the "river at risk," long rich with shellfish, has also seen a oyster seeding.
Rescue Our River seeded the Niantic in November. A total of 125,000 juvenile oysters were added to the river as pat t of a public-private partnership with the Waterford-East Lyme Shellfish Commission.

Read more about Rescue Our River here.

Editor’s note: This article was corrected to reflect 125,000 oyster seeds.