It all starts with
the rockweed,
salty and matted and greenish-brown — never yellow, the color
of new growth. Aquatic sustainability, after all, is the name of the
game at the annual Fishermen’s Clambake at the Little Compton
Game Club.
Over two days last September, we tagged along as volunteers
from the newly merged Westport Fishermen’s Association and
Buzzards Bay Coalition worked elbow-to-elbow yanking rockweed,
stacking the bake, rinsing the clams and pouring the butter in
advance of a traditional New England clambake. They’re an odd
pairing, the wind-warn anglers and quahoggers and lobstermen
and the white collared not-for-profit set. But the two groups came
together two years ago on common ground: to promote and protect
Southeastern New England’s waters.
The Fishermen’s Association had been doing the work since
1983, when the west branch of the Westport River was rife with
pollution and closed to shellfishing. The late Jack Reynolds, a
lifelong Westport River fisherman who died in June of this year,
knew they’d have to solve their own problems. He cajoled his
fellow fishermen — who would “rather go to the barroom than
look like a tree hugger,” he told us at last year’s event, a playful
glint behind his rounded eyeglasses — to help test water quality,
advocate for development setbacks, pinpoint pollution sources
and study salt marsh losses. And, in 2018, he approached the
Buzzards Bay Coalition to join forces and ensure the work of the
Fishermen’s Association would live on.
A clean Westport River is Reynolds’s legacy, and this community
clambake helped him get there. The 2020 event has been canceled
due to the coronavirus outbreak, but good things come to those
who bait. Keep an eye out for the 2021 event, or support the
Buzzards Bay Coalition’s clean water work with a donation at
support.savebuzzardsbay.org/jack_reynolds.
60 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l SEPTEMBER 2020