November 6, 2023 — An autumn afternoon in a Smith Hill committee room isn’t the usual habitat for a small group of quahoggers. The cloistered halls of the Statehouse are a far cry from the open waters and shorelines of Narragansett Bay, but for the four shellfishermen chosen to serve on a joint legislative study commission, it could mean their livelihood.
Their chief product is a literal state symbol: the northern quahog, also called hard clams. With their iconic shape and brown or gray concentric rings lining the outside of their shells, they are instantly recognizable to most Rhode Islanders. They are featured in the state’s popular “stuffies.” They are seen as the backbone of the state’s seafood industry and Rhode Island’s blue economy, to the point where earlier this year, state officials installed giant stuffies in airports across the nation as part of an advertising campaign.
But quahoggers working Narragansett Bay today are catching less than half the total amount of quahogs they were a decade ago. What once was a thriving trade in the 1980s, supporting thousands of shellfishermen and their families, has now dwindled to the point where less than 200 commercial quahoggers work the bay.
That’s because the state symbol seems to be vanishing from local waters. Last year quahoggers harvested 397,442 pounds of quahog meat, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s less than half of what they caught 10 years ago: in 2012, Ocean State quahoggers harvested more than 900,000 pounds of meat.