Recreational shellfishing is set to return to Winthrop and the outer Boston Harbor area for the first time in more than a century, in a major marker of the decades-long cleanup of the once notoriously dirty waterway.

State officials this month announced that the harbor’s multibillion-dollar transformation – including the construction of the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant – has improved water quality to the point where Winthrop can now make its own decisions about allowing shellfishing.

“It’s great news,” said Wayne Castonguay, a regional shellfish superviser in the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. On the timeline of progress, he said, “it’s the last thing that you could expect to see after the Boston Harbor cleanup, because shellfish, of all human uses of water – such as boating, swimming – shellfishing needs the very cleanest of water.”

“It’s the most restrictive classification – if you can shellfish, that means you can do anything else,” Mr Castonguay said.

Fast action

Winthrop town officials said they’ve seen enthusiasm in town over the prospect, and will try to move quickly on the steps now necessary to let people go out and collect clams. Those steps include getting at least two local officials to complete a shellfish constable training course, and the town government formally approving shellfishing, setting a map of permissible zones, creating a system for individual permits, and getting state approval for the plan.

The Winthrop Police Department is a central player, as it has taken authority over the town’s Harbormaster Department. The department is working with the town manager and state officials, and already has an officer getting the necessary training, said the town police chief, John Goodwin.

“I am optimistic we can hopefully get this up and running by spring,” Chief Goodwin said. Across town, he said, “people are very excited and it resulted in numerous phone calls and inquiries into the permit process.”

Mr Castonguay said he couldn’t estimate how long it will actually take Winthrop to get permits into the hands of residents. “It totally depends on the city or town. Some towns have had shellfishing for 100 years, so they’re well-invested – they have staff and resources – whereas a new town like Winthrop, they have to get all that approved and set up that infrastructure.”

Commercial history

The general ban on recreational shellfishing in Boston Harbor dates back to 1925, when a national typhoid epidemic and other illnesses were tied to the consumption of contaminated oysters.

Despite the ban, commercial shellfishing in Winthrop and the overall Boston Harbor has been quite robust in recent years, Mr Castonguay said, as licensed fishermen were allowed to harvest softshell clams and sell them after processing them at a state-run purification facility in Newburyport.

The flats ringing the northern side of airport have often produced about 10,000 to 20,000 bushels a year, with the bushels worth about $100 to $150 each, Mr Castonguay said.

But that business along the western side of Winthrop is currently in a down period, he said, due to cyclical variations in shellfish numbers in the harbor, combined with rising sea levels in Newburyport that led the state last year to shut down the purification facility and send customers to an alternate location in Maine.

Many of the commercial shellfish harvesters working the area “were up in age, and they took this opportunity to retire,” Mr Castonguay said.

Key choices

The state approval means Winthrop will now have the right to decide whether to allow the introduction of recreational shellfishing, the continuation of commercial shellfishing, or both.

The state action covers the outer harbor towns of Winthrop, Hingham and Hull, where the water is generally cleaner than the inner parts of the harbor that get less tidal washing.

“They don’t have a history of managing these areas,” Mr Castonguay said of the three towns, “and so we’re working with them on that process.” He suggested that the towns might want “to go slow initially,” perhaps first allowing recreational shellfishing before moving to commercial approvals.

But commercial and recreational shellfishing are so different in scale and methods that they don’t substantially compete with each other, Mr Castonguay said. “They co-exist really well,” he said.

Bivalve molluscan shellfish is the only marine fishery that is subject to local control and management in Massachusetts, with the exception of sea scallops, surf clams and ocean quahog, which are managed by the state, Mr Castonguay said. All other fishing is managed by the state and federal governments, he said.