Scenes from a Traditional Fishermen’s Clambake in Little Compton
We tagged along as the crew pulled rockweed, stacked the bake and feasted on lobster, clams and other favorites.
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.
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Jack Reynolds, who founded the Westport Fishermen’s Association in 1983 and organized clambakes as a main fundraising mechanism, died in June of this year. Here, he poses with a locally built Eastport nesting pram raffled off at the 2019 event. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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A volunteer lifts new growth to expose and excavate greenish-brown rockweed for the clambake. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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About a dozen volunteers assembled 185 bags in total. Both included a bowl of clam chowder, fixings and watermelon for dessert. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Guests could order a traditional clambake — clams served with bags of corn, onions, red and sweet potatoes, sausage, a hot dog and a foil haddock pack — or a lobster and clam combo. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Harleigh Oliveira and dad, Rick Oliveira, helped set up the bake. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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olunteers rake rockweed atop the scalding-hot granite stones. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Jeff Louro, who assisted the fire crew, holds up a fresh-cooked lobster. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Members of the crew place crates containing produce and meat bags, shellfish and lobsters atop the seaweed, then cover them with wet and dry tarps to trap in steam. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Volunteers donning gray 2016 Fishermen’s Clambake T-shirts pour melted butter into ramekins. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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A volunteer skins yellow onions for the bake. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Gretchen and Charlotte Petersen enjoy cups of chowder and oyster crackers sourced from Blount Seafood. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Fragrant hardwood — think: cherry, maple and oak — is stacked with granite stones and set on fire; the wood burns to the ground, transferring an intense amount of heat to the stone. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Cleaning the clams is a group effort. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Colin Zeigler hoists a full bag. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Volunteers filled forty in all. Left to right, Jeff LaValley, Suwin Chan, Claude Cobert, Donna Cobert (front), Colin Zeigler, Lisa Daniels and Nikki Cuoco all volunteered the day before the clambake to gather rockweed. They celebrated their work with Flounder ales from Buzzards Bay Brewing Co. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Bakemaster Jeff LaValley — who met his wife at a Fishermen’s Clambake thirty years ago — carts coffee bags for volunteers from the Buzzards Bay Coalition, they met at Boathouse Row in Westport, Massachusetts, to pack and hoof wet bags of rockweed in preparation for the next day’s clambake. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Clams were sourced from a local shellfishermen. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Donna Cobert of the Buzzards Bay Coalition pulls up rockweed for the clambake. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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Fisherman Howard Gifford handles fresh-from-the-bake lobsters. Photography by Wolf Matthewson.
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.
