EnvironmentSeptember 7, 2026 · 5 min read
Ten Years of Tides, and the Harbor That Came Back
After a decade of careful work, the working harbor is full again — with boats, birds, and a new generation of sailors.
By Tomas Reyes · Staff writer
In 2015 the harbor held four working boats and a great deal of silt. The scallop beds were closed. The seabirds had moved down the coast.
What followed was unglamorous: a dredging schedule, a seasonal closure nobody liked, and an oyster reef built from culled shells collected by restaurants.
The reef worked faster than anyone modeled. Filtered water let eelgrass return; eelgrass brought fry; fry brought the birds back within four seasons.
There are twenty-two boats now, nine of them skippered by people under thirty-five — the first time that has been true since the 1980s.
