For Release: IMMEDIATE

Wednesday, May 21, 1997

Contact: Arthur Ganz 783-2304

Stephanie Powell 277-2771 ext. 4418

PROVIDENCE - The RI Department of Environmental Management will hold a second quahog transplant Thursday, May 22 beginning at 8 a.m. to transport an additional 75,000 pounds of quahogs from Greenwich Cove to a spawning area at the mouth of the Potowomut River.

Last Thursday 89 shellfishermen helped transplant 117,000 pounds of quahogs to the Potowomut and another 26,000 pounds to a spawning area in the Sakonnet River.

"With the transplant of another 75,000 pounds on the 22nd, we will reach our goal for the Potowomut," said Arthur Ganz, Principal Marine Biologist of DEM's Division of Fish and Wildlife and transplant project leader.

The spawning areas have been set aside by the RI Marine Fisheries Council and closed to shellfishing so they can be planted with brood stock which will be allowed to reproduce at least two years. Ganz said that after spawning the larvae should travel as plankton to re-seed the Bay, floating to the west passage and to areas adjacent to the Sakonnet.

Funds for the transplant are from a $600,000 natural resource damage settlement with the owners of the tanker World Prodigy recovered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The $75,000 quahog transplant is one of four projects underway, along with projects to restore lobsters, eelgrass, and a saltmarsh in Narragansett Bay.

Shellfishermen wishing to take part in the transplant should go to the staging area at the Greenwich Bay Clam Company on Water Street, East Greenwich. They will be paid 10 cents a pound to dig the quahogs and take them to the staging area.