Ninigret Pond

The Largest Salt Pond

Ninigret Pond is located in Charlestown. It is the largest salt pond and is connected to Green Hill Pond by a tidal channel on the east side. Ninigret Pond is a coastal lagoon with a breachway that connects it to the ocean. The Charlestown breachway is prone to shoaling which contributes to navigation issues.  SPC works with the Town of Charlestown to secure funding allocations in the state budget to dredge and maintain the breachway.

Land use around the pond includes a national wildlife refuge as well as residential communities and light commercial areas. It is home to many aquaculture leases on the south side of the pond and a few small marinas. Boat size is limited on this pond due to extensive shoals and the narrow channel that connects to the sea through the breachway. In summer, this pond sees a variety of user groups including recreational boaters, windsurfers, recreational fishers and shellfishers, and birders.

Ninigret is surrounded by multiple large tracts of publicly owned land including former Naval Air Station land which is now U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Ninigret Wildlife Refuge and the town-owned Ninigret Park. State beaches include Ninigret Conservation Area and a town-owned beach Blue Shutters.  The Naval Air Station was used for practice during World War II and remnants of the landing strip are still visible today. This area nearly became a nuclear power plant in the 1970s.

Ninigret Pond provides important nursery grounds for a variety of fish, and it houses a shellfish spawner sanctuary at the western end of the pond. The marshes surrounding the pond are also crucial habitats.  SPC along with partners including Charlestown, Coastal Resources Management Council, and Save the Bay helped to restore marshes threatened by sea level rise using thin layer deposition of sediment dredged up from Ninigret Pond.  These areas were then planted with marsh plants to encourage recolonization of the area.