Brewster’s Ryan Burch Named Shellfish Constable Of The Year

BREWSTER – For Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, 2025 was a very good year, as they both were named Most Valuable Players. It was a great year for a local resident as well.

 Ryan Burch of Brewster was named 2025 Massachusetts Shellfish Constable of the Year by the Massachusetts Shellfish Officer’s Association, and he didn’t even have to hit 50 homers to do it. 

 “Ryan is an asset to our organization, to the shellfishery and community of Brewster, and is simply a standup guy who is always willing to get involved and help out,” Barnstable Shellfish Constable Amy Croteau, secretary of the MSOA, said at the Brewster select board meeting last week. She’s worked with and around Burch for 20 years.

 “Most recently he helped evaluate all of our annual scholarship applications. Obviously you guys know him, you love him, and Ryan you absolutely 100 percent deserve this,” Croteau said as she handed him the award.

 But if he didn’t hit homers or shuck the most shellfish, what did he do to earn such an honor?

 “I was recognized by my peers for work done modernizing the aquaculture regulations and the process that took place,” Burch explained at his office on Route 6A. “How it was done with participation of the stakeholders and public, gathering their feedback and seeing what was important and putting that into the regulations. It helps to get buy-in from the stakeholders. Now we are looking to expand commercial aquaculture licenses.”

 The natural resources department identified the best locations for shellfish grants and worked with Town Administrator Peter Lombardi on public hearings to get feedback. Brewster will soon permit eight new grants: four in front of Spruce Hill and four east of Breakwater Landing.

 “One thing I learned early on from Bob Mant: it is better to be an educator than a strong enforcer,” Burch said. “If you can teach people the rules and regulations and explain what they are doing is wrong and the effects of it go a lot further. We often consider ourselves ambassadors and approach someone with a smile rather than, ‘You can’t do that!’’’

 Mant was the director of natural resources in Brewster until he passed away in 2007. 

 “My name is on the award, but there is a long list of people I learned from and mentored me, who gained their experience and wisdom and shared that. I come from a land-locked place. It’s not like I grew up on the ocean,” Burch said.

 Burch has worked for Brewster since 1998, when he began as a seasonal employee. At the time he was an unlikely candidate for a future on saltwater.

 “I grew up in Scotia, N.Y. across the Mohawk River from Schenectady,” he recalled. “I went to Trinity College in Hartford and I was taking a class in marine policy, and one classmate was Bob Mant’s son.”

 Burch came down to visit and Mant introduced him to Wellfleet Shellfish Constable Richard Dickey, a former scalloper who was deep into the potential of aquaculture. 

 “I was doing research for a paper and it was my first visit ever to Cape Cod,” Burch said. “I was doing a study program in Mystic, Conn. in my junior year. Then I started looking for a job and I knew I wasn’t going on the path of my classmates. They were moving to New York City and Boston and that was the furthest from what I wanted to do. I was always fascinated with the ocean.”

 Cape Cod is surrounded by ocean, and he now had some local connections.

 “Trinity didn’t have a major in environmental science so I took as many classes as I could to try to create a major in environmental studies. As I started to explore options, I reached out to Bob and he had a summer position in Brewster, so I found a rental in Hyannis,” Burch said.

 That was when summer rentals were affordable. Burch also took that opportunity to take classes at Cape Cod Community College, which had an environmental science program. He found a substitute teaching job for the winter and retook the summer job in Brewster when spring rolled around. That was his first year on Cape Cod.

 “I was able to network and get to know the players in the environmental field,” Burch said. “We had the first AmeriCorps students in 2000 and I applied for the job as program supervisor for years one and two, and continued to help out Bob in Brewster. For probably the next 11 years I worked seasonally for the town of Brewster and travelled around the world volunteering in the off season. But I always had a job to come back to. It worked out for a lifestyle at the time.”

 That seasonal cycle existence used to be a common lifestyle for many Cape Codders, from lifeguards to restaurant workers, landscapers or shellfishermen. Burch finally was hired fulltime as the natural resources assistant in 2011 by Natural Resources Director Chris Miller. 

 “Chris has been amazing — to grow this department and allow me the freedom to grow and expand along the way,” Burch said. “From the first year fulltime to take the oyster program and turn it from four to five weeks of oyster Sundays for probably 50 people. This year we did 12 oyster Sundays with an average 250 people. That’s the equivalent of 150,000 oysters we grew and gave out to a lot of people.”

 Last year the program ran from Oct. 19 to Dec. 28. The oysters are harvested on the flats off Mant’s Landing. Each participant can harvest five quarts per week. The pre-Thanksgiving harvest is particularly popular and Miller and Burch asked participants for a donation of non-perishable food. 

 “We filled one truck and now we fill three trucks,” Burch recalled. The food goes to the Lower Cape Outreach food pantry at the Brewster Baptist Church. 

 “They provide a list of what they are short of and people are amazing in their generosity,” Burch marveled. “I’m having fun on the job. It’s not unusual to see me dressed as Santa on the flats around Christmas giving out oysters.”

 “I live in Brewster. I was in school this morning talking to second graders on how to be a pond steward. Next week I’ll be in Nickerson State Park with staff doing a field trip with first graders on how to share space with nature,” Burch said. “In June I’ll take third graders to an oyster farm to talk about aquaculture. We’re closing the gap between the natural world and their knowledge and experience with it. We try to get into the schools as much as we can.”

 Someday one of those students might “carry the torch” forward, Burch reflected. 

 Croteau noted that Brewster has its own propagation program for oysters and quahogs. The clams that are raised are stocked and sprinkled off Saint’s Landing. Brewster has an upweller pump system running through screens in Sesuit Harbor. Those shellfish are for public consumption. Burch works with commercial shellfish farmers as well. Brewster has nine aquaculture grants on the flats. He and Miller are reopening the razor clam fishery for the first time in years on June 1. They’ll monitor it to make sure the population remains stable. 

 All of the above is done around his tasks as a land manager, trail maintainer, sampling ponds for bacteria and collecting data from 24 freshwater ponds in Brewster spring and fall, something done since 1994.

 “We also manage the moorings. Anything attached to the bottom comes through us. We install no-wake buoys on Long Pond and manage the kayak racks. So we have a lot to keep us busy,” he noted.

 He isn’t on duty all the time. Married with two children ages 12 and 9, he coaches youth sports. 

 “I do surf and enjoy recreating on the water. I operate a paddle board business (Supra Adventures Cape Cod) and we do tours. I’m surrounded by water through the job and outside of work,” he said.