On summer days, everyone thinks Perry Raso has the best job in the world.

While growing millions of oysters in 3.8 acres of South Kingstown’s Potters Pond, he is outdoors all day, surrounded by Rhode Island beauty: the empty dunes behind East Matunuck State Beach, egrets feeding nearby and picturesque cottages on the distant shore.

Perry Raso, of South Kingstown, heads out on his boat to his oyster farm at Potters Pond in Matunuck. Raso, who has been growing oysters for about three years, is president of the state aquaculture association.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy Bill Murphy

But Raso likes his job even when he’s tending his oysters in the middle of winter. Alone on the pond. Six days a week. Ten hours a day.

And he didn’t mind the losses of starting his business. Two years with no income. Two years of investing thousands of dollars in equipment and young oysters. Just hoping they would grow big enough to sell.

Yesterday, Raso sorted through bags of his older oysters and had no trouble finding the 1,000 he would sell as this week’s allotment to local restaurants for 60 cents apiece.

It is hard, heavy work. At 28, despite a background of high school and college wrestling, Raso already feels arthritis in his arms. But he says there’s nothing he’d rather be doing.

And that makes him part of a small Rhode Island success story. Last year, income from the state’s aquaculture products rose by 81 percent and for the first time exceeded $1 million.

It was the ninth double-digit increase in the last 11 years, according to the Coastal Resources Management Council, the state agency that regulates the industry.

“In the 10 years CRMC has been pushing this industry, the turnaround has been amazing,” says Timothy M. Scott, a professor at Roger Williams University. “We went from being the laughingstock of New England to the envy of New England as a model with a regulatory process that makes sense.”

Not long ago, Rhode Island was considered the last-place aquaculture producer in the country. Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it ranks ahead of Vermont, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Arizona and even Alaska.

Scott and David Alves, the CRMC’s aquaculture coordinator, in giving an annual report on the industry last week, said the key to making aquaculture work in Rhode Island is “inclusiveness.” No leases are granted until all the interested parties agree they won’t intrude on important fishing areas, eelgrass beds or boating channels. Fishermen, coastal property owners and boat operators all have a chance to comment before any decisions are made.

“Now, every user has a veto power,” said Alves. “It’s a negotiation.”

Some projects are simply distributing young shellfish to the wild, and that will benefit all shellfishermen.

Ten years ago, few would have hoped for such successes.

In the late 1990s, there was a moratorium on new shellfish leases. State Rep. Eileen Naughton, D-Warwick, worked hard to enact legislation that would give aquaculture a boost in Rhode Island. When she began her efforts, state regulations were so confusing that one college professor said it was hard to figure out how to get a permit.

“If the nation’s farmers had to deal with all these rules, we’d all be starving to death,” said University of Rhode Island professor James Anderson at the time. While aquaculture was booming around the world, in Rhode Island there were only a handful of shellfish farms.

At the time, new aquaculture ventures still needed permits from the CRMC as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, the State Department of Environmental Management, the Department of Health and local communities.

Naughton’s legislation, which prompted a bitter battle among fishermen, environmentalists and others, eventually gave the CRMC full responsibility. But when the agency came out with its first set of regulations, they managed to antagonize both supporters and critics of aquaculture.

Some experts couldn’t understand the rules, others feared they would lead to Narragansett Bay being taken up by big new leases — evoking images of the early part of the century when 20,000 acres of the Bay were tied up with oyster leases.

The regulations steadily improved.

The number of aquaculture farms has grown to 28, utilizing 99 acres in the South County salt ponds, Block Island and various coves around Narragansett Bay.

About 98 percent of the farms’ output is oysters; the other 2 percent is clams.

There are no farms raising salmon or other finfish, which have caused controversies over pollution and disease in other states.

While today’s oyster catch is growing, it’s still a long way from the boom times of the past. Professor Michael Rice, a fisheries scientist at URI, contributed a history to the annual report that said peak oyster production in Rhode Island occurred in 1911, when 1.3 million bushels were landed. He said at today’s values, those oysters would be worth $135 million.

Pollution, the Depression, and finally the Hurricane of 1938 killed off the industry, Rice wrote.

Growers are making money now, but the CRMC reports the profits only follow significant investment. For instance, last year the total value of the shellfish raised was $1.3 million. But the farmers reported they invested $886,288 that year.

In addition to the individual farms, Alves reported that related industries in Rhode Island that distribute aquaculture products or make equipment used on farms grossed $3.5 million last year.

Also, aquaculture research at Roger Williams University and URI is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. And Roger Williams is growing tropical fish for the aquarium industry and shellfish for distribution throughout the Bay.

From the distance, Raso’s operation in Potters Pond looks like little more than two small rafts anchored amid some buoys. Up close, you see that he has anchored row after row of white PVC pipes on the bottom. The oysters grow in polypropylene bags — each about the size of a large pillow — that are affixed to the pipes.

Early each year Raso buys about $9,000 worth of oyster spat, juvenile oysters. Over the two or three years it takes to grow a marketable oyster, Raso and his employee, David Lemus, have to constantly work the bags, turning them over to interrupt algae growth, remove starfish, sort through the oysters and rebag them as they grow.

The farm occupies a shallow corner of the pond, so Raso and Lemus wear wetsuits and wade in waist-deep water as they work their crop.

Raso started bullraking when he was 12 and kept fishing of one sort or another ever since. Scuba diving for steamers in Potters Pond a few years ago, he got into a spat with a neighboring property owner that led to legislation banning such activities in the pond and litigation. But now they’ve gotten by that.

Raso recently earned a master’s degree in aquaculture. He has taught schoolchildren and college students. And he still does a variety of fishing besides maintaining his farm. He augments his income by raising scallops and marketing sizable shipments of oysters to Boston each month.

Raso said he doesn’t consider himself a pioneer; others paved the way for aquaculture in Rhode Island. But now, he’s the president of the Ocean State Aquaculture Association, and he’d like to see the industry continue to grow.

“There’s always work out there. I could work 24 hours a day,” he said yesterday. “But I try to keep it to 7 to 4, six days a week. I know it’s worthwhile.”

To read the CRMC’s 2006 annual aquaculture report, which includes commentaries by some of the state’s leading researchers as well as a history of the industry in Rhode Island, go to www.crmc.ri.gov/pubs/pdfs/aquareport06.pdf.

plord@projo.com