Hummock Pond

More than a mile long, but largely a narrow pond running northeast-southwest, Hummock Pond, which includes Head of Hummock Pond connected to it by a ditch, is an outwash pond extending from the middle of the western portion of Nantucket down to the ocean with a barrier beach in front of it. Prior to 1978, Hummock Pond formed a hook-shaped water body, but the ocean storm part of the Blizzard of 1978 hacked off the westside of this pond known as Clark Cove into its own pond, now separated from Hummock by beach, dunes and the ocean end of Sanford Farm’s Ram Pasture. Get to this pond by the Land Bank’s Lost Farm properties off of Millbrook Road and Gardner Farm off of Hummock Pond Road, and by the Nantucket Conservation Foundation’s Sanford Farm property off of Madaket Road.

Hummock Pond and its head are classified as coastal salt ponds. Both are considered impaired or, eutrophic, with Head of Hummock labeled as severely impaired. As fresh/brackish ponds, they support a variety of wildlife including painted and snapping turtles, American eels, blueback herring chain pickerel, sunfish, crappy and small-mouth bass. Mute swans and several species of ducks breed and raise young on the edges of these ponds. There are two osprey-nesting poles where pairs of ospreys nest almost every spring and great blue herons, great egrets, little egrets and black-crowned night herons work the shoreline shallows for small fish.

Currently, restoration efforts are underway to correct years of nutrient loading in these ponds.

Download the 2000 Hummock Pond Annual Report
Download the 2001 Hummock Pond Annual Report
Download the 2005 Hummock Pond Annual Report
Download the 2009 Hummock Pond Report
Download the 2012 Hummock Pond Report