Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1911)

WITH THE OYSTERS JX SUMMER. Ill of wages by abandoning the crew on isolated shores now becomes merely interesting reading together with the wild performances of the stage-coach bandits on the Western frontier. Every State that has undertaken legislative control of mollusk industries along its shores, has found that policing oyster beds is exceedingly difficult. Various efforts have been made to protect owners of private oyster fields, but in many sections thieving and illegal tonging and dredging still occur with a frequency most annoying to the culturist. In every State the lawmakers seem to have an utter fearlessness with regard to disease. They decree that no sewerage may flow into fresh water streams, but they make no reference, whatever, to the contamination of the salt waters which sweep their shores and in which the shell fish are cultivated with such care and consideration for financial returns. Oysters from the inland waters of the Gulf of Mexico are already becoming famous. The conditions there are so favorable that a marketable oyster can be produced in a year less time than in the Xorth. Sinje the appointment of the State Oyster Commission in 1902 the success of the Louisiana industry has been remarkable. Natural beds have been increased and properly cared for. Oyster farms #re leased to private individuals or to corporations, but the whole enterprise has been conducted with such care and efficiency that there is absolutely no danger of an oyster monopoly and there are few, if any, violations of laws and regulations. Any lessee is free to cultivate his farm in accordance with his own ideas. There is no close season and there is no restriction placed upon the use of implements. A trip on an Oysterer is a novel experience, tho usually uneventful after the first day, unless a hurricane or some accident occurs to vary the monotony. The object everywhere now is to gather large cargoes as rapidly as possible, regardless of the weather. With the dredges this can be easilv ac complished. For this reason there is an ever growing tendency to cultivate farms in deep water, for dredges are impossible in shallow places, and the use of the tongs is slow and laborious. From the Connecticut shore to Xew York the waters of Long Island Sound are dotted with queer-looking buoys which impress the uninformed with the idea that navigation must be difficult and dangerous. Even six miles out from land the buoys are to be seen, and when one is told that they merely mark the boundaries of the fields below, the natural assumption is that the water must be very shallow indeed. The oyster farmer will then exploit the various advantages of his field in much the same manner that the sugar-beet planter or Western grain man talks of his. He will explain that the grounds near the shore have been over cultivated, exhausted, or that they were all occupied, and so he made his attempt further out. Under from twenty to eighty feet of water his fields have been surveyed, the ground prepared, the seed planted and, altho the depth of water has made it necessary that the whole proceeding be accomplished practically blindfolded, the development exceeds all expectations. Unless some unexpected physical disturbance takes place, a bountiful harvest is assured. With the development of boats and implements the deep water farms are increasing in number every year, and now oysters are daily taken, economically, from vast beds literally out in the mighty deep, fully seven or eight fathoms under water, one hundred feet being quoted as not at a J unusual and, in some places from a depth of five hundred feet. The great dredging boats of the present day make the records of the slow methods in the past extremely primitive in comparison. No longer does ice interfere, nor is market delivery delayed by storm and unfavorable winds. What before was accomplished in many weeks of labor and hardship is now merely a two days' jaunt. The great, ice-breaking vessel plies regularly and, in one day. is