60 Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners 



BY DREDGERS AND SCRAPERS. 



Although the following calculations of the areas covered per 

 day and per season by dredgers and scrapers are based upon 

 information which has not been verified by actual measure- 

 ments from direct observations, they are accepted and have 

 been used by the Commission because the data from which 

 they were made were given to the Commission fry men who are 

 either now dredgers or have been engaged in dredging. 



A dredge-boat of a thousand bushels capacity is usually 

 equipped with a pair of dredges, each of which is not less than 

 five feet in width. When engaged in dredging the boat each 

 day sails over a series of courses- aggregating a total length of 

 at least thirty miles. For one-third of this distance both dredges 

 are on the bottom. The amount of ground covered by the 

 dredges per day may therefore be estimated as a strip ten feet 

 wide and ten miles in length, or twelve acres. 



When" sailing to and fro over an oyster bar the strips of 

 ground covered by a dredge-boat frequently overlap and very 

 frequently the dredging apparatus becomes fouled and must 

 be hauled in and freed. If for these laps and fouls one-third of 

 the calculated area covered be deducted, eight acres of bottom 

 remain as an average day's work for a dredge-boat of the 

 above capacity, and this amount was adopted by the Commis- 

 sion as one of the factors to be used in determining the quan- 

 tity of oysters which grounds designated for dredging must 

 yield per square yard and per acre in order to be classed as 

 natural oyster bars. 



By reference to the table printed on page 61, it will be noted 

 that licenses were issued to 544 dredgers during the dredging 

 season of 1906 and 1907. The grounds on which these dredgers 

 obtained their livelihood are located in the waters adjacent 

 to the ten oyster-producing counties of the State, and there is' 

 no means by which the number of dredgers which worked on 

 the dredging grounds in Anne Arundel County can be ascer- 

 tained. It is assumed, however, that the dredgers were 

 fairly evenly distributed between the counties and that one- 

 tenth of the total nuniber of dredgers 54 worked in Anne 

 Arundel County waters. 



