Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners 163 



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the Commission would have been justified in refusing to exclude 

 them from lease for oyster culture. They were charted and 

 buoyed, however, as natural oyster bars because of their loca- 

 tion near Crisfield, the home of hundreds of oystermen, and 

 because they continue to be resorted to by these oysiermen for 

 a short period each season. That these bars do not now 

 produce one-tenth the quantity of oysters of which they are 

 capable and that their productiveness could be immediately 

 increased ten fold under private ownership is the opinion of all 

 parties concerned. There seems to be a general agreement also 

 that the failure of these grounds to become restocked by nature 

 is due to the fact that so much of their substratum of shells has 

 been removed that an adequate amount of clean shell surface 

 for the attachment of spat is lacking. 



The approximate location and extent of oyster grounds in 

 Tangier Sound as ascertained by the Commission can be seen 

 by reference to the charts 2b, 3b, 4b, 5b, and 6b reproduced on 

 pages 164 to 169. 



In 1878 the quantity of oyster producing bottoms in Tangier 

 Sound, according to the survey made by Lieutenant Winslow, 

 covered about 25,792 acres or nearly twice the area now covered 

 by natural oyster bars. The approximate location and extent of 

 these oyster grounds as charted by Lieutenant Winslow, is 

 shown on charts 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, and 6a reproduced on the pages 

 opposite the charts referred to above. 



A comparison of the areas of the oyster grounds shown on 

 these two series of charts by dotted areas indicates that while 

 depletion of oyster bottoms has taken place to a certain extent 

 in each of the sections of the Sound, it has been far more exten- 

 sive in the sections south of a line from Hazard Point to Kedge 

 Straits and in Kedge Straits, than in the sections above this 

 line. 



The demand for seed oysters by Virginia planters and the 

 proximity of the oyster bars of the lower part of Tangier Sound 

 to Virginia waters seem to be the only facts which can account 

 for the depleted, and in some cases exhausted, condition of the 

 oyster grounds in the section under consideration. 



