165 



fencing and preparing the two acres which will be first 

 dealt with, will not exceed Rs. 2,800 of which only halt 

 will be required in the current official year ; the recur- 

 ring cost may be about Rs. 1,200 annually of which 

 Rs. 600 will be required this year ; hence, in round 

 figures, Rs. 2,000 will be needed this year, and Rs. 2,000 

 next year by the end of which period there should be a 

 considerable crop of marketable oysters and, above all, a 

 new industry in actual, though infant, operation. 



The essence of the experiments is simply this ; small 

 areas of the lake bed, about two acres in one area, and 

 one in another, close to existing oyster beds, will be 

 bunded in by bunds of perhaps a foot high, merely 

 intended to retain water at very low tides and ordinarily 

 submerged entirely ; these areas (parks) will be specially 

 prepared by cultching, etc., for the due receipt of young 

 oysters which will be obtained by placing tile collectors 

 in the selected areas on which the spat from the adjacent 

 oyster beds will fall, and by subsequently removing the 

 young oysters from the tiles and putting them out for 

 growth in the selected breeding parks. Probably the 

 process will be assisted by transferring natural oysters 

 from the beds to the parks, but the above is the proposed 

 system in outline. As already mentioned, experiments 

 have shown us that good marketable oysters can be 

 obtained in eighteen months after the spat fall, so that 

 by March 191 2 we may have on the first acre a lakh of 

 good oysters and on the second acre a large number of 

 young ones ; in four years' time there should be on three 

 acres several lakhs of oysters in various stages from 

 infant to marketable. 



9. The third point adverted to at the close of para- 

 graph 6 siitra is however essential, viz., the issue of 

 orders by Government wholly prohibiting, for the present, 

 the taking of oysters from the lake except by the 

 Fisheries staff or persons authorized by the department. 

 There are few and small beds, and no oyster taking- 

 industry at present exists at Pulicat. But recent adver- 

 tisements by a firm which was — apparently temporarily — 

 located at Pulicat, stated that dried or other oysters 

 would be supplied on demand, and it is obvious that any 

 one who could find a market for dried or preserved 

 oysters might destroy the whole existing beds in a single 

 season, and consequently the whole of the brood oysters 



