INVESTIGATION OF OYSTER SPAWNING, ETC., MILFORD, CONN. 457 



Table 8. — Per cent of drift bottles recovered during the first month, according to location 



In a period of 10 months, 290, or 58 per cent, of the bottles were recovered. 

 Taking the groups as a whole, we find that 70 per cent of the recovered bottles were 

 collected during the first month, 13 per cent in the second month, and the remainder, 

 about equally divided over the next eight months. The records of the bottles recov- 

 ered during the first month are of greatest significance, and, in analyzing them the 

 factors of time, distance, and points of release and recovery have been considered 

 carefully. In discussing the results it is necessary that each experiment be taken up 

 separately because of the different conditions in each locality. 



Experiment A. — (See figs. 16 and 17.) This experiment was planned so as to 

 cover the most valuable oyster-seed producing region in Connecticut. The drift 

 bottles were released in groups of 10 from the northeast corner of oyster lot No. 771, 

 at Stratford Point, out to Stratford Shoal Lighthouse, a distance of approximately 

 6 miles. The bottles in Group 1, which were released at the time of high water, were 

 transported first by the ebb current in the Sound, while those released in Group 2 

 were carried first by the flood current. The recoveries in Group 1 were all made to 

 the eastward, and in no instance were bottles recovered west of the line of release. In 

 Group 2 the effect of the flood current is shown by the recovery of 16 bottles to the 

 west of the line of release, though as a whole the bottles of this group were carried 

 eastward also. The fact that 60 per cent of Group 2 were recovered and only 38 

 per cent of Group 1 is due chiefly to two factors — (1) the shoreward movement of the 

 flood tide, which deposited a greater number on the Connecticut coast, and (2) the 

 discharge of the Housatonic River, which caught the bottles as they were moving 

 eastward and forced them over to the Long Island shore. Further influence of these 

 two factors is shown in the difference in distribution of the bottles by the currents 

 and the percentage recovered in each region. If we analyze the results over shorter 

 periods of time, as, for example, by weeks, we find that during the first two weeks the 

 majority were found on the Connecticut shore, the third week at the entrance of the 

 Sound, and during the fourth week on the north shore of Long Island. Only 1 of the 

 bottles of Group 2 succeeded in getting out of the Sound, while 5 of Group 1 were 

 recovered outside, 3 of which went to the Green Hill Coast Guard Station in Rhode 

 Island, a distance of 80 miles from the point of release, in approximately 14 days. 



In Group 2, the farthest distance covered by a bottle drifting to the east was 50 

 miles and to the west, 14 miles. In this experiment the general distribution of the 

 drift-bottles in relation to time, tide, and point of recovery also indicates a clockwise 

 rotary circulation of the water in the Sound. 



