8 THE OYSTER AND THE OYSTER INDUSTRY. 



ALABAMA. 



The oysters are found in the lower part of Mobile Bay and the 

 east end of IVIississippi Sound. There are 13 dealers in oysters in 

 Mobile, but most of the oysters are opened or reshipped in the shell 

 at Bayou Labatre and small adjacent points on the Mississippi 

 Sound. The only oyster cannery in the State is located at Bayou 

 Labatre. 



MISSISSIPPI. 



The principal oyster beds in this State are in Mississippi Sound, but 

 90 per cent of the oysters opened in the State are brought from 

 Louisiana waters, especially from St, Bernard Parish. At Biloxi 

 there are 12 canneries and 6 raw houses, the only city having a 

 larger number of canneries being Baltimore, Md., which has 15. 

 The following Mississippi cities have one cannery and one or two raw 

 houses each: Gulfport, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Ocean 

 Springs. 



LOUISIANA. 



The principal oyster beds are in the waters on the east of St. 

 Bernard Parish, although important beds are found on the coast of 

 Terrebonne and Plaquemines Parishes, and others are bein^ devel- 

 oped to the westward. As a result of experiments conducted by the 

 U. S. Bureau of Fisheries between 1906 and 1909, valuable oyster 

 beds were established in Barataria Bay. These were subsequently 

 broken up by a hurricane and the oysters washed about to different 

 parts of the bay. From the natural propagation of the oysters so 

 scattered several beds developed which have grown to be of consider- 

 able value. There are about 24 wholesale oyster dealers in New 

 Orleans. One cannery is located near New Orleans, two farther 

 down the river, two or three at Houma in Terrebonne Parish, and a 

 new one is just starting at Franklin. 



TEXAS. 



The principal oyster beds of this State are in Galveston, West, 

 Matagorda, Lavaca, Espiritu Santo, Aransas, Mesquite, and Corpus 

 Christi Bays. There are from two to six oyster-shucking houses at 

 Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, Rockport, Port O'Connor, Port Lavaca, 

 Seadrift, Palacios, Matagorda, and Galveston. There are no oyster 

 canneries in this State. 



OUTPUT OF VARIOUS REGIONS. 



Chesapeake Bay produces more oysters than any other body of 

 water in the world. <^ vSome notion of the size of the industry there 

 may be gained from Plate XVIII, figure 1, showing the oyster fleet 

 operating out of Cambridge, Md., which is only one of the several 

 large oyster centers on this bay. Virginia and Maryland, within 

 whose borders Chesapeake Bay is embraced, lead the United States 

 in oyster production with over 5,000,000 bushels each annually.^ 



aRmith, IT. M. Ovstors: The World's Most Valuable Water Crop. National Geographic Magazine, 

 March, 1913, p. 2(11. W:xshinKton. 

 bReport, U. S. Commissioner of Fisheries, 1913, p. 41. Washington. 



