230 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



reefs afford plenty of craggy points for them to cling to, and whose crannies at once serve as homes for the animals 

 they feed upon, and safe hiding-places for themselves. Beds of jingles, Anomia, deckheads, Patella, limpets, and 

 other rock-loving mollnsks are strongholds of starfish life. 



Extent of damage wrought by the starfish. — Tlie amonnt of damage done to the oyster-fisheries of 

 the American coast by sea-stars, was one of the objects of constant inquiry in my work north of Staten Island. 

 To the southward of Sandy Hook, at the utmost, no harm is reported, since the starfishes are extremely few, and 

 almost wholly confined to the mussel-beds in the inlets. 



In Prince Edward island they did not reckon this enemy as of much consequence, and had no losses of any 

 consequence to report. 



Crossing the Maritime provinces to the harbor of Eastport, Maine, I learned that all attempts to bed down 

 northern stock or to transplant and raise any northei-n seed oysters, had been completely frustrated by hordes 

 of giant starfish, which ate up the mollnsks almost as fast as they could be put down. Here, then, the sea stars are 

 responsible for an entire disuse of otherwise available privileges for oyster -culture. 



The same condition of affairs exists to a great extent on the rest of the coast of Maine, and I am not sure but 

 the mysterious extinction, at aliout the date of the advent of Europeans, of the once extensive living beds of oysters 

 between the mouths of the Kennebec and the MerrimaCj was largely due to the attacks of this five-fingered foe. 

 At Portland, however, where many southern oysters are laid down every year, I heard little complaint. This 

 immunity is i)robably due to the fact, that no young oysters are planted here, or grow naturally; and also to the 

 fact, that the beds are made upon muddy flats, in shallower water than starfishes enjoy. The same is true of the 

 whole of Massachusetts bay, except WcUfleet, where the planters count sea-stars among the enemies, but secondary 

 to the three or four species of mollnsks that prey upon the planted beds. 



South of Cape Cod, however, where oysters spawn and grow naturally, and beds of cultivated oysters are 

 raised irom eggs and infancy, starfishes are plentiful. All of the shores of Buzzard's bay are infested with them, 

 and from there to the western extremity of Long Island sound they do enormous damage annually to the oyster 

 interests — a damage probably not overestimated at $l!()0.000 a year. The south shore of Long Island and the bay 

 of New York are less afflicted. Their attacks are not uniform and continuous, it appears, but vary with years, the 

 time of the year, and other circum.stances. A steady increase, however, has been observed in their numbers, 

 wherever oyster-cultivation has been carried on for any considerable length of tinie. The planters at Providence, 

 New Haven, and Norwalk, whose memories go back for twenty-five years or more, relate that in their early days 

 this plague was not regarded as of any consequence, and that the starfishes are steadily increasing. Such a re])ort 

 is no more than we should expect, in view of the enormous increase of the food afforded them by oystei'-culture. 



Starfish invasions. — There have occurred times in the past, nevertheless, as now happens at intervals of a 

 few years, when an excessive crowd of starfishes invaded the beds. Such a disastrous visitation was witnessed in 

 the Providence river, Rhode Island, about 1858. The starfishes came in " sudden droves", as my informant expresses 

 it, "which burnt up everything". The planting-grounds were mainly on Great Bed, about thi'ee miles below the 

 city of Providence, and of all this extensive tract only two acres escaped, owing their safety to the fact, that just 

 before that they had been partially buried under a layer of sunken sea-weed and diifted matter. Another of the 

 planters had his heaviest bed between Field's point and Starvegoat island (which probably were not long ago 

 connected), where the low tide left them so nearly bare that his men could pick up the starfishes, while his rivals had 

 no means of combating them in the deeper water. In the general scarcity that ensued, he made large profits from 

 this rescued bed, and got a start to which he owes a large part of his present eminence in the New England trade- 

 So complete was the destruction caused by this visit, that the state revoked the leases of all that ground, and 

 the planters left it wholly for a new tract at Diamond reef, where the water was so fresh that starfishes could not 

 live. This single inroad upon Providence river probably cost the planters there $150,000. It occurred late in the 

 summer, and the marauders staid there picking up the fragments of the Icii'st that remained until winter. Then a 

 heavy fall of snow and rain, in conjunction with an unusually low tide, chilled and so completely freshened the water 

 as to kill them all off. So it is related ; and it is said to have been some years before that tract was reoccupied by 

 planters. 



Similar traditions exist elsewhere along this "sound" coast; and the planters stand in constant fear that the 

 army of the enemy, which they daily fight, may at any time be suddenly re-enforced from some invisible quarter to 

 an extent which shall nmke any contest useless. In 1878, for examide, after some rough and gloomy weather in the 

 latter part of October, a planter at Pocasset, Massachusetts, went out in his boat to look at his oysters which lay in 

 three to five feet of water. He at once noticed that the starfishes had made a raid upon him under cover of the 

 storm. Taking an eel-spear as a weapon, he forked up 2,500 by actual count within the next two days, and later 

 gathered 500 more. In spite of this they ate u[) about .'300 bushels from his beds alone. Adding what his neighbors 

 suffered, he considers the single week's loss at that point to have been about 1,000 bushels, worth $1,1.'00. 



At Warren, Rhode Inland, I saw a pile of dead starfishes, said to amount to 1,000 bushels, which had been 

 dredged off the beds in the river there. A bushel of living sea-stars contains from 100 to 200, according to size ; say, 

 150 on the average. In drying, however, the bulk of a bushel is reduced three-fourths. Therefore this decaying 



