98 Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 



At this time Chapter 711, generally known as the Haman Oyster 

 Culture Law, was added to the Public General Laws of the State, 

 and it was intended that this law should provide the legal basis upon 

 which to found such an industry and grant such rights and privi- 

 leges as are necessary to the success of those who lease lots for the 

 purposes of oyster culture and engage in the enterprise. 



This law provided, however, that before any bottoms should be 

 leased for oyster culture purposes, a careful and accurate survey 

 of the natural oyster beds should be made to determine the position 

 and limits of the grounds reserved as a public oyster fishery, and, 

 in its provisions for this oyster survey, the law is a most satisfactory 

 instrument. The survey has been so conducted, and its results have 

 been so satisfactory to those who have been hitherto bitterly opposed 

 to oyster culture, that much of the opposition to perfecting the 

 oyster culture features of the law has been thereby removed. More 

 than 200,000 acres of the best oyster-producing bottoms of the 

 State have, as a result of the survey, been charted and reserved to 

 the public oyster fishery, an area which greatly exceeds any estimate 

 of the area of the natural bars of the State which had previously 

 been made. Such a result could not fail to convince those who 

 derive their livelihood from the natural oyster bars that the State 

 has no thought of sacrificing in any way the public oyster fishery 

 rights and interests to oyster culture. 



It has been ascertained during the survey also that the State owns 

 more than 300,000 acres of bottoms now barren and exhausted, 

 situated outside the limits of the natural oyster bars, which are 

 valuable for oyster production, and that about 100,000 acres of this 

 area is so situated and constituted that, by the application of mod- 

 ern methods of oyster culture, it can be made as productive of 

 oysters as the bottoms now occupied by the natural oyster bars. 



The results of the work carried on under the Haman Oyster Cul- 

 ture Law for the establishment of an oyster culture industry such 

 as was intended, on the other hand, have been far from satisfactory, 

 and it has been clearly demonstrated that the law in its present form 

 fails to provide the necessary legal basis upon which to build up an 

 industry in oyster culture. It withholds from lessees of oyster If as 

 certain rights and privileges which are absolutely essential to success 

 in oyster planting operations. 



