OYSTER BOTTOMS {N VICINITY OF APALACHICOLA, FLA. 9 
of a man whose sole duty it was to give heed to such signals and report 
them to the recorder. ; 
The launches from which the soundings were made were run at 
a speed between 3 and 4 miles per hour. At intervals of three 
minutes—in some cases two minutes—the position of the boat was 
determined by two simultaneous sextant observations of the angles 
between a set of three signals, the middle one of which was common to 
the two angles, the position being immediately platted on the boat 
sheet. At regular intervals of 15 seconds, as measured. by a clock 
under the observation of the recorder, the leadsman made a sounding 
and reported to the recorder the depth of the water and the character 
of the bottom, immediately after which the man at the wire reported 
the character of the chain indications since the last sounding—that is, 
whether they showed barren bottom or dense, scattering, or very 
scattering growths of oysters. 
With the boat running at 3 miles per hour the soundings were 
between 60 and 70 feet apart, and, as the speed of the boat was 
uniform, the location of each was determinable within a yard or two 
by dividing the platted distance between the positions determined 
by the sextant by the number of soundings, The chain, of course, 
gave a continuous indication of the character of the bottom, but the 
record was made at the regular 15-second intervals observed in 
sounding. ; . 
The chain, while indicating the absence or the relative abundance 
of objects on the bottom, gives no information as to whether they 
are shells or oysters, nor, if the latter, their size and condition. To 
obtain these data it was necessary to supplement the observations 
already described by others more definite in respect to the desired 
particulars. Whenever, in the opinion of the officer in charge of the 
sounding boat, such information was required, a numbered buoy was 
dropped, the time and number being entered in the sounding book. 
A launch, which followed the sounding boat, anchored alongside the 
buoy, and a quantity of the oysters and shells were tonged up, 
separated by sizes, and counted. 
This boat at each station made a known number of ‘‘grabs” with 
the oyster tongs, exercising care to clean the bottom of oysters as 
thoroughly as possible at each grab. In a given depth of water and 
using the same boat and tongs, an oysterman will cover practically 
the same area of the bottom at each grab, but, other factors remaining 
the same, the area of the grab will decrease with an increase in the 
depth. 
Careful measurements were made and tabulated showing the area 
per grab covered by the tonger employed on the work at each foot 
of depth of water and for each pair of tongs and boat used. With 
these data, and knowing the number of ‘‘grabs,’’ the number of 
