OYSTER BOTTOMS OF MISSISSIPPI SOUND, ALA. 



17 



PASS DES HUITRES BED. 



This is a bed of indeterminate boundaries, being continuous with 

 Cedar Point bed on the north and on the south with Pass des Huitres 

 Flats and the whole series of beds extending to Dauphin Island Bay 

 inside of Grants Pass and as far as Pass Drury in Mobile Bay. The 

 names applied by the oystermen to the beds in the vicinity of Grants 

 Pass designate general localities rather than defined beds, and for the 

 purposes of this report their boundaries have been arbitrarily selected 

 and are not definitely indicated on the chart. For this reason the 

 areas assigned to the several beds may differ somewhat from those 

 which would be regarded by others as proper, but as the excess or 

 deficiency of one bed is compensated for by decreasing or increasing 

 its neighbors, the total area of all of the beds, which is the important 

 fact, is not affected. Pass des Huitres bed takes its name from a 

 channel having about 13 feet in its deepest part and shoaling to 4 feet 

 or less at each end, which sweeps in a curve about 350 yards off the 

 end of Cedar Point. Its area and the conditions of its oyster growth 

 are shown in the following table : 



Oyster Growth on Pass des Huitres Bed. 



The dense growth lies principally south and east of the channel, 

 though some of the bottom most prolific of market oysters is in the 

 deepest water. Most of the marketable oysters are between 3 and 4 

 inches long, but in the deeper water the proportion of larger ones is 

 greater than elsewhere. There is a good ratio of single oysters and 

 small clusters on this bed and the shape is therefore better than on 

 the beds previously described. The quality at the time of exami- 

 nation was fair. 



The scattering growth lies north of the channel on the edge of the 

 barren bottom extending to Cedar Point. The oysters on this area 

 of hard sand and shell bottom are nearly all single or in small clusters. 

 There were, in December, 1910, practically no oysters over 4 inches 

 in length and a great abundance of individuals less than 3 inches 

 long. 



