OUR FOOD FROM THE SEA 205 



the value of the fishery. The shell-fish industries of the west 

 coast of England are of considerable importance, both as food 

 and bait. In 1917 the returns in the Lancashire and Western 

 District alone amounted to about two-fifths of the total for 

 England and Wales, and the value to the fishermen was 40,000. 

 There is probably no area of land or water that gives such a 

 return in weight of food per acre as a mussel bed, and the shell- 

 fish are eminently responsive to cultivation and capable of 

 improvement. Here at least, if not yet in the open sea, we 

 have an aquiculture comparable to agriculture ready to our 

 hand. 



To show what can be done at small cost to improve the 

 value of shell-fish by judicious transplanting, the experiments 

 made by the Lancashire Committee in 1903-5 maybe recalled. 1 

 The work was carried out on the mussel beds at Heysham in 

 Morecambe Bay, probably the most extensive mussel-producing 

 grounds on the west coast of England. 



In 1903 the Committee gave a grant of 50, to be expended 

 on labour in transplanting overcrowded and stunted mussels 

 which had ceased to grow to neighbouring areas not so thickly 

 populated. The result was most striking. At the end of 

 a few months the old, starved, undersized mussels " blue- 

 nebs," as the fishermen called them had grown f- of an inch 

 or more, and had reached the legal selling size. The animals 

 inside the shell were in fine condition, and these mussels found 

 a ready market at a good price. Shell-fish which in their 

 original condition could never have been of any use as food 

 had been turned into a valuable commodity at comparatively 

 little labour and expense. The money value to the fishermen 

 of these mussels that had been transplanted for 50 was 

 estimated to have been at least 500. 



In 1904, again, a grant of 50 resulted in the transplanting 

 of some boat-loads of undersized mussels which were sold later 

 on at a profit of over 500. 



In the following year (1905) a grant of 75 resulted in the 

 sale of the transplanted mussels some months later for 579. 



1 For the full details see the article by Scott and Baxter in the Lancashire 

 Sea-Fisheries Laboratory Report for 1905. 



