Vickcrs. — Oysters. 203 



over $2,500,000 each, followed by Virginia and Maryland with 

 about $2,250,000 each. 



One of the highest authorities in this country once said that 

 nowhere in this country is there any excuse for continuing to rely 

 on public oyster grounds as sources of supply, and the proposition 

 to discourage or prohibit individual control of land for agricultural 

 purposes would not be less absurd than to prevent or retard the 

 acquisition of submerged lands for aquicultural purposes. It would 

 seem that this is a most reasonable and progressive statement, yet 

 representing a part of the Chesapeake Bay region where we have 

 always had to depend on our large natural oyster rock areas for 

 production, I feel that we must still rely on our public grounds 

 and adopt strong conservation methods to prevent their depletion. 

 The 1913 statistics of the oyster industry show the preponderant 

 importance of Chesapeake Bay; an output of over 11,000,000 

 bushels, valued at more than $4,250,000, and the production of the 

 Bay since has not varied more than 2,000,000 bushels from these 

 figures. 



In reviewing the statistics of the production of the oyster- 

 producing bottoms of Maryland between the years 1865 and 1920, it 

 may be of interest to know that these bottoms produced 453,000,000 

 bushels of oysters which had a money value of over $200,000,000, 

 or an average of $3,571,428 a year. The greatest production in 

 Maryland was between 1873 and 1893. The survey of the oyster 

 bars of Maryland, 1906-1912, showed that the natural oyster rocks 

 beneath the waters of the State covered over 200,000 acres at that 

 time, although many thousands of acres had become depleted since 

 1885 and this depletion was on the increase. 



MAINTENANCE 01^ NATURAL OYSTER AREAS. 



Believing that it is essential to maintain the natural oyster 

 bars and rocks in the waters of the State of Maryland, we are 

 returning cultch, in the shape of oyster shells, to the partly depleted 

 bottoms, and are leasing barren areas with suitable current and den- 

 sity conditions for oyster culture. During the long period from 

 1865 to 1920, aside from the cull law on the natural oyster rocks, 

 nothing whatsoever was done to maintain the oyster bars. The 

 fishermen of Maryland continued to resort year after year to the 

 bars for a livelihood, and this overfishing naturally caused de- 

 pletion. During the past two seasons, over 250,000 bushels of 



