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fisheries which have not yet been possible to overcome in California, and a second 
occurrence of the same nature with respect to menhaden will set back fishery 
development possibilities in coastal United States waters by another generation. 
It seems certainly to be on the way. 
(3) Oysters —There are three sorts of oysters harvested in the United States, 
the eastern oyster, the western Oyster, and the introduced Pacific (or Japanese) 
oyster. The total production of oysters in the United States in 1987 was 57.7 
million pounds. This is about 1% the recorded production of 1880 (152 million 
pounds), for the east and Gulf coasts alone, or for the whole U.S. im 1908 (152 
million pounds) which was the first year of complete national survey, or about 
half the catch (117 million pounds) recorded for Chesapeake Bay alone in 1880. 
The eastern oyster has always been the largest producer. It was even farmed on 
the Pacific Coast with modest success for some years in San Francisco Bay before 
it became too polluted (2.5 million pounds having been produced in California 
in 1899). The decline in its production has been quite steady since records began 
to be kept. The clearest case is in Chesapeake Bay where the catch has gone quite 
steadily down hill from 117 million pounds in 1880 (the first year of record) to 
21 million pounds in 1965 (the last). The Middle Atlantic catch shows much the 
same course, having been 28 million pounds in 1880, 29 million pounds in 1887, and 
then declined rather steadily to 756 thousand pounds in 1965. The New England 
catch shows the same picture but on a slightly different scale. Production was 4 
million pounds in 1880, rose to 27 million pounds in 1910, and then (except for a 
small revival in 1935-37) declined steadily to a third of a million pounds in 1965. 
The causes have been various. Over harvesting of wild stock and destruction 
of native shell beds is undoubtedly the largest single cause. Regulation of this 
in the several states still ranges from odd to weird. The colonies of Maryland 
and Virginia were arguing over the proper way to harvest oysters from the 
Potomac River estuary before the Revolutionary War, and they still are. 
Estuarine pollution has been a major problem, ranging from human wastes 
from the cities rendering the oysters inedible from the health standpoint to in- 
dustrial pollution killing the oyster beds outright. Waves of disease have 
depleted wild beds and damaged farmed beds. It is not certain that these epidemic 
diseases are not related to estuarine pollution. 
There is no general tideland tenure program in the East coast and Gulf States 
favoring the farming of oysters as practiced in Japan, Western Hurope and the 
Pacific Northwest, although such practices have been introduced with success in 
a few places. 
The history of United States resource use has produced few instances of 
natural resource wastage more flagrant than that of the eastern oyster. Even 
San Francisco Bay (where its cultivation was introduced after gold rush) is too 
polluted and changed to warrant its cultivation there any longer. 
The delicious small western oyster was never a big producer (3 million pounds 
in 1892) and it was quickly cleaned out of most of its natural habitat. It has 
not been seen in Willapa Bay, an original large producer, for thirty years. It also 
suifered greatly from pollution, silting and other changes in its estuarine environ- 
ment. For fifty years it has been the object of small scale, but lucrative, farming in 
southern Puget Sound, which waged continuous battle for thirty years with pulp 
mill pollution to survive. Production runs at less than 40 thousand pounds per 
year in recent years. When the pulp mill at Shelton, Washington, shut down 
from general economic causes, only then did that damage repair. 
The Pacific oyster was introduced for farming in the State of Washington 
after World War I, and into Oregon and California within ten years later. 
Production has been as high as 13 million pounds per year (1946) and was 5.9 
million pounds in 1967. 
There is great talk about the future of mariculture (and particularly oyster 
culture) in the United States, and the need for research to stimulate its growth. 
Sophisticated oyster culture has been practiced in the United States for fifty years. 
American oyster farmers and scientists are in close touch with their Japanese 
colleagues and quite aware of the most modern technology and its economies. 
‘The oyster market in the United States is strong. Decrease of natural harvest 
and lack of substantial growth in farmed production is not due to lack of science 
or technology. It is due to estuarine pollution, silting and other changes; to lack 
of appropriate land tenure rules in most states to favor mariculture;: and lack 
of good resource management techniques, well known, in regulating the harvest 
from remaining wild stocks. Governmental mechanism in the United States simply 
is not suited to the use of modern aquatic resource management methods and 
techniques, 
