48 OYSTEK BOTTOMS OF MISSISSIPPI SOUND, ALA. 



scattering, aggregating 1,978 acres, with a total estimated marketable 

 content of about 550,000 bushels of oysters. It is believed that these 

 beds would safely sustain, with a proper observance of the culling 

 laws, an annual yield double the present product of dredges and tongs 

 combined, about 275,000 bushels. Many of the beds would be bene- 

 fited by a reasonable fishery which would remove part of the oysters 

 now going to waste, and allow room for the remainder to grow and 

 improve. In many places a considerable proportion of the small 

 oysters could be removed to advantage, and there would result a 

 double benefit if they were used as seed on some of the barren bottom 

 now going to waste. 



BARREN BOTTOMS. 



The area of barren bottoms — that is, those which are not naturally 

 productive of oysters even in small quantities — vastly exceeds that 

 of the natural beds, including in the latter those so-called depleted 

 areas which bear practically nothing. These bottoms are barren 

 mainly because of one character in which they differ from the pro- 

 ductive areas, namely, that they are devoid of shells or other objects 

 lying on the surface. They consist of sand or mud of varying degrees 

 of stability and consistency. Oysters, immediately after they 

 develop from the egg, for a brief period swim or float freely in the 

 water, settling to a fixed condition only after they reach a stage of 

 considerable development." , 



It is not necessary to give more detail to this subject other than 

 to say that at the time at which they are undergoing fixation the 

 oysters are very minute, and a slight film of mud or slime is sufficient 

 to stifle them. During the spawning season these little organisms 

 are present in the water in untold myriads and are precipitated to the 

 bottom in a continuous gentle drizzle of tiny specks. If they fall on 

 an oyster bed they find firm supports on the shells and oysters, 

 attach themselves and grow, but if they fall on the mud or bare sand 

 they die. 



The natural beds have been slowly developed on bottom similar 

 to that which surrounds them solely because through some agency 

 there originally lodged on the mud or sand some hard objects to 

 which the young oysters could safely cling. Oysters developing 

 there, and their shells scE^ttered about by the waves, furnished addi- 

 tional places for fixation of new generations of young, with the result 

 that the original growth extended in area and its base became a 

 compact mass of shells and fragments, beneath which can still be 

 found by excavation or probing the original bottom differing in no 

 essential particular from the adjacent barren areas. 



a For a more extended account, see " Oysters and Methods of Oyster Culture," by H. F. Moore, Bureau 

 of Fisheries, Document 349, which may be obtained by application to the Bureau of Fisheries, Washing- 

 ton, D. C. 



