6o BULi^ETiN OP The bureau of fisheries. 



fishery. The man may fish during the forenoon and cook out in the afternoon; in 

 some cases the wife or children of the sheller attend to the cooking out, while the sheller 

 continues the fishing operations. 



The cooker consists of a vat about 5 feet long by 2 feet wide and from 12 to 18 

 inches deep (PI. XXVII, fig. 2 extreme left, and PI. XXIX, fig. 4). The frame may 

 be of wood and the bottom of sheet iron or stovepipe iron, brought up a few inches 

 over the lower edges of the wood to protect it from the fire. The bottom of the cooker 

 is usually made to slope upward at one end in order to facilitate the forking out of the 

 shells. The vat is set over a trench or ditched-out furnace, the back part of which is 

 fitted with a couple of joints of stovepipe or smokestack of some kind to furnish the 

 necessary draft ; driftwood may serve as fuel. 



When the cooker is filled with mussels, a small amount of water is added, and the 

 whole is covered with burlap or gunny sacks. The fire is started in the furnace and 

 continued until steam is being given off in quantities sufficient to kill the mussels, so 

 that they will open readily. The process may take about 20 minutes or longer. If the 

 mussel camp is situated near a factory or some establishment from which steam can 

 be obtained at a reasonable price, there is a great saving in time and trouble by making 

 a direct steam-pipe connection between the boiler and the cooker. The shells are 

 prepared in the same way, but instead of applying heat beneath the cooker the steam 

 is admitted directly into the container. 



The shells are removed with a fork and thrown on the sorting table which is about 

 3 feet high and of sufficient width and length to hold at least one-half of the contents 

 of the cooker. The mussels must be handled separately, picking or shaking out the 

 meats, which are put to one side for later examination for pearls and slugs, while the 

 shells are thrown into heaos on the ground or into small bins (Pis. XXVII, fig. 2, 

 and XXXII, fig. I). 



When all the shells have been cleaned, the water, or soup, in the cooker is carefully 

 strained through a small mesh screen of wire netting in order to recover any pearls or 

 slugs which may have become disengaged from the meats during the cooking-out process. 

 It is said that pearls which have lain on the hot metal bottom for any length of time 

 are permanently injured. The size of the screen is usually about i foot square. Most 

 of the pearls are found in the meats, which must be examined one by one. The pearls 

 are not always visible, but are found by slipping the meats through the fingers. Small 

 pearls are sometimes recovered by allowing the meats to rot in kegs or half-barrels. 

 When reduced to a pulp, the mass is rubbed through a fine-mesh sieve, the pearls and 

 slugs being retained on the sieve. 



Many mussels are cooked out merely with the hope of finding pearls. The non- 

 commercial shells must be thrown aside, but there is no general practice of classification 

 of the salable shells. Often this is done by throwing shells of a certain quality, such as 

 niggerheads, pimple-backs, etc., into one pile and blue-points, washboards, and miscel- 

 laneous shells into another. This is usually an advantage to the sheller, since he may 

 obtain an advanced price on the best grade shells; yet the practice of buying the river 

 run at one price is still very common. Most of the shellers do sort out the yellow sand- 

 shells, since these command a price several times higher than the others; but even this 

 is not always done, and thus a good many yellow sand-shells are received at the factories 

 along with other shells. These, of course, are sorted out at the factory, and resold to 



