SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 109 



manent shell-fish, industries, be prevented or delayed for want 

 of the comparatively small sums which are necessary to start 

 the work. 



As an example of what can be done at a small cost to 

 improve the value of shell-fish by judicious transplanting, 

 the work carried out by the Committee in 1903-5 may be 

 recalled. A full account of these operations was given by 

 Mr. Andrew Scott and Mr. Thomas Baxter in the Lancashire 

 Sea-Fisheries Laboratory Report for 1905. 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 over-crowded and stunted mussels, 

 which were not showing any growth, to neighbouring areas 

 which were not so thickly populated. The result was most 

 striking. At the end of a few months the old starved under- 

 Bized " blue-nebs," as they are called, had grown | of an inch 

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

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

 a ready market at a good price. Mussels, which in their original 

 condition could never have been of any use as food, had been 

 turned into a valuable commodity at comparatively little 

 trouble 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 undersized mussels which were later on sold 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. On that occasion over 240 tons of the under-sized 

 mussels had been transplanted in six days' work. It was 

 found that on the average the transplanting increased the 



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