OYSTEE BEDS OF MOBILE BAY. 
339 
NOTES RESPECTING OYSTERS OF MOBILE BAY AND SOUND IN MOBILE COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
By JOHN J. DELCHAMPS. 
From Cedar Point to Dauphin Island is a little over 2 miles, Grant Pass being midway. Within 
that distance are found a dozen sorts of oysters which, though all of the same variety, are yet so 
different in size, shape, etc., as to be recognizable at sight by oystermen, who tell at once from what 
flat, reef, or gully they were fished. Their differences are due to locality, depth of water, character 
of ground, and currents; so that oysters from one spot aud removed to one only a few yards distant 
will in time assume the look and character of those native to the latter. Such varieties are “ Oyster 
Pass,” “sharpers," Dutch Island “ gullies” and “ flats,” “Grant Pass oysters,” “Pass Heron flats” 
and “Pass Heroners,” “redfish gullies,” “ west-edgers,” “ new reefers,” “sand reefers,” “Dauphin 
Island Bay oysters,” the last mostly classed now as plants but inferior. 
Westward we find “ Halfmoon” and “East and West Heron Bay” plants, the first of the class to 
fatten well in the fall ; “ Fowl River Bay plants,” very fine also, but owing to circumstance of locality 
fattening later; thence westward, “Coden,” “ Portersville,” “Bayou Batre,” and “Little River” 
plant beds; none west of Fowl River Bay very extensive. Further on is Grand Bay, which is large 
and said to have a good many oysters, but of an inferior quality and therefore little visited by oyster 
boats. 
Leaving the Sound we find in Mobile Bay proper, extending from near Dauphin Island and east of 
Grant Pass, an extensive reef; then from the Birmingham Shoal, a mile or so northeastward from Cedar 
Point, some 8 or more miles northwardly, there extend reefs or a succession of reefs distinguished 
locallyas “Birmingham,” “ White House,” “Austin,” and “Middle Light,” the oysters on all of which 
are about identical. 
It is only of late that these reefs, long known, have grown to be of importance and to yield many 
for market. Most of them are outside the bar and in water 10 to 12 or more feet deep, requiring 14 
to 16 foot rakes for catching. The growth is doubtless due to a succession of favorable seasons; a 
like succession of long-continued floods of fresh water would probably prove very injurious. These 
oysters are in character intermediate to the “gullies” and “sharpers,” and like the last are very good 
for planting. Some of these are covered with mud dumped by scows from the dredges at work on the 
ship canal. It is not unlikely that when that mud has settled and hardened somewhat these reefs 
will be benefited and the oysters improved. 
Oyster-planting here has never been carried on to any large extent. Unfortunately, just as a 
few enterprising persons were embarking in the business some four years ago, our State legislature 
passed a law which proved an effectual bar thereto, and two years after passed a new law retaining 
if not emphasizing the obnoxious features of the first. 
The best time for oyster-planting is from May to October, when the}^ are chiefly in spawn ; it is 
also the time when oystermen are mostly idle. Oysters for seed or planting should be taken up in the 
rough and planted unculled, as much in bunches as possible. Those sought for seed would be mostly 
“ sharpers,” small oysters in bunches, unmarketable ones. 
If the State would foster and encourage this industry the result would be that, by taxing plants 
as well as reefers, it would within a few years realize a handsome revenue at 5 cents a barrel. 
The enemies to the oyster are the drumfish, which grinds up and devours many single ones aud 
universally the small culled-off ones the State orders scattered on the reefs whence taken, and the 
whelks, which bore through the shell and destroy the oyster. This is the first year that I have heard 
serious complaint of their destructiveness. As there must be a cause for every effect, I assume the 
reason of their prevalence to be the long continuance of salt water, unbroken for months by any heavy 
rains and consequent rise of our rivers. 
