Oysters: A Leading Fishery Product 
By HUGH M. SMITH 
Former United States Commissioner of Fisheries 
O YSTERS are the most popular 
and most extensively eaten of 
all shellfish; economically, they 
are the most important of all cultivated 
water products and, with the single ex¬ 
ception of the sea herrings, the most 
valuable of all aquatic animals. Zoolog¬ 
ically considered, oysters are lamelli- 
branchiate mollusks of the genus Ostrea. 
In at least 35 countries oysters support 
a special fishery, and in various other 
countries enter into the food supply. On 
the shores of all the temperate and tropi¬ 
cal oceans and seas, oysters occur in 
greater or less abundance; but the supply 
in the North Atlantic exceeds that of all 
the other waters combined. Not less than 
one hundred and fifty thousand men and 
women are engaged in the oyster industry; 
and the capital invested in vessels, boats, 
apparatus, oyster lands, and cultural estab¬ 
lishments aggregates many million dollars. 
The oyster crop of the world at the 
present time amounts to over twenty-two 
million bushels and is valued at nearly 
$20,000,000. Of this output, the share 
of the United States is 79 per cent of the 
quantity and 63 per cent of the value. 
Of the remaining portion the greater part 
belongs to France. 
At least one hundred species are known, 
with a rather wide range in size, shape, 
habits, flavor, and food value. Some ex¬ 
cellent species exist in the equatorial and 
sub-tropical regions, but the best occur 
in temperate climes. The northern limits 
of their habitat are the Gulf of St. Law¬ 
rence and southern Norway in the At¬ 
lantic, and Hokkaido and Puget Sound 
in the Pacific. 
Oysters produce an immense number 
of young in order to compensate for the 
heavy mortality that occurs at all stages 
of growth, but particularly in the early 
months. It is an astonishing biological 
fact that in some species of oyster each 
sex is represented by a different indi¬ 
vidual, as in the oyster of the Atlantic 
coast of North America: while in other 
species both sexes are united in one in¬ 
dividual—the male stage alternating with 
the female, as in the common oyster of 
the Atlantic coast of Europe. 
After the oyster attains a size that is 
visible to the unaided eye, it is incapable 
of changing its position. This is in 
marked contrast with the newly born 
young, which is a free-swimming crea¬ 
ture, floating about with tides and cur¬ 
rents, and quite as likely to settle down 
on a far-distant bank or bar as to rejoin 
its progenitors. 
Of the millions of microscopic young 
liberated by a single full-grown oyster, 
only an exceedingly small percentage be¬ 
come attached to a suitable bottom, form 
a shell, and enter on a career that will 
terminate on the table in two to four 
years. When the temperature, density, 
tides, and currents are favorable, the 
young will settle on an existing bar or 
bed, covering the shells of the old oys¬ 
ters and any other hard surfkces or ob¬ 
jects that may be present. All the young 
that fall on a muddy or soft sandy bot¬ 
tom, or on surfaces that are slimy, are 
lost. Oyster culture therefore aims pri¬ 
marily to conserve the free-swimming 
young, which it accomplishes by sowing 
clean oyster-shells or other ‘"cultch” to 
which the “spat” can attach, or by col¬ 
lecting the young on tiles or brush raised 
above the bottom or suspended between 
surface and bottom. 
CHINA AND ITALY CULTIVATED OYSTERS 
2,000 YEARS AGO 
Oysters have been under culture longer 
than any other shellfish and, indeed, than 
any other water creature. A simple type 
of cultivation, with the formation of 
artificial beds, flourished in China at 
a very remote period and probably an¬ 
tedated by some centuries the inception 
of oyster culture in Italy, about the year 
100 B. C. With the advance of civiliza¬ 
tion and the increase in population, oys¬ 
ters were in greater demand and of ne¬ 
cessity came under cultivation in all the 
important maritime countries of Europe, 
