The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-08-12

placed IN the barren spaces the Spot
or young ones will cling to them.
Oyster planting is placing of small,
or seed oysters, upon bottoms which
are favorable to their growth. There
are many bottoms where there are no
natural oysters, simply because there
is nothing for them to fasten upon, or
because the spat hao not been carried
there. Planting also adds very greatly
to their value, as they grow more rap
idly, and are of better quality.
THE whole secret of oyster culture is
to furnish proper bodies for the at
tachment of the young. Many methods
of doing this have been devised and
employed. The following method is
still employed in Sweden: Upon the
blackish mud are constructed here and
there rockerieS of rough stones, thrown
into heaps sufficiently elevated to be
protected from deposits of mud or
slime. Upon these rocks oysters are
deposited. Each rockery is surround
ed by a circle of stakes. The stakes
are united by a cord passing from one
to- another, to which are suspended
between each two stakes small bum
die of twigs floating in the water at
short distance from the bottom.
when the fishing season arrives the
stakes and bundles of fagots are taken
up. Those oysters are used which are
suitable for market, and then the
stakes are replaced. About fifty years
ago some Swedish fishermen in the
East river, in New York, began prac-
tical experiments in this line, and I
see no reason why Mr.. Cooper and Mr..
Waterhouse should not make a like
success in front of their homes at Pearl
Harbor. In 1858 the famous French
naturalist. Caste, began his inyestiga-
ton and experiment in France. He
~, 90 NOD S
which formerly constituted great
source of wealth, eighteen had been
completely destroyed when he began
! the work of replenishing the exhaust
| ed beds on the coast. In an area de-
pleted by dredging, where the beds had
been so completely destroyed that they
could not provide spat, six long beds
| of oysters We're planted and buoyed
out. The bottoms around these beds
were then thoroughly planted with the
shells of oysters and other molluSks.
| Bundles of twigS, six to ten feet long,
were then fastened by stone anchors
foot above the bottom, to serve as
spat collectors. Six months later these
bundles were found to be completely
covered with spat, and twenty thou
sand young were counted upon one
bundle.
Two government farms were es-
tablished. with a force of one hundred
persons, and an area of LOCO acres was
stocked in the same way In 1853, dur
ing six tides, 16,000,000 of oysters were
taken. Land was then coded by the
government to individuals, and one
area of $50 acres was in a few years
stocked with oysters valued at SS,000,-
900, and all this resulted from the ex-
pertinent of one man.
Mr. Canavarro tells US that the
oyster culture is equally prosperous in
Portugal, and that large quantities are
shipped to London, Berlin and Paris.
Mr. Mark Robinson also-says that
he well remembers hearing his father
tell of the pearl fishery at Pearl Har-
Dor There are hundreds of tons of
empty oyster shells at Pearl Harbor
today.
In 1872 we visited the pearl lochs in
company with the late Abraham Fer
handles and w l.. Greene. Their opin-
ion was that the oysters had been kill
ed by some convulsion of nature, but
that is a mistake. The natural bed is
the oyster rock. The boundaries of
this rock are usually well defined, and
few oysters are to be found beyond its
limits. At Pearl Harbor the oysters
were packed so near together that they
could not lie fiat, but grew vertically.
side by side, the cloSeness being SO
great that the growth of one oyster
prevented adjacent ones from opening
their shells, and thus crowded them
out and eXterminated them. On natu-
raj oyster rocks. nearly every one of
the living oysters is fastened to the
omen or free end of a dead she'll and
often a pile of five or six shells IS
thus united. The second, when young.
fastening TO the end of the first, thus
getting a little above the others. The
first dies, the second continues to de-
yelop. and then a third fastens itself
to its shell. and so on, until the chain