The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1910-08-27
Biography .; :' Oyster.
From Harper's MAGAZINE.
From Harper's Magazine.

Oystermen nowadays are farmers OF
the deep. They own their artificial beds
and seed them down and cultivate them
carefully, and watch their crops and
scarecrow off the predatory hordes, both
men and fish, that otherwise would prey
upon them, just as the careful husband
man labors in his fields. Such an oys-
ter bed as this may comprise sea -coy-
cred patch of anywhere from 90 to 800
acres of "bottom", floored preferably
| with good, clean sand or broken rock or
shell, yet frequently devoid at the start
of all natural growth of the oysters.
On the natural beds the oysters spawn
tremendously in the first warm months
! of coming summer. The spawn attaches
itself like millions of freckles to any
thing affording foothold anything
sharp, like broken shells, old bottles,
other oysters and rocks. With incredi-
BILE rapidity these freckles expand, be-
coming "spats' ts''-small fnger-nail oys-
ters, already housed in walls of lime.
Now comes the oy8terman, he OF the
schooner, with two big iron dredges
and he in the skiff with his tongs. Both
begin to pilIage the beds in long, hard
days of application. They fetch up tons
of baby oysters, pitch back tons an d
tons Of rock or broken shell for the
foothold OF oysters yet to be, and, sail
ing away to their sUaked-out farms,
scatter all this "seed" beneath the
waves,
Not only are the private oyster beds
carefully divided one from the other by
the best of good stake hedges, bat each
holding is subdivided again into many
smaller fields to facilitate the work.
This becomes necessary from the fact
that the seed must be permitted to grow
for fully three seasons before marketa-
bic oysters can be harvested. There
fore, when, with the advent Of Septem-
Der, the season for bivalves has begun,
the schooners are manned with OYSTER
men proper, who go down to dredge out
a three-year-old crop for the towns.
They are dredged from the beds Just
as rapidly as men and machines can
fetch them forth. The dredge Genes up
from the deep like a mining cage O.
steel. It's cargo, upon arrival, is dumped
upon the dock, and over it goes for an
other. Meanwhile, crew of furiously
working men are busily culliIig the bed.
Scores of TIE oysters come up in 1umpy
colonies, H114vr3 six, eight, ten or more
of the creatures are cemented together
in a group. The men, armed with ham
mers and szillful at the work, give one
sharp tap at such an aggregation and
break all its units apart. A false blow
might serve to kill many oysters.
Having loaded her decks, the schoo-
ner goes home, only to discharge with
all possible speed and hasten again to
her labors. At the docks, in the mea n
time, equally arduous employment is
abundant. The oysters are forked like
so much coke upon-es especially con-
structed floats, which, provided with
tanks to submerge them, are lowered at
once below the ebb-tide level, where
they "drink" and fatten for at lea st
three changes of the tide, being waite he'd
like nursing babies. The moment they
are just exactly right another hurried
bucinaCS iS in hand
The tanks are pumped out, up come
the floats, and men descend upon them
like rubber-boo demons to shovel
them swiftly to scoW. And now, be-
ing absolutely at their finest, they must
all besrushed to market