Year: 1905
Type: book
Abstract: The citizen of Maryland gives to the oyster a high place in the list of our resources.The vast number of oysters which the Chesapeake Bay has furnished in the past is ample proof of its fertility, but it is difficult to give any definite statement as to its value.Statistics, even in recent years, are scanty and doubtful, and it is not possible to estimate the number of oysters which our beds have furnished to our people with any accu- racy, although it may be computed, approximately, from indirect evidence.The business of packing oysters for shipment to the interior was established in Maryland in 1834, and from that date to quite recent years it has grown steadily and .con-stantly, and, though small and insignificant at first, it has kept pace with the development of our country, the growth of our population, and the improvement of means for transportation.For fifty-six years the bay has furnished the oysters to meet this constantly increasing demand.The middle of this period is theTHE OYSTER.year 1862, and as the greatest development of the business has taken place since, the business of 1862 may be used as an average for the whole period, with little danger of error through excess.We have 4 no statistics for 1862, but in 1865 C. S. Maltby made a very careful computation of the oyster business of the whole bay for the year.He says there were 1000 boats engaged in dredging and 1500 canoes engaged in tonging.The dredgers gathered 3,663,125 bushels of oysters in Maryland and 1,083,209 bushels in Vir- ginia, while 1,216,375 bushels were tonged in Maryland and 981,791 bushels in Virginia, or 6,954,500 bushels in all.About half of these were sent to Baltimore, and the rest to the following cities in the following order: Washington, Alexandria, Boston, Fair Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Seaford, and Salisbury.Of the 3,465,000 bushels which came to Baltimore, 625,000 were consumed in the city and its vicinity, while 2,840,000 bushels were shipped to a distance by Balti- more packers.Ten years later the harvest of oysters from the bay had increased to 17,000,000 bushels, and it has continued to increase, year after year, up to the last few years.We may safely regard the harvest of 1865 as an approximation to the annual average for the whole period of fifty-six years, and other methods of computation give essentially the same result.The total harvest of oysters from the Chesapeake Bay since the establishment of the packing houses is therefore about 56 times 7,000,000, or 392,000,000
Author: William Keith Brooks
Language: English
Subfield: Aquatic Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1513604231