THE IMPENDING OYSTER FAMINE.
rpHE question now occurs, as it has any time these ten years," says Mr. Francis Franois, writing the other day to the Times newspaper, " Why are Oysters so scarce and dear ?" The public, we believe, will heartily echo the question, and ask " Why, indeed? " As they have been often enough told by na- turalists that the Oyster is the most prolific of all our shell-fish, and annually reproduces its kind in millions, the astonishment of the public at the continued scarcity and growing expensiveness of this excellent mollusc may therefore well be pardoned. An Oyster famine is a misfortune which the public never contem- plated. As such an event, however, is now imminent, we must look it in the face, and consider what can be done to meet it. Doubtless, when the whole troth becomes known, it will be found that the Oyster, as they say in France, in which country it has also become scarce and dear, has been " dredged to death"—in other words, over-fished—and that oysters being dear is simply a consequence of the scanty supply. The demand is greater than the supply. Mr. Francis, who has had numerous opportunities of studying the natural and economic history of the oyster both at home and abroad (having been a member of a travelling Oyster- fisheries' Commission), speaks of the Oyster-fishery as we have more than once in these columns spoken of the Herring fishery. He tells us plainly—and plain-speaking is a virtue on such sub- jects—that "no fishery can fail to be destroyed if left to the in- terested ingenuity of man, with no protection." That is so, and it is more true of an oyster-fishery than of any other fishery: Oysters cannot escape from their enemies so readily as most other sea animals. Almost from the moment of their birth they are chained to one spot, from which they never move, till, in all pro- bability, they find their grave in the stomach of the genus homo, or are destroyed by other equally determined enemies, of which there are a great number. The oyster is, of course, well pro- tected by its adamantine cover, but then so are the crab and lobster, with their shelly carapace, whilst in addition they are endowed with the means of locomotion, and are provided with powerful claws with which to frighten their enemies and protect themselves.
Oysters at threepence a-piece, which is about the present price, are a luxury which, we fancy, few are able to indulge in ; nor have we any hope of seeing a speedy decrease in the cost. Those who ought to know best about the Oyster supply tell us that the stocks on artificial layings are becoming exhausted, and as for the natural beds, —where are they ? We know of none. There are doubtless many " scolps " in various parts of the English Channel where a few thousand " roughs " might be obtained, and which, if economically treated, might ultimately become productive, and yield at least supplies of brood ! But, unfortunately, no sooner is a spot of oysters discovered than the ground is straightway covered with dredgers, and the dainty bivalves disappear in a day or two. And no wonder. London alone, not to speak of Manchester, Bir- mingham, or Liverpool, can take all the oysters we can gather, and even then the Great Metropolis would have but a scant supply. The facilities of transit from distant places are now so great that local demands of all kinds are quite ignored, and London is at once the grand centre of supply and consumption. It is no extraordinary matter for a can of oysters to be sent from London to a place within a mile or two of where they were gathered, but at which place they could not be obtained. Even at a spot so far distant from London as the small town of Stranraer, in Scotland, the London market is the only market considered. " What is the price of that codfish ?" asked a lady-resident of the town in question. " It's not for sale, ma'am ; it's going to London," was the reply. " And these oysters, are they going to London also ?" " Yea, they are going as well," was the rejoinder. It is the same with all our sea produce,---the best of it finds its way to London or Manchester ; the finest turbot, the largest lobsters, all command a ready and steady market in our great cities.
As regards the Oyster, some persons endeavour to find an excuse for the annually decreasing supply in a want of " spat." That is a ready enough way of not seeing what is really the great fact of the case, namely, that it is over-consumption which has led to the mischief now imminent. The theory of the "spat," we fear, is not so well understood as it ought to be. There are those who assert that the oyster only breeds in fine, warm seasons, and that for some years past, in consequence of our summers not having been up to the average in warmth, the fall of " spat " has been very intermittent and partial. But that is not really the case. The summers will, taken one with another, be found to average for all the purposes of nature, oyster-spatting included. The oyster yields its seed at stated periods, the same as other animals of the land and sea, and it is not that sufficient spat has not fallen to ensure a continuation of our oyster supplies, but that we have not been able to find out where the spat has fallen. Measureless quantities of the spawn of the oyster—that is; if the animal be as prolific as it is said to be—have been probably wafted away by the waves to unsuitable places where it cannot grow, but becomes lost, from the want of a coigne of vantage to which it can affix itself. Some portions undoubtedly alight on proper fostering-ground, and that is in all likelihood the secret of the occasional discovery of patches of natural oyster-scolp, which, as we have explained, are no sooner found than they are gobbled up by the hungry fishermen, who know of many markets where they can at once be converted into ready money.
It is no use blinking the fact any longer. We are over-eating our Oysters at such a rate as will speedily exterminate them. Reasoning from what has occurred in other countries, and taking France as an example, it is on record, the authority being un- questionable, that the great productive natural oyster-scolps of that country are now all but exhausted. At Cancale, twenty-seven years ago, the dredgers were able to gather with comparatively little trouble 71,000,000 of oysters ! How many will they obtain this season ? Not one-seventieth part of that number. The commissariat of Paris has been chiefly supplied with oysters during late years by the artificial breeders, the men of Arcachon, Marennes, the Isle de Re, and other places. But even these men have killed their goose for the sake of its golden egg, and now we are beginning to be told that artificial oyster - culture is not paying in France, and that the spat has failed ! The excuse is amusing ; how can they have spat, if there be no oysters left to exude it P If twenty thousand dozen of oysters be laid down in an artificial park and left to breed, there need be no fear of keeping up the capital stock ; but if these oysters be sold before a spat has issued from them, the ground will, of course, be left barren, and can only again become populous by the purchase of a brood stock, or by the owner of it waiting till a friendly wave brings upon the shore a fresh supply of seed. In oyster-breeding, nothing must be left to accident. We have the prosperous Company at Whitstable constantly teach- ing us that. London is largely indebted to this Company for its oyster supply, and the Company is only enabled to keep up its business by exercising great care in the working of its oyster- beds, and in constantly restocking them with brood, which they are glad to purchase. An opposite case to that of the Whitstable Company may be cited as a proof of the care and caution that is necessary in working either artificial beds or natural scolps. The Firth of Forth oyster-beds (they are natural scolps of great extent) were at one time very productive, so much so, in fact, that oysters used to be sold from them in Edinburgh at the cost of 10d. for a hundred and twenty! Now, oysters. in the capital of Scotland are as dear as they are elsewhere. First of all, the fishermen of Newhaven, who leased the oyster-beds at an almost nominal rent from the Corporation of Edinburgh and from the Duke of Bue- clench, the owners of the scolps, thought the supply would "never go done;" and so they went on, season after season, dredging them to an unreasonable extent, till a year or two ago they found out that as the price rose in the market the supply diminished on the scolps ! They had killed their goose for the sake of its golden egg; and what was worse, they were threatened both by the City and the Duke with the loss of the carcase of the pactolic bird as well. As it is, the Duke of Buccleuch (very wisely, we think) declined to continue the men of Newhaven in the tenancy of his portion of the scolps, so that these greedy dredgers have now only about half their former extent of ground, and with about four times the labour they cannot obtain a fourth part of the oysters which they were able to take some forty years ago ; and although they have been
well taught the consequences of over-dredging, they are yet rather greedy, taking, we suspect, too large a per-tentage from the ground, if they expect the supply to last beyond a year or two.
We can cite still another example of over-fishing the Oyster, this time on the authority of Mr. Francis. It is given in the letter to which we have just referred, and shows how the most productive fisheries can be ruined by the greed of man. We allude to the case of the Channel Islands Oyster-fisheries, which were at one time under the charge of Mr. Francis's father. In 1857, the number of boats and smacks engaged in the fisheries was 260, and the take of oysters was 4,680,000 gallons This was a splendid crop for man to obtain with so little trouble—only the labour of reaping was required—and had not the ground been over-dredged, the oyster-fishery of the Channel Islands might still have been prosperous, but it only required seven years of active over-fishing to reduce the quantity of oysters taken to 78,000 gallons, which were dredged by the crews of twenty-three boats ! More evidence of a similar bearing might be brought forward, but we think we have proved our case ; and we have done so without going to Ireland, on the coasts of which the oyster once abounded, but where it is now very, very scarce.
"But what is to be done, then ?" will be asked ; " what is the remedy ? " In our opinion, it is exceedingly simple,—remove the cause, and the effect will cease. We cannot both eat our cake and have it. If we are " over-dredging " our oysters, we must cease to do so. The animal must get a fair chance to multiply and replenish, and even from the most populous scolps which are dis- covered, only a small per-tentage, or indeed, none at all, ought to be taken till their measure of productiveness be ascertained. When a natural scolp is discovered, it should be made a punish- able offence to touch it till permission has been granted,—after it has been surveyed, and its productive power has been gauged. This might be done on behalf of the Crown, and the costs incurred in preparing the work might be recouped by charging a small sum as royalty on each bushel of oysters. It is not, however, the business of the journalist to devise remedies ; he does his duty when he points out the grievance.
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