FISHERIES: Blue Points Up

Last week R returned to the calendar. To squeamish folk who believe the ancient adage of the inedibility of oysters in summer (R-less) months, it was a signal to start gulping them again. To oystermen, who indulge the superstition to conserve oysters through their spawning season, it was a signal that the 1940-41 oyster season was on—a season in which they saw a chance to make big money for the first time in nine years.

Prices were $7~$8 a barrel ($1 a bbl. above 1939), might hit $9. From 1935 to 1938 they had sagged as low as $5.50. Before that (1931-35) they had been unspeakable. Time was (before 1924) when oysters were the No. 1 U. S. cash seafood product. Now topped by salmon and tuna, the industry, which employs some 66,000 workers, harvests an average 16,300,000 bushels of oysters annually.

All oysterdom is divided into two parts: freebaiters (independent fishermen), who work the public oyster beds, and farmers (private companies), who own or lease and cultivate their own beds. Stronghold of the freebaiters is the Chesapeake-Delaware Bay area, ‘which produces 60% of U. S. oysters. Stronghold of the private company is Long Island, which produces 25%. Cultivated oysters bring the higher prices. The inlets of Long Island shelter them from the high wind and rough weather which often smother them with sand, feed them enough fresh water to supply the copper and other minerals that tasty oysters need.

To a headwaiter, blue points are just small oysters. To oystermen, however, they are oysters which pass at least the last three months of their five-year lives in Long Island’s Great South Bay. Blue Point Oysters is the only trade name in the industry protected by New York statute, is owned exclusively by companies farming the Bay. Biggest of those is Bluepoints Co., Inc., which has six plants, 35,000 acres of beds, and harvests 5% of the U. S. oyster crop. Bluepoints Co. transplants its oysters from four to six times during their lives: two to three years in warm, shallow water inshore; a year in the fattening grounds; a year or so in the maturing grounds before the final move to marketing beds near the plants.

When the hurricane of 1938 swarmed over Long Island, it played hob with the oyster beds. That is one reason for higher oyster prices this year. Oystermen have other foes. Nastiest is a thing called the drill, which bores through the oyster’s shell, devours the oyster. One active drill can liquidate 30 to 200 oysters a season; a swarm of them can wipe out a young crop. But most oystermen save their wrath for the starfish (good for nothing but fertilizer), which glaums on an oyster, wears it out until it opens up, then eats it. Oystermen fight them with lime, catch them in moplike sweeps. Last year starfish wiped out part of Long Island’s 1939 oyster crop. This year oystermen asked Congress for a $250,000 appropriation to fight the “stars.” They didn’t get it.