... we got good store of mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thicke as stones. Wee opened some, and found in many of them pearles.
The Jamestown planters who wrote accounts of the new colony commented on the abundance and variety of fish and shellfish in the rivers and creeks near the "capital citty." It seems rather surprising, therefore, that so many colonists died during the first autumn "of meere famine," as reported by Percy, when the James River teemed with fish, oysters, and crabs.
Captain Gabriel Archer, Gentleman, mentioned a seven foot sturgeon which was caught on June 13 1607: "Our Admiralls men gatt a sturgeon of 7 foote long which Captayne Newport gave us." George Percy commented on the excellence of the sturgeon in the James River:
Photo courtesy National Park Service.
Fishhooks, Fish-gigs, Lead Net-Weights
The artifacts shown were excavated at Jamestown. These objects and many others found, are reminders of a day when fish and shellfish lived in abundance in every creek, river, and bay, in Tidewater Virginia.
There are many branches of this river, which runne flowing through the woods with great plentie of fish of all kindes; as for sturgeon, all the world cannot be compared to it....