The Young Wireless Operator—With the Oyster Fleet / How Alec Cunningham Won His Way to the Top in the Oyster Business

by Lewis E. Theiss

When he had asked the skipper how the oystermen knew good grounds from poor ones, the captain had replied, "They don't. All they can do is to shell 'em and see if they get a set."

That was the doctrine and belief of an experienced and able captain of an oyster-boat. Yet here in his very hands Alec had proof that an intelligent person could discover where the good grounds were, easily and cheaply. It wasn't necessary to own a ship and buy thousands of bushels of shells and employ expensive help to spread them in order to find out whether a given place would make good grounds or not. With very little equipment Alec knew he could test the matter as well as anybody. He almost cried aloud with sheer joy. For though the planted beds covered 30,000 acres, and doubtless included many and perhaps most of the good grounds, Alec did not doubt that there still remained unstaked areas that would make as good oyster-beds as any already "stuck up." His job was to find them while he was getting together the money to buy his equipment.

When Alec had gone hastily through the bulletin once, he again began to read it, this time slowly and painstakingly. He found that Skipper Bagley's assertion that one oyster produces millions of little oysters was not only true, but was almost an understatement, so incredible was the actual number, estimated by the scientists at sixteen to sixty millions, depending upon the size, age, and vigor of the spawning oyster. And it was equally true, as the skipper had said, that one could not see newly-formed oysters with the naked eye; for, even at two weeks of age, when they are about ready to attach to something, they were still scarcely visible.

What fairly astounded Alec was the fact that each tiny oyster larva has a foot, which is later absorbed into the body when there is no longer need for it. For, contrary to what the skipper had told him, the oyster fry not only have the power to move about in the water, but they do not die at once if they sink to the bottom and find no suitable place of attachment. With its tiny foot, each microscopic oyster is able to move about on the bottom, and does move about, a few inches at a time, seeking a place of attachment. It has other methods of locomotion as well. Hair-like growths that act like propellers, give it the power to move slowly through the waters. Thus it creeps and swims, searching here and there until it finds the resting-place it is after. Then it makes fast to the place selected, and its shell rapidly enlarges. In ten hours' time it has become as large as a grain of pepper.

And the bulletin's suggestions as to shelling oyster-beds, Alec noted, were directly at variance with established practices. For Alec knew that ordinarily the shells were spread broadcast, in an effort to cover as much of the bottom as possible, whereas the bulletin advised the planting of shells in windrows, placed transversely to the current, and piled to the depth of ten inches or even a foot, so as to afford more exposed surfaces than could be offered by shells broadcasted and lying flat in the mud. For now Alec learned, to his astonishment, that the tiny oysters do not necessarily drop downward in their search for a place of attachment, but also rise upward. And since sediment does not collect to any great extent on the under surface of bodies held in the water, the under sides will afford the cleaner places of attachment. In proof of this, the bulletin showed several shells that had been suspended in the water for five days during the spawning season. Though they were clean when put into the water, enough sediment had collected in that short time to prevent the attachment of a single spat to their upper surfaces, while one shell alone had seventy-three spats attached to its under surface at the end of five days.

"Why, that's just common-sense," cried Alec. "Of course an under surface stays cleaner in the water than an upper surface. Anybody knows that. And shells heaped in windrows will present a thousand times as many under surfaces as shells thrown flat in the mud. You bet I won't forget that."

There were many other things that astonished Alec. He learned that spawning activities are controlled almost wholly by temperature, oysters never spawning before the water reaches a temperature of at least 68 degrees and generally 70 degrees, while spawning activity increases with the increase in the temperature of the water. Alec saw at once that there might thus be great seasonal variation in the amount of spawn produced, and that a cold, cloudy summer might result in little or no oyster fry being spawned, while a hot, cloudless spring and summer, particularly if the wind did not stir up the water too much, would almost certainly result in a tremendous output of oyster larvæ.

"Looks to me," said Alec, with characteristic insight, "as though it wasn't worth going to the expense of shelling a bed if it happens to be a very cold year," and he was pleased when in reading further he found that the bulletin confirmed his judgment.

Furthermore Alec knew that deep water would remain cold while shallow water grew warm. And as the oyster remains practically at the temperature of the water surrounding it, he saw that here was another problem to be considered in the greatest of all the problems that he believed lay before him. That was the problem of finding a good oyster ground. For Alec had no hope of ever being able to buy a ground already established. Within a very few days such an established bed had changed hands, and the price paid by the purchaser was $25,000. Of course this was a big bed, but Alec knew that any productive bed at all would command a high price. What he must do when he became a planter was to stake out new grounds that he could get from the state merely for the annual rental of seventy-five cents an acre.

To procure such a bed was a simple enough matter, but to procure a bed that would be productive, where the planting of shells would result in a good set of spat, was quite another matter. As the skipper had told him, it was commonly believed that all the good beds had already been "stuck up." That fact had been the most discouraging thing Alec had had to face, as he thought over his plans for the future. But now light was coming to him. One of the factors he must consider in the selection of his grounds was water temperature. Depth was an important factor, and so, too, was the movement of the water, for turbulent water meant cold water, while still water meant warm water.