MORE OYSTERS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 14 October 1920, Page 3

MORE OYSTERS.

ARTIFICIAL CULTURE

The yearly increasing demand for oysters makes it imperative that a comprehensive scheme of artificial oyster-culture should he taken in hand (states the Chief Inspector of Fisheries in his annual report), -There is no doubt that there are large areas in the North where extensive beds can be formed by adopting some of the Australian methods of oyster-culture best suited for the conditions in our bays and estuaries. Valuable work has been done since 1909 in the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Islands by planting depleted areas with oyster-rocks taken from other beds and by shifting high-water oyster-rocks down to and below half-tide, but there is a limit to the work which can be done in this way, and the time has come when more scientific methods must be adopted for the purpose of extending the beds and in- i creasing the oyster supply. Our Northern rock-oyster (Ostrea cucuiata) is identical with the oyster which is so extensively cultivated in New South Wales and Queensland. It is really a sub-tropical species, the northern part of New Zealand being the southern limit of this oyster in this hemisphere, and our colder water and climate no doubt account for the poorer and rather uncertain seasonal fixing of oyster-spat on our New Zealand beds in comparison with the abundant and regular fixing which they get in the warmer waters and climate of New South Wales and Queensland. The poorer fixing of spat on our beds in turn influence the quantity of mature oysters which can with safety be taken for market each season. —Wellington Post.