Oystering: The Difference between Falmouth, England and New England

In January, 2016, I wrote a blog called Falmouth: A Fascinating Little Town. In that blog entry I described, among other things, the oyster fishery there. I suggest taking the time to go read that section of the blog entry. When we went to the Mystic Maritime Museum, which Jack described in detail in a previous blog, there was an exhibit on the oyster fisheries of the Eastern Seaboard.

Originally, the oyster fishermen fished for oysters by wading out to pry them off rocks. Once the seashore was stripped, they proceeded in boats to a deeper waters to scoop them with a metal basket on the end of a long pole.These evolved to tongs which were up to thirty feet long. At around that time,  the early1900's, oysters became America's first fast food. The fried oyster vendor was as prolific as the hot dog stand is today.

The rapidly increasing demand destroyed the banks of oysters in scooping depth, driving the boats further from shore. To restrict the dredges, a law was passed requiring a fisherman to be under sail or oar while dredging for oysters on a natural bed. The exact same law is still in place in Falmouth, England. Unfortunately, this law was not enough to stop the overfishing of oysters in the United States. To increase the density of oysters, fishermen devised two things.

Here are some oyster tongs lying on the ground.

The first approach was to destroy the oysters' predators, the starfish. Starfish wrap their arms around the oyster and pull it open so that they can insert their stomach and digest it. The fishermen started chopping the starfish into five separate arms. Unfortunately, starfish can regrow their entire body from one arm. The starfish population quadrupled. The fishermen soon realized their problem and began dunking the starfish in either kerosene or boiling water, which killed them instantly.  To more efficiently capture the starfish, a starfish dredge, also called a starfish mop, was created. It was a dredge in the shape of a triangle. From the lower bar a bunch of loose line, usually in a massive tangle, was dragged. The starfish's spiny backs would be caught in this and the mop dunked in boiling water. Most fisherman towed one of these with the other four or five dredges going for oysters.

 This is our picture of the mop.

A picture of a picture of a loaded starfish mop.

The other solution was to start farming. The fishermen would spread baby oysters in a specific area then mark the area with buoys, to show they owned the underwater farm. Then they would carefully mop the area of starfish and watch the oysters grow. When they were large enough, they would dredge them up and sell them. An individual's oyster farm could be over a hundred acres. Oyster farms still continue today, though now they are raised off the bottom so starfish cannot reach them and so the massacre of starfish no longer occurs.

I was very interested to compare this fishery to that of Falmouth, England. The biggest difference is Falmouth has fished for oysters exactly the same way versus the American version which slowly evolved as oysters were over-fished and more effective techniques were discovered. The next difference then is the boats. The ones we saw in Falmouth had no deck so the catch would be dumped around the feet of the fishermen whereas the American boats were slightly bigger and had a deck with a hold. This reflects the place in which the fishing occurred. The oyster banks in Falmouth are well protected so the fishermen never had to handle any serious waves whereas the American boats would consistently go out to face large Atlantic swell and stronger winds.

Another difference is the oysters' destination. The Falmouth oysters would be packed in ice and be shipped as far as London, Paris, or even Vienna to be sold as fancy appetizers in restaurants. In the US, they were sold by the twenty or thirty pounds to street vendors who sold them fried to pedestrians. This changes the way they were handled. They were poured randomly into storage places on American boats whereas they were carefully placed in orderly piles by species and size in the Falmouth boats. The last difference is who the fishermen were. In the United States, large companies owned the boats and received a quarter of each catch in exchange. In Falmouth, individuals owned everything and had to maintain their boats by themselves. Learning about the fisheries in both places was very fun, but what really made it interesting was the comparison.-Porter