A Brief History of the Louisiana Oyster Industry

Exploitation of oyster resources has occurred for thousands of years, dating from at least 2,000 B.C. Evidence of oyster use can also be found in the numerous shell middens formed by Native Americans along coastlines of the United States. In Louisiana, early French settlers were reported to have harvested oysters and as oysters rose in popularity, their collection, sale, and distribution also expanded.

In the mid 1840s, Croatian-Slavonian immigrants moved to Louisiana and began fishing for oysters in the rich estuarine waters adjacent to the Mississippi River below New Orleans. Through careful observation and year of experience, the fishermen realized that an abundance of oysters grew on the eastern side of the river. They also began moving oysters from overcrowded reefs on the east side to areas on the west side where salinity was more favorable, current more steady, and food was plentiful. These oysters grew to a more round-oval shape, matured quicker, and developed tastier meat. The oystermen gather the seed oysters, plant them in a favorable spot, allow the seed to grow into mature, market-size oysters, and harvest the crop. While the Slavonians were developing the oyster industry in estuaries near the Mississippi River, others, such as the Cajuns, were beginning to do the same in coastal areas farther to the west.

This cultivation of oysters has developed over the years into a partnership between the state and private oystermen through the use of both public seed grounds and privately leased state water bottoms. Oystermen lease waterbottoms from the state for $2.00 per acre per year and use that area as a place to grow oysters for market. In most cases, oystermen travel to the public grounds, dredge the seed onto their boat (called a lugger), and transport the seed to their lease where it is washed overboard by large water hoses. After allowing the seed to grow (1-2 years), they return to the lease and dredge the mature oysters onto the deck, cull away dead shell and fouling (attached) organisms, and place the oysters in sacks. Each sack is then tagged with information such as harvester name, date, and location of harvest, before being taken to market.

A Louisiana oyster lugger, the Capt. Pete Vujnovich

The method of oyster harvest has also evolved over the years. It began with the oystermen hand-picking the oysters from reefs, with harvests limited by depth of the water, weather, and physical strains hand-picking placed on the body. The early immigrants collected seed oysters, placed them on skiffs, and rowed or sailed to favorable areas. Once in a favorable area, they painstakingly “planted” the oysters one by one with enough space in-between to allow the oysters room to grow. They soon realized that a fish, which was abundant in coastal waters, was a voracious predator of their young oysters and they took great effort in protecting their crop. They enclosed the oysters with wooden fences in order to keep the black drum (Pogonias cromis) away and also to keep others from poaching their crop. Soon, oystermen developed oyster tongs (likely from two garden rakes) with which to collect oysters while standing on the boat.

Black Drum (Pogonias cromis)

The modern method for harvesting oysters, the dredge, was developed by a Croatian fisherman in 1905. The dredge involved using a V-shaped iron frame with a 1-meter long ring-mesh bag towed behind the boat. This method is still used today in all areas of the state except in Calcasieu and Sabine Lake where tonging is the only legal method of harvesting oysters.

The leasing of water bottoms began in the 1850s when oystermen leased areas from the parishes. However, when the Louisiana Oyster Commission (predecessor to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries) was formed in 1902, oystermen began leasing water bottoms from the state. The first official state lease was granted in November1902 to Joseph R. Brown of Port Eads, Louisiana. His lease was located on the west side of the river in what was once Whale Bay (exact location of Whale Bay is unknown today due to coastal erosion). Today there are thousands of leases encompassing hundreds of thousands of acres along the coast.

The economics of harvesting oysters has changed greatly over time as well. Around the turn of the century, oystermen sold oysters by the barrel for $3.00 to $4.00. This unit of measure is still used today to describe the amount of seed oysters a fisherman is collecting for transplanting on his lease. This barrel equals roughly two modern sacks of oysters, and sacks sell today for anywhere between $10.00 and $20.00. However, the law of supply and demand helps to determine prices and prices were as low as $5.00 per sack in 1973 to as high as $28.00 per sack in 1992.

The Louisiana oyster industry is one of the most successful oyster fisheries in the country and, through proper management of the public oyster resource, its continued success appears evident. Effective management of the state’s seed grounds involves several techniques including cultch planting and freshwater diversions. Adding freshwater to a system drives out oyster predators that need higher salinity waters to survive. Oyster larvae need hard, clean surfaces to attach to in order to survive. From time to time, the state will plant cultch material (usually old shell or limestone rock) on the public seed grounds to increase the available substrate on which larvae can settle. This is one of the most effective management techniques employed today that helps to ensure Louisiana’s oyster resource is stable and strong for years to come.

REFERENCES

DUGAS, R. J., E. A. JOYCE, AND M. E. BERRIGAN. 199???. History and status of the oyster, Crassostrea virginica, and other molluscan fisheries of the U. S. Gulf of Mexico. NOAA Technical Report. NMFS 217:187-210.

PAUSINA, B. V. 1970. Louisiana oyster culture. Pages 29-34 in J. W. Avault Jr., E. Boudreaux, and E. Jaspers (eds.) Proceedings of the first annual workshop: World Mariculture Society. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

PAUSINA, R. 1988. An oyster farmer’s perspective to the past, the present, and the future of the Louisiana oyster industry. Journal of Shellfish Research. 7(3):531-534.

VUJNOVICH, M. M. 1974. Yugoslavs in Louisiana. Pelican Publishing Company. Gretna, Louisiana. 412 p.

WICKER, K. M. 1979. The development of the Louisiana oyster industry in the 19th century. Louisiana State University. Baton Rouge, Masters thesis, 214 p.

ZACHARIE, F. C. 1897. The Louisiana oyster industry. Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission. Volume XVII. Washington, D. C. 297-304.