OYSTER FEAST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 6, 5 December 1932, Page 4

OYSTER FEAST

ANCIENT RITUAL. COLCHESTER CEUEM ON Y. The Colchester Oyster Feast took place on the first Thursday in November, when Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught were the principal guests. At the opening of the season the Mayor of Colchester fixes the date of the feast and dredges the first oysters. When these have lieen tasted, the company assembled follows the ancient custom of eating gingerbread and drinking gin. Returning home after such feasts, connoisseurs regale their envious families with astonishing tales of the number and quality of the oysters they have consumed unharmed. But in the business of eating oysters how many people give a thought to the many interesting processes of oyster cultivation? asks W. B. Jepson in the Sunday Observer. Oysters in Britain, the “natives” dredged from about the coasts, are most carefully preserved, not only from contamination but from their natural enemies living in the sea. Much expenditure of money and time has been devoted for years to oyster breeding. For example, it has long been known that oysters.change their sex from time to time, depending upon conditions of -environment. This change is common to all varieties; the oysters are female for a short time, and then male. One oyster kept under observation at the London Zoo changed its sex no fewer than four times in thirteen months. ,

Recent experiments by marine biologists have marked a definite advance in the culture of oysters. Brackish rivers having suitable mud beds have been reserved that oysters may there breed undisturbed save by the dredgers. EXTENSIVE OYSTER RESEARCH. Since 1921 oyster fisheries in England have steadily declined because the beds were ravaged Try a mortality which seemed to baffle every investigation. Though there has been no unusual mortality since, oysters have been fewer; hence these experiments on their breeding habits and conditions. This oyster research is a net spread very wide, practical results being the outcome of years of patient study. Much has been discovered by the examination of the principal beds at the “spatting” or breeding season. For a plentiful fall of spat, heat and tranquillity of the water are essential: cold and stormy weather at this critical time results in poor landings' of oysters in the ensuing years.

In early summer the female oyster’s body contains some two million eggs, which in duo season are emitted as the grey spat. This rises in clouds to the surface of the water. The embryo oyster soon swims away, and, furnished with its row of brush-like legs, fastens itself upon some hard substance on the bottom, such as rock or shell. Probably, under natural conditions, not more than one oyster in a million comes safely to anchor, but once safely anchored the little creature discards its legs, now superfluous, and adheres for life to its rock or shell until man steps in with his dredger.

The latter fate overtakes the oyster when it is three or four years old. Throughout tlie year immature oysters are dredged nt the fisheries to he submitted to bacteriological examination to preclude contamination from sewage. Experiment has shown that, if the water is very cold when this spat is emitted, the cloud sinks to the bottom and the tiny oysters die.

“A GOLDEN SPAT.” Should fine weather supervene, however, the cloud spreads far and wide over rocks and .shells—“a golden spat” it is called. The oyster is, indeed, a curious creature, for it has both sex glands in the same body, has no eyes and no cars. Though it responds to environment chiefly through sound waves, it would not ho alarmed, for example, hv gunfire; it would merely he sensitive to the vibrations. The most serious foe that British oysters have to reckon with is the ray, which consumes them not by the dozen, but by the thousand. He smashes the shell by a vigorous blow of his tail, and swallows the contents with enormous gusto. Fortunately he is easily outwitted by surrounding the oyster beds with a fringe of small twigs, which simple defence lie is unable to penetrate.