A pearl-y tidbit for angelenos
October 24, 2012 § 2 Comments
Hello Creekfreaks! I miss writing about LA waterways but am much enjoying the new sights and sounds of Humboldt Bay, and my new job is promising to be very rewarding. Being bay-focused, I’m reading about oysters today, and stumbled across a little anecdote I thought you might appreciate:
Native oysters grew in some of the bays in southern California, but did not form the basis of a commercial industry. Wilcox (1898, p. 647) says: “Native oysters, small in size and of little value, are found in limited quantities at several places in southern California, but are gathered only at Bolsa, Orange County. Some attempt is being made to cultivate the California oysters in the waters between San Pedro and Wilmington, where they have long been known to exist in very limited quantities.” He also stated that production in Orange County in 1895 was 25,740 pounds (probably including shells) valued at $772; at the same time the production in San Francisco Bay was 14,701,500 pounds (shell weight) valued at $538,725 (U.S. Bur. Fish. Rept., 1898, p. 651).
A decade later, in 1906, Pacific Fisherman (October 1906, p. 23) reported the native oysters in the Grand Canal at Venice, Los Angeles County, were to be exploited commercially.
-Fish Bulletin 123, The California Oyster Industry, by Elinore M. Barrett, California Department of Fish & Game, 1963
Do you have a new blog? I love Humboldt County…… Keep us posted.
Not yet. Humboldt Baykeeper has a Facebook page, and also sends out email blasts and keeps a running update of news items on our webpage (humboldtbaykeeper.org). I may blog through that. I have a Baykeeper twitter (baykeeperjess) which you can subscribe to – I’ll start using it soon!