If one only looks to the conduct of some of those who have been engaged in our oyster fisheries, the reason for their present defective state will be readily apparent.  The Fisheries Commissioners well express it when they state that “If a person takes up ground only for the purpose of collecting and selling whatever oysters he finds upon it, and bestows no care in providing for the continuity of the supply, that ground must cease to be productive.”  And apart from this it will be found that even when every effort has been made to provide for continuous supply, yet the matter is by no means easy.

The truth is the oyster fisheries have been managed in a happy-go-lucky way.  There has been but little care taken in their conservation, and the inevitable result is that the winnings, as the official figures show, are rapidly failing.  The same thing is not peculiar to Australia, however, and has happened everywhere else where the same careless policy has been pursued.  We have, then, a grain of comfort from the fact that it is not confined to us.  In our own case the Fisheries Commissioners have repeatedly called attention to the need for certain legislative reform in connection with our oysteries.  They assert, in fact, that “it is absolutely imperative that our oyster beds and deposits must be regulated on quite a different system to that which obtains under the existing law.”

Mr. Saville Kent, who has been investigating the cause of failure in connection with the oyster fisheries of Victoria, not so long ago, has made some interesting recommendations.  The principle of his system is to establish on selected spots, in the neighbourhood of the formerly most productive natural oyster grounds, small Government reserves, whereon stocks of oysters shall be laid down and carefully cultivated for breeding purposes.  He points out that the capacity of oysters for breeding is greatly augmented when they are collected together in a small space, in comparison with that of equal numbers thinly scattered over my extensive area.  Each reserve in this way constitutes a prolific breeding centre for stocking the surrounding waters, and by this means alone the process of restoring the natural beds is quickly accelerated.

Indeed, he is particularly careful to draw attention to the fact that in the previously attempted establishment of artificial oyster fisheries a prominent error was in working too large areas.  One or two acres intelligently cultivated can be made to produce far more substantial results than a very large area under inefficient management, and at much less expenditure of time and money.  A vast amount of money has been expended in different localities on the Victorian coast for the purpose of developing the oyster fisheries.  In the great majority of cases, however, the site selected was unsuitable for such a purpose, and the mode of culture adopted impracticable and inefficient.  For instance, one place was the recipient of a vast amount of sedimentary deposits.  Here he found that they had surrounded the chosen areas with fences of great height and strength, and closely wattled, for the purpose of catching and retaining the young oyster brood.  Instead of this, however, they had simply acted as “catch-pits,” which had accumulated soft oozy mud to the depth of several feet, and a few dead oyster shells were the only result.