Shell Game

Early each morning last week four broad-beamed, 80-ft. oyster boats chugged into Little Peconic Bay near the end of Long Island. Over the boats' sides with a clank and a clatter, down 60 feet to the bottom of the bay, went 200-lb. iron dredges; up they came with 12 to 15 bushels of oysters apiece. On deck, nimble-fingered crewmen sorted them, according to size, for the Atlantic City and Philadelphia markets. Restaurants there sell oysters the year round. Elsewhere in the U.S. it will be another week before "Oysters-R-in-season" again.*

Boss of the four Peconic Bay boats is burly (6 ft., 210 Ibs.) "Captain" Royal Toner, 56, whose 6,000 acres of oyster beds off the shores of Long Island, Connecticut, Delaware and California make him one of the biggest U.S. oystermen. The industry expects to gross about $80 million this year, and Toner's share, on upwards of 50 million oysters, will be about $1,000,000.

Cleaned Out. A handy man with books and boats alike, Captain Toner was once a stenographer for John Wanamaker, later a bookkeeper for an oysterman on Manhattan's waterfront. When Toner was 21, he and a fellow employee named James U. Lester decided to be oyster wholesalers. Toner took his savings of $3,000 and tried to make a killing in the stock market, was cleaned out, but managed to borrow $1,500 and got into the business anyway.

After four years, Toner and Lester scraped up $30,000 to buy a small Long Island oyster bed. Up at 3 every morning, Toner hawked his wares in the Fulton Fish Market while Lester supervised production. In 1922 they bought new beds in Delaware Bay, in 1929 plunked out $600,000 for Long Island's Greenport Oyster Co. and its 4,000 acres. When the fame of their "Seapure" oysters spread to the West Coast, Toner and Lester bought oyster beds near San Francisco.

Clean Up. Unlike the old days, when oysters were dredged up without regard to pedigree or conservation (1880's output was 155 million lbs. v. last year's estimated 80 million), oystering is now as scientific as farming. In the spring, just before the spawning season, Toner (Lester died in 1945) dredges up oysters from Peconic Bay and drops them in more sheltered beds off Connecticut so that their offspring won't be washed away. "After that," he says, "it's like raising tomatoes, you've got to be so careful."

When the seedlings are a few months old, they are transplanted to grounds where the water is full of marine vegetation (an oyster will guzzle about 160 quarts of water a day to get its food), and once a year they are moved to new beds until ready for market at the ripe old age of five. With long-handled mops, Toner's men sweep beds clear of starfish,* at night patrol them against poachers.

Despite his early bruising in the stock market, Toner still plays it in one way. He uses it to gauge how good the oyster business will be each year. Says he: "When stocks go up, people eat more oysters. And lately the market's been acting just fine."

* Contrary to popular belief, oysters are edible in any month. But some states frown on their sale, as a conservation measure, during non-R months when oysters are spawning.

* A starfish wraps itself around an oyster, and exudes a fluid which stuns the oyster; then the starfish can force open the shell and eat the meat.

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