. Commercial fisheries review. Fisheries; Fish trade. March 1961 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES REVIEW 15 A PRACTICAL CHEMICAL METHOD FOR KILLING MUSSELS AND OTHER OYSTER COMPETITORS By Clyde L. MacKenzie, Jr.* BACKGROUND During the summer of 1959 there was an unusually heavy set of mussels (Mytilus edulis) on many oyster beds along the Connecticut shore of Long Islsind Sound. The mussels threat - ened to smother oysters, especially young ones, and to damage the beds by accumulating on them large amounts of silt. As a result, several oyster companies requested information on how to kill the mussels eith
. Commercial fisheries review. Fisheries; Fish trade. March 1961 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES REVIEW 15 A PRACTICAL CHEMICAL METHOD FOR KILLING MUSSELS AND OTHER OYSTER COMPETITORS By Clyde L. MacKenzie, Jr.* BACKGROUND During the summer of 1959 there was an unusually heavy set of mussels (Mytilus edulis) on many oyster beds along the Connecticut shore of Long Islsind Sound. The mussels threat - ened to smother oysters, especially young ones, and to damage the beds by accumulating on them large amounts of silt. As a result, several oyster companies requested information on how to kill the mussels either on the beds or during transplanting operations. Meanwhile, to save the crop of oysters, one company used deckhands to remove mussels manually as the oysters were transplanted. Dredged-up bottom material, which averaged 332 mussels per bushel, could be processed by deckhands in about 17 minutes per bushel at a labor cost of cents. When mussels averaged only 156 per bushel, the material could be processed in 6 to 7 minutes, at a labor cost of 15 to cents per bushel. Working at this rate, however, deckhands removed only about 57 percent of the mussels; this means that about 140 mussels per bushel were left in bottom material in which the original count was Fig. 1 - Deck hands at culling board on a boat removing mussels manually from oysters and other dredge d-up material. Later in the summer, after mussels grew larger, about 80 percent of them were removed by hand (fig. 1). It is estimated that to remove 95 to 100 percent of mussels averaging 332 per bushel, deckhands would have to spend approximately 48 minutes, at a labor cost of $ per bushel. ?Fishery Biologist, Biological Laboratory, Division of Biological Research, U. S . Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Milford, Conji 3, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE SEP. NO. 615. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readabi
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