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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Oyster predation?
Message-ID: <1450@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Jun-87 12:33:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.1450
Posted: Fri Jun 19 12:33:42 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Jun-87 04:16:43 EDT
References: <13496@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <396@uhnix2.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 26
Xref: mnetor sci.bio:457 sci.misc:362

In article <396@uhnix2.UUCP> bchso@uhnix2.UUCP (Dan Davison) writes:
> I lived in Oyster Bay, NY for a few years.  They now harvest clams instead of
> oysters because the starfish population explosion finished off the oysters.
> BTW, the oystermen thought that by cutting up starfish and throwing the
> pieces overboard they were killing the starfish off...

This sounds much like an apocryphal story to me.  Does anyone have a reference
to support this?

I remember hearing this when I was a kid on Long Island.  But in order for
oystermen to significantly increase the population of starfish, they would
have to produce a large proportion of regenerating starfish.  It would be
readily observable and obvious, and they'd stop.  It strikes me as more likely
that the pieces got eaten, and that there was a reproductive bloom through
ordinary sexual means.

It's also possible that the oysters declined because of a change in bottom
conditions, pollution, etc.
--

"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."   Samuel Beckett
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh