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September - October 2018
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boatingonthehudson.com
The Wonderful
Oyster
Is Coming Back Strong
Imagine what the mouth of the Hudson
River looked like with oyster reefs covered
with these huge oysters everywhere!
byJohnH.Vargo,Publisher
Henry Hudson described the oysters in
the old beds as being as big as dinner
plates. Jeff wonders what size his dinner
plate was. Nina will get an intern right on
that.
Tom Lake (DEC naturalist) says the
Middle Archaic period c. 5,000 years
ago (give or take a millennium) was
considered to have been the optimum
salinity for oysters in the Lower Hudson,
but the biggest one he has from then is
only 7 inches (17.78cm). He is further
researching but this may be bigger than
those were!