New Deal Accomplishment: More than 8.2 million bushels of oysters planted; an industry revived

Above: WPA workers loading oyster shells onto a barge in Biloxi, Mississippi, June 1938. Oysters start their lives as larvae in the open water and then need to attach themselves to hard surfaces, such as the shells you see above. They take about 2-3 years to reach market size. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: WPA workers on an oyster planting project near Mobile, Alabama, August 1938. The oyster industry began to fall apart in the mid-to-late 1920s--due to sewage discharge, disease, predation, and less-than-ideal harvesting practices--and so the New Deal helped many states get their oyster populations back to healthy levels. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: WPA workers planting seed oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, off Crisfield Maryland, June 1936. Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.

Above: The description for this photograph, taken in June 1938, reads: "Oyster packing sheds and general waterfront scene at Apalachicola, Fla. - due to supply of oysters being almost gone, this prosperous town would have to find other industries to employ their people were it not for WPA and their oyster planting project." Photo from the National Archives.

Above: These WPA workers are tonging for seed oysters in the shallow waters off Apalachicola (see previous photo), June 1938. The oysters will be transplanted to more productive areas. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The tonged oysters (see previous photo) are placed in a better location. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: In some areas, WPA workers used dredges to bring up even more seed oysters. This scene is from the 1938 Apalachicola oyster planting project (see previous photos). Photo from the National Archives.

Above: This ad ran in the February 25, 1943 edition of the Washington Daily News (Washington, North Carolina) newspaper. Several years earlier, the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel ran a full page story, with the dual headlines, "WPA Helping Ocracoke Fisherman to Rebuild State's Great Oyster Industry" and "Bushels of Seed Now Are Growing Big Oyster Crop" (August 21, 1938). It looks like the WPA's work paid off for the J.D. Guthrie Fish House and similar businesses. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: This is part of a much longer article in The Foley Onlooker (Foley, Alabama), March 2, 1939. Subsequent newspaper articles indicate that the WPA's work did indeed promote golden harvests for Alabama's oystermen, for example: "Before the [1940] season is ended it is estimated that 85,000 barrels of oysters will have been taken... The annual oyster catch in recent years has been helped by the WPA oyster planting project. Four years back before this work started, the oyster catch annually was in the neighborhood of only 20,000 barrels" ("Oyster Season Open, Work On Harvest Begun," The Onlooker (Foley, Alabama), September 5, 1940, p. 1. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: This is part of an editorial that was included in a comprehensive two-page story, "Shell Fish Industry 'Off the Rocks' by Returning to the Rocks," Richmond Times-Dispatch Magazine (Richmond, Virginia), March 12, 1939. It highlights another way that the WPA helped the oyster industry - by reducing an infestation of screw-borers, an oyster predator. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: The WPA's Federal Writers' Project helped compile seafood recipes for Florida. Here, we see the cover of a 2004 reprint of the WPA's work (from Creative Cookbooks in Monterey, California), and a page from the section on oyster recipes. Images scanned from a personal copy of the book.

Above: The WPA also wrote a book on oysters, part of an educational set of 30 children's books. To the left is the credit page, and to the right is one of the many illustration inside the book. The illustrations were created by Herbert J. Palmer, a WPA artist. Images scanned from a personal copy of the book.

Above: "Oyster Houses, South St. & Pike Slip," a photo by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), taken in 1937 as part of her WPA "Changing New York" series of photographs. From the Brooklyn Museum Collection.

Above: An artwork depicting an oyster house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, created by William Bicknell (1860-1947), while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1937. Image from the Boston Public Library and Wikimedia Commons.

Above: "Oyster Shuckers," an oil painting by Catherine M. Howell (1892-1975), created while she was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1933-1934. Image from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Return of the Oyster

Between 1935 and 1943, WPA workers--frequently ridiculed as lazy good-for-nothings--planted 8.2 million bushels of oysters and helped revive a dying industry. The planting of oysters also helped the environment, since oysters are filter feeders and help keep coastal waters clean.

The New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) also planted oysters, but those totals are not currently known.

It was a New Deal for oysters, the oyster industry, oyster workers, the oyster-consuming public, and the environment!