More light upon the problem of the Oyster’s nutrition

Modern oyster culture began its development in the second part of the nineteenth century. Beginning in Europe it gradually spread over all the world’s oyster regions. Locally oyster cultural methods acquired a high degree of technical specialisation, recently even including chemical control of oyster diseases. A steadily increasing stream of scientific and technical papers, dealing with oyster biology and oyster culture, accompanied this development, and already numbers several thousands of publications. If closely related industries, such as cattle-breeding, horticulture, and agriculture, are compared with it, it is clear that one of the basic problems of oyster culture must be the oyster’s nutrition. Without a detailed knowledge of this subject it seems hardly possible to control effectively the oyster’s growth and fattening. Therefore it will surprise many to learn, that two of the most prominent of our oyster biologists summarize their knowledge about this subject as follows: ""At present we must confess our ignorance of the principles of mollusc nutrition and consequently our inability to suggest a practical solution of the problem of forced feeding and production of fat oysters at will."" (GALTSOFF 1942).