Reprint from Florida Grower
"Farmers of the Sea" Add to Florida's Wealth
Agriculture and Fishing are Cousins, Both Dependent on Nature in Providing Man's Food Supply and Riches
By R. L. (Bob) Dowling
State Supervisor of Conservation

Florida's economic welfare depends on two fundamental resources-land and water. One without the other is unthinkable. Science and government have given much to our soils and the crops they produce. Yet we know the land would be barren and our peninsula a desert without water.
Within the boundary lines of the state there are more than 35,000,000 acres of land. Within these lines there are more than 7,000,000 acres of inland and coastal waters, all within the jurisdiction of Florida laws.
The land produces plant and animal life for food, shelter, and raiment. The same three essentials for human family likewise are produces, in varying proportion, but in much greater variety, in our state's waters. We venture the assertion that for every land plant and animal which yields a product for man, there are two in our waters. Millions of acres of land are idle and not producing; not and acre of our water is without production.
We build terraces to prevent soil erosion, using government experts who are readily obtained. We rotate our crops for diversification and to further enhance the fertility of the land, again using free government service. The commercial fertilizers we buy are inspected, and each bag bears an official tag to insure its content. When we plant our seeds, if we need financial help, there is a government loan awaiting us. Then, when the harvest is ready, we find markets and lower transportation rates for agriculture and horticulture, all due to a beneficent government- a constant guardianship.
All this is well and good! Not for a moment would we disparage the noblest of efforts, efforts which have resulted in agriculture and horticulture being as rich as they are; supreme in their place. A recent survey reveals that 118 federal agencies and bureaus are at work in Florida, about forty of them striving to do something for agriculture and the tiller of the soil. How many are helping the fishing industry; the man who farms under the sea?
Don't scoff! We're talking about 100,000 citizens of Florida, the forgotten worker if you please. We are talking about the an who last year produced 100,000,000 pounds of food in Florida; a crop of diversified seafoods which for the most part did not have to be planted, fertilized, or cultivated. Florida's conservation department, with its extremely limited funds, was the only agency which presumed to lend a helpful hand.
It should be noted here that the forgotten fisherman is not the only one who reaped a harvest of seafoods. A million tourists went fishing and took and uncounted toll, license free, from Florida's natural fishing wealth. Another estimated 100,000 Florida families also went fishing once or twice a week. These took from the sea and inland salt waters uncounted millions of pounds of food, without license or penalty, for home consumption.
The sea yields for Florida a rich harvest of food. Certainly there is no other single attraction, unless it be our climate, which brings so many tourists. The state's conservation program regulates and taxes the commercial fisherman, who pays for all but a fractional part of the cost. His production is a matter of record, but the other production is likened unto the tail that wags the dog. It has not been measured. The amount of wealth taken from our state's waters by the visitors and the homefolks in their recreation and fishing for home consumption is an unknown quantity. Neither the poundage nor the dollars and cents value is known. But we do know the sum total would reach a stupendous figure if it could be counted and added to the commercial catch.
There is nothing new in conservation except the method of applying it. The Japanese and Chinese have been planting and cultivating oysters for more than 3,000 years. In Florida we are too much inclined to look upon fishing merely as a sport which flourishes for the visitor. Fishing is essentially a source of food supply in most countries, as well as in some of our states.
We believe that sports fishing brings four times the monetary gain to Florida that is returned by commercial fishing. Both subsist on the same species of fish, with few exceptions, and both fish the same waters. On the other hand, the necessity for saving and propagating sprang from the commercial branch, and we believe it is in their favor when we say that the commercial fisherman also realizes what a catastrophe there would be in Florida's economic structure if the conservation department should allow all the fish to become depleted. Half of the tourists would immediately go elsewhere, and the commercial fisherman would then have lost his livelihood.
Pliny, the famous Greek naturalist, wrote about oysters being cultivated nearly 1000 years before the coming of Christ. Benjamin Franklin, while on a visit to England in 1726, tells in his letters of the English planting oysters in the rivers near the cities to "fatten" them.
Florida fishing industry produces in commercial volume nearly seventy varieties of seafoods, oysters being only one. It is doubtful if a single item of fish life could not be replenished if depleted, planted, or hatched domestically if scarce, or their production increased by applying conservation. Certainly their distribution might be effected from fruitful waters into other waters. Farming under the sea is just as diversified.
Conservation, as applied in Florida, is new. Only the surface has yet been scratched. The potential yield is much greater than imagined; the possibilities are almost unlimited. No other state is so generously blessed by Nature. It is our wish that we might make Florida citizens conscious of these facts and awaken them to a true appreciation of what there is to be accomplished.
We may be pardoned for insisting there is a parallel as between land farming and farming under the sea. Let us see, briefly, if the waters of Florida are not just as prolific as the land.
Commercial fishing in Florida was the first industry of the white men. No one knows how many centuries the Indians along our coast subsisted on fish and oysters before the white man came, over 400 years ago, Agriculture is nothing like as old in Florida. The land and the water are brother and sister, and agriculture and fishing are first cousins.
For every hog we butchered in Florida last year some fisherman caught a shark worth $2 to $5.50 each. We can safely estimate what these sharks returned to the fishermen, but we haven't accounted for all the leather that came from their skins, all the oil that was rendered from shark livers, the watch chains made of shark teeth, novelties from their eyes, or the walking canes turned from the cartilage bone in their backs. Shark oil goes to the family where the under-nourished want to return to their robust health; to the poultryman who feeds chicks for faster growth and hens for more eggs. Shark oil, in another grade of refining, also goes to the dog owner and to the cat fancier, who use it for these animals because its content is beneficial. Shark oil is produced in Florida, in many other grades. It has numerous uses on the farm.
For every cabbage we trucked across the state line last year, fishermen tool a sponge in our salt waters, each worth $1 to $5 when dressed. Who knows how many farm women utilized a Florida sponge in her kitchen work while her husband washed his car with another? The medical profession could hardly get along without sponges. Florida produces 95 per cent of the nation's sponge crop, and at Tarpon Springs is located the

largest sponge market in the world. Another large one is located in Key West.
For every five pounds of beef the packers bought in Florida last year, fishermen caught a pound of mullet. These staple fish, tasty, healthful, easily cooked or preserved, brought the fishermen less than 3 cents a pound. Florida fish are staple foods for Florida citizens and can be had fresh daily. No place in Florida is further than sixty-three miles from salt water.
For every pound of string beans and tomatoes produced in Florida last year there was a menhaden fish caught and processed for oil and fertilizer meal and feedstuffs, much of it manufactured in Florida-for Florida agriculture.
For every orange and grapefruit plucked last year, we must have surely caught two fishes. Some of the fertilizer the growers disked into the earth beneath the trees came from Florida fish, manufactured in a Florida plant.
For every dozen eggs produced on Florida farms last year there was a pail of oysters, and for every fryer there was a can of clams. For every turkey there was a quart of scallops, and for every quart of milk there remained enough seafood delicacies for a stew.
For every ton of sugarcane there must have been a yard of shell under the wheels of the truck which hauled it to the sugar mill or the syrup vats. Incidentally, there is no particle of waste in an oyster. The shell sometimes is more valuable for planting new oyster bars than the seed oysters. Hundreds of acres have been planted by the conservation department in the last two years.
As a healthful, delectable, nourishing food, oysters have no superior in food elements or mineral content. After the oyster is eaten, all of it, the shells may be ground for mixing with charcoal and fed to laying hens as an essential part of their daily feed.
Huge dredges at coastal points along Florida's 4,400-mile-long shoreline produce millions of tons of shell for road work and other construction. This shell goes to every community in Florida and its production gives employment at times to surplus farm labor.
For every pound of Florida-grown tobacco there was a pound of shrimp, and for every Florida-made cigar there must have been a trout. For every dress made of Florida raw material there was a dozen buttons carved from shell. For every wall an ornamental seashell inside the house for decorating the floor or mantel.
The food pages of Florida newspapers display snapper and grouper steaks as well as beef, pork, and poultry. Shellfish are advertised along with Florida vegetables. Authorities tell us the food contents greater in fish and shellfish than it is in most of the other staples. Menus carry many delectable dishes prepared from products of the sea, and cook books are filled with recipes on how to tempt the jaded appetite with seafoods.
The production of seafoods is adversely affected by droughts and floods, by storms and bad weather, the same as field crops. Providential disasters reduce the supply, demoralize markets, and reduce employment, with economic losses inflicted on all Florida, just as is the result on land and agriculture. Insect parasites plague the oysterman and take their toll at sea, just as they do in the cotton and potato fields.
Mother Nature gave us the land and the waters, both fruitful; and while she stocked the land with trees and flowers and wildlife, she was more than generous with her gift of fish life upon which we yet depend for much food and recreation. It behooves us as a thrifty people, and as a provident state government, to cherish this storehouse of natural wealth.
With the present arrangement of things and with no other agency to do the conservation work so badly needed, we invite the friendly support and cooperation of every citizen and of every visitor. Your conservation department should be supported financially and morally if it is to accomplish the amount of good it has set about to accomplish.