The History of the Oysters in the Fleet Lagoon

By Neville Copperthwaite of Abbotsbury Oysters Ltd.

To many people the introduction of an oyster farm within the Fleet Lagoon will be seen as an alien activity - a new idea. But nothing could be further from the truth. Oysters are now, and always have been, synonymous with the Fleet. Let me take you on a journey down through history and you'll see what I mean. We'll start around 10,000 years BC.

If you can picture the scene - Chesil Beach is just beginning to take shape and the Fleet comes into existence, albeit somewhat longer and wider than it is today; but already the rising sea levels and relentless waves in West Bay are driving the Great Beach slowly but inevitably towards the land - to where it is today, in fact.

Oyster larvae would have found the sheltered waters of that early Fleet Lagoon most convivial for settlement - and indeed that's just what they did. They settled in their thousands. You can see the evidence for yourself by walking along the landward shore of the Fleet, where you will find a proliferation of fossilised and semi-fossilised oyster shells.

If we now travel on a few thousand years, from pre-history into the realms of our (local) early recorded history, we arrive at an eleventh-century Fleet Lagoon. King Canute has already been and gone, and has bestowed the fishing rights over the Fleet to his trusty servant Orc (What a name, Eh!).

Anyway, the point is that Orc notes ".....there is little fish in the Flete except eels, flounders, and grey mullet, but is noted for its oyster beds". So we can assume that there were substantial oyster beds still flourishing in the eleventh-century in the Fleet.

If we skip on a mere four hundred years, Orc of course is long gone, but in his wisdom he had passed the fishery rights of the Fleet on to his wife Tula, who in turn had handed them on to the Abbey at Abbotsbury.

An agreement between the Abbot and local fishermen dated 1427 concerning tax to be paid on fish, shows that two pence had to be paid to the Abbot for every 200 oysters landed, whilst a draconian six pence was due on a single salmon. The contrast would suggest that salmon was a valuable rarity whilst oysters were still common and plentiful. Things were soon to change though.

The next two hundred years saw a flurry of activity by Fleet standards. Firstly, the Abbots lost control of the fishery rights in 1543 when Henry VIII had his tantrum and dissolved the monasteries. Soon his favourite Knight, Sir Giles Strangways, bought the fishery rights (and a large part of Dorset to boot) for £1000. Incidentally, it is Sir Giles' descendants that still rule the roost today.

Secondly, in 1630 an attempt was made to drain and reclaim about 3,000 acres of the Fleet - which amounts to most of it - although the exact location of the actual dam has never been discovered. Luckily the project was doomed to failure because of seepage of sea water through the Chesil Beach, but it is quite possible that the Fleet was actually drained temporarily, although there is no record to substantiate this. In 1646 defeat was conceded by all concerned.

You will notice that there is no mention of oysters since 1427. In fact it is yet another one hundred years (1743) before an entrepreneurial Captain Lysle purchased thirty tons of seed oysters from Concall in France, for a total cost of £50..6s..6d, and deposited them in the Fleet Lagoon, adjacent to Wyke - the first attempt at oyster farming in the Fleet.

Now, the conclusion I draw from events so far is this:

The minimal but persistent fishing of oysters in the Fleet down through the ages gradually reduced stocks (and perhaps they were also dealt a blow by the attempted draining of the Fleet). In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the depletion was at such a low level that eventually oyster farming was seen as the obvious answer in order to redress the commercial/natural balance within the Fleet Lagoon! Enter our hero - Captain Lysle!

But this is by no means the end of the story. Captain Lysle must have organised a sound base for his oyster business, because it out-lived him, and remained almost into the twentieth century. In fact, it was around about this time that J. Mead Falkner was in the area researching for his famous smuggling adventure novel "Moonfleet". It is in the very first paragraph of the book that he states "The lake is good for nothing except sea fowl, herons, and oysters...".

He is, of course, referring to the Fleet Lagoon when he says "lake" so it would seem that old Lysle's oysters had a good reputation, or at the very least were well known.

However, in 1880 some bright spark in the Weymouth Port Health Department decided that Ferrybridge would be just the place to build a Fever Isolation Hospital. Well, without going into too much detail, a Fever Hospital and oyster beds do not mix and within a few years the Fleet oyster fishery business was no more.

The twentieth century arrived and progressed, and a few wild oysters colonised the Fleet as ever they did, but not in vast beds as they must have done a thousand years ago. Then, in the early 1970's, the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAAF) asked Strangways Estate for permission to conduct growing trials with a newly introduced oyster, the fast growing Pacific Oyster. Being both very proprietorial, and suspicious of anything new in those days, the Estate said - No!

Well, not to be beaten, the MAAF scientist in charge of the experiment (I do know him but you will understand if I don't name him) persuaded the Army at the Bridging Camp to turn a blind eye while seed oysters were grown in secret, just off the Bridging Hard.

The trials were extremely successful - and to quote the scientist's most unscientific description of the experiment, "they grew like rockets".

Seventeen years later, in 1987, Strangways Estates had dragged themselves kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, with a new lady at the helm (a direct descendant of our Sir Giles Strangways, no less). Being a shrewd judge of character she asked me to investigate the suitability of some sort of marine farming within the Fleet Lagoon.

And that, in a nutshell, is how Abbotsbury Oysters Farm came into being. The lady, The Honourable Charlotte Morrison, and myself went into partnership and in 1990 - one hundred years after Captain Lysle's farm ended - oysters were back once again in the Fleet.

However, there are two notable differences between Captain Lysle's oyster venture and Abbotsbury Oyster Farm. Firstly, Captain Lysle grew the European Flat Oyster, known scientifically as Ostrea edulis, whereas we grow the Pacific Oyster known scientifically as crassostrea gigas. The reasons for this are two fold - firstly the Flat Oyster takes 5 to 6 years to grow to a marketable size, twice as long as the Pacific Oyster, and the Flat Oyster is also prone to a natural disease called Bonamia, which periodically devastates stocks. The Pacific Oyster is immune to Bonamia.

Secondly, Captain Lysle grew his oysters on the sea bed, whilst we grow ours in plastic mesh bags, which are suspended on metal racks above the sea-bed. There are in fact 10,000 racks in the Fleet at the moment, supporting 40,000 bags which are needed to hold our annual production of 100 tonnes of oysters.

An interesting spin-off caused by so many racks in the Fleet is that effectively they create an artificial reef, which in turn attracts many young fish who use the reef for shelter and protection. Some conservationists don't necessarily see this as a good thing, arguing that this is not a natural occurrence - and would like to see the end of oyster operations in the Fleet.

But - whatever your views are on what is natural and what is not - I feel that history teaches us that the only thing that will put paid to oysters in the Fleet is when Chesil Beach finally reaches the shores of Wyke Regis - and cuts the Fleet off from the open sea.

Ode To An Oyster

by April Lee of Wyke Regis

Oysters lying in the deep.
Bedded down beneath the Fleet.
Above salty waters swirl.
A special one may hold a pearl.
To open you is quite a knack.
Your known as an Aphrodisiac.
With my lemon I'll embellish.
Then swallow you with such great relish.
Cockles, Mussels and Prawns we trawl.
But this Oyster is the Queen of all.
You'r lifted out with great care.
To be presented at the Summer Fayre.
So if you want a Gourmets delight.
The well bred Oyster is born in Wyke.