Little Old Canarsie

The shellfish are on the table behind the Boegle’s catch for the day after fishermen returned from Jamaica Bay and points east. John Denton

Blues And Shellfish And A Million Dollar Industry In Old Canarsie

This is about a once thriving business of about a million dollars a year which gave employment to about one thousand families whose men and women were making their livelihood in the fishing and shellfish industry such as oysters, clams and mussels.

The men, known as baymen or clam diggers, went out on Jamaica Bay to bring their catches to the dealers they worked for. The wives would get paid by the various dealers to open the soft shell clams and string them on a cord with twenty-five on a bunch. Some of the men would open the oyster of the shell for the dealer to take to the market. They lost out when the N.Y.C. Board of Health banned taking any shellfish out of Jamaica Bay waters due to pollution caused by the city’s sewer system that emptied into the lovely waters. Swimming was also banned beginning January 1, 1920.

In 1923 the city pumped sand from the bay and closed up most of the nearby creeks coming in from the bay. There was Sands Bay Creek along Ave. N from E.98th St. and Steamboat of St. Jude’s Place. Then “Indian Creek” which came in from the bay just about at the spot where the brick building was on Canarsie Park Baseball Field. It ran between East 88th Street and East 87th Street to about a thousand feet south of Avenue M.

The other creeks filled in at the time were “Flat Creek” “Irish Creek” and “John’s Creek” between Bergen Beach and Barren Island, which became Floyd Bennett Field.

Photo from Canarsie Historical Society/Merlis collection