It's not the dredges that are over harvesting, it is the number of licenses.
Before dredging, there was probably 75 or so boats.
After the dredging was made legal, the number was over 200 licenses.
It is too easy to dredge.
The tong fishermen caught their 15 sacks a day.
But trippling the number of boats really hurt.
They let them dredge, hoping that they would roll more oysters, making them grow better and kill the mussels.
But easy money brought in too many more boats.
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