2680

ARTICLE 72

	136. Annual report of commissioners.	Advisory Committee on Oysters.
	137. Conservation Commission to increase productivity of bars.	158. Appointment; duties.
	138. Exemption of bars from oyster tak-	Reserved Areas.
	ing.
	139. Superintendent of natural oyster bars.	159. Power of conservation commission;
	140. Purchase and distribution of shells	notice; reopening of area; penalty.
	and materials.	160. Permit to catch and remove seed
	141. Control of state fishery force.	oysters; season; transplanting; cer-
	142. Limit of expenditures.	tificate; expense, how borne.
	143. Description of location of leased	161. How, when and by whom oysters may
	ground in indictment.	be caught upon reserved areas; tax;
	144. How location may be proved.	certificate; inspection and culling;
	145. Productiveness of natural beds to be	when open to public; penalties.
	increased.	162. Disposition of tax.
	146. Superintendent of natural oyster beds. 147. Purchase and distribution of shells.	163. Conservation commission to select and reserve natural beds, etc., for oyster
	148. Control of state fishery force.	cultivation; closing and reopening of such area; tax; transplanting;
	149. Limit of expenditures.	special license.
	150. Survey and designation of clam rocks.	164. Experimental area; penalty.
	151. Rocks not to be leased; treated as	165-167. State experimental oyster farm.
	natural oyster beds.	168. Boats to guard reserved areas, when
	152-156. Certain of the oyster laws made	closed and during current season
	applicable to Worcester County;	when reopened.
	leasing certain bottoms; fees, etc.	169. Reports to General Assembly of prog-
	137. Boat to be rented, to guard bottoms	ress of replenishing natural beds,
	of Wicomico river.	etc., under "Reserved Area" law.

Tonging.

An. Code, 1924, sec. 1. 1912, sec. 1. 1904, sec. 1. 1894, ch. 380, sec. 1. 1900, ch. 380.

1910, ch. 413, sec. 1 (p. 205). 1920, ch. 680. 1927, ch. 463, sec. 1:

1933, ch. 515.

1. Any resident of this State between the ages of fourteen and sixty-
five desiring to catch oysters with rakes or tongs for sale in any of the
waters of this State shall first obtain by application to the Clerk of the
Circuit Court for the county wherein he may reside or the Clerk of the
Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore City, a separate license for every
person to be employed on such boat, and such license shall have effect from
the first day of September, in the year which it may have been obtained,
to the fifteenth day of April, inclusive, next succeeding; provided that any
laws either local or public, now in effect or which may become in effect
curtailing the open season provided above, such local or public general laws
shall prevail, except in Talbot County and in the waters of the Choptank
River used in common by the residents of Talbot and Dorchester Counties.
Such license shall not authorize the taking or catching of oysters in any
creek, cove, river, inlet, bay or sound within the limits of any county other
than that wherein the license shall have been granted, except that the resi-
dents of Baltimore City and other residents of the State duly licensed shall
be permitted to tong for oysters in the waters of Chesapeake Bay and
Potomac River on such bars which are not specifically reserved in this
Article for the exclusive use of any county; and that the boundaries of
the counties on navigable waters shall be strictly construed so as not to
permit the residents of either county to take or catch oysters beyond the
middle of the dividing channel; provided, that nothing in this section shall