When the first settlers planted their small colony at Jamestown the tidewater rivers and bays teemed with many kinds of fish and seafood. Varieties which soon appeared on the colonists' tables included sheepshead, shad, sturgeon, herring, sole, white salmon, bass, flounder, pike, bream, perch, rock, and drum; as well as oysters, crabs, and mussels.

The day after the colonists reached Virginia, April 27 1607, George Percy observed that the oysters were large and tasty:

We came to a place where they [the Indians] had made a great fire, and had beene newly a rosting oysters. When they perceived our comming, they fled away to the mountaines, and left many of the oysters in the fire. We eat some of the oysters, which were very large and delicate in taste.

The following day, April 28, Percy noted that some of the oysters had pearls:

... we got good store of mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thicke as stones. Wee opened some, and found in many of them pearles.

The Jamestown planters who wrote accounts of the new colony commented on the abundance and variety of fish and shellfish in the rivers and creeks near the "capital citty." It seems rather surprising, therefore, that so many colonists died during the first autumn "of meere famine," as reported by Percy, when the James River teemed with fish, oysters, and crabs.

Captain Gabriel Archer, Gentleman, mentioned a seven foot sturgeon which was caught on June 13 1607: "Our Admiralls men gatt a sturgeon of 7 foote long which Captayne Newport gave us." George Percy commented on the excellence of the sturgeon in the James River:

The artifacts shown were excavated at Jamestown. These objects and many others found, are reminders of a day when fish and shellfish lived in abundance in every creek, river, and bay, in Tidewater Virginia.

There are many branches of this river, which runne flowing through the woods with great plentie of fish of all kindes; as for sturgeon, all the world cannot be compared to it....

John Smith and William Strachey also listed the delicious and palatable varieties of fish and shellfish which were found in Virginia waters, revealing that seafood was an important source of food for the colonists. At times, especially during the early years, it was one of the main sources.