His father, Loyman Melancon, said the cause was metastatic cancer. Mr. Melancon spent most of his life farming oysters the old-fashioned way, working a dredge across the bottom of the shallow, brackish waters of the lower Mississippi River Delta. He captained his own 65-foot steel-bottom boat, My Melanie, named for his wife and returned every evening sagging under the weight of the day’s catch. In his prime, the ursine Mr. Melancon would lug two 120-pound sacks of oysters onto a truck. But it was lucrative, too: He’d sell 400 of those bags in a day, at up to $15 a bag, to canneries and wholesalers that shipped worldwide.

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Persons: Jules Melancon, Loyman Melancon, Melancon, Melanie Locations: Louisiana, New Orleans, Cutoff, La, Mississippi