re: This Pogie Hearing Tomorrow... You Baws Need to Come or Email the LDWF!

The industrial-scale menhaden fishing allowed by Louisiana isn’t welcome in other Gulf states. Why? Is it politics or stupidity?

Florida and Alabama have banned it entirely. Mississippi won’t allow it within a mile of its shores. Texas has half-mile and one-mile buffers and a strict catch limit that have effectively killed the industry in the western Gulf.

As for the East Coast, only Virginia allows it now, albeit with ever-tightening catch limits and harsh penalties when the industry breaks the rules.

But in Louisiana, the pogie industry has free rein. We have dozens of rules for its other commercial fisheries, but menhaden ships can fish where they want and take as much as they want.

Even by the industry’s own estimates, the unrestricted haul is immense. About a billion pounds of menhaden are caught in Louisiana waters each year, making it by far the biggest fishery in the state and the Gulf by weight.

Omega, which does not publicly disclose its fishing data, says it keeps bycatch below 5% of their total catch.

So if Omega is hauling in a billion pounds of fish from Louisiana waters, that 5% of bycatch is 50 million pounds of our trout and redfish.

That’s 15 times larger than the state’s combined commercial catch of tuna, mackerel, and snapper.

Meanwhile, the LDWF is restricting the recreational sector's bag limits and slot sizes. Would we need to do that if we left that 50 million pounds of trout and redfish in the water along with the billion pounds of bait fish for them???

This is nonsense.

Just one more thing Louisiana is dead last on. And their plea that they'll lose 90 jobs? Since when is the LDWF in the economic development business? The LEWF website says, "The Commission is charged with the control and supervision of the wildlife of the state, including all aquatic life." Nothing about jobs.

Follow the money, baws.