Pogy Boat Buffer - Next Steps

...Continued from above

For perspective, the total shrimp harvest in Louisiana is 60 million lbs. The menhaden reduction industry removes over 1 billion lbs of menhaden every year. That is billion with a B. The total amount of all recreationally harvested fish in Louisiana annually, from catfish to trout to flounder to croaker to tuna is 35 million lbs. To put it another way there are 300,000 satwater fishing license holders in Louisiana and they only harvest 3 to 4% of what the menhaden industry harvests every year. Menhaden is a public resource, it belongs to all of us and the use of this resource is completely out of balance. The industry claims that they are only taking a small amount of the fish, but this is a lie. Their average harvest for the last 10 years in Louisiana has been 1.02 billion lbs annually. The total gulf-wide biomass of menhaden has been just over 5 billion lbs, as reported by the GSMFC who is responsible for assessments of several gulf species. The industry harvests on average 20% of the TOTAL gulf biomass every year and this occurs in concentrated fashion in Louisiana. The fact is that any school of menhaden large enough to be seen by a spotter plane is targeted and harvested. They are incentivized to harvest as many fish as possible. More menhaden = more money. They will catch every accessible school of menhaden in an area and move on to the next. The menhaden hug the coast and this is why the buffer is important. The industry catches every single fish that they CAN catch. If the buffer is reduced, they will catch more menhaden.

The menhaden industry has not existed forever in its current form. Historically small amounts of menhaden were caught as bait or for other purposes, without spotter planes and without huge factory ships. The first documented harvest of menhaden by the reduction industry in Louisiana was in 1948 and they only harvested 88 million lbs. That is 7% of what was harvested last year. With spotter planes and refrigerated holds on the boats being implemented the harvest increased dramatically by the 1970s. All of the big reduction plants were built in the late 1960s. This coincides with the decline of our fishery.

The modern reduction industry consists of 2 companies with 3 plants (2 in Louisiana and one in Mississippi that fishes in Louisiana): Omega, which is owned by Canadian company Cooke Aquaculture and Daybrook, which is owned by South African aquaculture company Oceana. None of the fish they catch are used for local crawfish or crabbing bait. 100% of it is reduced to fish meal and menhaden oil. Most of that is used to feed shrimp and fish farms in other countries. These companies are vertically integrated and the business model is very simple - 1) harvest the most nutritious and vast FREE protein source in the world: marine forage like menhaden and sardines 2) use that protein to feed fish and shrimp and livestock farms to sell more valuable products globally. These companies remove the forage from our ecosystem to feed fish and shrimp farms in other countries whose products are then sold back into our market at a cheaper price than our local shrimpers and fisherman can afford to exist. Shrimping effort in Lousiana is at a historic low due to prices being bottomed out by imported farmed shrimp, for example.

Key politicians, like Jeff Landry, are bought and paid for by these global giant aquaculture companies. In the last election cycle that elected Landry to governor, these companies publicly made over $750,000 in donations. Privately there is probably even more "lobbying" going on, but at the end of the day the governor is in bed with these people that are pillaging our coast. They harvest an unlimited amount of menhaden and do not pay a cent to the people of Louisiana for it. They employ a few hundred people between 2 operations in our state, one in Abbeville and one in Empire. Other than the employment they offer very little of value in return for the billion+ lbs that they take in menhaden.

The most obvious impact from the menhaden harvest is tarpon. The tarpon were first to go missing after the reduction industry began operating and should be looked at as a major warning. Stable isotope tissue studies show that Atlantic Tarpon only eat menhaden (clupeids) when in the northern gulf for their summer feed and they require large schools. In the late 60s when the pogy harvest ramped up the tarpon started to decline. Before this, every pass in LA used to have a giant raft-like school of menhaden stretching sometimes for 10 miles all summer long. There used to be large numbers of tarpon feeding on the huge menhaden schools all summer, close to shore. In many areas like Cameron, Cypremort Point, Cocodrie and Lake Ponchartrain almost no one has seen a tarpon for over 4 decades. They are exceedingly rare to non existent now compared to the 1960s and earlier when they were common. TBy the 70s and 80s the tarpon were becoming scarce state wide and today Grand Isle tarpon anglers are moving their boats from Lousiana to Texas and Mississippi because they have more tarpon. In contrast, Texas pogy harvest dropped by 98% to under 1 million lbs after 2009 regulations went into effect banning the boats from working within a mile of any pass or jetty and in the following decade tarpon abundance in Texas (as measured by Texas parks and wildlife) doubled over the prior 3 decades. Anecdotally, people here who used to fish tarpon in Louisiana in the 50s and 60s said “they disappeared when the pogy boats showed up”. It’s too much evidence to ignore. You can have either a thriving tarpon fishery or unlimited nearshore pogy harvest, but not both. Tarpon can migrate 60 miles a day so they are the first species to tell you if there is a problem with not enough food - they simply leave and head to another state where the pogy schools exist unencumbered.

Up and down the east coast the menhaden harvest has been banned, except in the Chesapeake Bay region. Where the menhaden have recovered there is now a resurgence in their ecosystem from numbers of striped bass that people have never seen before to humpback whales returning to New York harbor. Contrast this to what is happening in the Chesapeake where osprey populations are plummeting and the striped bass fishery has collapsed. Commercial bait fishermen in the northern Chesapeake reported being able to catch zero (0) lbs of menhaden last year because the reduction industry harvested almost every single school in the bay before the fish could make it to Maryland.

It is possible to have some menhaden harvest for commercial use, but we need to prioritize our own ecosystem over the profits of two international companies. We earned the name Sportsman's Paradise because of how vibrant and productive our ecosystem was before the pogy boats came. Now we are at risk to losing that title to other states because they are doing more to conserve and protect the menhaden that feed everything else. Florida and Alabama banned purse seines completely. Mississippi and Texas have a 1 mile buffer that makes it almost impossible for the industry to fish there. Louisiana's coast is now the last state being strip mined to benefit very few people. It is the most short-sighted use of arguably our most precious public resource.

Send the ICE Agents down to Empire if you want to halt the pogy fishery

The problem is is that you’re in the state of LA. The fact that AL and MS have addressed this issue before we have really says something about those in power here.

Morally and ethically corrupt greedy politicians that have little interest in the public. A abuse of power is an understatement for all the corruption that occurs here. The only way they’ll care is if their pockets get lined. They don’t put the citizens first. They never have and they never will.

I contacted all of the representatives in this area as well as my state senator on this and not a one of them replied. Sad.

Can you give us some bona fide sources for what you say? And if it isn’t political but biological based and is is fair and balanced we will be happy to educate ourselves.

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Usually it’s a cross section of commercial interests; oyster mafia, pogy mafia, shrimp mafia.
Commission is also typically a stacked deck with commercial interest exceeding rec.
Self preservation***