Gulf menhaden management should include a harvest cap and the agreed upon half-mile buffer zone
This Down on the Dock column is long overdue.
The subject concerns all outdoorsmen. Yes, fishermen, hunters among the main user groups, but it’s more about the fishing and hunting.
What often gets overlooked in any discussion about these matters is just how different we are in the United States — note, this is not about “America” — when it comes to our fish and game, because all of the “Americas” don’t take the same stance as our forefathers did 250 years ago.
So, in this approaching celebration of our country’s independence, it’s time to make this point again.
Our game — deer, bears, rabbits (you get the idea) — and our fish, no matter where they swim, belong to us, as opposed to the mostly European belief that game belong to the landowning gentry.
What should happen, and often does — but not always — is that we hire folks to properly manage our game and fish. That’s accomplished mostly at the ballot box, by electing folks who we can trust to put in place qualified and knowledgeable people to staff the governmental agencies charged with overseeing our game and fish and the land and waters in which they inhabit.
Our resources
Let’s be straight about this: governors don’t own our fish and game, nor do presidents, nor senators, nor representatives, nor the people hired to manage these resources.
Louisiana’s governor does not own the menhaden swimming in our state waters. We own those fish, and it’s up to us to let the decision makers know when, where, how and why there is a problem with Louisiana being the only state in our country that allows two foreign-owned companies to extract tens of millions of menhaden each year from our state waters.
While there appears to be a movement from our president about making America (meaning the U.S.) great again, how is it that we allow companies based in Canada and South Africa to reap the benefit of our resources without compensation to us, the greater of us, not ship captains and their workers.
Yes, menhaden companies pay wages and the foreign-owned companies are quick to offer how much economic impact that means in Louisiana’s economy.
If our state benefits from oil and gas exploration, and it does and those companies pay wages, then why isn’t there a severance tax on the millions of pounds of menhaden taken annually from our waters?
There should be!
Furthermore, Louisiana should be able to restrict the volume of menhaden taken annually — like all the other coastal states with menhaden living in their coastal waters.
The buffer zone
Next, if you haven’t heard, an association of Louisiana shrimpers came out against the Coastal Conservation Association’s stance on keeping the menhaden “buffer zone” at a half mile, a distance agreed upon in 2024. A move in late 2025 is for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission to move some coastal waters back to a quarter-mile buffer.
The shrimpers seem to believe CCA wants to ride herd on them, too.
But, do these shrimpers believe CCA pushed for turtle excluder devices? No. It was folks who wanted to save the turtles.
And, do the shrimpers believe it was CCA pushing for devices that let fish (mostly young red snapper) escape their nets. No. It was federal fisheries managers demanding that move because studies showed shrimp nets capturing juvenile red snapper when the federal studies showed red snapper populations in decline across the Gulf.
Now, in more or less verbiage, the shrimpers claim CCA is responsible for a decline in the number of commercial shrimpers in Louisiana, when their numbers declined significantly after Hurricane Katrina, then Hurricane Rita.
And, imported shrimp are this business’ biggest problem, and maybe the push should come in the State Legislature in a demand that Louisiana restaurants, seafood houses and grocery stores sell only Louisiana shrimp.
Yes, most of us could support that move.
Greater amberjack
Look, the 20-year-plus fight over red snapper off our coast and across the other Gulf States took a political fight to offset what was a bureaucratic management nightmare. It took Congress (with the lead from Louisiana’s congressional delegation) to put up the necessary funds for the Great Red Snapper Count, a study that led to debunking a woeful federal fisheries management plan that handicapped offshore recreational fishermen for years.
Today, with continued restrictions on catching greater amberjack, a similar move is coming from Congress for the Great Amberjack Count with hopes to figure out why there are such short seasons on that hard-fighting fish.
All this doesn’t stop with fish or shrimp.
With Chronic Wasting Disease spreading in our state, deer hunters should be on notice that it will take some political dealing to ban importation of live deer into our state. We just don’t need anyone else’s problems these days. We have enough of our own.
