Ho! Ho! Ho!
Hope all you tens of thousands in our state who contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars in fishing license fees enjoy the lump of coal Gov. Jeff Landry and his Wildlife and Fisheries Commission minions gave you for a Christmas present.
You can join conservation, environmental and coastal restoration folks — among others — on that list. Yep, all have been touched by Landry’s benevolence this year.
Yes, another time to battle over menhaden after the commission voted 4-3 in early November to reduce the menhaden fishing industry’s buffer zone from a half-mile to a quarter-mile over miles of Louisiana’s coastline.
Why?
OK, nothing new in Louisiana. Money talks and so do political contributions.
Yeah, nothing new, and in the case with menhaden, years of campaign contributions have kept this industry afloat when other coastal states, including the other four Gulf States, have put limits on the two foreign-owned commercial fishing ventures operating in Louisiana’s coastal waters.
So, now that the menhaden operation has pushed back from their one-year, half-mile buffer zone restriction, maybe it’s time to stop comparing the apples of the recreational fishing folks to the oranges of the menhaden operations.
Let’s go apples to apples.
During the summer, LGL Ecological Research Associates revealed the findings of its menhaden bycatch study — a 3.62 percent bycatch rate when our state allows this industry 5 percent.
Furthermore, the study identified that bycatch by species, 240,000 speckled trout, 80.592 million croaker, 24.75 million white trout, 11.7 million spot and 5.7 million white shrimp retained in the total catch, and added 22,000 redfish killed and another 8,354 redfish retained in catches. It gets worse when other species like Spanish mackerel, gafftopsail and hardhead catfish, hognosed rays, flounder and sharks were listed but not counted in numbers or pounds.
The economic value
Today, it is time to consider just how much the menhaden industry touts its $419 million economic impact — it’s $3.7 billion for recreational fishing — and menhaden’s gloating over its contribution of $25 million in state taxes — when recreational fishing adds at least 10 times that amount to Louisiana’s coffers.
There’s more.
Again, using LGL data, the average annual take of menhaden is 500,000 metric tons from Gulf waters, of which 93.5 percent came from Louisiana waters in 2024, which means 467,500 metric tons from Louisiana and a total catch weight of 1,030,659,850 from Louisiana waters.
Here’s the rub: the menhaden industry does not pay one penny of severance nor excise taxes for taking more than 1 billion pounds from state waters.
If there could be a one-cent excise tax, it could mean more than $10 million to Wildlife and Fisheries.
That’s not all. Consider this, the 240,000 speckled trout breaks down into 16,000 15-trout limits. And, when the average catch of five trout per angler per trip is factored, the number of angler efforts jumps up to 80,000. If you factor in gas, food, ice, bait and lodging at $200 per effort, then the economic impact of the bycatch on speckled trout alone is a staggering $16 million.
Let’s add in the 30,354 redfish in the bycatch study, then that’s another 7,586 limits — only if the redfish measured 18-27 inches and not redfish more than 27 inches.
Add in guide fees and the economic value jumps.
Restitution value
Let’s go one step further: If someone other than a menhaden boat takes all those trout and redfish and has placed on them a civil restitution penalty (the penalties were revised in June by the commission) then we’re talking about much more than damage to our fish populations.
The restitution for a redfish is $50 per fish ($1,517,000); for speckled trout, it‘s $31.25 per fish ($7,500,000); for white trout ($129,937,500); and, the 5.7 million white shrimp (using a count of 35 to the pound at $1.50 per pound totals $244,285).
There’s no way to estimate the value of the 11.7 million spot because the restitution value is $1.05 per pound, but if it takes four spots to the pound, then the estimated value is $3,071,250, and we haven’t touched the replacement (restitution) value croaker, mackerel, flounder, etc.
Again, except for the spot and its number of pounds and the 35-per-pound white shrimp, all numbers come from the report and the commission’s action on adjusting penalties for fish removed from our waters. True, the civil restitution penalties are for illegally taken fish, and the menhaden folks will stand on their allowance of a 5 percent bycatch.
Still, these numbers and the values cannot be ignored, if only because this commercial industry is allowed to operate in a system flawed by years of unregulated catches. It’s only because the instances of dead fish floating up on beaches from one end of our state’s coastline to the other, and issues of nets breaking and menhaden boats working all the way to our beaches, that LGL’s study was undertaken.
Maybe it’s time for our State Legislature to pony up funds for an economic study on recreational coastal fishing. It’s been nigh on 30 years since the last one, and that one opened a lot of eyes. Maybe a newer one will do the same.
Merry Christmas!
