00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to ONEX Hunt for their support of this podcast. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: I'm your host, Lake Pickle. 00:00:16 Speaker 1: On this episode, we're headed back down to the brackish waters of America's Amazon. That's the Gulf for any of you who may have missed that episode. Only this time we're setting sail from the Louisiana coast to take a good look into the minhaden fishing industry, or pogy boats as they're commonly known, along with the questions surrounding the amount of byecatch they bring in and the frequent conflicts they have with recreational fishermen. 00:00:40 Speaker 2: Let's dive into it now. 00:00:53 Speaker 1: I'm an Inlander, born and raised where I grew up and where I currently live. I'm anywhere from three to four hours to the missis or Louisiana coast, but still during the summer or early fall months, one of my favorite things to do is head down there to catch speckled trout and redfish. Myself and often three to four friends will load up and make a long weekend out of it. Which is what you're hearing in the background here. This clip is from a trip around terry O, Louisiana with my good friends Jordan Blissit, Jimmy Primo's, my father, Bobby Pickle, and Travis Lovel with really good charters speckle trout. Fun to catch, excellent to eat. But me personally, man, I love hooking into those big bull redfish. These things will pull and fight you to the point where you'll be thinking that you have somehow managed to set your hook into a diesel truck. It's a fight and thrill that's impossible to forget. But that is just one of the many crown jewels that make the Louisiana Gulf Coast what it is. It's the people, it's the scenery, it's the smell of the air down there, and the bull trump if you're lucky. There's a reason, or really a whole lot of reasons that this place has been a sot out destination for thousands upon thousands of anglers. And the short clip that I've shared with y'all here is one of many incredible memories that I've gotten to make down there. Man, it's such a special place and an incredible resource. But now I'm gonna share with you a clip from another fishing trip. I wasn't on this one. A man named Chris Mcaluso was. And Chris had a much different experience on his fishing trip than I did. 00:02:26 Speaker 3: Here's Chris, Well, we got the Pogy boats out here right up against the beach. 00:02:31 Speaker 4: They just strung the. 00:02:33 Speaker 5: Per sane net which catches everything that swims, and now they're pumping the whatever they caught. Pogy's you know, men, aiden, mullet, croakers, speckled trout, white trout, redfish, whatever got caught in that net they're pumping. It'll go in the hold, into the hold, and then the big fish you're gonna get kicked off to the side, pretty much dead sharks, bull, redfish. 00:02:59 Speaker 4: Or jacks. 00:03:00 Speaker 3: And right now they're pumping the water out of the hole to make room for more men haden. And all that water that's coming out of the boat right now is just no oxygen in it at all. 00:03:09 Speaker 4: They're pumping it here. 00:03:11 Speaker 5: This water's hot, it's shallow, they're pumping it in here, and when that no oxygen water comes out in here, it's gonna kill everything there too. So just absolutely no reason for those boats to be this close to this beach well and about four feet of water at the most, and we are, I mean, they're less than one hundred yards from us right now, about the length of a football field, and we're twenty five yards off this beach, so they're less than two hundred yards from this beach, a beach that, by the way, just got restored, just got one hundred and twenty million dollars invested in it to restore it. And you can clearly see this big boat when he's under power, it's chewing up these sandbars and chewing up the surf very clearly. 00:03:51 Speaker 4: See that. 00:03:59 Speaker 1: We're gonna hear from Chris later. But before we go any further, the stage has to be set. Two different fishing trips off the Louisiana coast that they were conveying very different experiences. The biggest difference was the presence of the poggy boat operating close proximity to where Chris was trying to fish. And we're going to dive off into that subject, but before we all need to understand just exactly what these poggy boats or the min haden fishing industry, as it's more formally known actually is and heads up. If you're a visual learner like I am, you can see the video of everything I'm about to describe on the YouTube version of this episode. Let's dive in the Golf. Min Hayden perse Sane fishery has existed since the late eighteen hundreds and is the largest commercial fishing in the Gulf and the second largest in the United States in terms of total landings. Landings peaked around one million metric. 00:04:54 Speaker 2: Tons in the nineteen eighties and has. 00:04:56 Speaker 1: Averaged around half a million metric tons over the last decade. Over ninety percent of that occurs off the coast of Louisiana. A Minhagen or a pogi, as the more locally called, is a small, oily fleshed fish. They're bright silver in color and have a distinct black spot right behind their gill opening. They are a flat fish with a deeply forked tail, and at full maturity they can weigh around a pound and be about fifteen inches in length, So a relatively small fish is what we're talking about here. They can be found in coastal and estuary waters and they're filter feeders, feeding primarily on plankton. They're also a very important forage fish to several other predator fish species such as redfish, kobia, dolphins. 00:05:39 Speaker 4: And many others. 00:05:40 Speaker 1: As far as the role they play for the menhaden fishing industry, well, they're the life blood of it and they're harvested for the production of fertilizers, animal feed, fish bait, fish food, and since they're a huge source of Omega three fatty acid, menhaden are also used in several human and animal supplements like fishhole pills for example. And for the record, I want to put this out early on at the front of this episode. I fully believe in telling both sides of every story, regardless of how controversial or my own personal beliefs or biases. You've reached Abram Fisheries to the operator, Please press zero. 00:06:17 Speaker 4: Thank you for calling it, Blue Empire. You're callings now being forwarded. Please hold good hearty. 00:06:26 Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I need to speak to the operator. 00:06:28 Speaker 4: Please, no one's there today as the plants off today. 00:06:33 Speaker 2: Okay, thank you very much. 00:06:34 Speaker 1: So, just for the record, I have tried to get a representative from the Menhaden fishing industry to talk to me. I've called, I've sent emails. I even sent Facebook messages and I was not told no, but I was never responded to. So if anyone from the men Haden industry is out there and wants to speak their truth on this issue. 00:06:55 Speaker 2: I am all ears. 00:06:56 Speaker 4: Get back to me. 00:06:59 Speaker 1: Anyway, Let's get into it. To kick this off, I'm driving straight to the source. I made a day trip out of it, and now I'm driving into grandew Louisiana, a tourist destination for Anglish. 00:07:10 Speaker 2: Far and wide. 00:07:11 Speaker 1: Wanted to come down here and experience some of the world renowned inshore fishing that this place offers. The marshy waters hug up to both sides of the road and looking out into the distance, I can see several charter fishing boats. Now to mention, driving past several folks that are trying their luck fishing off the bank. As I get into town, the roads are lined with stilt elevated buildings whose height protects them from high water incidents. This is a recreational fishing town through and through, and I'm here to meet a man who has spent his whole life not only appreciating this place, but has made his living as a charter fishing guide. 00:07:46 Speaker 6: My name is Keith Bergeron. I've been chartering out of Grandell for since two thousand and four, twenty one years going on twenty two. I won't be long. I've been fishing all my life. There's no white saying like Florida and Gulf Shores. It's brown saying. It's all natural beaches. The wildlife is just abundant, and the fishing is extraordinary. Anybody who's an outdoors person would come here and just fall in love with this place. 00:08:19 Speaker 2: So it was a passion for you, something that you love to do long before it turned into. 00:08:25 Speaker 6: Well, even as like a kid, I was always amazed at how somebody could fish for a living, and I always dreamed about it, I guess you could say, but never thought I could do it. And I started out hoping I could do maybe thirty trips a year, ended up doing like sixty. So the first year was just crazy. Ever since then, it just it's been booming. I got more business than I want. I gave a lot of trips away to other guides because I just wanted to builds to come here, right even if I'm not fishing them. You just want to keep the area perpetuated. Yeah, that's just if they can come here and enjoy theirselves. They'll come back and hopefully they'll call me again, and if I'm available, take them. 00:09:16 Speaker 1: Keith has a story and perspective that's rooted in love and appreciation for this place that he calls home, as well as countless hours spent on the water. I really think you're going to enjoy hearing it. But before we do, there's someone else y'all need to meet that shares some strong similarities with Keith. 00:09:33 Speaker 7: Shane Mayfield and I basically operate from portsalthat of Venice, Louisiana. I haven't been doing it full time now since ninety six, so I guess I'm coming up on thirty years. But I did it before that too, all through college, and you even a little bit when I was in high school guiding. 00:09:51 Speaker 2: God, yeah, how'd you get into that? 00:09:54 Speaker 7: Long story short? My dad, he still does, run a lodge for corporation down in Port Selfur, So that's kind of how I got into it. 00:10:04 Speaker 4: In high school. You know, I was working. 00:10:05 Speaker 7: I'd worked there in the summers and my off time, and then i'd take some of their customers help with when they had groups coming in to go fishing. And then I did that, you know. And then when I went to college, I you know, I'd come home on the weekends and fish and you know, put a little money in my pocket. 00:10:20 Speaker 2: Sure. 00:10:20 Speaker 7: And then I got out of college and I went to work for a consulting firm. I have an environmental. 00:10:24 Speaker 4: Degree, and I just like to fish better. 00:10:27 Speaker 7: So I only worked about a year and a half and then I quit my job. And I always tell my customers. When I told my mother I was gonna quit, she said, you're gonna do what I said. Yeah, I'm a guide full time. And I say, I wish you'd taken that blackground skillet and beat me upside the head with it, because I don't know what I was thinking. But all joking aside, it's been it's been good to me. 00:10:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, see you still like it. 00:10:48 Speaker 7: Like I love taking people fishing. I mean, I done caught my share. If I never catch another red fish again in my life, I done caught way more than most people ever will. So you know, I just like taking people fishing. It's what I do, and I've been doing a long time. 00:11:03 Speaker 1: Both Keith and Shane are Louisiana natives. If their accents don't immediately give that away as well as veteran charter fishing guides, which is a valuable perspective seeing is one of the big topics in question is the significant amount of conflicts that seems to be happening between the pogy boats and charter and recreational fishermen. I want to hear some of their personal experiences with these pogy boats as well as their thoughts on them. 00:11:27 Speaker 6: They've always been in this area and it's only certain times of a year where the pogy really get abundant on the beach. They start schooling and they might be laying eggs. I don't know their process of polgi itself, but I know late summer, when it's hot, we see a lot more polgy boat action. They're not scared to get in there and get on the beach and disrupt the fishermen. They yeah, the pogi boats itself, they're all about catching them pogies. You know, it don't matter what it takes who they're going to mess up your fishing spot. They gone after them pogis. So it got to where they were catching so many pogies in a drag that they had a net busted on the beach right here in front of grand Isle. I don't think they were very far out, and the net when it ripped, all those dead pogies were just floating and they all washed up on the beach in grand Isle. And this is a tourist place, so the town had to deal with the stench. And I'm talking about three four feet wide, six st eight inches deep, just dead fish. So we had a bad issue here, and grand Isle ended up creating a buffer zone which was passed by law, where they had to stay away from Grandal for three at least three miles away. 00:13:00 Speaker 2: Gotcha, gotcha. 00:13:02 Speaker 1: So before that there was no buffers on. They could come in wherever they wanted to. 00:13:06 Speaker 6: Yeah, that was pretty much free rains. 00:13:08 Speaker 2: How long ago did they pass their buffers on? 00:13:10 Speaker 6: You know, it's been about two years now, so. 00:13:13 Speaker 4: Not that long. 00:13:14 Speaker 1: No, Wow, I would have thought it had been. I was expecting to say, ten to fifteen years ago, something like that. 00:13:20 Speaker 6: Now, before this, two or three years ago, they were able to come in as close as they wanted. I mean, the boats are kicking up sand. That's how shallow they get. These nets are. I'm gonna just guess and say they probably fished fifteen feet of water easy. That's how long they stretched down from the bottom to the surface. So if you're in eight six eight feet of water or less, they're catching everything in sight. Everything in that circle is being trapped in that net. 00:13:55 Speaker 2: It's not just pogies in and up in. 00:13:57 Speaker 6: No, they got speckled trout, they got flounders, redfish in order, even the bull reds, jack Reville dolphin, and they catching torporen. 00:14:13 Speaker 1: The first talks about making some areas restricted to menhaden fishing started up in twenty twenty three, However, there was no formal law put in place until the early part of twenty twenty four. These laws established a coast wide buffer zone of one half mile and a one mile buffer zone at Grand Terry, Elmers Island and Holly Beach, as well as a three mile buffer zone at Grand Isle. These buffer zones were put in place due to several factors, most notably after eighteen separate fish spills accounting for over two point five million waist in min Hayden and at least several hundred dead breeding sized redfish. This all occurred in twenty twenty three alone. Some of these filed up popular beaches and seemingly increased the number of conflicts between recreational anglers and boaters with the menhaden boats. 00:15:04 Speaker 2: There was also a. 00:15:05 Speaker 1: Significant amount of public outcry from local citizens and sportsmen about the potential damage that this method of fishing could be causing to the shallow waters, the fishery, and the habitat. I want to get Shane's take on this as well. 00:15:19 Speaker 6: I'll say this. 00:15:19 Speaker 7: So, for the first time in thirty years or thirty something, whatever it was, the LDWF they had done a stock assessment, the first they had done in a long, long, long time. And then they got the results and they said, we got a redfish problem. In other words, we don't have the numbers we'd like to see. We got to do something about it. Well, they had meetings and meetings, and it's always a slow process when you're going through that, and finally they came up and they recommended, Okay, we're going to drop it from five reds to four reds. We're going to go from sixteen to eighteen inch minimum, nothing over twenty seven inches. So that's what they did because there was a problem, right, I mean, they've taken that twenty seven inch fish like used to be. We could keep one, you know, a recreational anglers and will look, we never really did keep them. They're not good to eat, you know. If people want a trophy, I mean, back in the day, somebody might want to keep one to mount it. But now you can get a replica. You know, you measure and girth and take a picture and you can get a replica that'll last forever. Well, they cut that out, they said, okay, you can't keep anything over twenty seven inches, no more for recreational charter anglers, what have you. Well, yet the poge industry they catch I don't know. I can't say a definite number. I mean, I don't know. I'm not on those boats. 00:16:37 Speaker 6: I don't see. 00:16:39 Speaker 7: But it's incomprehensible to say that when I'm drifting through schools of men Hayden, and on a good day with three angles on the boat, we'll catch say forty to fifty of those things or more, you know, And I'm drifting in a bay boat with popping corks. But when a boat pulls up with a big persing and that's a huge school of Hayden that I know bull reds are in, there's no possible way they can't be catching them and killing them. I mean, it's just a nature of that, the way they fish. And if the recreational angler can't keep any mature redfish because it's supposed to be bad because of the chaines in the fishery, well, if they're killing as many as I know they're killing, it can't be good. 00:17:23 Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff from Keith and shame and believe me, we're not through hearing from these guys. I feel like we're just getting into the meat of their stories. But I feel like now is also a crucial time to kick it back over to Chris Mcaluso. You remember him from his fishing clip early in the episode with the pogy boat operating close to him. Chris is the director of the Center for Marine Fisheries and Mississippi River Program director for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. He works on conservation as well as advancing habitat restoration efforts across the Gulf and improving federal fisheries management law and policy. Chris is going to give us a more detailed view around the Menhaden fishing industry and why it's such a cause for concern, and he's going to accomplish this by telling us about a first of its kind, comprehensive study on the minhaden industry that was just published earlier this year. Quick heads up, you're gonna hear the term by catch. By catch is unwanted fish or other marine creatures that get caught during commercial fishing for a different species. So, for example, a bull of redfish caught in a pogy boat net is by catch. 00:18:30 Speaker 2: Here's Chris. 00:18:31 Speaker 3: There have been studies in the past, they were not nearly as thorough as the study that was released earlier this year and was conducted in the twenty twenty four fishing season. And I think that was part of the problem is that when fishermen and I know and charterboat captains you know, were starting to call me, you know, eight ten years ago in complaining about what they were seeing from the pogy boats, and it really ramped up in the last five to six years. We just had a number of big spill. The boats were just getting closer and closer to some of these very popular fishing areas, and people were starting to shoot a lot of video of it, you know. When we would talk about it with fisheries regulators, so we would go to Wildlife Fisheries Commission or talk about it with lawmakers. The data had big gaps in it, you know, and so you could draw a lot of different conclusions about just how many fish from a by catch perspective were being killed, you know. And the number I would use was, Okay, well, they're allowed up to five percent of their total volume to be bycatch, and if they're harvesting a billion pounds of men hate in a year, well five percent of that's fifty million pounds of additional dead fish. 00:19:41 Speaker 4: But we didn't know those. 00:19:42 Speaker 3: Things for certain, Like we were just putting out the numbers that were in the previous by catch study, which had pretty big gaps in it, Like nobody had ever really estimated how many bull redfish, for instance, were being killed, how many croaker were being killed, because it was just it's too difficult for researchers or you know, biologists or fisheries managers to get down into those nets. They just didn't have the technology that it took to count all of the things that were coming onto that boat and going into the boat and the things that were being kicked back off. Nobody had taken a nearly as close a look as was taken last year during that study. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: Before Chris dives into the details of this study, allow me to read to you some of the numbers that came back as a result. The twenty twenty four bycatch study of the Industrial Gulf men Haden Fishery indicates the following approximately twenty two thousand breeding sized redfish, eighty one million croker, twenty five million sand trout or white trout as they're commonly known, in forty or more other species, including black drum, sea trout, cownos rays were all observed and counted in those poggy nets. 00:20:57 Speaker 3: But yeah, it's just extraordinary when you look at some of the other numbers they I mean, you know, the redfish part is what jumps off the page because it's a game fish. Louisiana recently took action to make it illegal for recreational fishermen to harvest a bull redfish, Like you can't kill a twenty seven inch plus redfish anymore. But twenty two thousand of them were killed according to the estimate from that study by the min Eiden industry last year. You know, when I've talked to reporters about this or I've talked to lawmakers or others about it, and they say things like, well, but it's just twenty two thousand. I mean, come on, you guys thought it was a lot more than that, or the industry is downplaying that number, and you have to remind them that it is illegal for anyone else to kill those fish. It's illegal. What they're doing is illegal for everybody else, you know. And that's the point that I think can't be lost here. And the reason it's illegal is because those fish are important, because the redfish dock in Louisiana is not nearly as hell healthy as it once was, and those are the fish that are out there that have escaped our marshes, escaped the wetlands, get out into the gulf to lay eggs and make more redfish. And so that's why those fish were protected. That's why recreational fishermen in this state for the most part, said we don't want to kill those fish anymore, because we know that the recovery time to bring that species that bring that population back up to a healthy level gets cut down significantly if we stop killing the ones that are making the babies. And so what those guys are doing killing twenty two thousand buwl redfish. That's illegal for everybody else. And so that's point number one. The other thing is, though, you got to look at some of the other species that are being killed, you know, eighty one million crokers. I mean, the estimate is that literally every time those guys set a net, they're killing six thousand plus crokers. 00:22:53 Speaker 4: You know. 00:22:53 Speaker 3: Not only is that an important forage pace, an important part of the ecosystem, but crokers are also a fish that recreational and commercial fishermen like to catch because they're very good to eat, you know, and that could be a viable commercial target off of Louisiana's coast for commercial fishermen that don't have snapper quota or other things. 00:23:15 Speaker 4: They could be catching those crokers. 00:23:16 Speaker 3: And there has been a just a stark lack of bull crokers that folks talk about all the time now. In the sixties and seventies, when they would go offshore or they would fish lake, ponch train, et cetera, they'd catch these two pound crokers. 00:23:30 Speaker 4: They don't really catch them anymore, like it's a huge deal. 00:23:33 Speaker 3: It's almost as big a deal to catch a two and a half pound croker as it is a twenty five pound. 00:23:38 Speaker 4: Red snapper two and a half pound. Croakers just aren't there anymore. 00:23:41 Speaker 3: And maybe one of the reasons they're not there is because the poke boats are killing eighty one million of those crokers every single. 00:23:47 Speaker 4: Year, you know. So it was just those kind of numbers that really jump off the page. 00:23:51 Speaker 3: To twenty five million white trout, five and a half million white shrimp, you know, millions and millions of mullet harrying and other things that are out there. You know, that's all an important part of the ecosystem, and these things are supposedly being killed by accident, you know. And another number that not a lot of folks have talked about are made a big deal of is a two hundred and forty thousand speckl trout. Well, you know, speckel trout is one of those fish that generally doesn't get captured in nets unless it's a gild net. I mean, they're they're pretty good at getting out of trolls. They're you know, pretty good at escape and capture, you know, in these persones. But again, two hundred and forty thousand speckled trout, I would be willing to bet you that that if you took ten charter boat captains from Grand Isle, those ten charter boat captains combined in their careers may not take customers to kill two hundred and forty thousand combined speckl trout. If a charter boat captain was taking four customers to catch a limit of speckl trout, and again a limit of trout now. 00:24:51 Speaker 4: Per person in Louisiana's fifteen per day, it's still a lot of fish. 00:24:55 Speaker 3: You'd have to do that four thousand times to equal to one hundred and forty thousand spec wul trial. There's just not a lot of charter boat captains who are going to do that. I mean, that's the kind of numbers we're talking about, because that's the volume at which this vicuery operates. 00:25:22 Speaker 1: We know the Menhaden industry has been around for over a century, the late eighteen hundreds to be more specific. So why has the conflict around this operation seemed to have such a significant spike in these recent years. 00:25:36 Speaker 3: I think what has stood out to people in the last decade or so in terms of the change that people have seen in terms of their interactions with the boats, is that they went from being domestically owned companies to foreign controlled companies that didn't really take the same perspective when it came to how they approach the fishery that they had when they were domestically owned fisheries. 00:26:03 Speaker 4: And that's not me making this up. 00:26:05 Speaker 3: I mean that's reflected in some of the data that we see that in the last ten years a lot more of the harvest has come closer to shore than it used to. And then you know, hearing from fisheries regulators in Louisiana who've told me off the record on the side, you know, there was a time where if we were getting a lot of conflicts and people were complaining about dead fish or bycatch. You know, if they complained to say the Department of Wildlife Fisheries, the department would call the pokey companies and say, hey, y'all might need to back off a little bit. But those things stop happening. You know, if you're a lawmaker who's from North Louisiana, or you're you know, a member of Congress or whatever, you know, you look at commercial fisheries and you say, well, you know, these guys are operating very close to the margins and this is a small operation. That's not the case. These are not mom and pop crabbers. This is not a sole proprietor shrimp or anything like that. I mean, this is a large industrial activity and they harvest and kill things on an industrial scale, and so you. 00:27:06 Speaker 4: Got to look at it like that. It's not a mom and pop shripping operation. 00:27:10 Speaker 3: It's a very large, internationally owned, industrial scale fishing operation. 00:27:16 Speaker 6: They got spot or planes that are telling these pogy boats where to go. They got planes in the air flying and they give them coordinaces. The boat goes straight to that spot. They encompass that whole area with that net and whatever's in that net. When they pulling that net in, the pogies regurgitate and they put off the slime off their skin. That's just it makes the water like a slurry. It's real thick and it's nasty. So all of these fish that are in that net with the pogies are breathing that stuff in and it's clogging up their gills and they can't get oxident and that's why they're dying. So they they have the hose with the big cage on the end that only allows smaller fish in. So when they released all the rest of the fish that are in there, they dead. This last instance we had was about two or three weeks ago. I got a call on a Monday. It said they were right there on the beach, right here in front of grand Isle. And I got another phone call from a guy on Wednesday morning because I went. I went out Wednesday morning in my boat. We went to fish Tripletail out towards the mouth of the river, and on the way back, I got a call from a guide that said grand Ale Beach has hundreds of bullreds dead on the beach. So we were coming back from the mouth of the river and I saw at least fourteen poge boats in for a baya, which is just easter here over. They were all together in this one area, so we went straight over there. So I got some pictures of some dead redfish floating. And then the Wednesday is when all of redfish were on the beach. I got pictures all that Wednesday afternoon Thursday, I got in my boat and I went to the islands east of grand Isle, which is only accessible by a boat, and I have forty pictures over there of dead bullreds. So all of those bull reds they captured in the nets on Monday were all dead and floated against the beach, and that's the only ones I could find. There was probably more than that. Redfish don't have babies until they over twenty seven inches the ones that they're killing. There wasn't one dead red fish out of the one hundred forty pictures I got that was under twenty seven inches. 00:29:57 Speaker 2: So they're killing all breeding SIZEA. 00:29:59 Speaker 6: Yes, killing all the ones having the babies, but yet they've stopped the recreational guy from keeping our catching them at all. 00:30:22 Speaker 8: Thank you for calling day Brook Fishery. 00:30:24 Speaker 3: If you know your party's extension, you may vale with at any time. 00:30:27 Speaker 8: Tell me the voicemail that's one after good Chown. Hey, my name is Lake. I produce a podcast called Backwoods University for the media or podcast network. I'm calling to inquire and see if someone from your organization would be open to doing a quick interview. I have a flexible schedule and I could do these interviews digitally, so please let me know if anyone from your organization be willing to talk with me, and I would love to talk with you. Thank you very much. 00:30:56 Speaker 1: I'm going to put this out there again if anyone from the men hay and fishing industry is willing to share their side of this story by all means get back with me. However, I think we can all agree that everything we have heard so far is some moving information. What I'm curious about now is what do we do with it? Where do we go from here. 00:31:18 Speaker 7: I'll preface this by saying I don't want anybody to lose their jobs. You know, there's a lot of things we've done in wildlife and fisheries over the years that we used to do that we can't do anymore because they realize they ain't good for the environment. It ain't good for the fisheries, ain't good for the wildlight, what have you. So, I think that's kind of where we're going with this. I mean, they've outlawed it pretty much everywhere else in the country except for small way. It's not nowhere near the large scale, industrial scale they have here in Louisiana. They have a I think it's a half mile buffer zone off of Placamus Parish, which look half mile is not that far. No, let me tell you if it was three miles, we would never have conflicts. 00:32:06 Speaker 1: See, that's what's interesting is so, I mean I was interviewed. I interviewed a guy in grandal to day and uh, you know, I was just trying to get honest answers. And I said, man, if you could have a magic wand and you can, you can make the laws, you can wave magic wand what would you do. I thought he was going to say, I'd make the whole thing go away. Yeah, And he said, I just wish they'd stay at their three miles buffers on. 00:32:30 Speaker 6: Three miles in front of grand Isle is great. I don't know why it's not three miles all along the coasts. 00:32:37 Speaker 1: So you think they're there, there could potentially be a way for them to find a way for everybody can work. 00:32:44 Speaker 2: Like, you don't. 00:32:44 Speaker 1: Necessarily have to shut the poge boats down, they just need to move out further. 00:32:49 Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying. 00:32:50 Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't have a problem when the pogie boats work and just not killing everything inside, right, and they and they're probably still going to have have some by catch being that for out, but at least it's not on the beach where they're killing all the spectacled trout, the croakers, all the smaller fish that can't go out in that deep water because they're gonna get eaten. They on that beach because that's their protection and that's where they thrive at. So yeah, if the pogi boats were further out, and I know what they're gonna say, the polgive industry is gonna say, they can't catch nothing out that far. I don't know what else to tell you. We're the only state that allows this practice to continue. 00:33:40 Speaker 7: If you push them out further, you would never have that conflict because I'm gonna tell you, we don't never drift out three miles, right, never, never, never, never. Now how it impacts their fishery, I mean, I can't say that. 00:33:54 Speaker 4: I don't know. 00:33:55 Speaker 7: I don't know, but I do know if they were outside of three miles, they are off a grand isle, this would be a moot point. Now they ain't gonna be good enough for some people, But you know what, I'm willing to give something, yeah, or they willing to give something. 00:34:10 Speaker 4: Compromise, Yeah, compromise. 00:34:12 Speaker 1: I just man, I feel like and this is I haven't been able to talk to anybody on the men Haden fishery side. I honestly just for the just for the sake of having a balanced journalism, I would try to talk to one of them, but I haven't been able to do that. But everything that I'm pointing to that that I can gather it points to this needs to be looked at just from a ecological standpoint and for the health of the fishery. It's like it seems to be folks need to take a closer look at this. And two, understand the men and haden industry. I understand there's jobs there. Understand that. Yeah, also understand how much tourism dollars and big the businesses for charter guide service. 00:34:54 Speaker 7: Well okay, and not to cut you off, but that is therein lies a big problem because look, you know, the commercial fishing has always butted heads with recreational that is wherever you go, you know, and look, there's there's sometimes as a disconnect. You know, people don't don't realize that, you know that what's what's going on out there is that they don't see it. Most of my people from out of town, so not only did they pay my rate that I charge, but they're staying at a bed and breakfast and right the import selfer, you know, they're traveling through. We stopped at the local grocery store because they needed to get something. We came back from fishing. They went, they lunch yesterday when they got in earliest that when they lunch at the small restaurant, right the import selfer. So it's not only my fee, my rate I'm charging per day, but it's the lodges, it's the stores, and we're bringing all these people in. What how much are the men Hagen boats? How many people are coming in on the men Who's day? None of those guys are coming in and stay ain't at lodges and all that. Yeah, you know, the boats are buying food maybe from a local vendor. But as far as people actually come in and going down those guys going to Venice Marina or going to Cypruss Cove or going to the you know this lodge or that lord, they ain't doing that. And our guys are that. You know, we're a small parish. We don't have the oil industry like we used to have, commercial fishing, edting like it used to be. So you know, they pay property taxes and I mean so you know they've been around, They've been around a long time, so people want to protect it. 00:36:35 Speaker 4: And I get that. I get that, Like I said, I. 00:36:37 Speaker 7: Don't want anybody to lose their job, But I say, what about me? I mean, what about what I do? What about people coming from all over the country. I'd say ninety percent of my people are coming from the way out. It's an economic impact that I'm going to tell you. If you didn't have that for a lot of these small coastal communities, they wouldn't be It'd be a ghost. 00:36:57 Speaker 8: Have that. 00:36:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a lot about the character of these men that the solution that they're seeking here is really just an even playing field for both sides. I mean really, after the stories that they share, and honestly, some of them didn't even make it endo the episode due to time constraints, I thought for sure that they would be wanting to put an end to menhaden fishing outright, But they didn't. They recognized that this industry is how some folks make their living and support their families. They realize that this industry has an economic impact. I'm going to share my own opinion here, but based off of the information that I have right now, I think that what these guys are asking for is reasonable. They want to take a closer look at the fishing industry, the methods, the bycatch, the conflict between recreational and charter fishermen. Is there a way that they can find more common ground. Is there ways to continue harvesting men haden and it be more sustainable with less bycatch and less harm done to the habitat. These questions are not outlandish, and I think worth being asked, and more importantly, I think they're worth finding an answer to. 00:38:06 Speaker 3: We really weren't ever pushing or haven't ever been pushing to eliminate the men hate in the industry. But what we wanted to do was find a way that they can continue to operate, but to protect some of those more sensitive habitats that we knew were being damaged by those nets and by those boats making contact with the water bottom and getting, you know, very very close to our beaches. I mean, I've seen pokey boats setting nets in water that was four and a half to five feet deep. You know, these boats draft ten feet at least nine feet maybe at a minimum when they're empty, which means I have watched them plow through the water bottom. You know, I've watched them dig up the sand and dig up the sandbars to get the boat into where they were harvesting the fish. And I know that that persane is making an enormous amount of contact on that water bottom. I see the amount of sediment that's being stirred up. And the fact is there's not a biologist who would argue against this, but that you know, the majority of your biomass, you know, in a coastal situation, happens in that area that's within a mile or two of the beach. That's just where most of your species are going to be. You know, there was a conservation element to moving the boats into a little bit deeper water, and it was that by not having those nets all over the bottom of the water, you were going to reduce potentially the volume of bycatch, but also reduce the number of species that were being impacted, and you were going to keep that water bottom more intact. And this is something I think we've seen born out in that by catch study. You know, as you move into deeper water, the number of species impacted go down, the volume of bycatch goes down, and so there is a conservation value to moving those boats into deeper water. You know, it'd be nice for them to make some concessions here and there, that a little bit of conservation goes a long way, not just from a public relations perspective, but just from the value of our resource. You know, Let's say you went to the Prairie Pothole region, right and you told the duck hunters up there that there was this industry that was going to employ a few hundred people. It was going to have some economic impact on the communities, it was going. 00:40:23 Speaker 4: To provide some jobs. 00:40:25 Speaker 3: The trade off there is going to be we're going to have to kill thirty thousand specklebelly geese, about two hundred and fifty thousand blueing teal and mallards, and about one hundred thousand mourning doves or a hundred million mourning doves. You guys cool with that? Nobody would be cool with that. Nobody would be cool with that, and no politician would back that, you know, nobody would put their name to that. And yet that's in essence what's happening here. I mean, that's sort of the level that we're dealing with. I mean, red fish in Louisiana or a game fish. 00:41:02 Speaker 4: And the bottom. 00:41:03 Speaker 3: Line is it's not okay for those guys to be killing those fish. It's not because it's not okay for anybody else to be killing them. 00:41:12 Speaker 7: I wish I had more education on the actual industry itself, as far as you know why going out deeper would affect their profit margin or. 00:41:23 Speaker 4: What would it? What would it? What would it? 00:41:24 Speaker 7: What would them being out three miles statewide due to their bottom line or their business? And I'm sure when people on the other side are listening to this, they're gonna be saying, yeah, you don't know, you don't know. No, I don't, but tell me and let me know. But still, can we meet? Can you know, let's let's find a let's find a meeting place. I would say, hey, if you see boats over there, just don't go buy them. What I'm doing is sustainable, yeah, because I ain't keeping nothing. I'm throwing them all back. Does a fish die and every now and then maybe, but I mean we we fight them, we unhook them, you know, every now and then you might have one that's hooked. 00:42:01 Speaker 4: Deep it bleeds a little bit, but that is like very rare, rare, you know. 00:42:05 Speaker 7: So I can say without a shadow doubt that what I'm doing is sustainable and it can and if you protect the fishery, what I'm doing. You can do this forever. You know, if you keep on keeping on the way, we're losing habitat. Eventually all that large scale industrial fishing that's gonna be done. 00:42:24 Speaker 1: I'll tell you one thing. For my separate conversations with Keith, Shane and Chris, all of them have an undeniable appreciation for the Louisiana coast. It comes from a place of authenticity and I respect it. 00:42:38 Speaker 2: It's impossible not to. 00:42:41 Speaker 1: Before we wrap this up, I want to hear some final thoughts from both Chris and Keith about what they think and hope for the future of the Menhaden fishing industry. 00:42:51 Speaker 3: You know, my primary focus at TRCP has always been habitat, habitat restoration and the Mississippi River basin, especially focused in Louisiana, and it's a top two to three priority for our center in particular, and it's a priority for our board and for the organization, and it will continue to be because I think there is a path. It's difficult to see it right now, but there is a path to not only better conservation in the Atlantic Basin when it comes to men Ain't fishing, but also in the Gulf. 00:43:22 Speaker 6: I'm opening as many eyes as I can to this right now. I'm hoping that something gets done. I mean, that's all I can do is try. If I don't succeed doing this, I'm just gonna throw my hands up and say we can't do nothing about it. You know, that's all you can do. 00:43:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I hope something does change. 00:43:45 Speaker 6: Yeah, me too. 00:43:46 Speaker 2: For every probably I'll say. 00:43:48 Speaker 6: It's not me. It's not about me. It's about the kids coming up, you know, families coming down here to enjoy ourselves and catch fish. In the future, I'll be long gone. People will still be fishing. Yeah, and if you keep wiping them out, then I will be here. 00:44:16 Speaker 1: Regardless of where you fall on this issue, Hopefully we can all agree on wanting a healthy and sustainable fishery and coastal habitat in the future. The question is how do we get there? What do y'all think. If there's one thing I am confident in, it's that we should never be afraid to ask questions. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease and this country life. I mean, really, the warm welcome that all of you have given me to this bear grease podcast. Feed means a whole lot and I appreciate it. And hey, if you liked this episode, share it with either the worst or best angler you have in your contact list. Only don't tell them what you that's one they are. 00:45:00 Speaker 2: Leave them guessing. 00:45:02 Speaker 1: And also be sure to check out Blood Trails, the newest podcast addition to the Meat Eater Network. This is the true crime genre and hunting and fishing world Colliding, hosted by writer and journalist Jordan Sillers. You will hear everything from missing hunters, poachers turned killers, and fishing trips gone fatally wrong. It is a fascinating podcast that you will not want to miss in the first episode premiere's Thursday, October thirtieth. Be sure to check that out and subscribe to it so that you'll be notified when the first episode drops. I'm telling you this is gonna be good. And stick around here because if this podcast was an inshore fishing trip, we haven't even made it out of the no wake zone yet. We're just getting started. There's a whole lot more on the way.