How Menhaden Reduction Destroys Louisiana’s Fisheries

I personally feel that the most serious environmental threat to Louisiana’s coastal fishery as a whole is the menhaden reduction industry, more commonly known at the local level as “the pogey boats”.

Now, if you’re paying attention, then you would have noticed that I didn’t say “Louisiana’s inshore fishery”, but the entire coastal fishery.

No, I’m not talking just about a handful of sport fishermen chasing speckled trout and redfish, but rather everyone. Oyster, shrimp, crab, everyone. Keep reading and I’ll make it clear as to why this is the case.

How Pogie Boats Could Be Destroying Louisiana’s Fishing

Here I aim to explain how the menhaden reduction industry is so bad for Louisiana’s coast, as well as what else it is that people get wrong when addressing this hot topic.

There's a lot more at stake here than just a handful of dead redfish!

If you take time to learn everything I have to share with you in this blog post, then you’d be far more informed on this topic than what most people are armed with, which is usually just repeating what they’ve seen on social media.

What we’ll get started with is why menhaden are so important to begin with. It doesn’t seem that they would be, because of all the things we eat on Louisiana’s coast, menhaden are not one of them.

Go to any Louisiana seafood restaurant and you’ll see shrimp, crab, redfish, speckled trout, oysters and more on the menu but you won’t see pogies. Not at all.

If you’ve ever handled these fish, you’ll know that they can smell bad. I’ve never been adventurous enough to eat one, but I’ve read that they’re oily, full of bones and don’t taste very good at all.

So why would anyone care what happens to pogies? There are plenty of other fish on Louisiana’s coast that no one cares about and make awful table fare:

So why all the fuss over menhaden?

The answer is that menhaden are a vital link in the food chain. If you can understand why, then you’ll have an understanding of Louisiana’s coastal ecosystem that most do not possess.

But, before jumping into that, I’d like to make a quick announcement:

If we don’t eat pogies, then why are they so important to our fishery?

Menhaden are important in a way that other “rough fish” such as needlefish and hardheads are not. It’s all about what they do for Louisiana’s coast:

I’ll break it down as simply as I can in the following points:

What Pogies Eat Separates Them From All Other Fish

Virtually all life on earth thrives on sunlight, either directly or indirectly. Without sunlight we would all die.

That’s because plants need sunlight to make energy. Then herbivores eat plants to take their energy, then carnivores eat the herbivores to take their energy.

If that’s not crystal clear, then let me try this cow analogy.

The Cow Analogy

Consider that grass grows in places that are well fertilized, well watered and receive enough sunlight. Then cows eat that grass, then we eat the cows.

If you were to remove grass from the equation, then the cows would starve and die off. There would be no more cows, and we’d run out of food and we would starve, too.

Now, obviously this is a gross over-simplification, but that is more or less how it works. Obviously there are other things we can eat besides the cows. But if there were no cows then our alternate food sources would be strained and there would be hard times.

Well, on Louisiana’s coast, the grass would be the algae that grow in the water column. The cows would be the menhaden (which are technically planktivores), and the "humans" would be all the fish that eat the menhaden. Then, obviously, you and I eat those fish.

If you remove the menhaden, you remove that vital link in the food chain and then everything above it comes crashing down.

Even if the effect isn’t immediately apparent, just like in our cow analogy, the ecosystem would still be stressed.

When fish don’t have menhaden to eat they will find something else to eat and, when they do, they will strain — or even break — that other part of the food chain.

This cartoon I found does a pretty good job explaining what happens:

So that’s pretty bad, right? But it actually gets worse. That’s because killing off menhaden brings about something akin to a nuclear winter. I’ll explain:

The Nuclear Winter Analogy

The worst things about nuclear weapons isn’t the initial blast and radiation they create, it’s the nuclear winter that follows.

When a nuclear bomb detonates — especially something really big in the range of megatons — it throws billions of tons of ash and dust and crap into the atmosphere. There it suspends and blocks out that life-giving sunlight for years.

What do you think happens at that point in time? Nothing grows, then there’s nothing to eat and whatever’s left probably has three eyes and glows in the dark anyway.

So, there’s an indirect effect to the detonation of nuclear bombs in our atmosphere that’s worse than the initial direct effect.

Well, when menhaden reduction occurs in the ecosystem, there’s more damage that’s done over the long term, and this is due to the third thing they do for Louisiana’s coast that I listed above: they clean the water.

How Menhaden Clean The Water

If you’ve ever held a pogie and looked in its mouth, you will see that they do not have teeth like a speckled trout, redfish or bass.

That’s because they’re filter feeders. They filter the water of algae, nitrogen and plant detritus for sustenance.

So, how much water can menhaden filter? Scientists estimate that an adult menhaden can filter as much as four to six gallons a minute.

To put that into perspective, if you filled the Super Dome with water, it would take last year’s catch of menhaden no more than 14 seconds to filter it, probably closer to something like 4 seconds.

For comparison, an adult oyster can filter something like 1 gallon an hour. Yeah, not even close.

How Menhaden Reduction Can Be Harmful To Oysters, Speckled Trout, Redfish & More

The filter feeding of large schools of menhaden clean the water. Any inshore angler can appreciate why that’s beneficial. I mean, it really is that simple, but there are some aspects of that which are not so clear (pun not intended).

So, let me explain the benefits of filter feeding, why everything living in Louisiana’s coastal waters need it and what happens if that filter feeding is removed from the ecosystem.

Penetration of Sunlight

Remember earlier when I mentioned how important sunlight is? Yeah, that’s still in play here. When menhaden filter the water and clean it up, that water is more easily penetrated by life-giving sunlight.

A desirable consequence of this is the creation of more habitat.

Clear Water = More Sunlight = More Oysters

Oysters are also filter feeders that enjoy eating algae. But, unfortunately for oysters, they can’t swim at the surface like menhaden do. They’re glued to the bottom and have to eat whatever flows with the current down there.

So, if sunlight can penetrate to that depth — which amounts to no more than 10 feet — then those oysters will have plenty of algae to eat and will flourish and, with time, build a big oyster reef.

If you have spent any amount of time fishing for speckled trout (or other inshore species) then you know how important that is to finding and catching fish.

But I’ve got Earth-shattering news: oysters don’t grow in the dark.

Go to the bottom of any of these locations and see if you find oysters:

• Seabrook in New Orleans
• Caminada Pass in Grand Isle
• Grand Pass in Dularge
• Lake Campo Pass in Delacroix

You won’t find them there because little to no sunlight penetrates those bodies of water, which range from 20 to 100 feet deep.

Oysters do better in shallower water. If you’re not sure, visit any oyster lease in Louisiana.

The dirtier the water, the shallower oysters have to grow (i.e. two to four feet) and the fewer oysters you have. But if there’s more sunlight that can penetrate the water, in say water that is two to six feet deep, then you’ll have far more real estate for oysters to grow in.

Clear Water = More Sunlight = More Aquatic Grasses

Now that you have a good grasp on how menhaden reduction would harm oysters, you can easily see how overfishing menhaden would do the same for aquatic grasses that grow in the water column.

These are no different from plants that grow above the water’s surface. Just like oysters, they don’t grow in the dark. Surprise!

Still not sure? Take your wife’s favorite potted plant and stick it in the closet for a month. See what happens. That will be a lesson in life-giving sunlight you’ll never forget, and it won’t be coming from the plant!

The more sunlight that can penetrate the water column, the deeper aquatic grass can grow. The most common submerged grass you’ll find in the brackish water of Louisiana’s coast is a type of Eurasion milfoil that also acts as a water filter and provides habitat for the entire food chain.

It’s no secret that the best sight fishing you can do for redfish in the entire world is in the parts of Louisiana’s coast that feature giant mats of aquatic grass.

Visit one and you’ll see a wide variety of bait swimming around to include, but not limited to:

Eurasion milfoil isn’t the only kind of aquatic grass that grows in Louisiana’s saltwater. There’s also turtle grass, which is found in the higher salinity at the Chandeleur Islands and eel grass, which is common on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Go to places like Lake Carencro in Dularge or virtually any pond in Venice and you’ll find a wide variety of grasses that benefit the local fishery.

By now I think you understand the importance of menhaden filter feeding the water column for improved sunlight penetration. But there’s another aspect to clearing the water that goes overlooked:

Pogies Keep Harmful Algae Blooms At Bay

Algae that gets eaten cannot possibly reproduce. But if you remove the thing that eats it — in this case: pogies — then the potential for its reproduction to spiral out of control is much greater than it otherwise would be.

This is one way algae blooms occur. And, if the bloom is bad enough, it can create a thick layer of scum at the water’s surface, blocking that life-giving sunlight, depleting oxygen in the water column and pretty much nuke everything in the water.

We got to see this in action during the height of The Freshening in 2019. There was an out-of-control algae bloom in Lake Pontchartrain that was so bad you could literally see it from space.

Now, the nutrient overload from historical openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway was the chief culprit of that algae bloom. It’s a reminder of how careful we need to be with planned river diversions. But it is nevertheless an indicator of what happens when there’s nothing or very little of anything to consume that algae to begin with.

I’m not sure if millions of menhaden ever populated that range, but I know different kinds of shad could, which are a freshwater cousin of the menhaden and essentially function in the same way as they do.

However, this actual event that happened before our eyes in the not-so-distant past is an indicator of a future without menhaden: we could see similar algae blooms in Lake Borgne, Barataria Bay, Bay Caillou, Vermilion Bay, Breton Sound and many more.

The Menhaden Reduction Industry Could Kill More Than Just Bull Reds

By now it’s obvious that when menhaden are present there’s a positive compounding effect:

But when the menhaden are depleted from the water there’s a negative compounding effect:

Some of these bad things are immediately obvious. One would be the numerous dead bull redfish spotted by anglers in the wake of pogie boats. This has been going on for years and is nothing new, but it seems the frequency of these events could be increasing.

Either way, the spectacle of miles of dead bull redfish floating in the water and washing up on beaches has certainly drawn the ire of the public on social media and at Wildlife & Fisheries Commission meetings.

But what most people fail to see, and certainly don’t talk about on social media, is the overall and long term effect of the menhaden reduction fishery on Louisiana’s other fisheries.

By now you can put two and two together to see what the reduction of menhaden can do to Louisiana’s shrimp, crab and oyster fisheries in addition to damaging our speckled trout, flounder and redfish populations.

The menhaden reduction industry has great potential to harm the commercial and recreational fishermen if left unchecked. Let me be clear: this is not a user group conflict, but an existential threat!

What Do You Think? Would you share this blog post?

So, you got to hear what I have to say about the issue, but what do you think?

What did I miss? What could have been explained better? Am I some curmudgeon a-hole who hates commercial fishing jobs?

Let me know in the comments section below!

I appreciate it whenever anyone takes time to visit my website, whether they agree with me or not! If this is something you would want to share with your fishing friends, then please do so. It's greatly appreciated.

Where You Can Learn More About The Menhaden Reduction Industry

We have yet to see the “nuclear winter” that the menhaden reduction industry can bring to Louisiana’s coast.

While this may seem like Earth-shattering news to many people, it’s actually old news and something that has repeated itself throughout history.

Yes, what’s happening here in Louisiana has already happened on the East Coast in the last century and the one before that.

I could write about it here, but I would rather you read it for yourself from the same source I got it from: H. Bruce Franklin’s 2007 book The Most Important Fish In The Sea.

It details the history of the menhaden reduction industry, its roots in the 1800s, why it was banned along most of the Eastern Seaboard and more.

It’s a great read and a “must have” for every inshore angler’s library.

You can check your local library for a copy or get a copy from wherever you buy books.