Keith Lusher 02.21.24
On Thursday, Feb. 15, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Fee unanimously handed the emergency rules that created buffers for the 2024 season. The choice got here as a compromise was reached by conservation teams and business menhaden (pogey) fisheries operators. The brand new rules now require these pogey boats, which kill tons of of redfish because of bycatch, to make use of their nets a half mile off of the Louisiana coast. The earlier buffer zone was 1 / 4 mile. Additionally included within the new rules is a broader 1-mile buffer zone off Holly Seaside. It additionally comprises extra stringent penalties and reporting necessities for future fish spills.
Pogey’s are a vital meals supply for inshore and offshore fish together with speckled trout and redfish that are extremely prized amongst saltwater anglers in Louisiana. Up to now, Menhaden boats have been allowed to fish as shut as 500 yards from Louisiana’s shorelines, and have been blamed for killing tons of of redfish in recent times by way of bycatch. An estimated 1 billion kilos of pogies are taken by the commercial Gulf of Mexico pogey fishery every year with the vast majority of the catch coming from Louisiana.
Whereas the choice is a step in the correct course, leisure anglers and conservation teams had been hoping to attain a 1-mile restriction. This may fall in keeping with different states like Alabama and Mississippi that prohibit pogey boats from coming inside a mile of the shoreline. The restrictions would save hundreds of redfish that inhabit the Louisiana Shoreline.
David Cresson with CCA of Louisiana hoped to see a 1-mile buffer zone however mentioned the half-mile zone is a step in the correct course. “The 2 sides had been requested by the Fee, the Governor and the Legislature to discover a compromise. In any compromise, there may be give and take. Our facet wished the one-mile buffer. The compromise was 1/2 mile. It’s what it’s,” he mentioned.
Hopefully, with so many eyeballs set on the Menhaden Trade in Louisiana, Cresson mentioned we must always be capable of monitor the boats correctly to see if the half-mile buffer. “Solely time will inform if it helps. If incidents of fish spills, web tears, and lifeless redfish on seashores are diminished, then we are able to say it was a constructive transfer,” Cresson mentioned. “If the incidents persist, then we are going to know we want extra. There’s additionally a bycatch research being performed in 2024, and that ought to reveal much more about the place these boats must be allowed.”
The NOI will now undergo a 30-day oversight interval, the place the joint Legislative Oversight Committees could select to overview it and make different suggestions. In the event that they take no motion, the NOI can be formalized as a closing rule forward of the 2024 Menhaden fishing season.
