September 4, 2013 — Some biologists, though, have called the Gulf of Mexico menhaden fishery a near-perfect fishery. Factors of such a perfect commercial fishery would include:
• Low bycatch.
• A stable number of fishermen, without the big swings in numbers that often occur in commercial fisheries.
• The fishery would not be in competition with recreational fishermen for the fish.
• The number of fishermen in the fishery would be small enough to monitor their catch accurately.
• All parts of the fish would be used, with no backbones, skin, shells or other waste to discard.
• The fishery would be consistantly profitable.
Yes, everybody eats pogies; They just don’t know it.
The sea is a funny place. On land, planting-eating species (herbivores) vastly outnumber meat-eaters (carnivores). That’s because it takes 10 pounds of herbivore flesh to produce 1 pound of carnivore.
In the sea, it seems like every fish eats another fish — they are all carnivores. Or almost all. At the bottom of the fish food chain sits the menhaden, commonly called the pogie. Almost every fish that we humans love to catch and eat in turn eats pogies, so we humans are essentially eating “re-manufactured pogies.”
Pogies numbers are awe-inspiring — in the many, many millions. They swim in massive, silvery schools that attract many predator species, including man.
The menhaden purse seine fishery, just by the sheer size of its catch and the size of its fishing equipment, sometimes catches the jaundiced eye of a recreational fisherman who worries about the nets catching all of his favorite fishes’ food.
Read the full story at the Lousiana Sportsman