Saving Seafood

Maine fishermen are fighting to harvest more pogies, used as lobster bait

September 15, 2022 — Maine fishermen say they need a bigger piece of the East Coast menhaden fishery because the fish have become the primary source of lobster bait.

More than 75 people attended a hearing in Augusta on Tuesday night about proposed changes to state quotas for the fish, also known as pogies.

Attendees at the meeting said they wanted a larger quota because the fish have become plentiful in Maine over recent years. The menhaden population rises and falls in roughly 20-year cycles, and landings data show the number of fish has been on an upswing since 2016. Menhaden are often seen breaking the surface as they flip and jostle in thick schools, even close to shore.

Maine fishermen are currently allotted 0.52 percent of the total catch allowed across all Atlantic states. About 78 percent of the catch goes to Virginia, home to the Eastern seaboard’s only plant for producing fish oil from menhaden. The next-highest allocation goes to New Jersey, at 10 percent.

The Virginia plant makes fish oil used in animal feed, as well as omega-3 supplements for human consumption, and is operated by Omega Protein, a subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick, Canada. Cooke also owns salmon aquaculture farms, including in Maine. Omega Protein uses an average of 309 million pounds of menhaden per year, almost three times the amount that is used for bait.

In Maine, the fish have been widely used as bait in lobster traps, replacing herring after that fishery collapsed and catches were drastically limited.

“The New England lobster fishery relies solely on menhaden now, basically,” said lobster fisherman Dustin Delano, of Friendship. “Herring’s gone. We need to be able to catch everything we can. We need as much quota as we can get. You’ve got 15 or 16 states that are fighting for crumbs here while two states are taking it all.”

Read the full article at Central Maine

Maine lawmakers approve bill to limit number of pogie-fishing licenses

April 14, 2022 — Under a bill passed by the Maine Legislature on Wednesday, the state’s pogie fishery will be closed to all fishermen in 2023 except current license holders who meet certain criteria.

To be eligible, fishermen must have held a license to fish for pogies in at least two of three years from 2019-21, and have landed 25,000 pounds in at least one of those years. Those who have the required license history but have not yet met the landings requirement have until the end of 2022 to harvest 25,000 pounds.

Pogies, also known as menhaden, have returned to state waters in large numbers over the past few years. As herring landings have dwindled, many lobstermen have switched to pogies for bait. At the same time, lax licensing requirements have lured others to enter the pogie fishery.

But the fishery has a regional quota, set by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is up for reassessment next month. State officials are concerned that the rules will be changed in ways that will limit the amount harvested from Maine coastal waters and estuaries. If the fishery remained open to additional licenses, that would mean less would be available for each fisherman, threatening the bait industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Increasingly valuable pogie fishing season gets underway in Maine

June 15, 2021 — Russell Libby turned to his crew at CBS Lobster and Bait on Union Wharf on Monday afternoon, telling them another boat was due in five minutes. Libby also told them it was close to sinking.

That turned out to be an exaggeration but not by much.

Before long, a small fishing boat came chugging around the corner. The Deja Vu II was so loaded with pogies, the open transom was several inches underwater.

The crew was jubilant.

“That’s the most I’ve had on there in 20 years,” said Capt. Dan Harriman of Cape Elizabeth.

Dozens of plastic barrels stood stacked on the vessel’s deck. What little open space remained was awash in fish. The crew stood ankle-deep in them. Even the engine compartment was full of pogies.

“We’ve got some down forward — we really do,” crewman Corey Doughty shouted up to the dockworkers. Doughty is also from Cape Elizabeth and Harriman’s cousin.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Pogie ships would be forced farther from Louisiana coastline under bill OK’d by House

May 20, 2021 — After decades under lax regulation, the Louisiana House voted 67-28 Wednesday to require the state’s largest commercial fishery to cast its nets farther from the state’s fragile coastline.

Louisiana waters supplied 40% of the menhaden caught in 2019 across the United States, a catch worth tens of millions of dollars, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. In a given year, the industry’s 180-foot-long vessels and 1,500-foot-long nets ensnare 700 million to 1 billion pounds of the tiny, dart-like silver fish off the state’s shores.

But if House Bill 535 becomes law, Louisiana would forbid menhaden trawling within a half mile of shore, to reduce coastal erosion and limit damage to shallow nurseries of popular game fish species such as redfish and speckled trout. The bill now goes to the Senate. (Here’s how the House voted.)

Menhaden, also known as pogies or shad, are a keystone species in marine ecosystems, providing food for a wide range of larger fish and birds. When caught commercially, the oil-rich fish is ground up into animal feed, health supplements and fertilizers.

In negotiating the latest bill’s text, menhaden industry representatives stood firmly behind a quarter-mile exclusion zone, stating reports from recreational anglers were hyperbolic. Omega Proteins owns two of the three menhaden reduction plants on the Gulf Coast; Daybrook Fisheries owns the other. Louisiana hosts one in Abbeville and one in Empire.

Omega Proteins’ public affairs manager, Ben Landry, said a half-mile exclusion could cut into the industry’s bottom line as almost one fifth of menhaden harvest occurs within a half mile of the coast. That means some could lose jobs.

“I’m not saying some of that won’t be made up outside of that half mile,” Landry said. “But I can’t promise you that. Who’s family around here could face a 20% cut and then be told, ‘Oh, that’s not going to impact you.'”

Read the full story at NOLA.com

MAINE: Large pogy catch good news for lobstermen who feared bait shortage

August 14, 2018 — Maine has landed a record number of pogies this summer, forcing regulators to shut the bait fishery down just as lobster season peaks.

All of the landings have yet to be counted, but officials say it is likely that an unusually large pogy fleet will have caught almost 7 million pounds of the fish, which is more than double last year’s landings. This comes as especially good news for Maine lobstermen, who use pogies to bait their traps when the herring supply runs low, as it is expected to this year.

“Every pogy used was herring not used,” said Kristan Porter, a Cutler lobsterman and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which has been working with its members to prepare them for the herring shortage. “There also are some in coolers stored and ready. … The increase in landings is a good thing.”

State officials say Maine had run through its 2.4 million pound annual quota of pogy, also known as menhaden, by July 22, even though the quota was 13 times what it had been in 2017. Pogies were still running strong, however, with purse seiners harvesting them farther north than they had in decades, so Maine got regulatory approval to catch extra.

Over the last three weeks, the Maine pogy fleet has claimed almost all of the 4.5 million pound quota set aside for a handful of states to share when the oily forage species shows up in local waters in unusually high numbers. The high rate of catch prompted Maine to close the so-called episodic fishery on Saturday, with regulators expecting all of the shared quota to be used up.

Part of the high catch rate comes from the size of the fleet. In past years, only a handful of fishing vessels have entered Maine’s regular pogy fishery. This year, however, the fishery attracted 50 fishing vessels during the regular season and 64 in the special episodic event fishery, officials say – no doubt drawn to Maine by word of the large number of schools reported up the coast.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Thousands of fish found dead on banks of Mystic River

August 6, 2018 –Last week about 40,000-50,000 Atlantic menhaden (pogies) were found dead along the Mystic River in Everett and Somerville, MA.

There are no perpetrators responsible for the mortality. Menhaden are victims of their own success, flourishing in large, dense schools that can cause them to “suffocate” and die off from lack of oxygen.

David Pierce, director of Massachusetts Marine Fisheries said, “When large schools of fish enter warmwater estuaries and rivers in large numbers during the summer months, they can deplete the water’s dissolved oxygen, making survival impossible. Oxygen must pass across and through fish gills, and when used up by tightly-packed fish in shallow waters, the inevitable occurs.”

Pierce said, “Management and regulation of menhaden is overseen by the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), having adopted compliance criteria of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Menhaden Plan and approaches best suited for the Massachusetts menhaden fishing industry. Our commercial quotas were raised this year due to high menhaden abundance finally re-establishing itself north of Cape Cod and (somewhat expectedly) causing re-occurrences of past years’ typical hot-weather kills – over 20 years ago.”

Read the full story at The Sun Chronicle

MASSACHUSETTS: Pogies have been abundant in North Shore waters

August 7, 2017 — I can’t remember the last time there have been so many pogies (Brevoortia tyrannus for you Latin fans) in the water. Huge schools of them can be found right now from Salem to Salisbury. The big stripers and tuna have just been feasting on them.

These fish, also known as menhaden on the South Shore, bunker further south and about thirty other names along the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Florida, grow to roughly 15 inches in length and weigh in at about 1 pound. Native Americans in precolonial America called the fish ‘munnawhatteaug,’ which means ‘fertilizer.’

They are a rather oily forage fish with a scale-less head that composes about one-third of it’s body length, are fairly flat-sided with a deeply forked tail. They can range in color from dark blue, green, blue gray, or blue brown above, with silvery sides, belly, and fins, and with a strong yellow or brassy luster. There is a conspicuous dusky spot on each side close behind the gill opening, with a varying number of smaller dark spots farther back, arranged in irregular rows.

They feed in a rather unique manner. An adult pogy swims along with it’s tooth-less mouth wide open and its gills spread. As tiny plankton, annelid worms, and crustacea flow into the mouth they are caught in a whole series of very fine comb-like gill rakers. As they move through the ocean these small fish filter as much as 7 gallons of water per minute! Imagine how much water is filtered when a whole school is feeding.

They have no defense mechanism other than being hidden in a huge school. They are oil-rich so every prey fish in the ocean targets them. Pollock, cod, tuna, stripers, sharks, bluefish and swordfish all savage these schools. Menhaden are a major source of omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to cut risks of heart disease and possibly other diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

Read the full story at the Newburyport Daily News

MAINE: Thousands of dead bait fish wash ashore in Brunswick

June 18, 2017 — Over the last several days, thousands of dead bait fish have washed up on the shores of Middle and Maquoit bays in Brunswick.

The pogies, a type of bait fish, appeared to have died after a single vessel which caught them was ill equipped to handle a large catch, not low oxygen content in the water or predation by a larger fish, according to the Brunswick Police Department.

Since then, the Brunswick Police Department’s Marine Resources and Harbor Management Division has received numerous complaints about dead fish being found on the shore.

“It’s stinky,” Dan Devereaux, Brunswick’s harbor master and marine resource officer, said Sunday, adding that he has received at least 50 complaints from people complaining about the smell of rotting fish. Pogies are particularly pungent because their flesh is so oily, he said.

Devereaux said that on Sunday, a group of recent high school graduate and college students collected 21 totes full of fish within about a 70-yard stretch of the five-mile span of affected coastline.

In an effort to rid the town of rotting pogies, the town is inviting the local fishing community to come collect the excess fish for use as crab and lobster bait.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Bunker or Pogie: Menhaden by Any Name Makes a Great Bait

September 12, 2016 — Menhaden may have a bit of an identity problem. Most of the Northeast refers to them as “bunker.” But around Massachusetts they’re often known as “pogies.” Whatever you decide to call them, they’re great bait this time of year for fishing big stripers.

Menhaden are a member of the herring family. They migrate into our waters seasonally, arriving from the south each spring. They grow out to a couple of pounds and about a foot long. They’re schooling fish, typically swimming in big schools.

In this week’s Fishing News, Kevin Blinkoff, of On The Water magazine, talks about snagging pogies and using them to fish bigger striped bass in Boston Harbor.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI