New data sheds light on Louisiana's controversial pogy boats. Will it resolve the debate?

Two boats slide off the back of their mothership and into the Gulf’s green waters. Then the real work begins.

With waves rocking them, the boats begin to separate, unspooling a net bigger than five football fields as they motor in opposite directions to form a circle. Hundreds of pelicans hover, hoping for a free meal.

When the net is set, yellow floats along its perimeter bobbing on the surface, the men on the boats close it off and haul it back, bringing small, silvery fish with it.

“You’ve got a little fish in the net,” says Shane Treadaway, who oversees the operations, as he watches from a separate boat nearby, speaking of what was primarily intended as a demonstration for visiting journalists rather than an actual attempt to catch menhaden.

Later, the menhaden, or pogies, will be pumped onto a mothership about 170 feet long, for the trip back to the dock. There, they’ll be shuttled through pipes into a plant that runs them through an elaborate process to create oil and fish meal for uses that include food for animals and aquaculture.

It is far from the idyllic vision of south Louisiana fishing held by generations of anglers. Not even Treadaway, an Empire native who is now vice president of operations for Westbank Fishing, would argue that point.

It is an industry, one that creates jobs, tax revenue and wealth. And, let there be no mistake, lots of controversy, too.

Louisiana’s menhaden boats have long been the subject of scrutiny from recreational anglers and charter captains, who accuse them of worsening population declines for the coveted redfish, among other sins. The companies involved have pushed back vigorously, highlighting their economic contributions and pointing to the far higher catch by sport fishermen for speckled trout and redfish.

A recent study has shed some light on the debate by quantifying the industry’s bycatch, or fish caught by accident besides menhaden. The companies are holding it up as proof that concerns over their operations are overblown – an argument bolstered at least in part by findings from the state’s fisheries biologists.

But that is far from the end of the discussion. Recreational fishing organizations are highlighting what they see as troubling details in the study and signaling further battles ahead. Some are pushing for an expansion of restrictions that took effect last year keeping menhaden boats a minimum of a half-mile offshore for most of the coastline.

The industry says that would put them out of business, arguing that the existing buffer zone has already taken a chunk out of their bottom lines.

Only about eight inches long on average, the fish have taken on outsized importance. Though not eaten by anyone here, they are the Gulf’s largest commercial fishery, bringing in around 500,000 metric tons annually over the past decade.

“At least now they have numbers to talk about in a comprehensive way,” said Scott Raborn, president of LGL Ecological Research Associates, the firm that carried out the bycatch study on behalf of the state.

“Before they had to make some assumptions that they had no way of validating to come up with numbers. And we sort of removed those assumptions.”

Fish refinery

The Westbank Fishing operation and related Daybrook processing plant in Empire is essentially a fish refinery, with warrens of pipes and machinery that transform the humble pogies.

In addition to the boats, the operation includes Cessna spotter planes that assist in finding schools of fish.

When one of the boats returned to the dock on a recent day, workers suited up in waterproof overalls and face coverings to climb above the hold, where about 200 tons of fish awaited. They used a hose to push the mounds of oily fish toward the pipe that delivers them to the nearby plant.

Next to the plant is a warehouse where much of the finished product is stored: tall piles of fish meal ready to be shipped.

Westbank President Francois Kuttel is eager to show off the company’s operations, saying there is nothing to hide. Much is at stake.

A series of high-profile spills involving hundreds of thousands of fish drew further scrutiny to menhaden boats a couple years ago, which helped lead to the enlarged buffer zone.

Kuttel says the industry has voluntarily upgraded to costlier, far stronger nets that have greatly reduced those risks. Conservation groups argue the buffer zone has been key in reducing those incidents.

The companies have also standardized the use of improved excluder devices that keep many larger fish — including redfish — from being sucked up into the hoses. It is working toward further improving the excluders, which Kuttel says has the potential to keep lots more redfish alive.

He notes that the industry is well below overall bycatch limits required by the state, and highlights the buffer zone extends further in sensitive locations, such as three miles off Grand Isle. The boats include mapping devices that notify captains where they are in relation to the buffer.

“It employs 800 people directly, 2,000 people indirectly, and those are in jobs that are paying materially higher than the average for Louisiana, in areas that Louisiana needs those jobs created,” Kuttel says of the industry as a whole.

But conservation groups and recreational anglers argue that, while legal, the bycatch numbers are still high and concentrated along Louisiana’s already fragile coast.

“I think it's well within the rights of people who pride themselves on conservation of this resource, and the recreational fishermen who have invested a lot in pursuing these fish … for them to be upset about some of these numbers,” said Chris Macaluso of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

Disappearing habitat

The Gulf menhaden industry almost entirely takes place off Louisiana. Other Gulf states, more dependent upon beach tourism, have tighter restrictions on the industry. Louisiana’s Mississippi River-nourished coastal environment also provides ideal habitat for menhaden.

Three plants process the fish, located in Empire, Abbeville and Moss Point, Mississippi. Federal law prohibits the fishing fleets from being controlled by foreign companies.

Kuttel’s Westbank Fishing is a separate company, with no common employees, from the plant where it delivers its fish, which is Daybrook, also based in Empire. Daybrook is owned by South Africa-based Oceana Group, where Kuttel was formerly CEO.

Kuttel, who followed his father into the business, was born in South Africa but has been a naturalized US citizen for around 35 years.

Studies show that the Gulf menhaden population is healthy — not overfished or in the process of becoming so. They play a role in the food chain for other marine life, though perhaps not as large as some have asserted, said Robert Leaf, a University of Southern Mississippi fisheries scientist who has studied the subject.

Key findings of the recent bycatch study included:

• The industry’s total bycatch by weight was 3.6%, below the 5% limit in state law.
• Total redfish killed as bycatch in 2024 was around 30,000. As a comparison, the number of redfish caught and kept by recreational anglers in the same year was an estimated 791,000, not counting throwbacks that later died.
• Total speckled trout bycatch was estimated at 240,000. Recreational catch was around 2.8 million, not counting throwbacks.
• Total croaker bycatch was 81 million, white trout 25 million and white shrimp 5.7 million.
• Redfish blocked by excluder devices from being sucked up into the hoses — allowing them to be released from menhaden nets — had a high rate of survival, at around 83%.

The state’s fisheries biologists sought to put those numbers into context by extrapolating over a 10-year period from 2015-2024. They found that redfish killed by the menhaden industry during that time accounted for 9.9% of the total by weight, with the rest attributed to recreational anglers.

As for speckled trout, the amount killed by the menhaden industry represented 2.7% of the total by weight.

One point conservation groups hammer home is that the redfish killed by the menhaden industry are essentially all spawning-age fish, or “bull reds,” which are now illegal for recreational anglers to keep.

Asked whether that posed a particular problem, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said redfish live to around 40 years old and move offshore by age 5, meaning the ages of those killed by the menhaden industry would be spread throughout that span.

Regarding croaker and white tout, it said sampling has not turned up signs of "unsustainable declines." Further, it said menhaden white shrimp bycatch amounts to less than 1% of annual landings. 

The department plans to use the updated numbers in its assessments moving forward. 

Lifelong fishermen are concerned the entire picture is not being taken into consideration. Ryan Lambert, a 47-year charter captain based out of Buras, says Louisiana’s land loss crisis has already robbed its fish populations of nursery habitat. The pogy industry is adding further pressure, he says.

“You’re destroying the estuary, and it can't hold it anymore,” said Lambert. “We can't take that much out of it because it's not reproducing, because we lost the estuary due to coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.”

Treadaway, while headed back from the recent trip on the water to view pogy operations, said jobs are at stake.

“If the science tells us we’re doing something wrong, then ok, push us offshore,” said the 53-year-old, himself a longtime recreational fishermen. “If the science says everything’s fine, leave us alone.”