‘They’re taking everything’: Banned in other states, pogy ships catch all they want in Louisiana

A proposed law would put the first restrictions on the state’s menhaden industry

Along a chain of islands stretching from Venice to Grand Isle, a silvery swarm rises from the depths and flashes in the eye of a passing pelican. When the bird splashes down, scooping a mouthful of dollar-bill-sized fish, a feeding frenzy breaks out. Gangs of dolphins charge in, as do larger fish and dozens of other seabirds, all vying for a taste of a stinky, oily fish known as menhaden.

The dolphins are smart enough to flee when the Gulf of Mexico’s apex predator arrives, first with a fish-spotting airplane and then a 174-foot-long “mothership” bearing two smaller boats that slide from a ramp and begin to encircle the scrum of sea life in a long black net.

Steering his boat around the net, Venice-based fishing guide Michael “Red” Frenette gives a play-by-play of an industrial fishing process he says is harming his business and Louisiana’s fragile coastal ecosystem. Pound for pound, menhaden, also called pogy and fatback, is by far the state’s largest fishery. Yet few Louisianans have heard of it, and fewer still know how it’s fished.

Frenette has witnessed the process dozens of times, and it still makes him furious.

“They want the little fish, but they’re taking everything,” he says as the fishing crew cinches their purse seine net from the bottom and then tighten its top. Frenette points out a saltwater catfish and several burly redfish struggling amid the compressing mass of menhaden. He’s seen panicked dolphins tangled in the nets; today he spots a pelican. The bird dangles by its beak, wings flailing, as a winch lifts the net out of the water. A crewman yanks the creature free just before its head is crushed in the machine.

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