There was nothing wrong with tonging oysters. It kept the hard core oyster fishermen working.
Now it is so easy to make $300/day, everyone is buying a boat and making a dredge. But in a couple more years, when there are no more keeper oysters, some of them will cry and not understand why there are no more.
Some of the oyster fishermen can see what is going to happen soon. The ones with a brain can see the writing on the wall.
Like they say, education will never be as expensive as ignorance. They will wipe out the oysters, LDWF will make them go back to tonging them. 50% will quit oyster fishing cause tonging is too hard. When the oyster beds rebound, LDWF will let them dredge again. Turnaround in the LDWF is what's killing the oysters. It happened before, they stopped the dredging cause Big Lake was too small for dredging. New LDWF management steps in and sees all the oysters in Big Lake and lets them dredge again. Cycle of life.

CCA
 

I was wondering the same thing. Seems like a better fight for them than bowfishing reds.

:*****: True dat.

And this is probably the most brutally honest and depressing thing I've read all day.

CCA is too busy selling STAR tickets

first response back from LDWF:


Mr. White

I have been out of state this week and will return to the office on Monday. We will review your concerns and respond early next week. Thank you for contacting me.

Patrick

Patrick D. Banks
Biologist Program Manager
LDWF Marine Fisheries Division
225.765.2370

You should'a told him you were W. He would have gotten back to ya immediately. :confused:

Biggest problem on Big Lake imo; I can deal with other fisherman, but removing the habitat... no way.

pretty funny when you think of all the time and money spent on artificial reefs; when this year probably nixed more habitat than all the artificial reefs combined.

They cannot catch any more than they could with tongs. 15 sacks.
But making it easy with dredges, probably doubled the amount of fishermen.
Plus some of them are fishing more boats. The LDWF allows them to get 1
license per boat, not 1 license per person. So, 1 man can have 5 boats, with
a license for each boat.
With tonging oysters, by the time they caught their limits, they were too tired
to catch another.
Plus, they didn't hit the big reefs. It is a lot easier to catch oyster clumps instead
of tonging the big reefs. Scattered clumps were their targets.

bill
 

Anyone know if a bill has been introduced this session to address this?

Just reread the book “plugger” and the chapter titled “Oysters Teach Me a Lesson in Conservation” really hits home.

great book imo!

i was talking to a inshore fisherman from galveston with a biology backround this past weekend, he told me the reefs needed to be broken up so that they won't die off, so it can be healthy to do SOME oystering on them.

i can't verify the facts on this.

Why is he in our waters from texas....if he is here fishing sounds like they don't know !!!! That's why there here.....

Oysters will grow on oysters, clams will grow on oysters, they will pile up, they might kill off the ones on the bottom, but others will grow.
Go to the West Fork in Cameron on a low tide, some call it oyster bayou but it ain't, and you will see lots of old reefs that haven't been harvested in more years than I was alive. They are in good shape, they just get taller. The old shells give the new ones a place to grow and protection for small fish and shrimp.
There is nothing wrong with harvesting oysters, but wiping them out in a few years is not good. The bad part about this is when they wipe them out and have to go back to tonging, who are they going to blame? Same with gill nets. Some commercial fisherman will catch the last fish/oyster/shrimp to make money, not thinking about where the next dollar will come from after they wipe out everything.
Some of the educated commerical fishermen know this, but there is nothing they or we can do if the LDWF let the dumb ones catch everything with any means available.
It has happened before, it will happen again. The people within the LDWF who witnessed this before are all gone. The new ones just see a lot of oyster reefs. They need to be educated, they will see soon.