They have to release anything under a certain size, in the same area they caught them at.
Changing from tonging to mechanical dredges is going to hurt the oyster reefs, in my opinion. I'd bet there were mayby 1/4 the oyster boats when there was tonging only.
In La., you can have one license per registered boat. That means one man can have 5 boats(I know one that does), that has an oyster license for each boat. He can catch 5 limits per day. When tonging, no one could fathom tonging enough oysters in one day to fill 5 limits.
Plus more people are oystering cause it is so much easier to dredge, winch them in, throw it back overboard and start dredging again while culling and sacking.
But on a bright side, once the oystering is dead cause there are no more oysters, or not enough to make good money, they will have to go back to tonging. It's happened before, it will happen again.
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