Nature Notes
by Bob Thomas

The following story illustrates how components of the environment and economy are interconnected.

"I live in Montana. Why should I care about Louisiana's coastal erosion?" "I'm a teacher in Ohio. Why should I care?" "Yeah, I'm a car dealer in Helena, Arkansas. It doesn't affect me!"

WRONG! It does affect you, but I'm not surprised that you didn't know. As a matter of fact, few Louisianans have been apprized of their dependence on our coastal wetlands.
Assuming that, if you are reading this, you would be interested in being a member of the "informed crowd," let me tell you a story that mixes biology, ecology, and a little economics along the way.

Our story begins with a non-descript fish called a Gulf menhaden Brevoortia patronus. Locally, it is most often referred to as a "pogy." If you've never heard of it, maybe you've smelled it. Have you ever noticed that a drive through Pascagoula, Empire, or formerly Cameron may be a genuinely malodorous experience (the locals call it the "smell of money!")? This is the smell of pogy being changed from being fish to another very important product, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Pogy are small, schooling fish that are about five inches long as adults (the largest are about ten inches) and shiny silver in color. They swim in schools of oodles of millions (that's a "M" word) of fish and they represent the largest single fishery in the United States. Certainly in tonnage they are number one. That alone makes them very important, but there's more.

Remember food webs? They are basically a "who eats whom" list with arrows connecting each predator (eater) to one or more prey species (eatees). Pogy, that tremendously important commercial fisheries crop, eat plankton - tiny little critters and plants that exist as free floating life forms in the water column. On the other hand, pogy are eaten by most flesh eaters of the sea - redfish, trout, sharks, mackerel, tuna, cobia, bluefish, and more. So far I haven't found even a Louisianan who has a good recipe for pogy, but I'm sure someone out there does!

As important as pogy are in the food web of the Gulf, they are most important to humans as the basis for an extensive "economic web." An economic web is a list of all the ways people make money from products with arrows pointing the way between those that affect others (a graphic presentation similar to the food web).

The basic part of the pogy economic web is obvious. Pogy fishermen buy boats, nets, gasoline, white rubber boots, clothes, cars, food, electricity, insurance, sunglasses, Dixie beer, brooms, ice, and so forth. They hire many people: to dry-dock their boats, to work as deck hands, to haul supplies, etc. And don't forget what all these people and vendors do with the money they get from pogy fishermen - they spend it in most of the same ways!

When the pogy boat reaches its home base with a load of fish, the fish are rendered into oils and fish meal at a "pogy plant." Most of the oil goes to Europe where it is used in cosmetics, as glazing on pastries, and to make margarine (the FDA won't yet let us produce these products in America). The primary use of the fish meal is in making chicken (and catfish) food. It must be shipped to another plant (What does the trucker do with his money?), then many other suppliers and handlers are involved to get it to chicken farms. The chicken rancher hires lots of people and spends lots of money to raise chickens. The rancher then ships them to a poultry processing plant (the trucker stops along the way to gas up, eat a po-boy, play a pinball machine, spend the night in a Motel 6, etc.) where lots of people are employed and lots of businesses receive lots of money for services rendered. Be sure you don't forget all those folks who work at the utility company supplying the electricity to the plant, and the guys at the ice plant, and the preacher at the church the employees attend, and the person who fills the candy machine, and the people at the Chamber of Commerce, and so forth and so on. Do you think this could go on forever?

Now the precessed chicken leaves the plant and some goes to a grocery store, some to a restaurant, some to Popeye's Fried Chicken, and lots is exported. Many people now choose chicken as their main protein source because it is relatively cheap, but many others are required to eat chicken for health reasons.

What will happen if they had no chicken? Oh, my gosh! Do you realize that we listed Popeye's? Without Popeye's, there will be no Mardi Gras! You can't watch a parade without eating fried chicken! What will you do while sitting on the curb waiting for the parade to arrive if you don’t have Popeye’s fried chicken? The total economy and culture of New Orleans will collapse!

And to think, it all started with pogy. Or, did it?

We mentioned earlier that pogy feed on plankton, so on what do plankton feed? Most get their energy from nutrients that float in the water. Off Louisiana's coast, those nutrients largely come from organic matter that washes from coastal estuaries and their marshes with each tidal flow. If the marshes do not exist, there will be no food for the pogy to eat. Additionally, pogy (as most other commercially important species from the sea) must spend a portion of their lives in coastal estuaries. Without coastal wetlands, there will be no place for pogy to complete their life cycle.

No marsh, no pogy. No marsh, no economic web. No marsh, no culture. How will we replace the economic web and sustain our cultural web if we lose our coastal wetlands?

The next time you have a meal of delicious chicken (or pond-raised catfish since they are also fed fish meal), remember that you are enjoying the fine taste of processed Louisiana marsh!

What do you personally plan to do to ensure its availability?

Gulf menhaden, or pogy, Brevoortia                                   Pogy swim in enormous schools. In this
patronus.                                                                         photo, a large school entered an estuarine
                                                                                       waterway, got caught in oxygen deficient
                                                                                       water, and died.
                                                                                       Photo by P.J. Hahn.

Pogy on the deck of a pogy boat.                                       Young pogy netted in Bayou LaBranche
                                                                                      not far from its mouth into Lake Pontchartrain.
                                                                                      Coastal estuaries are necessary to their
                                                                                      survival, serving as their nursery grounds.
                                                                                      Photo by Bob Thomas.