PHOTO: Trawlin' For Pogies On The Sakonnet River
Did you see the vessel on the Sakonnet River Thursday, with surface netting catching fish?
No, that was not an oil spill Thursday on the Sakonnet River. A trawler gathered up the oily pogies to sell them for bait.
One Tiverton Patch user sent an e-mail wondering what the boat was doing out there.
Tiverton Harbormaster Dave Vannier said this is a common fishing practice, although last year it wasn't such a big deal because there weren't large schools of pogies, technically known as menhaden, in the local waters, but it was in previous years.
"I'm not sure if it was the hammering of the bridge," he said.
He said the pogies are sold either for bait or for cat and other animal foods.
"They grind them up and use the oils," Vannier said, noting the fish, when gathered in large groups, produces an oily slick that drips from their scales, and ends up in the water.
"It's non-polluting and biodegradable," he added.
Resident Jim Lipe also sent in a photo of the trawler, saying at times you can see a plane just flying lazy circles in the sky, and they can see the schools of pogies below the surface and radio the information to the boats. Then, when the boat gets in place a smaller boat pulls a net out to encircle the school, then as the net is raised the fish get sucked up by a giant vacuum that spits the fish into the hold and water back in the bay.
Lipe noted that if you walk on either side of the shore beyond the area of the former railroad bridge, you find many bricks left from the huge factories that processed the pogies from local sailboats and then-steam boats.
Gloria Schmidt
4:50 pm on Friday, May 25, 2012
It is interesting to see an old industry come back. As we were researching the Portsmouth Historical Society exhibit - "On the Water, our curator did some research on the menhaden boats. Atlantic Oil & Guano Company at Common Fence was a Menhaden processing facility. These fish (aka Pogy) were caught and processed. The extracted oil was used to replace costly oil in paints but later used in cosmetics. The remainder of the fish was sold as fertilizer. Menhaden industry in some form was present in Portsmouth from 1812 to 1920s.
Tuna man
11:36 am on Saturday, May 26, 2012
The problem we now have is the Menhaden are becoming an endangered species. It is one of the main foods for fish such as striper,Bluefish and others. Todays fishing fleets make short work of the large schools of them and many times before they can even get to our waters where they enter the local rivers to spawn. Hundreds of millions of pounds of Pogies are taken each year and it is getting harder each year for these fish to rebound. Pogy boats are restricted to certain parts of the bay and the river by DEM to allow the fish to reach the spawning grounds but as is the case many times these boats find a school in a restricted area they slip in and and take the fish. Quoata's should be enacted by NOAA to help these fish come back to where they should be and maybe even a moratorium for a year or two. I have used Pogy for fishing many times over the years but I would like to see my grandkids be able to in the future.
nun
7:25 am on Sunday, May 27, 2012
When I was a kid, those planes doing lazy circles over the river meant it was only a matter of time before the big blue reduction boats made their way up the Sakonnet to clean out all the pogy. Years and years of overfishing has decimated the stocks. Nowadays most of the overfishing of pogy takes place in VA. Those few that get past the nets there make their way here in the Spring. Thankfully, RI DEM monitors the stock well here and enforces strict limits on how much of that stock can be taken by commercial harvest. In fact, Rhode Island's methods of protecting the stock are being used as a model for other states down the coast that want to protect their own stock.