EP 52: Stripped Seas: How Menhaden Mismanagement Threatens Our Fisheries

Schools of bunker once blacked out our bays; now many anglers chase scattered pods and skinny bass while ospreys circle empty water. We sat down with Captain Paul Eidman of Menhaden Defenders to unpack what changed, why the new ecosystem science calls for much tighter quotas, and how a single industrial fleet can reshape an entire food web. This is a straight look at menhaden—the forage that fuels stripers, birds, whales, and the bait that keeps lobster and crab fisheries moving.

We trace the cascade: Atlantic herring collapsed first, industrial capacity slid into menhaden, and pressure concentrated on the biggest, most nutrient‑rich adults. The result shows up everywhere—fewer “horse bunker,” shorter runs, predators forced to eat less‑dense prey, and even failed nests for ospreys and eagles. While managers acknowledged errors in the old models, the vote still landed well above what the corrected ecosystem approach recommends. If you’ve wondered why the on‑water story doesn’t match the policy, this conversation bridges the gap.

We also separate fact from fury on fleets. The reduction sector harvests at industrial scale for fishmeal and oil, targeting the oldest fish that anchor resilience, while small bait boats supply working waterfronts with a fraction of the impact. If we care about rebuilding stripers and restoring coastal wildlife, we have to start by rebuilding their food—setting a hard, science‑driven cap, reserving a cautious bait quota, and pausing reduction catch until adult age classes rebound. Abundance is the goal, because abundance feeds everything else.

If this mattered to you, share the episode with a fishing buddy, subscribe for future deep dives, and leave a quick review telling us where you’re seeing (or not seeing) bunker this season. Your on‑water reports help shape what we tackle next.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening, Stakes, And Housekeeping
• 3:02 Sponsors And Listener Setup
• 7:32 Menhaden Focus And Host’s Stance
• 12:37 Guest Intro And Forage Fish Primer
• 16:40 Herring Collapse And Pressure On Menhaden
• 22:30 Nutrient Value And Predator Health
• 26:40 Trust In Data Vs. Management Decisions
• 31:20 EBM Math: 233k To 108k Debate
• 36:20 Targeting Big Adults And On‑Water Signs
• 41:10 Bait Fleet Vs. Reduction Fleet Realities
• 47:15 Ownership, “Canadian Boats,” And Loopholes
• 52:00 What Can Anglers Do Now
• 56:20 Birds, Size Classes, And Missing “Horse Bunker”
• 1:01:30 Cuts, Capitalism, And Ecological Limits
• 1:06:00 Global Reduction Fishing Context
• 1:10:00 Calls To Action And Closing Notes

Transcript

Capt. Paul Eidman: 0:00

And up until last month, I was measuring every single fish at six or seven inches. Now I'm measuring every fish at nine inches. This time of year, I should be measuring 12 inch and overfish, and they are just not there.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 0:22

Hello and welcome back to the Fat Dad Fishing Show. I'm your regular host, Rich Natoli, and we've got a pretty uh interesting episode tonight that I'm I'm excited to dive into. We're gonna be talking about the condition of Menhaden, Atlantic Menhaden, uh, all up and down the coast that affects everybody who's saltwater fishing, and that is pretty much anybody that's watching or listening to this. So it's a it's one of those topics that look, we got to take a break from strike fast. Uh, we got to take a break from the TOG, uh, well, even before TOG gets really rolling. And we're gonna talk about this because it's an important issue that I think everybody should at least have some information about. Uh, we are scheduled to have two guests on with us tonight, and uh, I'm gonna jump into that in a minute, but let's get let's get through the housekeeping first and let's talk about the sponsors of the show. The first one, Great Bay Outfitters, Radio Road in Tuckerton, the shop that I use for everything kayak fishing, kayaking related. Uh, if you if you're looking for a kayak, that's where you want to go, Paul and uh Paul's nuts. Let me just tell you that. Paul, the owner, is nuts. He's in the chat right now. This is a dude who uh finds himself with a little free time and decides that he's going to just pimp out a uh a kayak and he's just gonna throw a Garmin Force on there. He's gonna do something, he's gonna throw new electronics on it. And uh, one of the best things about the shop is it's on the water. So if there's a kayak that you're considering, go down there, get on the water, and try it out. That that is always the best advice. Don't listen to people that say, go get this, go get that. Uh, 99.9% of the time they're saying it because that's what they have, and everybody wants to think that they made the best purchase in the world. Doesn't mean it's right for you. So uh great day outfitters in Tuckerton, New Jersey. Make sure you check them out. Next one is Quad State Tune with Kevin Driscoll. So the phone number for Kevin is 44 633 5975. It's also in the bumper to this video if you want to go back and check it. If you have a Toyota truck, uh this is what they what he sells are the tunes for the Toyota truck. So think about the Forerunner, the Tundra, the Tacoma, especially the third gen Tacoma. Uh, these will get the engines more efficient, more uh horsepower, better torque. It's what you need for these engines to get them running at peak performance. And if you're not sure if you need it and you have a Toyota or even like a Lexus 460 or 470, reach out to Kevin. If you don't need it, he's going to say, Yeah, you don't need this. But if it's something that will help you for towing boats, for the highway, highway speeds where it's shifting in and out of gears and it's not kind of like resting where it should, he can help you out with that. Then the last one is real estate me. I am a residential real estate agent with Weikert Realtors Cornerstone. My home office is in Bluebell, Pennsylvania. Also work out of Collegville, but do everything southeastern Pennsylvania related. So if there's anything I can do, reach out to me, 267-270-1145. So that's going to cover the sponsors. And I want to just let you know. So we're scheduled to have two guests on tonight. We're scheduled to have on Captain Paul Eidman, who is he's captain of Real Therapy, Fly and Light Tackle. He fishes primarily striped bass, and we're talking northern New Jersey area. So, like most of the people that watch this, our New York is our number one region that watches, and then and then New Jersey is number two. So, right where you are, that's where Captain Paul is fishing. He is also involved with Menhaden Defender. So a 501c3, it's really looking out for the environment and Menhaden specifically. So he's going to be on, talk about what's going on with that fishery. We're also supposed to have Captain Vinny Calabro from Carranan Charters in Jamaica Bay, New York. Now, here's the issue: Captain Vinny is out today, and he is not here yet. He may not be able to get here. You know, the they're captains, they work on the water. So we knew that could happen, but we have two and two captains, and Paul is available and he's here. And we're going to jump on with him in one moment. I want to do a little housekeeping. All right. So those of you that are new to the show, welcome. Thank you for showing up. Those that have been here for a while, you know that I am not afraid to give my opinion on anything. I just don't care. I'm not making a ton of money from this. This is not my job. This is what I do for fun, trying to help people out. So if I believe something, I'm going to tell you flat out. And there have been multiple episodes in the past where I've said, well, you can't say it, but I can. And I will. I will tell you this for this for this Menhaden issue that we're going to talk about. I'm not sure entirely where I stand at this moment. So do I believe Menhaden are in trouble? I do. Do I believe the math behind it? I don't. And I don't for the same reason as I don't believe a lot of the data for striped bass, it's just been shown to be just bad data. And I don't trust the ASMFC. I've made that clear. But it it could be that we're on the same side on this. I'm not sure. So that's where I stand. And I want to also make it clear that this issue that we're talking about is Manhaden. We're not going to drift off into other things like windmills and striped bass, even though striped bass are definitely related to the Manhaden populations. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking specifically about Menhaden. If you don't know what those are, they're bunker or pogies in different areas. So that's what we're going to do. Yeah, and this is a commercial and a wreck fishing issue. And I can tell you right now, just by the title of this, the commercial guys are pissed at me. Pissed. And it's a clean channel, so I'm not going to say everything that I'm thinking, but I'll just say this. I don't care if you're pissed at me because of the title of this. I don't care about anybody. My initial thought is there is an issue with Manhattan. I just don't know what to do about it at this moment. And I don't know that I believe any of the math. So that's where I stand. Now that could evolve as we go forward. Paul is really, really in-depth involved in this. He knows the numbers. He knows everything about it. So he's going to do some education here. And the last thing I'm going to say is I did not invite, we do not have somebody from quote unquote the other side of this issue, which is the reduction fleet side of this issue on the show tonight. And the reason that nobody is on to argue is because they didn't want to come on. Nobody answered. Now, I get it. It's not a huge podcast. I get it. They're corporate attorneys and it's whatever. They didn't want to come on. That's fine. But don't complain. And we're not just going to have a random guy who works on a on one of the boats come on because want to talk to people that know what they're talking about, have the information and the data. So that's kind of where we stand. Those are the level setting for this episode. And with that said, gonna bring on Captain Paul Eidman right now. Good to see you, Paul. Thanks for coming on.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 7:39

Hey Rich. Thank you so much.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 7:41

Yeah. I'm doing great. I'm feeling great. I'm I'm looking forward to this episode for a while. And I've been following Menhate and Defenders for quite a long time because I've, you know, you and I talked about this backstage. I it first came up with me in the late 90s, early 2000s, where you could see all the you know the reduction happening right up along the beach lines, and really pissed off the recreational fishing guys back then. Just I don't even know why. We didn't know the numbers or anything. It was just we didn't want to see the boats there. And so I've kind of followed it. And then when I found the Menhaden defenders online, I just kind of started following and trying to keep up with it. But things have kind of come to a head. And I want to share one thing that we started to talk about. I mentioned that to me, I've described it to people as the Menhaden or the bunker is really the first domino to fall in the line. So if it falls, it can collapse everything else behind it. But you had a different take.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 8:50

Yeah, not I'm not jiving on that.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 8:53

Yeah, so you're not jobing. So what's your take on that? I think it's the first domino. What's your thought?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 8:58

It's literally the last domino. So I'm a forage fish guy, and that and that comes from being a fisherman. And in my mind, in order to be a good fisherman, you have to know what fish are eating. So unless you know the forage and you know the patterns that are in the water, you don't really, you know, and I also I'm not a live bait guy, so I'm always throwing lures trying to match the forage. So to me, this kind of organically, you know, it happened. And it just, you know, if you know your forage fish, you know the the situations that surround each one. I don't care if it's a grass shrimp, an eel, a menhayden, a herring, they all have their own habits and and and biology. And I'm really, really deep into that. So that led me into this rather insane rabbit hole. But but to answer your your question, it's the last stop on the train right before you go off the cliff. So this all starts out with Atlantic herring, okay? We've completely decimated the Atlantic herring stocks in the Northeast. And a lot of those those vessels, when everything goes by sectors, okay. So what they say is, okay, sector one is overfished, sector two is overfished, and then they just close the season. And then those boats, these these giant herring boats, come down and they they have to stay busy in order to stay affordable. So they start loading Menhaden and they became carry vessels for our bait fleet in New Jersey because they had no fish where they were. Now, key to that is providing lobster bait. Okay, so when you run out of bait, when there's no Atlantic herring left, which is the traditional lobster bait, you have to turn to another fish. Well, for years they turned to alewife and blueback herring, which were also very popular up there. And guess what? Now we're at the bottom of the barrel of that too. Now, alewife and blueback, commonly known as river herring, are caught at sea and just and dumped overboard. When when these midwater trawlers are fishing for squid or scup or Atlantic mackerel or all these other fish, they use small mesh and they tow in the midwater, and guess what? They all feed on the same little microorganisms. So when the net goes through the pod, it's a disaster. And these nets are so big, they can decimate an entire river's population of river herring in one net set. So if you had river herring in one special place in Pennsylvania that you used to go as a kid, guess what? There's 10 that show up in the spring now instead of 10 million. Right. And I live that. So I mean, I can remember taking my bike to the local creek and and catching river herring, you know, in my bare hands because there were so many. And now there's none in that same creek. So here we are. Everything has prey switched over to Menhaden, and now the Menhaden are depleted. Well, what do you think comes next? I mean, there's nothing else, you know, and and we've up until recently, we haven't had the sand eels that we need. We haven't had American eels are also in the in the crapper. So it's it's it's an ugly situation. And and it's always important. The bottom of each of these conversations, by the way, is the nutrients that the menhayden have. In other words, a striped bass can prey switch over and eat a baby fluke, but it doesn't have the same vitamins and minerals in there that it needs to turbocharge that growth. And for that same reason, that's why these are so important commercially. Because for fish meal and oil, they're getting all these nutrients and it's cheap. And if you need your puppy to grow fast or you need your salmon to grow fast to get to market, you feed them menhaden. It's rocket fuel.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 13:12

Yeah, it's interesting. It's funny because I in the fish too, like striped bass, yeah, they get they get better better nutrients out of it. And it's what I what's what I tell people when we're talking about what's the best way to approach catching certain fish. And when we talk about predator fish, now a migrating striper is not, or I should say, an ambush predator fish. When it's migrating, that's not what it is. It's playing a different game. But you know, you take the the summer holdovers, they become their natural ambush predators. And the big thing is they're they're eating to survive, and and they need to get the calories back that they're expending to go after that prey when they get out there. Otherwise, there's no sense in doing it. And it's a great point. If they're going to eat a little baby flounder, that's great, but they're not getting nearly the nutrients that does impact it. And then it just now they have to go after two baby flounders and six crabs and so on and so forth, and they're you know, they're not quite getting to where they are. It it really is though a domino effect that we're seeing. But my my big question is what is it going to look like down the line if well, actually, let's take a step back. Let's talk about the numbers because as I've told you in the before, and I said at the beginning of this, I'm I'm not sold on the numbers because I'm not sold on the entities that are collecting the numbers. Are you able to comment on the validity of the numbers when they do these stock assessments of the Menhaden?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 14:47

Yeah, I I actually think I don't know, it's you know, we all have our opinions about the ASMFC and basically that they couldn't, you know, run a bodega, but it's it's true. I mean, the majority of the species, species that they manage are in the are in the toilet. And if it was corporate, they would be fired because they're they're simply not doing their job. The ASMFC, if I if I remember correctly, was started in the early 50s. And originally the design around the ASMS ASMFC was to have all the user groups that use the fishery participate in the management of the fishery. So when you have a commercial guy, an environmental guy, and a recreational guy sitting representing each state, it all should come together. Well, over time it's become largely a commercially run and lobbied organization, and that always puts business in front of the fish. And me personally, not only, I mean, in my world, in my little Enviro world, I always put the fish in front of business. I don't care what it is. I mean, I run a striper charter business, and I should be in favor of status quo. Let everything go, but I'm not. I think that we need to be cautionary because we're gonna shoot ourselves in the foot. We're gonna wake up in 2027 and go, wow, what we said in 25 was right, and now we have none, and now we go into a full moratorium, and I can't even do a charter. Right. But yet, put the fish first, and and you gotta you gotta just be really, really concerned about the conditions. I I have to say though, that the scientists, these are all marine biologists, they all provide the data to the ASMFC. I have confidence in the data collection. However, in this specific case that brought us to tonight and this vote the other day, was the fact that they admitted there was a mistake. They admitted that they used the wrong numbers to calculate the ecosystem-based management plan that they were gonna implement. Now, when you're doing millions and millions of fish and you're off by a hair, that means a lot. So basically what they said was okay, we we originally allocated 233,000 metric tons to the industry. Okay, that's both reduction fishing and the bait sector, bait meaning trap bait. Okay. So now they're saying so so so for for years they they they treated menhaden as a single species management, just like you would for a weak fish or a fluke or a striped bass. However, we lobbied very, very hard to get them to switch over to ecosystem-based management because we felt that you couldn't use a Menhaden as a single species because it influenced and impacted so much of the ecosystem that you have to do something different. That took us 12 years to implement. Okay? We finally did it. They they put in all the work, everything from herons to to osprey to eagles to you name it, it's all in there, okay? Striped bass, omega protein, the lobster guys, you name it, they they put everything in there and they came out with a number. And they said 233 would do it. Well, guess what? Oops. Now they're saying 108,000 will do it. Right. And 154% cut, okay? And that that's what the science says that the ecosystem needs to survive. And what did the ASMFC vote on the other day? They used their own freaking science and they said, nah, I don't think so. We're only gonna do a 20% cut, and that's how it is.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 19:08

So so this is where uh my suspicion does kind of collide with you now, right? So the data collection, here's the thing. I I do believe that data collection, they do what they can, they don't have the resources. They could, I think they could be better. Every species, I think the data collection could be better. But as I had mentioned to you, I used to work in statistical analysis for a very, very large company, like very large. And I could tell you why four out of five dentists prefer Colgate and tell you it's true. And I could tell you in the next sentence that four out of five dentists prefer prefer Crest and it's true. Because you can make the numbers do whatever you want, but it's also very easy to just screw it up. It's it's very easy. And like you said, if you're off by one-tenth of one percent at that volume, there's a big impact. So are we sure that the hundred and the the 108 was right? Or are they saying maybe they made a mistake and it really should have been 186?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 20:10

No, no. The 186 was a fallback position that they came up with. This is this is just a very clever move. I I think that it it this there are so many pitfalls to this conversation that I don't I think we need to kind of trim it a little bit, if you will. We need to kind of edit it because it's just too freaking complicated. I mean, it's it this is this is tough stuff. I've been in a room with the smartest marine biologists and they turn to me and go, What the hell's going on? Like that's how complicated fishery management is. Okay. However, don't treat a a striped bass, excuse me, a menhayden like you would a striped bass. In other words, it's a whole separate entity. And when you're when you're dealing with ships that are 200 feet long taking two million fish at a time, it's totally different than a fleet of boats off a Sandy Hook, you know, jigging up stripers. Like it's a whole different scenario. They're totally related and the conversation, they are in the conversation, but let's keep the menhayden cozy in their own little conversation, okay? Yeah. Um, you know, everybody, a lot of your listeners, you know, we all want to talk about, you know, the planes and the tactics that they use and and all the stuff and how unfair it is. But the reality is that they're in the business to collect protein and they're extremely good at it. And in order to get that protein, they have to go for the fattest, oldest fish. Okay? And that brings us exactly where we are today. After six years of targeting at the numbers that they were told they could they could do. We're all yelling, by the way, on the water how the osprey have no food, or the striped ass are skinny, or we haven't seen a big school of bunker like we used to. As fishermen, we're all seeing this, but that's anecdotal evidence. That's not scientific, you know. But guess what? Now we're right. It's sad. Now we're freaking right.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 22:27

So was there was there data collection? So their data collection that was years ago. So we've had six years or five, no, it's five years, right? Five years of targets set on a miscalculation.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 22:41

Well, it was six years ago that they went into the ecosystem-based management um method. But they do young of year studies every year, they feed that data in there. They do omega protein has to submit catch reports on a daily basis. So every time they set a net, there's a you know, GPS coordinate to that, there's an amount and a quantity, and they feed that to nymphs, and and it all goes into the total. However, you know, now that Cook Seafood owns them, everything's private. Okay, there's there's it's no longer public information, it's not a public company. So that that complicates things quite a bit. So we don't know how much they catch. Like, like we know overall that they're under the quota, but we don't know year to date, you know, like did they make the quota? I mean, as far as I know, they haven't made their quota. They haven't come close to reaching their quota in a couple of years now. And that itself, if these guys are the absolute best in the business and they're not catching their quota, that tells me that the abundance is is different, you know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 23:54

Yeah, I mean, it's it certainly seems that way. I mean, you know, again, I can only say anecdotally, but I'm hearing anecdotally that the even the schools that we had just three years ago are just not there. You know, you could walk across them and they're not there.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 24:10

You know, I I I fish the Navasink and the Shrewsbury and the Sandy Hook area and and and up in the Raritan River and all that, and I see a lot of estuary type behavior. Very, very early in the spring, we always have a run of what we call horse bunker, okay, meaning they're like 12 to 14 inches. These are the big dogs, okay? And always we had that. And up until I guess the last eight years, I've been monitoring two streams where we've had these these fish kills, and all the fish, I measure them all the time, and they're always these these horse bunker. The last two years, 24 and 25, we had torrential rains in the beginning of the year, and adult these big adult bunker can't can't tolerate that. And they bolted, they literally bolted, and they're they're in like New Hampshire. Okay. However, that that biomass of large adult fish used to be enormous, and now it's small. So when they all move out of the area, our springtime bass fishing here in New Jersey just goes off a cliff. And then you have migratory bass that are coming up the coast looking for these big meals, and guess what? They're not here. Well, you know what? Then the bass go farther up north, they come out of our reach. So am I I'm trying to stay on track here. It's it's pretty hard.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 25:34

No, you're no, you're you're staying on track.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 25:36

I mean, it is it is a how about the adult bunker? It's yes, every so if you have a company that must they app they can't make it catching five-inch fish. Okay, they gotta have big fish. And the pilots, by the way, that fly over the areas before they they set the nets are so skilled they can actually pick out what they want.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 26:03

And they're used to seeing the size of the flash and all that stuff, yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 26:07

And the depth, how far down in the water column and all that, and also they have to be concerned that they don't want to overload the net because that's no good either. Okay. So, so they're up there, and I mean I I follow the planes every day, I follow each and every ship every day. You know, it's like religion to me. And when I see them coming up past, you know, past Paul's store, I know they're they're on their way. I I I just I just know it because they look like it's looks like a military convoy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 26:40

Right. Oh, yeah, I've seen them. I've seen them heading up the coast. And you know, usually you'd see them when you're going out tuna fishing.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 26:46

And yeah, last year was their record. They they came up six times last year. It's crazy. Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 26:52

Well, let me ask you this because this is this is one of the big debates that I'm seeing on social media. What so you you have the reduction, you have Omega as an example. Yeah, the reduction fleet.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 27:06

And then you got the Well, Omega's the only company, so don't be shy.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 27:09

Okay. Omega. And then you have the bait guys that are supplying the shops and everything. What do you have an idea of what the the breakdown is between those two?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 27:20

It's not supplying shops. That's like not even on the list.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 27:25

That's what I want to kind of get to.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 27:27

It's 75-25. Okay, 75% goes to Virginia, period. Right. And 25 is Omega. And the second largest producer is New Jersey at 11%. Okay. And the majority of that goes to a single company called Lund Seafood. Now, this this is strictly catching whole fish, putting it in a bin, putting that bin on a flatbed truck, and sending it to Maine or the Chesapeake or to Florida for crab. It it's not to have anything to do with you know fishing or chum or or recreational fishing bait.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:08

That's it's commercial baits for whatever.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 28:12

So like there are local guys that throw a smaller net, like a sane net, like you and I would throw on a boat, and they're taking a thousand, two thousand fish a day, and then loading up a truck and driving around to the tackle shops and selling them. And they are permitted to do that. So they are totally separate.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:32

They're totally separate, but they are included in the numbers.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 28:36

Uh, I don't believe so, no.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:38

Okay.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 28:38

I guess my point is it's called incidental catch, by the way.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 28:42

Yeah, it's it's here's my thought on it. You see, a lot of people are getting on the shops, and I I don't I don't necessarily agree with that because it's it's like the whole thing. You get a little I I hate politics, man, and I I'm gonna say something, it's gonna piss people off. The whole like the straws, the plastic straws, and the the amount of plastic that the U.S. has thrown in the oceans. Okay, you can cut it, but at the end of the day, it's literally nothing compared to China and those over there. Like it's such a drop in the literally a drop in the ocean that to me it's like well, you know, we're doing all this stuff. So that's the kind of the way that I think whether you agree with that or not, the scale is so far different when you're talking about these guys netting and going to shops as opposed to these guys that are netting 100. Let's make this clear. 100, this is reduced, 186,000 metric tons of this per year. Like that's that's some serious volume that's coming out of there. And then you got these guys that are maybe taking out, you know, less than a ton a year, you know, for the for these smaller things. So I I I I think it's responsible. I think it would be great if they wouldn't. Do it, but I don't know that it's I think it's more symbolic than anything. I don't know how you feel about that.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 30:08

Well, I I first off, I don't think that we should allow reduction fishing in the United States.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 30:14

I agree with that.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 30:15

Period. There is I mean, as Bruce Franklin used to say, he's the author of the Most Important Fish in the Sea, that he's he would say there's not a single thing that omega protein makes that can't be produced in a more sustainable way and can't be replaced. In other words, just because your great grandpappy fished for them 150 years ago and the fisheries, you know, your heritage doesn't mean that you can continue to just strip mine the ocean at the at the expense of every creature and every business and every you know, it's it's totally lopsided. And unfortunately, we as recreational anglers, we don't have the organization or the, you know, the commercial guys are very, very talented at what they do. They have buttloads of money, they have they have tons of attorneys, you know. We we're really like Menhaden Defenders, for example, we're completely on donations, right? And when we need an attorney, we have to pay for it, you know. Yeah, I could lose an entire year's worth of donations in in one fell swoop. You know what I'm saying? Like it's just it's hypersensitive. So it this is this is a really tough subject.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 31:37

Yeah, and I I I'll throw another opinion in there. I I as far as if the numbers are right, and you say Omega, you can take we know that we're we're safe with the population if you take your 108,000. I am totally fine with Omega using planes, submarines, whatever the hell they need to get it out as efficiently, quickly, and cheaply as possible to take it because I I don't care. I like go ahead, it's business. I'm a business guy, man. I'm all about capitalism, I'm good with it. My my issue comes with the other part because when when you it's it's how much do they get? And I just don't trust it because look, I don't God I can't say things. No matter who you look at, no matter who you look at on TV, no matter which bias channel you want to look at on either side, those people are being bought and sold every day. Every single one of them is being bought and sold every day. And I I just don't I just don't trust it, man. I just don't trust the numbers. And look, Omega, they're fine if they're within the numbers. It's just the fact that Omega is but I think is buying the numbers.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 32:55

That's well, what's interesting about that, Rich, is that they they accepted the science and the numbers when it told them it was okay to go to 233.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 33:07

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 33:07

Now that it's okay to that they're saying, hey, listen, the real science is showing us that we must go to 108 in order to preserve the ecology of the entire East Coast. Now they're saying, yeah, you know, the science is bad. Right. That's that's not the way this works, you know? No, it's just disingenuous. In my world, science is first. If science tells me something, I I take it to the bank. This is not an opinion. You know, and then when we see things on the water and we go, you know what? I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm seeing less and less fish, both game fish and menhaden, that's an indicator. And when you have a thousand guys online chiming in, like on our Facebook page, holy crap, you wouldn't believe I get messages from all over the the East Coast. Right. No bunker here, no bunker here, only immature bunker here. Haven't seen an adult bunker. It's it's fascinating. And everybody is making these observations because we are the stewards of the resource. If we don't speak up, nobody's gonna do it. Right. And I see there's a question in the it's coming up here in the chat.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 34:17

It's probably the same one from James Flynn. How long does it take for a bunker to get to that horse bunker size?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 34:22

Yeah, so horse bunker is normally over four years old. All right. So it at two and a half to three years old, a bunker is sexually mature and they can reproduce. Okay. But once they get bigger than that, they can live nine years. If nobody bothered them, they they would live a full nine years. That's another form of herring, and they they follow that. Hope that answers the question.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 34:49

Yeah, well, it just says look, if we all have all these little ones, I I could say a lot of things. It's like you said, it's complicated, right? You've got a ton of little ones, I think we have a ton of the small guys.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 35:03

Wow.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 35:03

I don't know where to But I don't think that we have as many as we used to. You know, again, anecdotally, right? Like maybe they moved. Like you could say that. Maybe they just don't, maybe it's like other fish. They, you know, we have redfish back, we have sheep's head back. Maybe it's maybe they've moved to a different area and we haven't found them. And maybe maybe the the population exploded. I don't know. But what I do know is that I have not seen in the past five years as many bunkers as I used to see.

unknown: 35:32

Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 35:32

Definitely not. I mean, it used to you used to not be able to get away from them. It was ridiculous. And now when you find when you find a really big number of them and huge schools, and it can go for miles, but they used to go like 10 miles, you know, now they go two miles. It's still big, but it's not as big as it used to be. You know, I I remember going out to the, I'm not, don't know if you're familiar with it, but the Five Fathom Bank, which is not, you know, it's off of Cape May and it's it's a little distance out there, and you would be it would just be continuous bunker all the way out. And you just don't see that anymore at all, at all.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 36:08

Yeah, and for the last couple of weeks, Omega and all the other all the other boats have been at the mouth of the Delaware Bay. So that's that's their right now, that's happens to be where they're where they're getting their fish. The one good thing about this lousy, lousy weather and these consistent storms, it's really bad for us, but it's really good for preserving men. Right. Because they can't, they can't, you know, anything over a couple of foot seas, they're done. Uh they they can't run the net boats, you know, their visibility is bad. So it's kind of good in a in a bad way.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 36:42

But we need those winds to bring them in, you know, the west winds, bring them bring them inside that line.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 36:47

But you're right. I mean, the fish do move around, but I'm I'm gonna default once again to you gotta you gotta look at this it in a in a coastwide lens. Okay. When the Indians were here, the Menhaden went from Maine to Florida. In other words, the entire biomass was the length of the East Coast. That's my unit of measure. Okay. Now we're we're focused on the slug of what's left, basically the middle of the biomass, is in the mid-Atlantic. Okay. And yes, they do move and they move north, but there's less abundance overall. The the numbers overall are way smaller than they need to be. Okay, so if if this was to go to 108,000, Omega would basically send boats to the Gulf. Because they don't need eight boats or six boats or whatever they're running out. So they would shrink it and they would they would the jobs would be lost in Reedville, and they would send the guys to uh to the Gulf, which by the way is almost two and a half times the amount of fish taken off the east coast. And that's even more fascinating because Gulf Menhaden only get to be seven inches. Yeah. So you need two fish to equal, so you're really pillaging the Gulf by removing that many fish. And I've talked to redfish guides and spec guides, and they're all like, you know, when these boats come in, we're we're done. We're done for the week. Right. You know, and they're trying to implement all these bumper zones, but we could save that for another another show.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 38:34

Yeah, so let's get to this. So this is a a basic point, KCD. I I see your comment in there. I'm gonna bring that up later, but another one from James Flynn. Where does the talk of these Canadian boats fit into all this? So this is Omega. Let's talk for those that are unaware of exactly their role. Why don't you give your your you know, thousand-foot view of who is Omega and why is this an issue?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 39:01

Okay, so if you recall earlier in the show, we were talking about how Omega used to be public. Okay, so they were ver they were a Houston-based company that was doing business in Reedville for a century. And in 2018, they got bought for like $550 million by a company called Cook Seafood. Now, Cook Seafood is an almost $4 billion a year global fish producer. They predominantly do sa salmon and other netted species. But if you know anything about business, you know that if you're paying somebody else for bait or for ground for fish meal or fish fish pellets, you're losing money. So they bought omega protein to vertically integrate their company. Okay? So now they have their own bait source, they have their own food and they continue to sell you know to all the other food groups. The Canadian boat thing, the the boats are not Canadian, the boats are American. However, what Omega did very cleverly was to re-register all the boats in Delaware under a company called Alpha, and then they started at another company called something harvesters. I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank. But they considered themselves American. Meanwhile, it was something like the brother-in-law of the Cook family happened to live in America, and they registered everything in his name. And it's just a loophole, it's typical corporate. I mean, the reason why they they registered all the boats in Delaware, obviously, is the tax advantages. There's certain, you know, advantages to that. But so But the Cook family is Canadian. They're all out of Canada, yeah. Yeah. So it's a Canadian company with an American brother-in-law who, yeah, it has to be in order to take American fish, you have to be American. So they figured out a way to do it, and that's what they did. This is, you know, and there was a lawsuit last year going against this, and it and it got tossed for whatever reason. But they're definitely exploiting that. But it it is Americans. There are Americans in Reedville running the boats, and that's that.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 41:31

Yeah, it is American. So it is to be clear, Canadian ownership is what everybody says, even though it's technically owned by an American, but it is staffed. The people that work there and the employees are American citizens. Yeah. They are they are just like us, they're just American commercial fishermen.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 41:54

Yeah, and they're kind of in their life. And there is another company, by the way, in the Gulf that is South African-owned, that also owns a Menhaden company, and them and and Omega fish in the Gulf together. So it's not it's not uncommon for these foreign companies to build entities everywhere. Because they're trying to, you know, there's there's global mouths to feed here and money to be made.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:25

Right. It would just be cheaper if we'd just buy it back.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 42:33

Yeah, and that was you know when you think about it. If I had some rich rich friends, uh they could have come up with 500 mil and and just buy out Omega and case closed, and then the lobster guys would have it'd be rain and bait, you know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 42:46

Right, right. So what do what are you seeing? One of the big problems that we had, I think, is you had all these these public forums, and they're always, always going to be attended by the reduction fleet attorneys and representatives because they're paid to do it. It's a paid business trip. So it's like, hey, I gotta go to work, you know, this Thursday.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 43:13

They were all paid for the day.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 43:15

Yeah. So I mean, so they're just going to work for the day. And then yeah, the rec guys. And that's the difficulty. I think it's tough enough, and I don't want to mention striped bass, but I'm going to do it anyway. That the fish that everybody loves in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast got almost nothing to these forums, right? I mean, I watched it online. I didn't even go. I watched it online because I got done work and it was too late to drive down to Bristol. So I I did the online thing and commented online, but it's not the same because there wasn't another person standing in front of anybody. How many guys did they have at some of these things from the the reduction side?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 43:56

Oh two busloads.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 43:58

Two busloads versus how many rec guys that are local?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 44:01

Yeah, whoever took the day off.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 44:03

Like 20 people.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 44:04

They're all retired guys because regular guys like us are still working, you know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 44:09

And that's the thing. So what so what is it that we can do for those that are concerned to help out with this as rec guys? Because you know, people are not, they're probably not going to want to miss too much work and not get paid for the day to go out and fight for a fish. Maybe we should, but realistically speaking, most people aren't going to do that. So what would you recommend people do if they want to get involved at this point?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 44:36

It's it's really a legislative thing and a petition thing and a I mean physically we can't really do anything. I mean, you should pay attention to, you know, our website and our calls to action because there are times where there is a meeting where we should attend and and we can try and get the people there. But this is like we are David and they are Goliath. And it's very, very hard for us to gain traction. And you know, at this point in time, I I really should bring up the efforts lately to get President Trump's attention. Yeah. And I I think that's very important because the this president is the first president that ever even noticed Men Hayden. Okay. And so there was a video that was made that showed the the squandering of American fish for Canadian profit, and that caught the president's eye. And he he immediately put it on Truth Social, and then all of his father followers put it on Twitter, and there was like a week of solid noise coming out of the White House, and he has an executive order in front of him to knock down reduction fishing in the United States. And all of a sudden, right after he put it out, it went to crickets. Like something happened.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 46:15

Right. Just sitting on the desk unsigned.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 46:18

Yeah. And and this is really, I mean, I've been doing this wow since '96, '95? No, sorry, 85. I've been doing this. And I have never had a door swing open like this. That this is a genuine opportunity for for us. We can go, we can all go on the president's website and leave a comment. We can all say, hey, you know, you're forgetting the little guy. You know, there's a lot at stake here. And the reality is that if Omega wasn't around and reduction fishing didn't exist, we would have what we saw eight years ago. Like, it was rain in stripers, it was raining whales, it was raining offspray. You know what I mean? Like, it was unbelievable. You'd go to South Amboy, New Jersey, and you could walk on the bunker.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 47:21

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 47:22

And there'd be whales in the middle of Raritan Bay. I I knew guys that were 70, 75 years old, they'd never seen that before. They've been in Staten Island all their life, they'd never seen a frickin' whale. And all of a sudden they're taking their grandparents, their grandkids out to go see whales in Raritan Bay.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 47:38

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 47:40

So a little bit of conservation goes a really long way with these fish. You just give them a little shot, you know, like a three-year, just like what happened in 2012 when they did experience a cut, these fish came back like gangbusters.

unknown: 47:56

Right.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 47:57

We all said if we're not careful, because so what did the ASMFC do? They gave back all the quota that they took away over the years, and it became 233. So you know, the the science was showing them that the stock was healthy, but unfortunately, the math was wrong.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 48:15

Now, is this up next year again? Or is this like a multi-year? Do they do they look at the Menhaden regs every year and readjust? Or I should say the quotas every year?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 48:28

Well, this this particular the ruling was was that they would take 20% for the 26th season.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 48:36

Right.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 48:37

And then at the annual meeting at the end of 26, they would talk about 27 and 28.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 48:43

Well, but that's that's my point. They so that that's my understanding, but they said they would talk about it. So, but does it automatically renew at 186 or does it go back up to the 233?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 48:56

No, it's gonna be re- Okay, so they have to resty.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 49:05

Okay.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 49:06

Yeah. All right. Oh crap. I I wanted to look up something, you know, that would help. Because there's so many numbers here. Like quotes like the this decision would still result in a 100% probability of fishing mortality being above the target. So it it's just the 186 or the 108? The the the what the the the 186. Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 49:42

Yeah. So that's what doesn't make sense. Like it it's their own stuff, and they're saying it it has to be 108. So let's just make it 186.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 49:53

That's exactly where I was headed. Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 49:56

I mean, is there any world that that makes sense? With here it is. Uh I gotta show the comment now. KCD. Tried to follow the science and couldn't. Then I followed the money and found the science. And it it certainly feels like that's what they're doing. Like the it the money money drops somewhere.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 50:17

Yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 50:17

You see, our making a deal, and we don't know about it.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 50:21

Menhaden Defenders, as a conservation organization, looked at the 108,000 that would that they arrived at and said, no, that's not good enough. Okay. So we actually wrote a letter to the ASMFC saying that a more aggressive cut was needed, and we wanted to set the 26 to 28 uh total allowable catch at 75,000, which is the current total allowable couch for the bait industry. In other words, Omega is is not in the picture, and we're reallocating all the quota to the bait fisheries to the bait, which is making it accept the bait, lobster, crab fisheries, and totally prohibit Menhaden fishing for reduction purposes. Now, if you were paying attention during the Menhaden meeting, there was a scientist that came out and said that you can't restore striped bass without abundant menhaden. Now, not this comment kind of went unnoticed, but I sure noticed it. And I know we're trying like hell not to talk about striped bass, but they are linked, okay? And the clear reality is that if there is more striped bass, if there's more menhaden left in the water, when these young of year come out to feed, they're gonna have more food to eat, and ultimately you have more striped bass. Right. Hope I didn't go too far out on a tangent there.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 51:58

No, no, and look, you did you did bring it back to what's gonna pique people's interest, right? Like the issue with the striped bass is the recruitment, right? Right.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 52:14

Well, well, they're currently overfished.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 52:16

Yeah, well, but it but a lot of it was the the recruitment for the last two years, right?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 52:23

Is is well the recruitment meaning recruitment means how many fish make it into adulthood.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 52:29

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 52:30

But if you think about it, the young does the young of year have been bad in the Chesapeake for seven years.

unknown: 52:39

Okay.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 52:40

Think about that, and it does relate directly to the populations of these high nutrient fish that are not there, right? Exactly. It does relate you. You and I had again another conversation we had offline about this is you look at birds of prey and what has happened with the birds of prey with the menhaden drop, right? So you don't believe there's a menhaden drop, that's fine, but there is an anecdotal related thing happening with birds of prey along the coast, and that's the eagles and the ospreys. For the past two years, they're not laying eggs. And part of the the belief is that it's because there aren't Medhaden, which is their the which is the best fish for them to get in order to be able to sustain eggs and young. And if they're not there, then they don't nest and they don't have they don't lay eggs, they don't have babies. And you know, there's another related thing to it. And and it it comes, and but they don't they they don't need little fish, they need big fish. You're not gonna see an eagle or an osprey diving down on a six-inch peanut bunker, you know. They they maybe a six, I don't know, six inch is probably too small.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 53:48

Yeah. And season long, you know, people should know every time I go out, if I come upon a school of bunker, I get my little treble hook out and I snag 10 fish, and I measure 10 fish. And up until last month, I was measuring every single fish at six or seven inches. Now I'm measuring every fish at nine inches. This time of year I should be measuring 12 inch and over fish. Yeah, and they are just not there. Okay. Now we used to look at these small baits as gold, like when we were live lining and stuff, we're like, oh wow, if you had a nine-incher, that was like, you know, if you had a spot that size, or you know, it was like really perfect for bait. Because some of the bait, some of the bunker used to be so big, it was like, what the hell's gonna eat this?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:41

Right, exactly. Yeah, you just toss them back.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 54:44

They did, they did swallow, no problem. But in our heads, we're always looking for that that juicy, you know, that little nugget, you know.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 54:51

I used to throw them back because they were too big for the hooks that I had tied on. I was like, I don't want to tie on a new hook, I'll just cast again and try to snag something else, you know, toss it right back in. It's too lazy. I didn't I wasn't using those 12 odd hooks.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 55:04

Yeah. Hmm. Well, where do we go from here?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 55:10

And and I think that's the thing. The the look, it's not an easy issue to know where everything is because again, like we're we're relying on science, and it is a really I mean look, we talked before this for 35 minutes, and I still feel like I don't know everything that I could know, should know.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 55:31

But that's subject cool.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 55:34

What's that?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 55:34

That's what makes the subject cool. Well, well, you know something? When when I first got into this, I never ever would have predicted that I would be taking pictures of of salmon in Whole Foods, or doing videos, or looking at at in-depth pet food analysis. Like I didn't, I didn't get it. I was just a fisherman, you know? And then all of a sudden it's like, holy crap, there's this protein industry is is epic. And then so as the world's population grows, by the way, reduction fishing, it's the smallest in the world in the United States. We're like 12% of the entire world. So Peruvian Angevetta is completely way bigger than us. So predominantly the fish oils and and the uh fish meal is from that species, not from Minhayden. That's just an American thing, you know. Right. But if I could just talk for a moment about the how the market is divvied up, okay.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 56:41

Yeah, and I think that's important. I'd like you to, but I will just say this we don't have the the size fishery that they're fishing either, right? I mean, Atlantic Menhaden is not we don't have the the area and the populations to support anything like that. So while it's 12% of the total, it is 100% of our total. And and that's that to me is where it comes in. People, you know, America first. Great. It's not happening. It's not happening right now. And even if it's an American company and it's owned by people that are 100% American, it's not American people first. It's it's one American business first, is the way that I'm feeling about Omega. The rest of the stuff I'm still not sure about. Like, you know, I'm still not sure. Like the bait, I I'm I'm I'm kind of on board with debate continuing. I I I really am because it supports all those other industries, the crabs and lobsters and all that stuff. I feel, I feel, I feel that that to me, it's difficult for me to say, shut that down. Like I would like, I wouldn't want to see it reduced on Omega and on them. I want to see Omega cut all the way until we get to the number. And then if there's we need any other cuts, then maybe then let's have another conversation. That's just the way that I feel about it right now.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 58:01

You need to look at it's the utility of scale. Okay. If you have a a 45-foot boat going out for bunker versus a 196-foot boat, yeah, that in itself is a sign. You know what I mean? Yeah. So we have never, we have always been a supporter of family-owned small commercial fishing. We feel that that is the the fabric of the United States. That's what this country was built on. Okay. There's no reason for us to assault them because they're not doing anything wrong. It's God, my brain just spins when I talk about this stuff.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 58:47

Yeah, but I would say I don't know that on the water. I don't know that it's gonna sound bad. I don't know that Omega's doing anything wrong. They're doing what they're allowed to do. It's the question is should they be allowed to do it?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 59:03

No, it's not a matter of illegal or legal. It's a matter of adjusting your harvest to the ecological conditions. And right now, our ecological conditions suck. Yes. Like, like I say this all the time. Our coast, our our entire coastal ecosystem, including the Chesapeake Bay, is dying a death of a thousand cuts. So now is not the time to look for maximum sustainable yield of the most important fish in the sea. Right. It's wrong. Okay, and and all the time you hear Omega talking about what a good steward they are of the resource, and they planted one of their old boats as a reef. Well, that's wonderful. But you know what? When a million guys are saying, get the F out of the Chesapeake Bay and stop netting and taking all these fish out because the bay is dying. They turn a blind ear. They go, Hey, you know, my grandfather fished this. It was no problem. Well, you know what? There weren't all the other conditions happening at the same time. Right. So, in that, yes, the population is shrinking, the water is changing, the climate is changing, all these factors, and they have to change too. You can't focus. You gotta shift to algae, shift to whatever, you know? Sure. But you can't keep raping and pillaging because you're gonna wake up one day, and guess what? There's gonna be nothing there. Our whole mission in the beginning was to have a lobster man in Maine be able to send his kid out in the morning for bait. Okay? That was like we were all we wanted to do was expand that biomass that was currently in the mid-Atlantic, that was very small, and grow it. And sure enough, it did. But it also got warmer. So in the 20 years that I've been doing this, the temperatures have changed, and those older, bigger fish are now in the Gulf of Maine.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:07

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:01:07

So guess what? Maine is finally able to get their own bait. But guess what? That pisses off Lunds in New Jersey because that bites into the profit that they can send up to Maine, which is why they side with Omega.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:25

Right. Well, I'll I'll side with the uh the the lobster guy in Maine every time.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:01:30

Exactly.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:31

Yeah, and and like I said, I'm a capitalist, I'm all about making money. But that's gonna go with the small guy.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:01:38

But it's in moderation.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:39

Yeah.

unknown: 1:01:40

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:01:40

You know, if they know that they only have a a a certain amount, like let's say they have 3,000 traps, they're only gonna take a certain amount of fish. Because these things go, these things spoil the moment the clock is ticking. You know, the ran the rancidity rate on bunker is extremely high.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:01:58

We're all rec guys, we know that. Yeah, you don't leave it out on deck at all. You leave it on you leave it on deck, you're done. You're done with it. All right, go back before because we're we're at our hour, but I want you to go back to the the total size of the reduction fishing and and how that relates. Total size of Yeah, so we're we're 12% of what's out there in reduction fishing in the United States. How does that compare to to other countries and other you know?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:02:29

Oh, I I can't give you statistics on Peru, but the reason why I bring that up is because even Peru sets limits on how many anchoveta they can bring in. We don't do that. There there's no limit in the Gulf of Mexico for Menhaden.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:02:47

There's no limit.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:02:48

There's a limit here on the East Coast, but there's none in the in the Gulf. So that's reckless, you know?

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:02:56

Yeah, it sure feels that way. Do they do do they do the same studies down there on the population?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:03:04

I think they do, yeah.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:03:05

Yeah, okay.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:03:06

Yeah, but I would need to spend some time uh in South America before I could really speak on that.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:03:12

I was gonna say, you got any spare time now?

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:03:13

But Peruvian Anchovetta is and it's basically a small anchovy, it's like a three or four-inch fish. So you need a lot of them to come out of the water. But they have a whole, you know, an anchoveta lawmakers, and they sit there and go, okay, we're gonna we're gonna get to a certain point and then stop the fishery, because otherwise we're not gonna have any fish for fishery in the future.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:03:37

Right. Like they do with the crabs up in Alaska.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:03:41

It's it's the same thing. Yeah, yeah. But but you know something? If we're gonna try and make sense out of commercial fishing and the logic, you know, I'm I'm a c I'm a catch and release fisherman. I do eat fish. I don't eat every fish. I don't eat striped bass because I know that they're overfished, and that would be hypocritical of me to eat a striped bass. You know what I'm saying? Like I'll eat a black sea bass instead.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:04:06

Right.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:04:06

You know, I'll I'll purposely go for a food fish if I need food. But I I won't shoot myself in the foot. It it certainly we have enough examples, whether it's cod or or you the list is endless. Yeah, it's everything we used to fish for. You just fish till you can't. Right. You know, and and that doesn't make sense to me. You gotta have moderation, otherwise you have no future.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:04:30

Yeah. I I it's always the guys that say, I remember we used to just bail bluefish and throw them in trash cans, and we get back and we'd clean as many until we got tired and dump the rest out. So I'm gonna keep doing that. It's like, didn't you learn anything from that? We used to throw them in trash cans too on the boat. We used to clean them all and eat them and give them away, but doesn't mean it was right, didn't mean it happened.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:04:51

I can tell you that after the first striped bass moratorium, we we were watching and we said, if we are not careful, the same exact thing is gonna happen over again. Now I'm gonna show my age here, okay? But we saw it coming. And look where we are right now.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:05:12

Yeah. We're there. We are it's this is where you and I diverge a little bit. I again go back to the numbers, and I think that we're gonna have better numbers next year with the the data collection on the striped bass. But I do believe that there is there's something that needs to get figured out.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:05:33

I you know what, I I don't think we're that far apart. I I don't agree with managing fish with arithmetic. Okay, I believe that we all need to behave like deer hunters and we all need to have a a piece of the data collection. In other words, when you and I go kayak fishing and we we get four and they're all 25 inches and we throw them back, that's data. When you and I go fishing for six hours and don't catch anything, that's data. That's important data. That data is not being collected. I mean, it it is, I shouldn't say it's not being collected. It's the system is is is screwy right now and they're using it to extrapolate numbers. Yeah like like they just came out with this mortality number that they adjusted down from 9% to 4%. I can tell you right now that if my mortality rate on my catch and release boat was 4%, I wouldn't do it. You know what I mean? That's too high.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:06:40

It is, it is, yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:06:41

You know, but if I'm running a six-pack chart and everybody's got eels and and and bleeding fish all over the place, that is way higher than nine percent. So, you know, you gotta. I mean, I'm pretty hardcore, you know. I have no barbs, I don't have I have thousands of lures on my boat, not a single barb. I got rubber nets, I have four seps, you know. I treat these things like gold when they come on board. So it's totally different on my little charter boat than it is on a headboat, you know, running on Welmar.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:07:13

Yeah, yeah, and it's I it is a tough topic, the strike bass, especially. Yeah, I again I I was okay with the status quo. I I kind of like the status quo because I want to see the I do want to see the data though, because they screwed it up so bad before I want to see where it is. I don't necessarily know that Menhaden is in that same category though, because Menhaden, first of all, it's a foundational block.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:07:45

Right. Well, that's why we shifted it to ecosystem-based management because it doesn't fit. It it doesn't every single fish that the ASMFc manages in the history of the ASMFC has always been done by how much fish does the commercial fishery need, and then everybody else.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:04

Right.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:08:04

They work backwards.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:05

Yeah, you know, well, and they don't they don't even collect. They didn't even collect for the striped ass, all the the the charter captains. They require them to keep the logs and then they never look at them.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:08:15

Yeah, I've heard that. A lot of New York guys, I think that they always talk about this this mysterious box of of data that that sits somewhere in in somewhere in Wood's hole.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:08:26

It doesn't it doesn't make any sense to me, but it it does kind of because it is a government organization. So okay, you know, I get it. You spent you spent two million dollars to create a a website that anybody any anybody that's my age could probably do in 10 minutes. You know, it took what it took Elon one day. Yeah, you know, just as an example, one day they fixed the website that they had spent two million dollars on and they couldn't get it working because it was broken. You know, it's stuff like that. It's and it's not a pro Elon, not a negative anything thing. It's just that's government, that's how it works. So I'm just mistrustful of it.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:09:06

If if we're getting close to our time, yeah, I would be remiss to say that you know, Menhaden Defenders is is a real grassroots boots on the ground organization. And we're made up of birders, we're made up of fishermen, we're made up of fly fishermen, bait fishermen, everything. And all we want to see is is abundance and sustainability. That's our goal, okay? And and we can't do it without everybody's participation, you know. Like when you go on the website or you go on the the Facebook page, it's not enough just to lurk around, you know, that's not helping anything. You should really be asking, hey, what like you did? Like what can we do? Where are we at right now? You know? And right now I do believe that we're at the point where we have to appeal to the Secretary of Commerce, who is over the ASMFC and NOAA, and we have to say, look. Very funny, Paulsy. Well, we have to say, look, we're we're at a critical point right now, okay? And we need your help. And if we need to rewrite the executive order or however it was written, it's not tweaked correctly, or whatever it is, let's do this. But just know that if you overfish and remove every Menhaden, it it's the end. Right.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:10:33

Yeah.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:10:34

That's it.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:10:35

All right. Well, so everybody, it's it's Menhaden Defenders uh on dot org, but on Facebook. Uh so if you if you're interested, go check it out. There's a lot of information on there. You can kind of get lost in the in there just learning. Um, and I've I've gone through it many times over the past couple years. Um I want to thank you for coming on. I do appreciate it. Uh it's great information. And look, we all like to talk about how to catch more fish, but every once in a while we need to stop and talk about uh what do we need to do to make sure we can continue to catch fish. And I think this is no matter where you land on this, uh whether you're a commercial guy, whether even if you're an omega guy, you should be concerned about the numbers.

Capt. Paul Eidman: 1:11:20

And uh if I'm deeply, deeply concerned about our hobby.

Rich Natoli - Fat Dad Fishing: 1:11:26

Yeah, yeah. Well, the hobby for for me and the the income for so many other people. So uh Paul, if you would hang on after we after we end this. Everybody, uh thanks for tuning in. Next week, we're going back to less serious, but more serious, because we're gonna have Frank Mahalik on and we're gonna talk about TOG because that is coming up quick. And uh Frank is up in Rhode Island right now catching double digits, so he's gonna be back fresh off of a trip, hopefully with a lot of energy. And uh, we're gonna go through TOG fishing right as we're coming up to the New Jersey opener, uh, where it's gonna start getting good in New Jersey and South coming up. Uh, and then we're gonna announce a few more guests next week. Everyone, thanks for coming in. And if you're going to do the tog trip on the uh on the osprey out of Atlantic City on December 7th, I think there's only 10 or less spots left. So make sure you sign up for that now. The the boat is almost full. Uh and if you're gonna go, let me know. It would be nice to know who's going and meet everybody out there on the boat. So, with that said, everyone, thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next Monday. Until next week, get out there, get on the water and get some tight lines.