Let me add a little to my last post. Was rushed and had to post it or lose the whole thing.
Estuaries require a holistic management approach. This means that you can't just manage part of it, you have to manage all of it. This is true of any natural resource, but especially in estuaries because there are multiple parts to the system. You have a lake, surrounding marsh, and a freshwater input. The problem we have in calcasieu lake is, first and foremost, a heavily altered estuary. The ship channel has been dredged since the 40s (maybe earlier, can't remember). The calcasieu river has had the saltwater barrier for a long time (pretty bad if you have to have a saltwater barrier that far up a system; that's how bad things are), so you don't have the freshwater input that you normally would because you have so much saltwater pushing up the system. You have the wiers and levees that (to a certain extent) cut off the marsh from the lake. They are not completely cut off though. So a degraded system.
Then you've got the actual resources. Everyone has issues with how the fishery is managed (wier management, creel limits, etc.) and why the wiers are operated the way they are. As i've stated time and time again on these boards, you cannot look at the wiers as simply being a salinity control structure. They control salinity in order to preserve the marsh. The marsh is preserved for several reasons. Marshes provide several benefits. As far as the general population is (or should be concerned), they provide storm protection. For the sportsmen, its a haven for wildlife and fisheries. In the case of marshes associated with a rich (but degraded) estuary such as Calcasieu Lake, it is the lifeblood of the lake as far as fisheries are concerned. The marshes serve as the nursery for crabs, shrimp, and fish.
So if you don't control the salinities, and water levels as we have seen this year, you lose marsh. If you lose marsh, you lose the nursery and thus the resource.
I know there are a lot of people that will say we had a great resource and great harvests before the wiers and then they dropped off. As I stated in my last post, that is because the marsh was dying. Shrimp and crabs feed on detritus. So an increased population of crustaceans was most likely due to the death of the marsh. It may impact the harvests short term, but long term, it will be beneficial to the system.
A bit repetitive as I have said these things before, but I felt it needed to be in one place.
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