BATON ROUGE — The Coastal Conservation Association says overfishing is killing fish and damaging the ecosystem, and has called for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to make a public comment on the subject by Friday.

CCA says processing plants located in Louisiana are harvesting 1 billion pounds a year of menhaden for its valuable fish oil.

Rules on the Mississippi Gulf Coast restrict the giant menhaden fishing boats to ½ mile off their coast, but those boats want to fish up to ¼ mile off of the state's coast, CCA says, arguing this is too close.

In November, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission advanced a plan to decrease the size of the no-fishing zone after members of the commercial menhaden fishing industry complained that guidelines put in place last year had cut their haul by up to 25 percent.

They added that popular game fish like red fish and speckled trout are killed when the menhaden boats cast their huge nets offshore.