November 10th, 2016 — With 500 years of fishing in his family’s lineage, the second interviewee of the day spoke longer than most.
He explained how his Swedish parents emigrated to New Jersey in the 1950s, assuming that America was “the place to be” to solidify their fishing future. They made their new home in Cape May at the southern tip of that state, home to a robust fishing economy and history. Their catch would include scallops, loligo squid and mackerel — the area was, and still is, rife with seafood.
This fisherman was talking with me about Atlantic menhaden. This small oily fish represents a critical piece of the food chain for many fisheries, a source of bait for lobstermen and crabbers, and an essential ingredient for omega-3 oil products, such as human supplements, animal feeds and even lipstick.
I had made the trek from Raleigh to Cape May to better understand the socioeconomic dimensions of the Atlantic menhaden fishery, tracking the fish from its Atlantic Ocean home to its final form as fish food, health product and other uses. My goal is to inform the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or ASMFC, menhaden board about the role that fish plays for fishermen and the folks that process, distribute and buy it. The ASMFC funded the study to provide socioeconomic data on the menhaden industry.