A move to cut the harvest of oily little fish called menhaden could help the Chesapeake Bay but hurt the fishing industry, observers said Thursday.
The footlong nuggets of nutrition are important foods for game fish such as striped bass and popular animals such as dolphins and ospreys.
They also are the targets of an industrial fishing operation in Reedville, about 85 miles northeast of Richmond.
A panel of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, an interstate regulatory agency, voted Wednesday in Boston to cut the menhaden harvest between 23 and 37 percent.
Virginia must go along with the cutback or the federal government could shut down menhaden fishing in the state.
"This is really a watershed event in terms of how we manage menhaden," said Chris Moore, a scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group that has claimed for years that too many of the fish were being caught.
Jack Travelstead, Virginia's fisheries director, said the fishing cut will hurt not just Omega Protein Inc., which runs the Reedville operation, but also people who catch menhaden to sell as bait and crabbers who buy menhaden for bait.
Read the full article at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.