I’m very pleased that Outdoors columnist James Drake took the opportunity to write about the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s historic vote on reducing the harvests of the menhaden fish [“Is the menhaden issue really over?” Maryland Independent, Nov. 18].
According to the PEW Environment Group, this little-appreciated fish that serves both as a feeder fish and a filter fish in waters along the Atlantic seaboard has seen an 88 percent decline in population over the last 25 years, and safe fishing targets for menhaden have been missed for the past 50 years.
Menhaden used to be the primary food source for both fish and waterfowl alike. However, vast changes have been forced on all marine life, to their detriment, due to the lack of available menhaden. In 1980 the osprey diet was 75 percent menhaden; however, in 2010 it was only 24 percent.
Most shocking of all are the statistics on the striped bass. Their diet was 77 percent menhaden in the 1950s, but by 2010, it was down to a mere 7 percent.
My interest and concern in the plight of the menhaden fish led me to introduce House Bill 1142 during the 2011 Maryland General Assembly legislative session as a means to limit the sale of goods in the state of Maryland that contain menhaden byproducts from the reduction industry.
Although HB1142 did not pass, it brought attention to the devastation of these fish that are vitally important for maintaining the health of the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
With the long overdue acknowledgement by the ASMFC that menhaden have been overfished for decades, my hope is that this vote will at last give the menhaden fish a chance to recover their population to sustainable numbers.
Read the full letter at SoMdNews.com
Analysis: The article is misleading when it claims menhaden have been "overfished for decades." While the fishery has experienced overfishing in the past, the last tens years of data does not reveal a recent pattern of overfishing. In the last decade, menhaden have only been overfished once, and the stock is not currently overfished, according to thr Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
To make the case for overfishing, the article uses on the presence of menhaden in the diet of striped bass as a proxy measurement for the health of the fishery. However, this is an imperfect measurement; bass diets are highly variable, and depend on several factors unrelated to the fishery, such as the location and availability of other feed species and the size of the bass population.