October 21, 2020 — A new way of thinking about fishing quotas will bring a 10% cut in the coastwide cap for menhaden, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided Tuesday.
The commission’s menhaden board voted to cut the quota for 2021 and 2022 to 194,400 metric tons from the current 216,000, a 10% reduction.
What drives the cut is a new approach to managing fisheries — an ecosystem-based one pioneered for menhaden, the small fish that is harvested for fish oil and bait and is an important source of food for other fish, birds and whales.
The older technique considers how many young fish join the population of a species in a year, how many die from natural causes and how many are caught. The idea with this traditional approach is to calculate how many can be caught without causing a species’ numbers to fall too far.