October 18, 2012 — The decline of menhaden stocks has caused interest in the health of our oceans. Particularly from Nova Scotia to Texas coastal waters where menhaden once ruled nearshore waters.
After a limited search for menhaden while navigating our sport fishing boat out to sea and coming up empty handed, we broke out a box of frozen cigar minnows and placed them into a saltwater filled bucket to thaw. Also called frozen popsicles, frozen cigar minnows are packed into five-pound boxes and used for a wide variety of fishing purposes. In recent years with the decline of coastal baitfish schools, boxes of frozen cigar minnows are frequently finding their way in fish coolers.
In previous fishing seasons it had become harder and harder to locate menhaden schools to catch in a castnet and use to live bait troll. Scouting for menhaden schools that seemingly did not exist was not a good game plan for catching fish, especially when we had a high paying charter on board.
A thirty minute ride from the tip of the St. Mary’s Inlet found our fishing party at the popular FA fishing grounds. Captain Terry David Lacoss throttled the pair of Caterpillar diesel engines back to a trolling speed while dead cigar minnows rigged to kingfish leaders were set out into a typical summer trolling pattern. Three dead minnows were set out as flat lines on the surface with a drop back distance from 40-80 feet.
Two more kingfish leaders rigged with frozen popsicles were sent deep with the aid of our electric Cannon downriggers, one at 15 feet and another at 30 feet. The 20-pound kingfish main line was set deep into the Cannon saltwater release to allow faster trolling speeds from three to five knots.
Typically live baits are trolled from one-and-a-half to two knots where kingfish lines are set just barely in the downrigger weight releases so that the fishing line releases easily when a kingfish strikes.
Read the full article on the Southern Kingfish Association website
Analysis: The Southern Kingfish Association’s article, “Menhaden Vital to Ocean Life,” misrepresents the status of Atlantic menhaden and the related commercial fishery. The article attempts to outline the importance of menhaden to larger predators, such as the king mackerel, and to the entire ocean ecosystem, but misconstrues several key facts.
The article blames an alleged lack of menhaden in the Jacksonville, Florida area on commercial fishing in the Chesapeake Bay, over 600 miles away. This argument relies on anecdotal evidence from observations made by one boat on one day, and the schooling patterns of menhaden during two days of a fishing tournament. Though the article claims this lack of menhaden is due to overfishing, the author fails to mention that instances of overfishing have been occurring less frequently in recent years. In fact, From 1994-2008 (up to the time the last peer-reviewed stock assessment occurred) overfishing occurred only twice, most recently in 2008 and only by 0.4%. Because menhaden is a comparatively short-lived species (living from 10-12 years), and produces large classes of new menhaden each year, the most recent data is much more relevant in determining the health of the species than older, dated statistics.
In 2011, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) adopted a new, more conservative baseline for determining overfishing in the future. Using that new “reference point,” the Menhaden Board determined that overfishing occurred in 2011 based on an increase in fish harvested, the new reference point, and an apparent lack of stock growth. Due to the adoption of the new reference point and model uncertainty, no overfishing determinations have been made for 2009 and 2010. With respect to model uncertainty, the Menhaden Technical Committee determined that the results of the 2012 update stock assessment were not suitable for management purposes.
The article states that the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) submitted a proposal to close the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries to all commercial fishing. On this subject, Jim Donofrio, the organization’s Executive Director, expresses his opinion: “Such a closed area would result in positive ecological benefits to the Bay and species that rely on menhaden such as striped bass.” However, the populations of striped bass and menhaden have never been strongly linked. In the study, “Synchronous multidecadal fish recruitment patterns in Chesapeake Bay” from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Drs. RJ Wood and HM Austin found that the climates that favored recruitment success for striped bass and Atlantic menhaden were very different. This variance can cause the population of the two species to be negatively correlated, such that when one species is abundant, the other is not, and vice versa. This graph highlights the inverse relationship.
The Southern Kingfish Association relies on unsubstantiated anecdotes in its attack on the commercial menhaden fishery. Rather than using the most recent and verified scientific findings, which demonstrate a healthy menhaden stock in which overfishing has only occurred twice in the last fifteen years, their article rests on unverified hearsay.