November 20, 2012 — The general manager of Omega Protein’s Reedville menhaden plant said Sunday that his talk to the Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library’s annual meeting at Grace Church in Kilmarnock Saturday simply covered things he has often talked about. Remarks from Dr. Rob LaTour, however, touched on scientific realities that people need to know about menhaden.
LaTour is now with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, but used to be chairman of the technical committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The ASMFC bases its actions, to an extent, on information the scientists on the committee provide it. Just now, the ASMFC is preparing to have a meeting at which it might slash Omega’s allowable catch. Thus LaTour’s views should have some influence.
LaTour pointed out that the large, older menhaden go into Northern waters where there is little fishing for them. Consequently, the ASMFC and everybody else lacks any real knowledge of the condition of their stocks. LaTour also pointed out that adult menhaden do not eat phytoplankton (vegetable matter that makes up algae) and therefore have no impact on the condition of the water the way oysters do. The adults do, however, eat zooplankton (tiny animals) and excrete 70 percent of the animals’ nitrogen back into the water.
Deihl said that Omega does not fish for the juvenile menhaden that stay in the Bay’s smaller tributaries and that do eat phyloplankton.
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