States from Maine to Florida voted Wednesday to set new, strict limits on catching menhaden from coastal waters and the Chesapeake Bay, handing environmentalists and sports fishermen a major victory in how this important little fish is managed.
"This is great news for jobs, for our economy and for a society that values wildlife," Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said in a statement after the vote.
At a meeting in Boston culminating more than a year of scientific calculations, loud public hearings and more than 90,000 public comments, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted targets and thresholds intent on restoring menhaden stocks coastwide.
Once implemented after another year of study and debate, the measures are expected to reduce harvests by up to 37 percent – cuts that Virginia officials say will be damaging to the menhaden industry centered in the Northern Neck town of Reedville and to watermen who catch and sell the oily fish as bait.
The economic fallout "could be enormous," said Jack Traveslstead, Virginia director of fisheries, who represents the state on the coastal commission. "It's going to cause a lot of hurt. There's going to be job loss. And I suspect the price of crab bait probably just went up by 40 percent or so."
Virginia, New Jersey and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission voted against the new target, favoring a softer proposal to cut harvests by 23 percent. That option was defeated.