Concerned that overfishing is destroying the ability of menhaden to reproduce, the commission that manages the Atlantic coast fishery voted Wednesday to sharply reduce the catch of the fish.
Tiny, oily menhaden are called the ocean’s most important fish by environmentalists because they provide food for essential fish such as striped bass and for birds such as osprey, bald eagles and brown pelicans. Without menhaden, environmentalists say, the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay ecosystems would come crashing down.
At a meeting in Boston, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted 14 to 3 to cut the amount of menhaden that can be harvested annually from 183,000 metric tons to 174,000 metric tons. The commission must now draft and vote on a plan to implement the new rule, which is likely to become effective in May 2013, spokeswoman Tina Berger said.
A single company, Omega Protein Corp., took 160,000 metric tons of menhaden — 80 percent of about 450 million fish harvested last year — off the coast of Virginia, the only state that permits industrial fishing of menhaden. The company crushes the fish into meal to feed livestock and farmed fish around the world.
Bait fishermen, who mostly sell to sport fishers, caught the rest.
Ben Landry, Omega Protein’s spokesman, said the commission’s decision could lead to job cuts at the company processing plant in Reedville, Va., where 250 people work. “It’s too early to say,” Landry said.
In the run-up to the vote, the 45-member commission received more than 91,000 letters, the vast majority of which urged members to drastically reduce the catch. States from Maine to Florida each have three representatives, only one of whom can vote.
The commission wants to ensure that at least 15 percent of adult menhaden are left to spawn in the ocean and its tributaries after the yearly harvest. But the commission is pushing to have 30 percent of the adult population left to spawn. That would nearly quadruple the current threshold of 8 percent.
Read the full article at the Washington Post.
Analysis: While the advocates quoted in the article are concerned with overfishing, it is important to note that, according to the most recent stock assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the menhaden fishery is currently not overfished. There also is no recent pattern of overfishing, as it has only occurred once in the last 10 years of the assessment.