Conservation & Environment

February 14, 2013 — The following is an excerpt from the article “ A Crucial Moment for ‘The Most Important Fish in the Sea’”, published on the National Aquarium’s Water Blog:

This fish is referred to as “the most important fish in the sea” by researchers, yet overfishing is causing the overall population of menhaden to plummet at historic rates.

According to the Pew Environment Group, more menhaden are now being caught than any other fish along the Eastern seaboard, including in areas like the Chesapeake Bay where a majority of the catch comes from.

Every year,  more than 410 million pounds of these fish are plucked from the Atlantic to be used in everything from fertilizer and pet food to feed for farm animals and farm-raised fish. Menhaden are also used in dietary supplements, as a high source of omega-3 fatty acids.

Read the full story on the National Aquarium's Water Blog 

Analysis: The recent article “ A Crucial Moment for ‘The Most Important Fish in the Sea’”, published December 12, 2012 on the National Aquarium’s Water Blog, while describing the significance of the Atlantic menhaden to the marine ecosystem, ultimately misrepresents the management situation surrounding the species.

Placing full blame for the alleged decline of the menhaden on the commercial menhaden fishery, the article claims that “overfishing is causing the overall population of menhaden to plummet at historic rates.” However, the author fails to mention the many natural and environmental factors that affect menhaden reproduction, and thus, the population levels. A study on menhaden management in Marine Fisheries Review by D.S. Vaughan and J.V. Merriner, of the National Marine Fisheries Service, concluded, “it appears that managing the fishery to maintain large numbers of spawners may prove fruitless since environmental conditions appear to outweigh the availability of spawners (as numbers or eggs) in controlling subsequent recruitment.”

Other similar studies from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have shown a poor correlation between the number of adult menhaden available to reproduce and the number of viable offspring that survive to join the population, indicating that factors other than fishing mortality affect recruitment. On their website, NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office explains, “menhaden recruitment appears to be independent of fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass, indicating environmental factors may be the defining factor in the production of good year classes.”

The article also includes a designation of menhaden as “the most important fish in the sea,” without an explanation of the phrase’s origin. Although the article presents the term as a scientific qualification supported by “researchers”, this phrase stems from the title and premise of the book, The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America, by Rutgers University English Professor, Dr. H Bruce Franklin. The statement is entirely qualitative, based on judgments made by the author. There is no scientific evidence supporting the hyperbolic statement that any one species of fish is "most important," and promulgating this idea represents only the authors’ opinion, rather than any scientific consensus.

 

 

February 12, 2013 — Next time you walk up to the seafood counter, look for products labeled with a blue fish, a check mark, and the words "Certified Sustainable Seafood MSC." Then ask yourself, "What does this label mean?" The MSC — Marine Stewardship Council — says that the "sustainable" label means that fishermen caught the seafood with methods that don't deplete its supply, and help protect the environment in the waters where it was caught.

But many environmentalists who have studied the MSC system say that label is misleading. "We're not getting what we think we're getting," says Susanna Fuller, co-director of marine programs at Canada's Ecology Action Centre. She says the consumer, when purchasing seafood with the blue MSC label, is "not buying something that's sustainable now."

If the label were accurate, Fuller says, it would include what she says is troubling fine print: The MSC system has certified most fisheries with "conditions." Those conditions spell out that the fishermen will have to change the way they operate or study how their methods are affecting the environment — or both. But they have years to comply with those conditions after the fisheries have already been certified sustainable.

Gerry Leape, an oceans specialist who sits on the MSC's advisory Stakeholder Council on behalf of the Pew Charitable Trusts, says the MSC's policy is baffling. "It's misleading," he says, "to put a label of sustainability on a product where you still don't have the basic requirements."

 

Listen to the full story and read more on NPR

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 22, 2013 –At first glance, the menhaden is not a glamorous fish, and not one that you would find on a restaurant menu. Also known as bunker, pogy, or bugmouth, the bony, oily fish, which is silver with black spots on its sides, is a humble fish. But there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the menhaden. For countless creatures under the sea, the menhaden plays several critical roles, leading some to refer to it as “the most important fish in the sea.”

Menhaden are an indispensible part of the Atlantic Coast food chain. Not only does the menhaden serve as the primary diet of numerous fish and aquatic birds, including rockfish, bluefish, herons, egrets, and ospreys, the fish also eats phyto- plankton, doing the essential job of cleansing ocean waters. Adult fish filter an incredible 4 gallons of water per minute!

However, the menhaden are severely threatened. According to the Pew Environment Group, the population of Atlantic menhaden surviving to one year has plummeted to less than 10 percent of historic levels and is now at record lows. Despite this, hundreds of millions of menhaden are still hauled in and ground up, removed from the ecosystem each year, mostly to be used in feed for agricultural animals and farm-raised fish, pet food, fertilizer, and dietary supplements for people.

By weight, more menhaden are caught than any other fish along the Eastern seaboard. A single company in Reedville, Virginia, catches about three-quarters of the entire East Coast catch—more than 410 million pounds annually. Most of that catch comes from the Chesapeake Bay, an important habitat for the juvenile menhaden.

In a Conservation Magazine article titled “The Oiliest Catch,” Richard Conniff writes that executives at this Virginia menhaden facility argue that menhaden produce 18.4 trillion eggs annually. This certainly sounds like a lot of eggs. But as Conniff points out, this number is actually down from a peak of 117 trillion in 1961. And while 18.4 trillion eggs should be enough to maintain the species at target levels, it doesn’t. This means that regardless of the number of eggs produced annually, the process of transitioning those eggs into grown-up fish has gone awry, and conservationists cite overfishing as the likely culprit.

Listen to the story here

Read a transcript here

Analysis:  In his January 22 A Blue View podcast on Baltimore NPR affiliate WYPR, National Aquarium CEO John Racanelli discussed menhaden, which he described as “the most important fish in the sea,” a description not based in science, originally coined by Rutgers English professor H. Bruce Franklin.

Mr. Racanelli, when describing menhaden’s role in the ecosystem, stated that menhaden consume “phytoplankton, doing the essential job of cleansing ocean waters.” He further claimed that menhaden can filter four gallons of water per minute. A 2010 study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found that juvenile menhaden consumed mostly phytoplankton, but consume less of it as they age. Adult menhaden consume mostly zooplankton. The study found that the rate of phytoplankton consumption was not enough to significantly improve water quality.
 
Mr. Racinelli also claimed that menhaden have “plummeted to less than 10 percent of historic levels,” further noting that the number of menhaden eggs being produced has declined from recorded highs in the early 1960s, and that “regardless of the number of eggs produced annually, the process of transitioning those eggs into grown-up fish has gone awry.”
 
Historical evidence indicates that environmental factors, rather than pressure from fishing, have the most impact on menhaden recruitment (the number of menhaden successfully born in the fishery), and with it menhaden population growth. Menhaden have historically followed a cyclical pattern of abundance and decline, a cycle that is evident when examining the history of data from the fishery, which dates from the late 1950s. There have been periods of high abundance, like the late 1970s and early 1980s, and periods of low abundance, like the mid 1960s and today. These cycles have little connection to fishing, but have a strong relationship to prevailing climatic regimes and environmental conditions. This link has been recognized by NOAA, which has stated that “menhaden recruitment appears to be independent of fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass, indicating environmental factors may be the defining factor in the production of good year classes,” and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which concluded that fluctuations in menhaden abundance may be, “almost entirely driven by non-fishery sources.”

 

February 3, 2013 — The following is an excerpt from the piece "Good news for menhaden" published on the New England on the Fly blog:

Menhaden — the largely unrecognized lynchpin of the saltwater food chain whose stocks have shown signs of decline in recent years — had a good day this week: the ASMFC’s Menhaden Management Board approved the first ever Atlantic menhaden harvest reduction, setting the reduction at 20%.

Menahaden are known to anglers by various nicknames — “bunker”, “pogy”, “bugeye” — and have been known to them for a long time. The name itself, “Menhaden,” derives from the Native American word fertilizer. A small, bright silver, oily-fleshed fish with a number of spots behind its gills, menhaden are a large part of the diet of striped bass, bluefish, and tuna, to name a few. In addition to supporting popular New England sport fish, they also have many commercial applications, including the production of  omega-3 oils for human consumption, active ingredients in Rust-Oleum, and feed to livestock. They are important today, it would seem, as they were back when.

Read the full story at New England on the Fly 

Analysis: Although this article states, "This news about the harvest reduction is good for menhaden, and for the salt water species of New England and the East coast," there is no scientific evidence that any fish predator populations are suffering due to a lack of forage fish.

In addition, although New England is mentioned in the above quote, the article does not mention that the current menhaden assessment process includes only very little data from the northern range of the menhaden population. To address this lack of data, Dr. James Sulikowski, of the University of New England, completed an aerial study in 2011 of the area and determined that significant amounts of menhaden are located there. In reviewing this study, Dr. Doug Butterworth and Dr. Alexia Morgan determined that over two times as many fish may exist than are accounted for in the assessment. Because the assessment draws much of the data used to calculate population estimates from fishery data, which is concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay, these fish are not included. 

 

 

February 3, 2013 — Choptank Riverkeeper sees "thousands" of bivalves, both planted and natural.

"You literally couldn't take a step without walking on oysters," Koslow said in a recent release by the Mid-Shore Riverkeeper Conservancy.

"In my four years as the Choptank Riverkeeper, I have never seen spatfall density like there is in Harris Creek."

Harris Creek, on the east side of Tilghman Island near the mouth of the Choptank River, is the focus of a state and federal effort to restore oysters to a corner of the Chesapeake Bay. The estuary once brimmed with the shellfish, but disease, pollution and overharvesting reduced the population to barely one percent of historic levels.

Oysters are a key to the bay's health.  Not just tasty to eat, they help filter the bay's waters, and their depletion coincided with the bay's decline.

Harris Creek was targeted for restoration to fulfill one of the goals set by President Obama's 2009 executive order on the bay, which calls for reviving oyster populations in 10 Maryland water ways by 2025.  The Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources began working last year to expand historic oyster bars in the creek and seed them with baby oysters, or spat, produced in a state hatchery.

 

Read the full story in the Baltimore Sun 

 

 

January 31, 2013 — We are excited about two big wins this week for the future of fish in New England.

The first is a major legal victory that establishes the first full count, cap, and control fishery in the Northeast. This lawsuit settlement means that the New England groundfish fishery, which catches Atlantic cod, haddock and flounder, among others, must strictly account for how much fish it’s catching and discarding.  Groundfish have been severely overfished, and this new ruling is an important step in establishing more sustainable fishing practices in the region.

Oceana has been campaigning for years to establish science-based monitoring of this historically overfished region of the U.S. Oceana won a legal victory in 2010 when a federal court ruled that the fishery must demonstrate that discards would be accurately counted, but when it soon became clear that discards would not be adequately monitored, Oceana brought a new lawsuit in 2012.

Secondly, we’re applauding a new set of significantly reduced annual catch limits for two stocks of Atlantic cod in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.

While all stocks of Atlantic cod have been overfished to alarming levels, the cod populations in these two areas have dropped to dire levels – an assessment earlier this year showed that after 15 years of trying to rebuild these two cod populations, virtually zero progress had been made.

The Gulf of Maine cod population is currently at less than 19 percent of its target level, while the Georges Bank cod population is at 7 percent. The new limits will reduce catches in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank by 77 percent and 55 percent, respectively, in a last-ditch effort to save these populations.

The fishing of groundfish like Atlantic cod is historic, older even than America itself. Atlantic cod has been harvested by U.S. fishermen since the 17th century, and the ocean was believed to be so teeming with cod that one could almost walk across the ocean on their backs.

 

Read the full story at Oceana

 

 

February 1, 2012 — Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) said the cuts don’t go far enough and called for the closure of the cod fishery to avoid a commercial collapse that could take decades to reverse.

CLF issued the following statement from Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel:

“In recommending the least aggressive cut to cod quota allowable under the law, the New England Fisheries Management Council continued a long and irresponsible track record of putting short-term economic interests over the long-term health of New England’s cod fishery,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel, Conservation Law Foundation. “The science is clear. The models are showing cod stocks at the lowest levels in history and declining. And if anyone doubts the science, they only need to look at how much cod is being caught this year. The fish just aren’t there.”

Shelley continued, “It’s exactly these kinds of short-sighted decisions that have allowed cod to be overfished for decades and contributed to this biological disaster. It is unconscionable that we should continue to take such risks in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and the stark example of our neighbors to the North. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should be shutting the cod fishery down and protecting whatever cod are left. The Council needs to have the courage to take the necessary, if painful, steps to rebuild this iconic fishery for the future. An entire generation of groundfishermen is at risk because of the Council’s limited response.”

 

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 27, 2013 — Believe it or not, there’s a Chesapeake Bay fish in even worse shape than the recovering striped bass, the troubled blue crab and even the imperiled bay oyster. The Atlantic sturgeon, pushed to the brink of extinction by overfishing and development, is little more than a memory in the Potomac River, ready for a spot in a museum.

The last time fishermen caught an adult Atlantic sturgeon in the Potomac, “The French Connection” was a hit movie, Ike and Tina Turner topped the record charts with “Proud Mary” and an American Motors Gremlin four-door sold for $2,000. Forty-three years later, river watchers are only noting unreliable sturgeon sightings.

Convinced that one of the Potomac’s signature fish might be gone for good, the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin has thrown its support behind a Maryland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife plan to use 60 domesticated Atlantic sturgeon, mostly from New York’s Hudson River, to restock the Potomac.

But the effort to bring them back has its own troubles. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fishery service listed four varieties of Atlantic sturgeon populations as endangered — the New York Bight, Carolina, South Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay.

The Chesapeake Bay listing has all but dashed the hope of restocking using the Hudson River sturgeon kept at a Maryland hatchery. To preserve the genetic purity of protected animals under the Endangered Species Act, rules prohibit mixing wild and tame species, no matter how much they look alike.

Long story short, Hudson sturgeon aren’t allowed to potentially mess around with their wild cousins in the Potomac. The result is that the Potomac will almost certainly lose its oldest, largest and most distinctive fish.

Marine biologists say it will take more than a century for sturgeon that migrate up and down the Atlantic Coast to return to spawn in Chesapeake Bay tributaries such as the Potomac.

 

Read the full story at the Washington Post

 

 

January 29, 2013 — There’s no nice way to say this, no way to spare any feelings. The northern snakehead is one ugly fish.

Seriously, just look at it. Like Lady Gaga says — baby, it was born this way, looking like a weird cross of three animals that strike fear in the heart: a Burmese python, a barracuda and an electric eel.

Also, a new study confirms what millions long knew: High heels may not be comfortable, but they are sexy.

But even the invasive Chesapeake Bay snakehead can be prettied up by an extreme makeover, as a recent charity event featuring Washington Redskins legend John Riggins showed. The downside for the fish: It was dead — and sliced, marinated in a tasty chimichurri sauce, skewered, baked, then arranged on a nice white dinner plate with a sweet potato chorizo flauta.

The presentation had to be just right because, to the event’s organizers at least, the future of the bay was riding on that fish plate. The point of the second annual ProFish Invasive Species Benefit Dinner at Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place in Georgetown’s Washington Harbour was to persuade humans — Earth’s top predators — to develop a taste for the bay’s most fearsome fish.

Five main courses were prepared by what organizers described as “elite, high-end, white table cloth” chefs from restaurants such as the Hotel Monaco’s Poste Moderne Brasserie, the Rockfish in Annapolis and J&G Steakhouse at the W Hotel, near the White House.

Before it was served about 8:30, Rockfish chef Chad Wells’s snakehead dish was the talk of the evening among about 200 people who paid $125 a plate to dine with Riggins, a celebrity guest.

 

Read the full story in the Washington Post

 

 

 

 

January 27, 2013 — McDonald’s has signed on with the Marine Stewardship Council to show that the fish it serves is caught in an environmentally responsible manner. While the fish is not changing, the deal will make the council’s distinctive blue logo familiar to tens of millions of Americans for the first time.

The world’s biggest fast-food company announced last week that its sourcing of fish for the United States market, which is entirely wild-caught Alaska pollock, had been certified by the council, perhaps the best-known organization promoting sustainable fishing around the world.

The most tangible effect of the sustainability imprimatur is that, beginning next month, Filet-O-Fish wrappers sold in the burger giant’s 14,000 American restaurants will display the Marine Stewardship Council label. McDonald’s also announced on Thursday that it would roll out a new promotional menu item in February called Fish McBites — think chicken nuggets, only made from pollock — that would also carry the council’s label.

Judging from photos like this one, it will be impossible to eat a McDonald’s fish product without getting reassurance that your meal is not harming the seas.

McDonald’s did not have to do much to comply with the council’s requirements. Susan Forsell, McDonald’s vice president for sustainability, said that under the company’s own in-house sustainable fisheries program, which began 10 years ago, 100 percent of McDonald’s fish is already purchased from fisheries that have received stewardship council certification.

In Europe, where McDonald’s products rely on both the Alaskan pollock and sustainable European fisheries, the council’s logo already appears on the company’s packaging, Ms. Forsell said.

 

Read the full story at the New York Times