After 10 years of meetings, workshops and panels, federal fishery officials finally have been convinced to end years of overfishing for the Atlantic menhaden, a small silvery prey fish that is an essential food source for countless marine predators.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in August approved new targets and limits for the menhaden, often called “the most important fish in the sea” because of its forage value. The new rule is being finalized for implementation in the 2013 fishing season.
The National Coalition for Marine Conservation, the country’s oldest public advocacy for conserving marine species established in 1973, led the fight.
“This is an historic moment,” said Ken Hinman, president of the coalition. “The benefits of leaving more menhaden in the water will ripple throughout the coastal ecosystem, improving the environment for so many other species and so many other fisheries.”
There are several species of menhaden, a seasonal migration baitfish also known as the pogy and bunker, the largest of which is the Atlantic menhaden, which averages 8 inches in length and grows to 12 inches. It ranges from Nova Scotia to Florida and is known for collecting into large schools which, in turn, attract sport fish such as king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, tarpon, cobia and jack crevalle.
For years, the so-called “reduction industry” has targeted millions of pounds of menhaden for fish meal and oil for industrial and agricultural uses. The term for the industry, established in the early 19th century, comes from the fact that it “reduces” the fish down to the end product. According to the coalition, it’s the largest fishery, by volume, on the Eastern Seaboard, landing an average 200,000 metric tons of menhaden a year. The latest figures are for 2010, when vessels caught 183,000 metric tons.
Read the full column by Bill Sargent at Florida Today.
Analysis: While the article claims that that recent regulatory decisions by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) were made in response to "years of overfishing," recent data collected by the ASMFC does not support that assertion. In it's 2010 stock assessment, the ASMFC concluded that the menhaden stock was not overfished, and that overfshing had only occurred once in the last ten years. Similarly, while menhaden are currently around 10 percent of their Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP), this is not a sign that menhaden are overfished; menhaden MSP has rarely exceeded 10 percent in the past several decades, and at that level the population has historically been able to rebuild itself. There is little correlation between menhaden recruitment and MSP: recruitment is cyclical, with levels of high and low recruitment occurring mostly independent of MSP.