June 27, 2012 โ The following is a excerpt from an article that appeared on the website Animal Cafe:
There were billions of Menhaden running from Nova Scotia to Maine, down the East Coast and all around the Florida Panhandle over 150 years ago, and 100 different companies processing them to replace whale fat. While considerably smaller today at around 12โณ per adult fish, each Menhaden filters four gallons of water a minute at the lowest estimate, 7 gallons at the highest. Clean water is important, but even more so is the staving off of an ecosystem collapse.
Menhaden eat algae (phytoplankton) which prevents algal blooms. We know algal blooms causes dead zones in bodies of water. Getting sunlight to beneficial plants at the bottom of the ocean to receive those life-giving properties is another outcome of Menhadenโs clean-up job. As Menhaden eat the algae they become rich with omega 3 fatty acids and are a fine and tasty meal for dozens of fish we eat, and several species of birds. And itโs because of the Omega 3s that their fate seems sealed โ industry is hungry for cheap sources of Omega 3s for vitamins, cosmetics and other items.
H. Bruce Franklin, noted cultural historian and Professor at Rutgers, joins us today and relates a little history, a little culture, and a lot about the impact on the future of the fish we eat and the water we fish from and drink.
Read the full story and listen to the interview at Animal Cafe.
Analysis: In an online interview with the website Animal Cafe, Dr. H. Bruce Franklin, a Rutgers English professor and author of the book The Most Important Fish in the Sea, repeated several inaccurate statements about the menhaden fishery. These included claims about menhadenโs ability as a filter feeder and about the overall health of the fishery.
Franklin claims in the interview, as he does in his book, that menhaden are filter feeders that remove large amounts of phytoplankton, algae, and other small plant particles from the water, preventing algal blooms, which are harmful to marine environments, including the Chesapeake Bay. This often-repeated claim has been disputed by several scientific studies, which have found that menhadenโs ability to improve water quality is negligible at best. A 2006 study by Dr. Kevin Friedland of the National Marine Fisheries Service and a 2010 study by Dr. Patrick Lynch and colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science concluded that menhaden become less able to consume phytoplankton as they age. Younger menhaden consume more phytoplankton than older menhaden, which mostly consume zooplankton (similar to phytoplankton but a larger size, and animals instead of plants).
Franklin makes repeated references to the menhaden reduction industry, accusing them of โstrip-miningโ the fish at an unsustainable rate and depleting the resource. This accusation is not reflected in the available data on the fishery. According to the last menhaden stock assessment, issued in 2010, menhaden are not considered to be overfished, meaning that the stock was producing enough eggs to meet its abundance targets. It was determined that overfishing was occurring, meaning that the level of fishing exceeded the mortality limits in the last year of the assessment. However, there has been no consistent pattern of overfishing recently, with overfishing having occurred only once in the last decade.
Franklin blames the decline of the menhaden population solely on the alleged overfishing by the industry. However, he fails to mention the many natural and environmental factors that affect menhaden reproduction. A study on menhaden management in Marine Fisheries Review by D.S. Vaughan and J.V. Merriner of the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded, โit 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.โ 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.
Franklin is also highly critical of Omega Proteinโs participation in the political process, saying the company โessentially bribes all the legislators and the stateโs governor to protect the industry.โ This vastly overstates the political campaign contributions of Omega Protein in Virginia. Between 2008 and 2012, Omega Protein contributed $142,000 to political campaigns and political action committees (PACs) in the state. This ranks it at #267 on the list of political donors in Virginia during that time period. As a point of comparison, the Virginia Taxicab Association made donations totaling $24,000 more than Omega.
In the interview, Franklin claims that the menhaden population is on the verge of collapse and causing an ecosystem crisis in the Chesapeake Bay. His incorrect allegations are not supported, and are in fact, contradictory to current scientific studies.