The Atlantic menhaden is one of those big things that come in small packages. It’s a pipsqueak of a fish, but it feeds some of the most important fish in the ocean. If it vanished, marine biologists say, the ecosystems of the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay could come crashing down.
As the population of this once abundant fish dwindles in dramatic fashion, that theory might be put to a test. Humans don’t eat the oily and bony menhaden, but it’s caught by the metric ton each year, ground into meal and fed to farm fish and livestock.
Environmentalists fear that the commercial catch takes food from striped bass, bluefish, swordfish, king mackerel, tuna, loons and eagles that rely on menhaden.
The reduction of menhaden, widely dubbed “the most important fish in the ocean,” is such a concern that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider whether its harvest for commercial products and sport-fishing bait should be significantly lowered for the first time in years.
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