Lewes, DE March 29, 2012 — In the Kent County fishing village of Leipsic, residents are struggling just to get by.
But a regional fisheries agency hasn't assessed the economic impact of proposed regulations to limit the catch of menhaden, Mayor Craig Pugh said.
The commission is drafting regulations to limit the harvest of the small, oily, bottom-of-the food-chain menhaden. It is a fish that is the source for everything from fish oil used in vitamins to fish for livestock feed.
"We are now 47 percent impoverished and have been for the last three years," he said. The proposed harvest reduction — aimed at rebuilding the fish stock — "doesn't help me out much in my community."
Pugh was one of a dozen people who came to an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission hearing in Lewes on Wednesday night.
That harvest, called the reduction fishery, amounts to 80 percent of the total catch. It was once the largest commercial fishery in Delaware, but overfishing took a toll and the industry closed in the early 1960s.
These days, Delaware's commercial fishermen — namely a group of about 100 commercially licensed crabbers — use the fish as a bait in their crab pots. Coastwide, the bait fishery amounts to 20 percent of the catch. Most used in Delaware comes from Virginia.
With a reduction in catch, the concern is that bait supply will go down and the price will go up, Pugh said.
That's another cost — on top of already rising fuel prices — that commercial fishermen don't need, he said.
Delaware fishermen aren't the only ones who use menhaden as bait. Lobster fishermen in New England use it as one of several bait options, said Toni Kerns, senior fisheries management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States Commission.