November 15, 2017 — There was measured praise and disappointment all around this week after a regional fisheries commission voted on a 2018-2019 management plan for Atlantic menhaden, often called the most important fish in the sea.
For Virginia, too, it was a mixed bag.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided at an annual meeting in Linthicum, Md., to lower the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap by 41.5 percent, from 87,216 metric tons to 51,000 metric tons. This pleases Virginia conservationists, but not the reduction fishery.
The commission said in a statement that its decision “recognizes the importance of the Chesapeake Bay as nursery grounds” for menhaden and many other species that rely on menhaden as a food source.
It also bumped up the coast-wide catch limit for menhaden by 8 percent to 216,000 metric tons — a net plus for fisheries, and a “modest” increase with a “zero percent chance of subjecting the resource to overfishing or causing it to be overfished,” the commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Board Chairman Robert Ballou of Rhode Island said in a statement.
Read the full story at the Daily Press