October 13, 2012 — Atlantic menhaden has been called the most important fish in the sea. It supports the nation's largest fishery. But you will never see one at the grocery store or on a restaurant menu because the catch it mostly reduced or rendered into other products such as pet food and health supplements.
I have fished recreationally in the Chesapeake Bay for over 40 years. One of the most fascinating and disturbing sites is the Reedville, Virginia menhaden fishing fleet at work. I saw the fleet again in August near Thimble Shoals light. I first noticed the spotter plane flying lazy circles at low altitude looking for schools of these small, boney, oily fish that darken the water. The larger, factory ships of the Reedville fleet drop smaller purse seine boats to encircle the schools with their nets. After the nets are mostly winched in, the dead and dying fish are vacuumed into the holds of the ships.
I find the process fascinating for its efficiency. I find it disturbing because it reminds me of the decades of bad science and mismanagement, enabled by good-old-boy politics that have dominated the menhaden debate.
On one side of the debate, Omega Proteins, the company that controls the Reedville operation, believes the menhaden fishery is healthy and its fleet should be allowed to continue is current, essentially unregulated practices. On the other side, the science now shows what every recreational fisherman in the Bay has known for years, which is that the menhaden fishery has collapsed. How do we know? We seldom see massive schools of menhaden being chased and churned by blue fish and rockfish. Why do we care? Simply put, without these little fish, there are no big fish.
Solid, peer-reviewed science says menhaden abundance is less than 10% of where it would be without fishing; in other words, the science says the Atlantic menhaden is experiencing overfishing. The science has also evolved from looking at each species on a stand alone basis to looking at the entire ecosystem. Any menhaden management plan must now address the forage needs of predator species such as striped bass, bluefish and weakfish. The reduction fishery will have to share the fish. Sustainability is no longer being defined solely as the amount of menhaden Omega Proteins can consistently catch but will instead be defined as the amount of menhaden Omega can catch while also maintaining a healthy forage fish population.
Virginia is a member of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Organized in 1942, the ASMFC is a commission with members from the 13 Atlantic coast states tasked with managing Atlantic coast fish species. For the first time in its 70 year history, the ASMFC has drafted serious harvest reduction options for menhaden. It will be collecting public comment and taking final action before the end of 2012 for implementation in 2013.
Read the full story at the Newport News Daily Press
Analysis: With the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) currently deliberating over the future of menhaden management, industry stakeholders, interested advocacy groups, and government officials have all contributed to the scientific and policy debate surrounding this economically vital species. Unfortunately, in his Newport News Daily Press op-ed (“Without little fish, big fish won’t survive”), Jay Joseph, Senior Vice President of Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate, fundamentally misrepresents the position of commercial and bait fisherman, presenting a skewed version of current menhaden science and management policy in the process.
Particularly, Mr. Joseph’s depiction of menhaden stock assessments and stock assessment science is riddled with inaccuracies, especially when he writes, “the science now shows what every recreational fisherman in the Bay has known for years, which is that the menhaden fishery has collapsed.” The “science” draws no such conclusion. Both the 2010 and 2012 menhaden stock assessments released by the ASMFC concluded that menhaden were not overfished, with the 2012 assessment measuring the stock at 40 percent above its fecundity threshold. This means that, far from having collapsed, the stock is producing more than enough eggs (40 percent more) to sustain itself.
The article also skips over much of the current scientific debate surrounding the most recent menhaden stock assessment, instead portraying legitimate concerns about the accuracy of current data as “Omega Proteins [sic] and its political allies fight[ing] a rear guard action” against new regulation by “challenging the science.” This completely ignores the problems that the ASMFC itself has recognized with the most recent, 2012 menhaden assessment. The Commission’s Menhaden Technical Committee resolved that the 2012 assessment was unfit for management advice, with flaws such as consistent overestimations of fishing mortality and consistent underestimations of the population. This means both that the assessment was likely too pessimistic in its estimates, and that the last reliable assessment was from 2010, which only includes data from up to 2008. Given that there is no reliable gauge of the menhaden stock for the last four years, it is reasonable to advocate for a cautious management approach while more reliable data is collected.
Similarly misleading is the casting of Omega Protein’s participation in the management process as “good-old-boy politics that have dominated the menhaden debate.” This vastly overstates Omega Protein’s influence with the Virginia legislature and on menhaden management. Omega Protein, like all interested stakeholders in the fishery, participates in both the ASMFC deliberative process and the legislative process; it does not have an undue amount of influence in either. For example, between 2008 and 2012, Omega Protein contributed $142,000 to political campaigns and political action committees (PACs) in Virginia. This ranks it at only #267 on the list of political donors in the state during that time period. As a point of comparison, the Virginia Taxicab Association made donations totaling $24,000 more than Omega Protein.
Rather than focusing on the nuances of menhaden science and management, Mr. Joseph resorts to straw-man arguments against his opponents and misleading interpretations of the facts. As a result, Newport News Daily Press readers are presented with a biased editorial instead of a fair analysis of the menhaden issue.