"THE MOST IMPORTANT fish in the sea," according to author H. Bruce Franklin, is not a whale, a tuna, a dolphin, or a shark. Instead, it's an oily fleshed, foot-long silver fish variously called a mossbunker, pogy, or, as we know it, menhaden.
On Aug. 2, the menhaden fishery was Topic A of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission–delegates from 15 states from Maine to Florida devoted to keeping fisheries viable. The menhaden population is falling, which troubles environmentalists, naturalists, and the ASMFC.
The decline can be seen in the number of immature menhaden–those a year old or younger. In 1960, experts put the number of these small fry at about 90 billion; 25 years ago, 70 billion; last year, 18 billion. What happened? It depends on whom you ask.
Most menhaden are caught by large commercial fishing vessels owned by one company: Omega Protein out of the Northern Neck community of Reedville. Omega uses spotter planes to find schools of the little fish both in the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, and huge purse seine nets to haul them aboard ship. When harvested, menhaden are ground into fish meal for use in animal feed, or they're processed into the fish oil that people take to protect their hearts. Omega captured 160,000 metric tons of menhaden last year, 80 percent of the total fishery catch.
Read the full article at fredericksburg.com
Analysis: The number of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay is influenced by a variety of factors, not just the amount of fish that is caught. These factors include the temperature and quality of the water, as well as activity by predators. Currently , the ASFMC allows 109,020 metric tons of menhaden to be harvested yearly. At that rate, the ASFMC concluded that menhaden were not being overfished and that overfishing was not occuring.