The menhaden is a humble fish. Many people may have never heard of it. Yet, this unassuming small creature is among the most important species in the Atlantic, playing a critical role in the region's food web and supporting the economies of countless coastal communities. Its numbers, unfortunately, are plummeting.
One of the culprits for the menhaden's dramatic decline is decades of unsustainable commercial fishing. This November, however, a key governmental body known as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has the opportunity to put in place sensible policies that could rebuild this severely depleted species.
Menhaden, also known as pogy, have dominated the annual catch along the East Coast since the mid-1800s. This yield helped create a vibrant industry across several states that used hundreds of ships and dozens of facilities to process billions of fish into oil and fertilizer.
While schools of pogy up to 40 miles long once were commonplace, decades of unsustainable fishing relegated this abundance to that of folklore. After peaking in the 1950s, the total menhaden take began decreasing, but not for lack of fishermen trying to catch them.
The quest for pogy continued unabated โ surpassing in some years the U.S. catch for that of all other fish on the East Coast combined. For the last 50 years, large-scale commercial operations have continuously exceeded safe fishing targets, and there has been no corrective management action to halt menhaden's decline. As a result, the species' population has dwindled to less than 10 percent of its original size.
Today, a single company has control of 80 percent of menhaden fishing and processing. At its factory in Virginia, hundreds of millions of pogy are "reduced" down to commercial products โ including feed for an array of farm animals, food additives, and oil for dietary supplements.
Menhaden are the primary food source for a number of seabirds, whales, and other popular marine mammals. They also provide nourishment for many of the species that East Coast anglers like to catch and eat, such as striped bass. But decades of huge menhaden hauls without any strong checks or balances have taken their toll on this ecosystem.
Read the full article at Foster's Daily Democrat.
Analysis: The article's claim that the menhaden population is "plummeting" due to "decades of unsustainable fishing" that has exceeded safe fishing targets is not backed up by the most recently available scientific data. A look at the most recent stock assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) reveals no pattern of overfishing or the unsustainability mentioned in the article. The assessment made several important findings; the menhaden population is currently not overfished, fishing past the mortality threshold occurred only once in the past ten years, and the abundance levels of menhaden eggs are currently at target. Taken together, these points reveal that the fishery is far healthier than the article claims.
The claim that menhaden are "less than 10% of their original size" is similarly misleading. Menhaden are currently fished to 10% of their Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP), an estimate of a theoretical unfished population. This alone is not an indication of overfishing; menhaden have rarely risen above this level over the past several decades, and their high fecundity rates have previously allowed the population to rebuild itself.
The percentage of menhaden in sea bass diets is also not enough to indicate overfishing. Bass diets are highly variable, and depend on several factors that are independent of the menhaden fishery. Health issues in bass are also more likely attributable to water issues in the Chesapeake Bay rather than the presence or absence of menhaden. Runoff into the Bay has created oxygen dead zones in waters that bass usually inhabit. This has forced the bass into warmer, shallower waters that the bass are ill-suited for, causing them to not feed properly and leading to a greater susceptibility to illness.