The question of localized depletion has been the heart of Virginia’s debate over Atlantic menhaden management for several decades. Does the concentration of industrial-scale purse-seine fishing for “reduction” in the Commonwealth’s waters of the Chesapeake Bay (more than 100 million pounds of menhaden annually–around 300 million individual fish) have an outsized effect on the stocks of these ecologically vital forage fish throughout the Bay ecosystem? Even though the Menhaden Technical Committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has maintained for some years that the coastwide stock is not being overfished, there has been nagging anecdotal evidence of localized depletion in the Chesapeake, with corresponding concern about other creatures that feed on these nutrient-dense fish, including striped bass (rockfish). For the past ten years and more, the only company fishing menhaden for reduction on the Atlantic coast is Reedville, VA-based Omega Protein. Reedville, in fact, has been the center of Atlantic menhaden processing since the 1870s.
To be fair, the question of localized depletion is complex, as Atlantic menhaden range from Maine to Florida. Estuaries along the coast serve as vital nurseries, with the Chesapeake the largest of them. At the same time, Virginia is the only Atlantic state that allows purse seine fishing in state waters, including the Chesapeake, and within three miles of its Atlantic coast. With Omega Protein based in Reedville, it obviously makes economic sense for the company’s fishing partner, Ocean Harvesters, to base its fleet there and make a high proportion of its net sets in the Chesapeake or the inshore waters just outside in the Atlantic.
Even so, ASMFC’s Menhaden Board has had to make management decisions based on data that the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) considers “woefully inadequate.” Pressing evidence of the problem has become more obvious recently, especially in what appears to be wide-scale starvation of osprey chicks in salty sections of Chesapeake waters and in plummeting pound net catches of menhaden for crab pot bait in Maryland’s Bay waters just above the Virginia state line. Then, in October of last year, ASMFC’s Menhaden Management Board reduced the coastwide catch quota by 20% after revising its assessment of the overall stock as being “smaller than we initially thought.” The Board did not, however, reduce the 51,000 metric ton cap on the fish the industry could catch each year in Virginia’s Bay waters.
Three years ago, a broad-based group that included representatives of the reduction industry, VIMS, recreational anglers, conservation organizations, and the general public came together to draw up a plan to develop and fund the science necessary to discover if localized depletion of menhaden is occurring here. Unfortunately, legislation to move that research forward has died in the succeeding sessions of the Virginia General Assembly, with ongoing pressure to delay the study for a decade or more from industry lobbyists.
Meanwhile, this Spring, ospreys have returned to the Chesapeake, paired up, and begun rebuilding their nests; rockfish are staging to spawn in the Bay’s big rivers; and crabbing season is gearing up in dozens of watermen’s communities. The need for these essential forage fish is rising with the water temperature.
But Virginia does not yet have a budget for the next two years. Governor Abigail Spanberger has called a special session of the General Assembly for April 23 to vote on the proposed new one. It includes $2 million that the members of the House Appropriations Committee included to fund menhaden research in the Bay. The special session offers lawmakers an opportunity—finally–to invest in this necessary science. Recent polling shows that 80 percent of Virginia voters support state funding for this study. “Given the lack of action on much-needed menhaden legislation thus far, we are grateful that the needed science funding is proposed in the House budget. The long-overdue effort is the only way we can ensure not only a robust ecosystem but also a healthy economic outlook for all of those that depend on a thriving population of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay for their livelihood,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation Virginia Policy Manager Jay Ford.