Officials who regulate the Atlantic menhaden industry have debated in recent years how to balance the historic fishery in the Chesapeake Bay with growing concerns about the ecosystem.
On Wednesday, they took their latest step. The Menhaden Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission advanced a document for public comment with potential changes to harvesting menhaden in the bay.
The commission helps manage fisheries along the East Coast, including 15 states from Florida to Maine.
The proposal outlines options for cutting the amount of menhaden the industry can catch by up to 50% and spreading the harvest more evenly throughout the season.
Environmental groups lauded the move after Wednesday’s meeting.
“The Chesapeake Bay is sending out an unmistakable call for help,” Will Poston with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said in a statement. “Fisheries regulators are hearing the warning by wisely advancing new measures that could protect the bay’s menhaden.”
The industry, meanwhile, maintains that there is no scientific evidence to warrant changing the status quo.
Ocean Harvesters, the company that harvests menhaden in the bay, said in a statement that the proposal is “a solution in search of a problem.”
“The addendum assembles observations, uncertainties and hypotheticals but never demonstrates that Chesapeake Bay menhaden availability has declined because of the reduction fishery or that the proposed measures would produce any biological benefit,” the company stated.
Ocean Harvesters, which operates a fishing fleet to supply Omega Protein, harvests up to 51,000 metric tons of menhaden in the bay each year using large walls of netting called purse seines. Omega processes, or “reduces,” them into fishmeal and fish oil at a plant in Reedville.
Environmentalists and sportfishers believe purse seines are removing too many menhaden, affecting species that rely on them, such as striped bass and osprey. They want the reduction industry to be banned from the bay or more heavily restricted.
The addendum now heading to the public is the culmination of more than a year of deliberations by the Menhaden Board and workgroups.
It centers around the Chesapeake Bay cap, the amount of menhaden the industry is permitted to catch each year. The limit, first established in 2006, is currently set at 51,000 metric tons.
The board will consider reducing the cap by up to 50%, or linking it to the coastwide Total Allowable Catch, or TAC, which is also set by the commission. (Last year, the board voted to temporarily reduce the TAC by 20%.)
Virginia is allocated about 75% of the total because it's the last East Coast state that permits menhaden reduction fishing. Others, such as Maryland, allow fishermen to use stationary traps called pound nets to catch menhaden for use as bait.
Under the proposal, future changes to the coastwide catch limit would automatically translate to the bay cap via the same percent reduction or increase, with some caveats.
Another section lays out options for establishing “quota periods,” or dividing the annual bay cap into specific timeframes.
The industrial menhaden harvest currently happens in the late spring and summer, “when both osprey and crab fisheries need menhaden the most,” according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Advocates say spreading out the harvest could ease stress on the system.
The changes are intended to be precautionary.
“The commission has been using proactive measures to manage this species in the face of uncertainty and to support both ecological and fishery objectives,” officials wrote in the addendum.
Virginia was the only state that voted against the measure.
Company representatives argue the Reedville area is economically dependent on the industry, and that cuts to the harvest would threaten local jobs.
Board member and state Del. Adele McClure(D-Arlington) said she believes in “trying to find a way to strike that fair balance” between the environment and employment.
“I've heard a lot of, ‘I think.’ Uncertainty,” McClure said. “Versus, ‘We know this is happening, and we know this is the cause and the correlation.’”
She said advancing the proposal is “putting the cart before the horse” of gathering more data.
Getting accurate science has become the heart of the debate over managing the fishery.
Menhaden are particularly difficult — and expensive — to study, scientists say, because they’re hard to catch with traditional survey gear and migrate seasonally out of the bay.
After many failed attempts by state lawmakers to fund a study of menhaden in the bay, Gov. Abigail Spanberger this year allocated $2 million to William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science for research over the next two years.
A separate research project was also launched last fall by the National Science Foundation’s Science Center for Marine Fisheries, which is funded by industry members, including Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters. That project focuses on studying the Chesapeake Bay cap and developing a “research roadmap.”
New Hampshire board member Dennis Abbott said officials can’t keep waiting.
“If not now, when? We've been fooling with this for many years,” he said. “We've been working on menhaden since I've been here so many years ago, and I'm of the opinion that we'll never have adequate science to back up any position that we take. It's so variable, and it changes over time.”
The public comment period will run through September and October, with the board meeting again in November to consider final approval, according to the commission’s website.
