Throughout much of last year, fishermen from Bangor, ME, to Broome’s Island, MD, experienced the return of impressive menhaden schools. Trollers, live liners, chummers, jiggers, and surf casters all got in on some great striper fishing, much of it over menhaden. YouTube videos showed epic striper blitzes during this prized gamefish’s annual run down the coast, as they corralled and mauled thick pods of bunker, this oily fish’s nickname in the Chesapeake region. Others along the Atlantic coast call them fat-backs, pogies, or mossbacks.
Whatever name they go by, it is not hyperbole to call them the most important fish in the sea. Found in coastal and estuarine waters from Florida to Nova Scotia, menhaden play a crucial role in the marine food web. Valuable gamefish including stripers, bluefish, red drum, and tunas rely on adult and juvenile menhaden—called peanut bunker—for food. Whales and sea birds also eat these protein-packed forage fish.
Here on the Chesapeake Bay, menhaden are commonly found in almost all salinity ranges. While capable of spawning year-round, the highest rates occur in late autumn off Virginia and North Carolina. Eggs hatch in the open ocean, and then larvae are pushed by currents into coastal estuaries. In these quiet waters they rapidly grow by consuming vast amounts of phytoplankton (primary food for fish under one year old) and zooplankton, serving another ecological function by filtering the water. Bunker join with other fish of similar age and size. Typically, younger and smaller fish are found in the Chesapeake Bay, sounds, and bays while older, larger bunker head to more open northern waters. Menhaden can live up to a decade or longer.
The commercial value of menhaden is impressive, as well. Given that, it’s no surprise that the debate over how best to manage them is so contentious. According to NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office, the coastal and Chesapeake harvest of menhaden constitute the largest landings, by volume, along the entire Atlantic Coast. Only Alaskan pollock are brought back to the dock in greater volume. To catch such huge numbers of bunkers highly effective purse seines are deployed with tender boats and the aid of spotter planes. It is accurate to say that Omega, a publicly traded company based in Houston, is the only game in town, so to speak, since it is the sole reduction operation along the Coast, based in Reedville, VA.
Many states prohibit this kind of industrial-scale practice, Maryland included, and have for years. Instead, commercial watermen use pound nets, a type of fixed gear. Chesapeake pound netters are important suppliers to the local and regional bait fishery—crabbers, lobstermen, and sport anglers via tackle shops.
Atlantic menhaden are managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). Currently, the rules set a specific catch limit—allocation—for each coastal state. For the entire Atlantic coast and the Chesapeake, the ASMFC approved a total allowable catch (TAC) of 187,880 metric tons per year for 2015 and 2016, a 10 percent bump from 2014. Following their historic decision in 2012 to implement the first-ever cap on the bunker harvest—which arguably has worked, evidenced by the anecdotal reports of more bunker—the ASMFC voted this past October to increase the menhaden quota by 6.5 percent for the Atlantic Coast in 2016.
In 2016, Maryland and the Potomac River Fisheries were allocated 1.37 percent and 0.62 percent of the total coastwide catch, respectively. Virginia received 85.32 percent, by far the most of any coastal state. New Jersey’s landings are a distant second, by a factor of nearly 10. Once a state reaches its catch allowance, it is required to close its fisheries. As one might expect, this has resulted in much discussion over the gross imbalance of allowing one state—and de facto a single company—so much of the harvest.
Last month, the ASMFC held public meetings throughout the menhaden’s coastal range to get feedback on its plan to manage this critical forage in coming years. National and regional conservation and fishing groups have long called on the ASMFC to set catch limits not based on the single species approach as it’s done for decades, but rather consider seriously menhaden’s importance to the comprehensive marine ecosystem. The ASMFC’s current system of implementing catch quotas, some argue, operates without fully knowing the impact of such actions. Here are a few key options within the Board’s plan:
- Ecological Reference Points—Option D is supported by almost all sportfishing and conservation groups. It would manage menhaden to a target of 75 percent of the total menhaden biomass before large-scale fishing, and ensure the population never drops below 40 percent.
- Fix Incidental Catch & Small Scale Fishery Allowance—NOAA says the menhaden commercial fishery is relatively “clean”—meaning the bycatch is low, comparatively. Yet, currently there’s a loophole that allows several million pounds of menhaden to be caught, but is not counted toward the quota. This loophole also impacts the imbalance between the small-scale bait fishery and industrialized reduction fishery.
- Cap the Chesapeake Reduction Fishery—The Bay is the primary nursery for juvenile menhaden. Many support not only keeping the historic cap but that the Bay harvest should be at 96 million pounds to protect against localized depletion, a kind of ecological bunker reserve, as it were.
Interestingly, at Maryland’s public hearing there was strong consensus between commercial fishermen and conservation and angling groups in attendance that the current allocation set-up is unfair to Maryland watermen. The answer is not to harvest more menhaden, but rather allocate total catches more fairly. It wouldn’t take much to bring relief and fairness to small- and medium-scale bunker fishermen without disrupting the food chain.
Menhaden Facts
- A member of the herring family, the word "menhaden" comes from the Native American word munnawhatteaug, which means "that which manures."
- Precolonial coastal native peoples would fertilize their crops with menhaden.
- Researchers believe that dolphins can eat up to 20 pounds of menhaden per day.
by Captain Chris D. Dollar