Thursday, January 28, 2010
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Most important fish in the sea needs your help
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
Bill Cochran's Outdoors
Recent columns
- Less freedom at Hatteras for surf casters
- Here’s the scoop on hunting shed antlers
- Want more grouse? Get used to hearing chainsaws
- Sunday hunting bills aplenty, but some hunters hold out
- Column archive
Bill's Mailbag
Bill's Field Reports
Resources
What is the most important fish in the Chesapeake Bay? Striped bass? Drum?
Good guesses, but a more likely candidate, is the menhaden.
Many people don’t know much about this pudgy, slimy, smelly baitfish, yet it is tied to the destiny of the bay like no other species.
H. Bruce Franklin extends its importance well beyond the Chesapeake Bay, calling it “The Most Important Fish in the Sea,” which is the title of his enticing book published in 2007.
But let’s talk about the bay right now, because that is where the current battle for this species is being waged, and this week is an important one in that war.
The menhaden is a vital food source for most bay species that we recreational anglers hold dear: striped bass, bluefish, drum, flounder, gray trout, and croaker, among them. It also is important fodder for gulls, terns, ospreys, gannets and other avians.
Menhaden serve as an important filtering system for the bay, sucking up plankton like a vacuum cleaner. Each adult fish is capable of filtering four gallons of water a minute, a virtual liver for the bay.
But here’s where the conflict begins: This little fish has a high commercial value, yielding products that include animal food, fertilizer and fish oil used for everything from lipstick to health supplements. Menhaden fuel a big economic engine at Reedville where Texas-based Omega Protein operates a processing plant that can take up to 109,020 metric tons of menhaden per year from the bay.
Spotter planes are used to locate schools of menhaden and vessels move in to surround them with nets and pump them into craft so big that they generally are called ships. No other state on the East Cost allows this level of industrial harvesting.
There are ongoing debates over whether too many menhaden are being harvested. This week the Coastal Conservation Association posted the following information for its members and supporters, who are mostly sport fishermen:
“There are numerous and unmistakable signs that the ecologically critical menhaden are in trouble, not only in the Chesapeake Bay, but in the ocean as well. That impacts the entire marine food chain.”
CCA says the bay population of menhaden has declined 72 percent since 1979.
The CCA isn’t calling for Omega Protein to pack up and head back to Texas. It is saying that the authority to manage menhaden should be transferred to the scientists of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, who manage all other saltwater fisheries.
For more than 100 years, the Virginia General Assembly has overseen the well being of menhaden. Imagine politicians, rather than scientists, managing a complex fishery; politicians who have a ton of other things to do; politicians who generally convene once a year.
There are a couple of bills in the 2010 General Assembly to change this, to put the scientists in charge.
“Seems like a no-brainer,” CCA says in its legislative alert. But similar bills have been defeated in the past by the menhaden industry and its supporters, who talk jobs and promote the theory that human predation on menhaden is trivial.
This time, though, things have never looked more promising for sport fishermen, who seem to have captured support from both the public and political arenas. CCA has tagged this week “Making Menhaden History,” but it is warning anglers that good things aren’t going to happen unless they get behind the effort.
The two bills, SB 185, introduced by Sen. Ralph Notham, D-Norfolk, and HB 294, filed by Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, have the support of an impressive coalition that includes the CCA, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Virginia Council of Angling Clubs, Fly Fishermen of Virginia, Virginia Beach Angling Club, James River Association and Bass Pro Shops.
The measures would turn menhaden management over to VMRC, a major step even though the agency doesn’t have a history of running roughshod over commercial fishing efforts.
Both bills are scheduled to be heard this week in committee. CCA has been urging sportsmen to rally support from their representative in the House and Senate. This may be the most important conservation legislation of the session.
