IN PURSUIT OF IGNORANCE: VIRGINIA LEGISLATORS DELAY MENHADEN STUDY

 

Menhaden, particularly Atlantic menhaden, are one of my least-favorite subjects for this blog.

They’re an important forage fish.  The resource has been abused in the past.  But thanks to a lot of good people doing a lot of good work over the past quarter-century or so, menhaden management is now at least on a par with management of other important species.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s current menhaden management plan employs ecological, rather than single-species-based, reference points and, perhaps most important of all, current biomass remains above the biomass target, and fishing mortality remains below its target level.

Despite clear scientific advice to the contrary, many people still believe that the Atlantic menhaden stock is beset by problems.  Such stubborn and widespread belief might be attributable, at least in part, to a book written over a decade ago, The Most Important Fish in the Sea, which caught the public imagination and is still widely accepted today a gospel, despite the fact that its author, H. Bruce Franklin, was a cultural historian and professor of English, rather than a fisheries scientist.

A symptom of such persistent beliefs is the fact that, even though the last stock assessment found that there are enough menhaden swimming all along the coast to serve their ecological role, and even though that role was defined by the needs of a fully-rebuilt striped bass stock, quite a few people providing input on the ASMFC’s recently-adopted Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass made comments such as

“Mismanagement of the Chesapeake Bays striped bass harvest, along with the unsustainable commercial reduction fishery targeting menhaden, has contributed significantly to the decline of striped bass stocks in the Bay and coast-wide.”

“[O]ne thing you can do [to help conserve the striped bass] is to eliminate or reduce the number of menhaden that are netted commercially in the Chesapeake Bay.  Increasing the number of menhaden would be beneficial to stripers of all sizes in the bay.”

“Strengthen protections for Menhaden, the critically important forage fish on which Striped Bass depend for food.  As is being increasingly documented—and sadly apparent to me in simply viewing from my own home—the Menhaden population has crashed.”

And,

“Why is the ASMFC refusing to acknowledge the effect of the menhaden reduction fishery on the ability of the striped bass fishery to rebound?...Even a moratorium on recreational/commercial harvest won’t make a difference though, the fish need forage to rebound and their forage is being removed…”

Nevertheless, while the plight of the menhaden is badly overblown, and the fish is doing quite well on a coastwide basis, there are still some important questions that need to be answered.  Perhaps first among them is the question of whether menhaden can be locally depleted by the reduction fishery in the Chesapeake Bay, and whether such depletion can or does cause harm to populations of fish, piscivorous birds, and/or other animals.

A 2019 report from the University of Maryland/Maryland Sea Grant defines “localized depletion” as a

“reduction in menhaden population size or density below the level of abundance that is sufficient to maintain its basic ecological (e.g., forage base, grazer of plankton), economic, and social/cultural functions.”

It notes that such localized depletion

“can occur as a result of fishing pressure, environmental conditions, and predation pressures on a limited spatial and temporal scale,”

while recognizing that

“it is an issue of concern because it could lead to compromised predator-prey relationships, reduction in nutrient cycling, and chronic low recruitment via larval ingress of menhaden to the Chesapeake system.”

But while the report says all of those things, the one thing is doesn’t say is whether localized depletion of menhaden actually occurs in the Chesapeake Bay and, more relevant to this discussion, whether such depletion, if it occurs, is due to the activities of the reduction fishing fleet in the Virginia portion of the Bay (Maryland waters already being closed to such reduction fishing).

At the February 2005 meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, that Board decided to cap limit purse seine (which, for practical purposes, primarily means the reduction fleet’s) menhaden landings in the Chesapeake Bay to 110,400 metric tons per year, an amount that has been cut by more than half since then, and also

“to initiate a research program immediately to determine the status of menhaden populations in the Chesapeake Bay in order to conserve the species while more complete population information is obtained to assess whether localized depletion is occurring in Chesapeake Bay.”

Nearly two decades later, research has yet to answer the latter question.

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science states that

“It is the general position of VIMS that there is currently insufficient direct evidence to indicate that localized depletion of menhaden from Chesapeake Bay has occurred.  Hence, we do not support the implementation of drastic management regulations for the menhaden fishery.  However, sufficient ancillary information regarding the possibility that menhaden abundance in Chesapeake Bay is quite low exists and warrants serious consideration.”

For a while, it looked like VIMS might get a chance to develop the data needed to finally determine whether localized menhaden depletion occurred in the Chesapeake Bay.  The Virginia legislature passed a bill directing VIMS to develop plans for a comprehensive study of menhaden populations in Virginia waters, including the Chesapeake Bay. 

On January 10 of this year, a bill to authorize and fund what was expected to be a three-year research project headed by VIMS, but also involving Virginia fishery managers and relevant stakeholders, including Omega Protein, the sole participant in the East Coast reduction fishery.  The possibility of localized depletion was one of the topics that the researchers would have been tasked to investigate.

Unfortunately, that won’t be happening this year, and perhaps not in the foreseeable future.  Less than three weeks after the bill authorizing the study was introduced, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Rules Committee put off consideration of the bill until 2025, when it may or may not be moved forward.

There is no clear explanation of why that occurred.  According to the website of WFXR, a local television station,

“There was no testimony or debate [at the Rules Committee meeting].  The bill’s sponsor Del. R. Lee Ware (R-VA 72^nd), who is not a member of the subcommittee, was allowed to give a brief explanation of the bill.  Immediately following that, there was a motion to move the bill to the 2025 legislative session, and that motion carried on a voice vote.”

The action was somewhat surprising, since there seemed to be wide stakeholder support for the bill.  As WFXR noted,

“Del. Ware said there was a meeting of various stakeholders including conservation groups, sport and commercial fishing groups, and Omega Protein several months ago.  Ware says all parties came to a consensus to move the research funding bill forward.  He also told the subcommittee that when he addressed the members.

“’As a result of that they came to a unanimous agreement about how to proceed with the science,’ Ware told the delegates.  They suggested a three-year longitudinal study that will really give us answers on this very important fish.’”

But for some reason, despite all the attention that menhaden have gotten in the Virginia legislature in recent years, the motion to defer action until 2025 succeeded.

Although no one seems eager to take credit for killing this year’s bill, and members of the responsible subcommittee have not tried to explain their vote, some are blaming Omega Protein for the legislation’s demise. 

Capt. Chris Dollar, who serves as “Chesapeake conservation advisor” to the Coastal Conservation Association, an anglers’ rights group, lamented that

“It’s no surprise that Omega Protein flip-flopped in their support of the study bill, but it’s extremely disheartening that that a handful of elected officials agreed with them to again derail this vital research.”

Another recreational representative, Steve Atkinson, president of the Virginia Saltwater Sportfishing Association, concurred, saying

“The fact that the industry was involved in designing this study, and then turned and lobbied against the bill, is yet another breach of public trust.”

A press release issued by the respected Chesapeake Bay Foundation sounded a similar theme, noting that

“Omega Protein previously backed the development of a scientific framework for a local menhaden population study.  But as the 2024 legislative session progressed, the company’s lobbying efforts paved the way for lawmakers to punt funding the study into next year.”

The Foundations executive director, Chris Moore, expressed his disappointment with the legislative outcome, saying

“In the Virginia Way, representatives from the conservation community, Omega Protein, and VIMS hammered out an agreement last year on how to proceed to develop more science on menhaden in both a timely and cost-effective manner.  Omega’s lack of support for funding the study is unfortunately not the Virginia Way…

“By opposing funding for these important research questions, Omega Protein once again proves that they are not acting in good faith for the Chesapeake Bay, but rather only for their own pockets.”

For its part, Omega denies any effort to torpedo the bill.  In a written statement provided to WFXR, its spokesman, Ben Landry, said

“Despite our concern that these proposed projects would not answer the primary question most people are after; i.e., ‘How many menhaden are in the Bay? and what should the Bay menhaden harvest be?’ we took no position on the bill.  I can say with certainty that no one from our team lobbied against Del [sic] Ware’s bill.”

While it seems that everyone’s statement cannot be right, and that someone must either be dishonest or mistaken, it’s also quite possible that both are telling a version of the truth; that is, it’s possible that by not actively supporting the funding bill, while also not offering formal opposition, Omega effectively damned the legislation with faint praise, making it clear to the legislators that the company would be happier if the bill was sent off to some dark corner to die.

Certainly, given all the attention that menhaden have been getting from both stakeholders and coastal legislators, there was plenty of impetus to at least move the bill out of committee, so that it could get the attention of the full legislature, attention which it seems to have deserved.  Given that, deferring the bill to the 2025 session, where it might or might not be revived, would appear a conscious decision to choose willful ignorance over promoting and developing scientific knowledge of the menhaden’s status in Virginia waters.

That makes the subcommittee’s decision all the more puzzling.

Yet there is one reason why legislators might opt for ignorance over expanded knowledge:  Someone must be afraid of what that knowledge—in this case, the menhaden study—might reveal.