ODD DAYS IN THE OLD DOMINION

 

I don’t pretend to know how some legislators make their decisions.

Certainly, they try to satisfy their donors and supporters, along with the constituents who put them and keep them in office.  Party politics can dictate votes, as can personal relationships in and out of the legislature, as well as overarching political beliefs.  And I need to believe that at least some lawmakers are where they are because they want to do the right thing.

Even so, some legislative decisions, particularly when viewed in context with lawmakers’ other actions, seem bizarre enough to leave me shaking my head.

Two recent committee actions down in Virginia illustrate just what I mean.

It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that both of those actions involved not only menhaden, but the industrial-scale menhaden reduction fleet.  

Menhaden, and menhaden management, has been a long-debated subject in and around the Chesapeake Bay.  Even with the coastal population above its biomass target, further restricting the commercial menhaden fishery remains a goal of some members of the recreational fishing and environmental communities.  When you add Omega Protein, the company that just about everyone outside of the commercial fishery loves to hate because of its large (nearly 300 million pounds per year) menhaden landings, to the mix, it’s pretty likely that something interesting is going to happen.

One can argue that menhaden deserve people’s interest, because they are an important forage species, with everything from juvenile “snapper” bluefish to humpback whales feeding on them at some stage in the menhaden’s lives.  And while the menhaden stock is abundant on a local basis, a lot of folks worry that concentrated menhaden harvest in a given location could lead to localized depletion, and resultant harm to menhaden-dependent predators in such particular region.

There is particular concern about such localized depletion in the Chesapeake Bay, where osprey nesting success has supposedly declined because of a decline in menhaden abundance, and some anglers are blaming the reduction fishery for taking so many menhaden out of the Bay that the striped bass stock has suffered.  To address such concerns, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has capped the reduction fleet’s menhaden harvest within the Chesapeake Bay to 51,000 metric tons.

Naturally, the reduction fishery, in the form of Omega Protein, denies such allegations, and has argued that the 51,000 metric ton cap is completely unnecessary. 

The Virginia state legislature, in an effort to resolve that issue and expand its knowledge of the menhaden and its impacts on the state’s waters, considered funding a three-year study that would hopefully answer the questions now being debated.

The study seemed to have near-universal support, with even Omega Protein buying in.  But, as I noted in this blog about ten days ago, a legislative committee decided that such study should not be initiated this year, and pushed off any further consideration until 2025.  The committee never deigned to disclose the reason for its actions, although some of the study’s supporters have publicly surmised that the legislators were swayed by Omega lobbying against the proposed research, allegations that Omega Protein has strongly denied.

The decision not to fund the study this year caught many people by surprise, given public concerns about the localized depletion issue and the widespread support that such study seemed to have.  Yet, however surprising that decision was, it probably didn’t qualify as truly odd.

The odd stuff surfaced a few days later, and culminated when a different legislative committee unanimously approved a bill that would increase the penalties imposed on anyone found guilty of harassing a commercial fishing activity.  That legislation arose out of an incident in which someone riding a jet ski, who apparently didn’t approve of the menhaden reduction fishery, harassed a purse seine crew last September.

I don’t side with the guy on the jet ski.  A spotter plane pilot caught him on camera, and there’s just no excuse for his actions.  The resultant video clearly shows the jet ski speeding in from open water toward two boats setting a purse seine, passing dangerously close to one of the net boats before cutting in front of it and into the closing circle of the net, before racing out, again dangerously close to the boats, as the two ends of the seine came together.  The jet skier clearly engaged in reckless behavior that could have easily injured, and perhaps killed, one or more of the fishermen.

Still, it’s hard to understand why legislators would be so willing to support a bill increasing penalties for harassing commercial fishermen, just because one jackass on a jet ski got out of hand, while other legislators would vote to kill the bill for a comprehensive menhaden study that was supported by just about every relevant group in the state.

That just seems a bit odd, and also seems to demonstrate a bias toward the menhaden fleet, without a similar bias toward protecting the health of the menhaden resource that is critical to the well-being of a host of predators, including the reduction fleet.

To be clear, commercial fishermen should not be harassed, and the existing law against their harassment is completely appropriate, although it’s interesting to note that while Virginia also criminalizes harassing hunters and trappers, as well as harassing anglers on the state’s inland waters, it does not extend such protections to its salt water recreational fishermen.  Thus, although the proposed Virginia legislation would protect menhaden fishermen from being harassed by anglers, no state law would protect anglers from being crowded, set around, or otherwise harassed by a purse seine crew, something that has reportedly occurred in the past.

That, too, is a little odd.

But then, it’s also a little strange that some anglers feel entitled to harass menhaden fishermen.  The jerk on the jet ski seemed to feel that he had the right to speed around purse seine boats, while allegedly yelling obscenities at and splashing water on the fishermen within.  And if the Menhaden Coalition, a group including Omega Protein and other large menhaden harvesters, is to be believed, such attitudes are fairly widespread.  Supposedly, the jet ski incident was only one of three similar incidents last year, in which people aboard recreational vessels harassed commercial menhaden fishermen.  The Coalition claims that such harassers

“are being instigated and fueled by the participants in various sport fishing organizations.  These groups monitor and report where commercial boats are operating and where they are anchoring each evening, which appears to have encouraged their membership to harass and disrupt fishing operations.”

Are they overstating the alleged connection?

Maybe.  But then again, maybe not.

What is undoubtedly true is that by taking such actions, those harassing the menhaden fishermen are handing the reduction fleet the opportunity to cast themselves as innocent victims, and gain the public’s sympathies as a bunch of blue-collar folks just trying to make ends meet, who are being unjustly obstructed by a coterie of well-heeled, boat-owning, abusive recreational fishermen.  Such propaganda does neither the menhaden nor the conservation community any good.

So perhaps the final, and most disturbing oddity, is that the responsible members of the recreational community don’t publicly condemn such harassment, and make it clear that while they may not approve of purse seining within the Chesapeake Bay, they also disapprove of irresponsible anglers who operate outside the law.  That they don't insist that the only way to solve existing menhaden conflicts is with deliberate and sober reason, based on demonstrable facts.

Which brings us full circle, to the need for more research, and the odd fact that legislators voted Virginia’s study down.