VIRGINIA LEGISLATORS CONSIDER LOCALIZED MENHADEN DEPLETION

 

With all things considered, Atlantic menhaden management can only be called a conservation success.

The fight was long—I got involved in the late 1990s, and there were other folks advocating for the menhaden well before then—but when you think about where we were 35 years ago, compared to where we are today, the progress becomes very clear.

After all, back in the late 1990s, menhaden were effectively owned by the purse seine reduction fleet.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s original Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, adopted in 1981, created an Atlantic Menhaden Management Board that was

“composed of the six chief fishery management administrators of states actively participating in the management program, six menhaden industry executives who request membership, and an ex officio representative from [the National Marine Fisheries Service]…”

charged with making the final management decisions, an “Atlantic Menhaden Implementation Subcommittee”

“composed of 3 industry and 3 state administrator members of the [Atlantic Menhaden Management Board]…to conduct the day to day activities of the overall management program…”

and an “Atlantic Menhaden Advisory Committee”

“composed of fishery biologists designated as representatives by the States actively participating in the management program, industry representatives designated by the companies in the purse seine fishery, and a NMFS biologist from the menhaden program who is actively engaged in the research and data base management…[The Atlantic Menhaden Advisory Committee] shall formulate recommendations for short term management actions over the next one or two fishing seasons, propose new research…and request special analyses of Atlantic menhaden data by NMFS-[Southeast Fisheries Center] scientific staff…”

 The plan’s stated long-term objective was to

“Achieve the greatest continuing yield for each area by determining the age at which menhaden should be harvested and eliminating other restrictions which do not contribute to the management goal.”

Following many years of work by the conservation and recreational fishing communities, which had combined their efforts to achieve a common goal, the ASMFC adopted Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden in July 2001.

Amendment 1 revamped the entire management structure, eliminating the seats reserved for industry members and creating an Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, Atlantic Menhaden Technical Committee, and Atlantic Menhaden Advisory Panel that were structured in the same manner as bodies focused on all of the other ASMFC-managed species.  

In addition, the management plan’s goal was changed from merely maximizing harvest, and eliminating any obstacles thereto.  It now reads

“To manage the Atlantic menhaden fishery in a manner that is biologically, economically, socially and ecologically sound, while protecting the resource and those who benefit from it.”

A comprehensive set of biological, social/economic, ecological, and management objectives were adopted at the same time.

If Amendment 1 represented the current pinnacle of menhaden management, it would have placed the fish in a far better place than they were in throughout the latter decades of the 20^th Century.  But fishery managers went even further.

In December 2012, the Management Board adopted Addendum 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, which adopted new biological reference points that provided greater protection for the spawning stock.  

In 2017, the Management Board took the next step, and moved toward the use of ecological, rather than biological, reference points to manage the menhaden fishery.  Under such approach, the focus of management would shift from merely maintaining a sustainable menhaden fishery to maintaining a sustainable menhaden population that was capable of fulfilling its role as one of the most important forage species on the Atlantic coast.

Such ecosystem reference points were included, along with traditional biological reference points, in a benchmark stock assessment released in January 2020.

A stock assessment update released in August 2022, employing such ecosystem reference points, found that

“The fishing mortality rate for the terminal year of 2021 was below the [ecosystem reference point] target and threshold and the fecundity was above the [ecosystem reference point] target and threshold.  Therefore, overfishing is not occurring and the stock is not considered overfished.”

It took more than 30 years, but moving from a management system driven by the reduction fishing industry, and solely focused on harvest, to a fishery management approach that emphasizes the menhaden’s ecological role was a clear victory for conservation advocates, particularly given the fact that the menhaden stock is not just meeting, but exceeding its management targets.

Today, most of the remaining complaints about menhaden management aren't biological in nature.  Instead, they arise out of some advocates' gut-level aversion to letting a single company, based in a single state, harvest over 60% of all menhaden landings.  It is an issue that arises out of the realm of economic and social philosophy, rather than the health of the resource itself.

Still, there is one remaining biological issue that has woven through the menhaden debate for at least a couple of decades:  Is it possible for concentrated fishing effort to deplete menhaden abundance in a discrete location, even if the stock is deemed healthy overall?

That’s a difficult question to answer.

The most recent research, including genetic research, supports the proposition that all menhaden on the Atlantic coast constitute a single stock.  Individual fish, belonging to such stock, can and typically do engage in long migrations, with menhaden from the waters off the Carolinas known to migrate as far north as Maine and as far south as Florida.

Despite such long migrations, some places can be largely devoid of menhaden at any given time.  The question, then, is whether such local absence of menhaden is due to completely natural causes, or whether heavy fishing pressure might play a role.  That question is particularly pertinent with regard to the Chesapeake Bay, a region that is not only heavily fished by purse seiners serving the reduction fishery, but is also an important spawning and nursery ground for striped bass, and hosts many other species that actively predate on menhaden.

No one really knows whether localized depletion is an issue or not.  The Management Board has properly taken a precautionary stance, and currently caps the reduction fleet’s harvest within the Bay at 51,000 metric tons.  However, Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden also admits that

“The Chesapeake Bay Reduction Fishery Cap was originally implemented in 2005 to prevent localized depletion of menhaden.  Given the concentrated harvest of menhaden within the Chesapeake Bay, there was concern that localized depletion could be occurring in the Bay.  In 2005, the Board established the American Menhaden Research Program (AMRP) to evaluate the possibility of localized depletion.  Results from the peer review report in 2009 were unable to conclude localized depletion is occurring in the Chesapeake Bay and noted that, given the high mobility of menhaden, the potential for localized depletion could only occur on a ‘relatively small scale for a relatively short time’.”

Thus, the issue of localized depletion still fuels a heated debate, with the reduction industry arguing against the Bay cap and conservation and recreational fishing advocates emphasizing the prudence of keeping such cap in place.

On February 8, the Virginia State Senate took action to resolve such dispute, passing a bill that would fund a study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.  Such study would calculate the population of menhaden in state waters over an 18-month period, while the reduction fleet continued to fish, and also survey the amount of bycatch caught, and often killed, in the very large nets used by that fleet.

Needless to say, Omega Protein, which operates the only remaining menhaden reduction plant on the Atlantic coast, opposes the Senate bill, seeing no need for such study.  The fact that Omega’s nets have been known to catch and kill such valued recreational species as red drum, one of the Virginia’s most iconic marine species, probably makes the company extremely reluctant to countenance any bycatch studies that might implicate its operations.

Given Omega’s history in the Bay, its very opposition to a study of both bycatch and localied menhaden depletion probably provides a good reason why such study should take place.

Unfortunately, when the Senate bill was sent to the Virginia House of Delegates for further review, it was not enthusiastically received.  The House Rules subcommittee largely gutted the legislation, amending it so that it only called on VIMS to provide details of a “potential” study’s scope, methodology, possible stakeholders, cost, and duration.  Omega Protein supported the watered-down bill, with its lobbyist noting that

“The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission…in April of 2021 had a study that suggests it would take five to seven years to do this, probably as much as 10,”

the implication being that the 18-month study proposed in the Senate bill was too short to accomplish its goal.

A number of conservation and angling groups also supported the House version of the study bill, perhaps believing that it at least provided a starting place from which research could begin.  

Such motivation could be heard in the words of Steve Atkinson, president of the Virginia Saltwater Sportfishing Association, who observed,

“We’re often told that there is no science to support our claims.  Now we finally have an opportunity to get some science.”

It would be unfortunate if that opportunity slipped away.

While it’s impossible to know what a study might reveal, if localized depletion is occurring, it could have a significant negative impact on striped bass and other Chesapeake species, including not only fish, but also marine mammals and fish-eating birds.

More research is needed, and there is no good reason why such research should not begin soon.