Preliminary
indications are that, in order to have a 50% chance of achieving that fishing
mortality target in 2027, and probably 2028 and 2029 as well, fishing mortality
is going to have to be reduced by 39%, and the annual catch limit reduced from
the current 186,400 metric tons to something like 114,200 metric tons. Those numbers are real, and anyone
concerned with menhaden conservation and the long-term sustainability of the
stock ought to be out shaking the trees, and letting their state
representatives on the Management Board know just how they feel.
Unfortunately, we’re talking about menhaden, one of the most
politicized fish on the East Coast, and about a lot of people who throw around
numbers, and make impassioned statements, that aren’t very real at all. Some
of it comes from being uninformed—an issue I addressed, with suggestions how to
fix it—about ten days ago, and some
of it comes from a desire to spin the menhaden issue in a particular direction,
whether or not all the spin is necessarily true, something that I wrote about
last June.
Unfortunately, the latter sort of advocacy seems to be
taking up a lot of space in the news, with the
latest example being a petition that was recently sent to Secretary of Commerce
Howard Lutnick, asking him to promulgate emergency regulations to shut down the
menhaden reduction fishery in federal waters off the New York Bight.
It’s not completely clear where the petition came from.
The
Forage Fish Campaign, a group that I’ve cited before for distributing dubious
information, provides links to the petition on its website, but its name
doesn’t appear anywhere in the petition itself, except as a cited reference in
four of the footnotes. The sponsors
listed in the petition include the Jersey Coast Anglers Association; the Hudson
River Fishermen’s Association; the New Jersey-based Hi-Mar Striped Bass Club;
the Tackle Box Fishing Company (a fishing tackle retailer); two New York
charter boats, the Jamaica Bay-based Karen Ann Charters and the Montauk-based
My Joyce Fishing Charters; Capt. Ron’s Fishermen (an Atlantic Highlands, New
Jersey party boat); and Moran’s Dockside (an Avalon, New Jersey tackle
shop). Whether those sponsors conceived
of the petition on their own initiative or, as seems more likely, were recruited
by The Forage Fish Campaign or some other entity, cannot be determined with
absolute certainty.
The petition’s entreaty to Secretary Lutnick seems to depend
on provisions
of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, specifically 16
U.S.C. 1855 (c), which provides
“(c) EMERGENCY ACTIONS AND INTERIM MEASURES
(1)
If the Secretary finds that an emergency or
overfishing exists or that interim measures are needed to avoid overfishing for
any fishery, he may promulgate emergency measures or interim regulations
necessary to address the emergency or overfishing, without regard to whether a
fishery management plan exists for such fishery…
(3) Any…emergency regulation or interim measure
promulgated under this subsection—
(A) shall
be published in the Federal Register together with the reasons therefore;
(B)
shall…remain in effect for not more than 180 days after the date of
publication, and may be extended by publication in the Federal Register for one
additional period of not more than 186 days; provided the public has had an
opportunity to comment on the emergency regulations or interim measure…”
The problem with using that provision as justification for asking
the Secretary to promulgate emergency regulations is threefold. First, the
Atlantic menhaden stock assessment update, which sets out the current state of
the stock, came out a little over one year ago, so it is difficult to argue
that anything contained in that assessment update constitutes an “emergency,”
for if it did, why didn’t the petitioners seek Secretarial action a year ago, rather
than waiting until now? Second, the
stock assessment update made it clear that the Atlantic menhaden stock is
neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing. Finally, material
released to the Management Board along with the 2025 stock assessment stated
that, at the current annual catch limit, there was absolutely no chance—a
0% probability—of overfishing occurring in 2026, 2027, or 2028, so it
is very clear that there is no need for the Secretary to promulgate “interim
measures…to avoid overfishing.”
Given all of that, it would seem that menhaden don’t qualify
for emergency treatment and, even if they did, that the Secretary should give
the ASMFC a chance to act before declaring an emergency.
Still, it might be worth taking a look at some of the
petitioners’ arguments to understand how and why those arguments are legally
and factually faulty. That examination
should probably focus on the petitioners’ claim that emergency action was justified
by key provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, in the form of National Standards for
Fishery Conservation and Management 1, 2, 8, and 9.
National Standard 1 states that
“Conservation and management measures shall prevent
overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each
fishery for the United States fishing industry.”*
A definition contained in an earlier section of Magnuson-Stevens
explains that
“The term ‘optimum,’ with respect to the
yield from a fishery, means the amount of fish which—
(A) will provide the greatest overall
benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and
recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine
ecosystems;
(B) is prescribed as such on the basis of
maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant
economic, social, or ecological factor; and
(C) in the case of an overfished fishery,
provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum
sustainable yield in such fishery.”
National Standard 1 might appear to provide the best support
for the emergency regulations, as an argument can easily be made, based on the
2025 stock assessment update, that menhaden landings need to be reduced
substantially if the species is to be able to fulfill its ecological role; in
fact, the target fishing mortality level is based on ecosystem reference points
intended to allow the menhaden to do just that.
As noted above, materials provided to the Management Board
ahead of its October 2025 meeting make it clear that current management
measures are already adequate to prevent overfishing—a 0% probability of overfishing
occurring is as much prevention as anyone can ever hope to achieve—so the only remaining
question is whether the current management measures achieve optimum yield.
That analysis would begin with the question raised in
subparagraph A: Do the current menhaden
management measures provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation? Menhaden aren’t typically eaten, and aren’t
targeted for sport or food by recreational fishermen, so the usual valuations
of food production and recreational opportunity cannot be applied.
One might argue that the menhaden fisheries
contribute to both food and recreation indirectly as the fish caught by the
reduction fleet are used, in large part, for agricultural and aquacultural
feeds, nutrition for the chicken, salmon, and other foods that land on
Americans’ plates, while menhaden caught by the bait fishery are used as bait
for crab and lobster, and also as bait and chum in the recreational
fishery. So the current regulations don’t
seem to conflict with that portion of subparagraph A.
Having said that, we might still question whether the
current menhaden management measures “take into account the protection of
marine ecosystems,” and whether, with respect to subparagraph B, such
management measures are designed to achieve maximum sustainable yield, “as
reduced by any relevant…ecological factor.”
It is easy to argue that they do not.
However, as noted at the start of this essay, all that is
needed to achieve the various ecological goals for Atlantic menhaden is to
reduce menhaden landings by 39% coastwide.
That can be accomplished by cutting both reduction and
bait landings by 39%, and/or by cutting every state’s quota by 39%. There is no indication that shutting down only
the reduction fishery, while leaving the bait fishery completely intact, and
doing so only in the New York Bight, is necessary to ensure that
menhaden fulfill their ecological role.
In fact, the petition unintentionally argues against itself
in this regard. It complains that the
reduction fleet removed 13 million pounds of menhaden from the waters off New Jersey
over the course of two days, although it never offers an estimate of the total
poundage of menhaden removed from the New York Bight over the course of a
season. However, the petition states
very clearly that
“The Bight’s menhaden play a key role [in New Jersey’s fishing
industry], with the commercial bait fishery based in New Jersey catching over 80
million pounds of menhaden annually…
[emphasis added]”
So, given that the reduction fleet is only in the New York
Bight for a relatively short period—or periods—each year, does it really catch
significantly more menhaden in Bight waters than the bait fishery
does? And if petitioners truly believe that
the removal of menhaden from the waters of the New York Bight is causing
ecological harm sufficient to invoke the provisions of National Standard 1, why
does it not object to the bait fishery, which it acknowledges removes more than
80 million pounds of menhaden—very possibly as much as, if not more than, the
amount of menhaden removed by the reduction fleet—from the New York Bight each
year?
The answer might be as simple as the fact that the reduction
fleet uses big boats, while the bait fishery uses small ones, and the
petitioners like the latter boats better, even if they collectively kill the
same numbers of fish.
National Standard 2 requires that
“Conservation and management measures shall be based on the
best scientific information available.”
Right now, the best scientific information available with
respect to Atlantic menhaden is the 2025 stock assessment update, which found
that the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.
And if the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing
overfishing, it’s hard to argue that any emergency management measures are
needed.
The petitioners try to get around that simple truth by
making statements such as
“The most recent stock assessment science concluded Atlantic
menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet that to rebuild striped bass
populations [which are currently overfished], significant reductions in the
catch of menhaden are required so more are left in the water as food for
striped bass growth, survival, and reproduction,”
citing the 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark
Assessment and Peer Review Report as support for that statement, or claiming
that
“NOAA and ASMFC ecosystem science concluded that more
menhaden must be left in the water as bait to help striped bass grow, survive,
and achieve healthy population levels,”
citing an ASMFC press release from about one year ago.
However, when one actually looks at the referenced
documents, one finds that the plain language of the documents doesn’t quite say
what the petitioners claim.
The
2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Assessment, for example, never states
that
“Atlantic menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet
that to rebuild striped bass populations, significant reductions in the catch
of menhaden are required.”
In reality, it states that
“When fished at their current [fishing mortality] rate, striped
bass do not reach their biomass target under any menhaden [fishing mortality]
scenarios,”
and that
“the ability of striped bass to reach their biomass target under
their [fishing mortality] target in the single-species stock assessment depends
on the recruitment regime assumed for future years; striped bass did not
reach their spawning stock biomass target under the current [fishing mortality
target] if recruitment remains at the very low levels observed since 2019”
even if menhaden are abundant.
While striped bass are the most sensitive species to
menhaden abundance included in the ecosystem model,
“striped bass biomass declined by 61% in the extreme [fishing
mortality] scenario where menhaden were effectively extirpated from the system,
and striped bass biomass increased by 6% if menhaden fishing ceased.”
If ending all fishing for menhaden, along the entire
coast, only caused striped bass biomass to increase by a mere 6%, it’s hard to
argue that just shutting down the reduction fishery in the New York Bight is
going to have a significant impact on the striped bass population, particularly
if squid, sand eels, or other forage species not included in the ecosystem
model used to assess Atlantic menhaden are present in large numbers.
Similarly, the October 31, 2025 ASMFC press release
referenced in the petition never comes close to saying that “NOAA and ASMFC
ecosystem science concluded that more menhaden must be left in the water as
bait to help striped bass grow, survive, and achieve healthy population levels,”
but merely notes that
“the goal of the [ecological reference points] is to maximize
Atlantic menhaden fishing mortality while also accounting for the
forage needs of Atlantic striped bass.
[emphasis added]”
The fact that petitioners so badly distort the message of
the documents that they cite is convincing evidence that the petition is not
supported by the best scientific information available.
National Standard 8 states that
“Conservation and management measures shall, consistent with
the conservation provisions of this Act (including the prevention of overfishing
and rebuilding of overfished stocks), take into account the importance of
fishery resources to fishing communities by using economic and social data that
meet the requirements of [National Standard 2], in order to (A) provide for the
sustained participation of such communities, and (B) to the extent practicable,
minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.”
The petitioners
themselves admit that
“Omega Protein Corporation and its vessel operators, Ocean Harvesters,
are estimated to provide a total of about 500 part-time and full-time jobs as
part of its entire reduction fishery operation based in Reedville, Virginia…These
estimates also suggest the company accounts for as much as $29 million in
annual payroll and benefits.”
That would certainly seem to make Reedville one of the “fishing
communities” contemplated by National Standard 8, which would entitle it to “sustained
participation” in the menhaden fishery, and oblige regulators to “minimize
adverse economic impacts” of its management decisions.
The petitioners argue that
“this benefit comes at significant cost to the Bight Region,
Atlantic Coast, and national economies supported by the recreational fishing industry,”
but offer no data, much less data meeting the “best
scientific information available” standard of National Standard 2,
demonstrating that the reduction fishery is causing any significant harm to
fishing communities in the New York Bight.
Thus, far from supporting petitioners’ call for emergency
regulations prohibiting reduction fishing for menhaden in the New York Bight,
National Standard 8 provides reason to minimize adverse economic impacts on
Reedville, and to reject the petition’s request for such emergency regulations.
Finally, National Standard 9 reads,
“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent
practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be
avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”
While every fishery, including the recreational fishery, has
some level of bycatch and discard mortality, the petitioners have made no
effort to document or quantify bycatch in the reduction fishery, but rather
merely assume that such bycatch is significant enough to justify citing
National Standard 9 as support for their request for emergency regulations.
There
is no question that the reduction fishery generates some level of bycatch, but the
best evidence available to date suggests that such bycatch represents only a
small percentage of the overall catch, and that the level of bycatch has
remained consistent for over a century.
It is entirely possible, although very far from certain, that new studies
could find that the reduction fishery creates a more severe bycatch problem
than uncovered in past research, but until such studies emerge, the best scientific
information available indicates that nothing in National Standard 9 provides
any support for petitioners’ request.
Thus, once again, we see the menhaden debate muddied by
advocates making untenable claims, and seeking to shut down a fishery for no
better reason than they don’t like its ownership or the fact that it operates
on a larger scale than most fishing businesses.
The problems facing Atlantic menhaden are real, and need to
be addressed when the Management Board meets in November.
The last thing that the menhaden needs is to have those real
problems obscured, and the debate muddled, by trumped-up claims made by
advocates and advocacy groups more interested in knocking down a particular
industry than in building up menhaden abundance.
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