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January jobs report: Unemployment rate falls to 4%, wages rise more than forecast; Trump signs order imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court over investigations of Israel; Ten Commandments in public schools debate reaches South Dakota; Virginia ranks among worst states for wage theft; Mexican long-nosed bat makes appearance in Arizona.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi strikes a Trump tone at the Justice Department, federal workers get more time to consider buyouts, and an unclassified email request from the White House worries CIA vets.

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During Black History Month, a new book shares how a unique partnership built 5,000 schools for Black students, anti-hunger advocates say ag communities would benefit from an expanded SNAP program, and Americans have $90 billion in unpaid medical bills.

Group addressing menhaden decline in the upper Chesapeake Bay

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024   

Forage fish, a critical food source for other species, are in decline up and down the Eastern Seaboard but menhaden decline in Maryland waters has advocates sounding the alarm.

Atlantic menhaden are not considered overfished along the entire coast but the sizable allocation given to harvesters in Virginia waters has affected the population in the upper Chesapeake Bay. Inadequate forage threatens species including ospreys and predatory fish, the decline of which in turn affects the sport fishing industry. Menhaden are also a critical bait fish for the Maryland blue crab fishery.

Jaclyn Higgins, forage fish program manager for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said when setting catch limits, regulators are starting to look at a bigger picture.

"Managing the amount of fish that are getting taken out of the water from an ecosystem perspective," Higgins explained. "This suite of predators is reliant on this particular forage species and we're gonna leave enough in the water to maintain that forage base for those predators, and then we're going to give an allocation to commercial harvesters."

Menhaden catch is regulated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which this year established a working group to consider seasonal and or geographic restrictions on menhaden fishing in the Bay.

The Commission regulates fisheries in coastal waters from Maine to Florida. State agencies can set their own regulations so long as they fall within the commission's guidelines. The menhaden commercial fishery includes a bait fishery and a reduction fishery processing catch into fish meal and fish oil. Catch limits are set by the commission and Virginia's reduction fishery has nearly 75% of the allocation for the eastern seaboard, with their Chesapeake Bay allocation measuring 51,000 metric tons.

The lone menhaden reduction processor is the Canadian-owned Omega Protein, which operates a plant in Reedville, Virginia. Higgins acknowledged it has been difficult to get conservation measures through Virginia regulators.

"Virginia fisheries are managed by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and we've had some struggles in the last couple years of getting menhaden conservation regulations in place in Virginia," Higgins pointed out. "There's a lot of commercial interests, obviously, on the Marine Fisheries Commission. "

The amount of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay is estimated to have fallen tenfold between 1977 and 2021. While there was an increased catch per haul in 2023, that still represented a fivefold decrease over the longer term. Reduction fishing is carried out at an industrial scale using purse seine nets that are capable of capturing hundreds of thousands of fish at once.

Dave Sikorski, executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association of Maryland, said at this point, the waters of the upper Chesapeake are seeing very few adult menhaden and he worries regulators are not acting quickly enough.

"We've watched the population densities change coast-wide, slide to the north, along with many other species that have done the same thing," observed. "Management needs to be more proactive to make sure we're assessing for what's in front of us and making decisions based on the realities of what's here today, not what historically's been here."

The Menhaden Chesapeake Bay Work Group will meet again next week and will present its findings at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's annual meeting in late October.

Disclosure: The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Endangered Species & Wildlife, Environment, and Public Lands/Wilderness. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.


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