February 13, 2019 — A threat to shut down Virginia’s menhaden fishery disappeared after an interstate commission decided it wouldn’t find the state out of a compliance with a new quota for the oily fish.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission cut the quota for menhaden caught in the Chesapeake Bay by purse-seine vessels by 42 percent back in 2017 — but the General Assembly balked this year and last at enacting that lower quota into state law.
This month, the commission indefinitely postponed taking any action to find Virginia out of compliance, a finding that could trigger a federal moratorium on the fishery.
Menhaden has made tiny Reedville the biggest U.S. fishing port, measured by pounds, outside Alaska. Reedville’s fleet of purse seine vessels — large former offshore oil service ships or former minesweepers — scoop up menhaden schools with giant nets, then deliver the fish to the Omega Proteins processing plant, where they’re turned into fish oil and animal feed.
The commission said that if the Reedville fleet catches more than 51,000 metric tons in the Bay — its current quota — it could still decide Virginia is out of compliance. But it noted that the Bay catch since 2012 has been below that level — Virginia’s noncompliance is strictly that it hasn’t enacted the commission’s cap into state law.
Read the full story at the Daily Press