Council Actions

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met in Annapolis on Tuesday to hear input concerning phase one of its possible implementation plan regarding menhaden, the most important fish in the sea.

What is a menhaden? Also known as bunker and alewives, the menhaden is a food fish that also serves as a filter feeder that helps clean the water it lives in. It is rich in oil and nutrients that keep predator fish healthy.
It is, in fact, the mainstay of rockfish, bluefish, sea trout and other species. Without this prey species, target fish lose their health, catch diseases such as pfisteria and micobacteriosis and remain skinny.
Once abundant, the menhaden now is at an all-time low of 8 percent of their capacity. Yet, the ASMFC maintains that the species is not overfished.
The reduction industry is the scourge of the fish. Located in Reedville, Va., Omega Protein is one of two places on the East Coast that kills the vast majority (80 percent) of fish.
Here is how they do it: A mother ship goes out to sea, keeping in touch with spotter planes equipped with heat sensors that detect large schools of menhaden. These planes relay the information back to the mother ship, which then sends out two smaller vessels deploying purse seines, effectively surrounding the entire school. The two vessels come together, joining back at the mother ship, where the fish are sucked into a huge vacuum onto the hold of the ship. The fish are then iced down and put into the hold until the ship docks.
Later, they are converted into cat food, dog food and Omega Protein capsules and sold in local drug stores.
The bottom line is that one industry is allowed to kill a valuable resource for monetary gain. Is it financially feasible for them to do this? Only because they are subsidized by NOAA, which has funded them for years. What is NOAA? It the federal group that is "the watchdog beyond the EEZ." Simply put, NOAA is a federal agency responsible for maintaining a safe balance of marine species beyond the three-mile zone near the coast.

Read the full article at the Cecil Whig.

Analysis: The article gets several facts wrong about the menhaden fishery and the ecological role of menhaden. While it is correct in noting that menhaden are not considered by the ASMFC to be overfished, it is misleading when it claims that menhaden are at 8 percent of their historical abundance. Currently, menhaden are fished to 8% of their Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP), which is not a historical number, but rather a population estimate of a theoretical unfished population. An 8% MSP is not a sign of an overfished population; menhaden have rarely exceeded 10% MSP in the past few decades, and the population hasin the past been able to rebuild itself at that level.

The article's claim that a low menhaden population is responsible for mycobacteriosis in sea bass is not unanimously supported. Sea bass diets are variable and depend on factors unrelated to the menhaden fishery, such as the availability of other prey species. A recent survey has found that menhaden can make up as little as 9.6% of sea bass diets.

Similarly, the cause of mycobacteriosis in bass is less likely due to diet and more likely due to environmental factors, such as the "thermal niche/oxygen squeeze" theory. Currently, large amounts of run-off in the Bay have created areas with low levels of oxygen, called hypoxia, in cold waters that bass traditionally inhabit. Because the waters that they are most suited to are uninhabitable, bass spend more time in warmer, shallower waters. The temperature of these waters are too high for the bass to feed properly, leading to a variety of health problems, including susceptibility to mycobacteriosis.

 

 

 

Equating the stocking of menhaden in Maryland's waters to a set of traffic lights, Mike Waine sees the current plight somewhere closer to red than green.

Waine, the fisheries management coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, said Tuesday's two-hour hearing in Annapolis helped gauge the public's view on the overfishing of menhaden — and the future management of the species.

Once considered a delicacy, menhaden are now more highly regarded as the main forager of unwanted algae as well as a source of food for the region's striped bass population.

According to Waine, the overfishing of menhaden this year for the first time in nine years prompted the ASMFC and other interested parties to draft an addendum to the current regulations regarding menhaden.

Waine said the goal is to reduce the fishing mortality rate of menhaden — those extracted from the waters by fishermen — and to spend the new few years studying other species of fish to see how they compare to menhaden when it comes to overfishing.

"In the stoplight analogy, the green light is fishing at the target rate and the red light is when we get to the threshhold — the level which we don't want to surpass" in terms of overfishing, Waine said. "Right now we're at a yellow light, but we don't want it to become red."

Among the suggestions made in the addendum is to leave 15 percent of the breeding stock in the water. As of now, that level is about 8 percent. Also proposed are targets between 20 and 40 percent to avoid overfishing.

Dave Smith, executive director of the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association, said "that 40 percent target will help reduce the harvest by about 45 percent" and will continue to feed striped bass.

"If that food source collapses for striped bass, it's just a domino effect," Smith said.

Read the full article at the Baltimore Sun.

Analysis: It is important to note, as the article does, that overfishing of the menhaden fishery has been limited to one year in the past ten, and despite this, the fishery is not currently judged to be overfished.

However, the article is more imprecise regarding menhaden's ecological role. For example, while the article refers to menhaden as "the main forager of unwanted algae," a recent study concluded that menhaden have little net impact on water quality. And while the article asserts that menhaden are an irreplaceable part of striped bass diet, the reality is more complicated; bass diet is based on several variables unrelated to the fishery, including the location and availability of other prey species. A recent ongoing survey found that menhaden can form as little as 9.6% of bass diets.

 

 

 

 

The Coastal Conservation Association/Virginia says that the current menhaden management system has allowed this critically important fish species to decline to the lowest abundance ever recorded.

Currently, overfishing of menhaden by the “reduction industry” (it includes Northern Neck commercial netters who sell the menhaden to plants that turn the little oily fish into various products) is occurring and has been for 32 of the last 54 years, says the CCA. In August the ASMFC approved Draft Addendum V to the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery Management Plan while proposing new rebuilding targets, all of which will increase menhaden abundance. A copy of Addendum V and the public hearing schedule for the Atlantic Coast can be found on the ASMFC website at http://www.asmfc.org/public

Read the full article at Gene Mueller's World of Fishing and Hunting.

Analysis: The article's claim that "overfishing of menhaden by the 'reduction industry'…is occuring" is misleading and does not accurately reflect the health of the fishery. While it is true that, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), overfishing did occur in 2008, it is the only time in the last ten years it has occured. The amount of overfishing was not enough to affect the long-term health of the fishery, however, as the ASMFC declared in the same stock assessment that menhaden were not overfished.

RYE — A total of 94 harbor seals have washed up along the New England coast from Maine to just north of Boston since Sept. 1, and officials have no idea why, according to a spokesperson from the New England Aquarium in Boston.

The unusual spectacle grabbed everyone's attention around Sept. 29, according to Tony Lacasse, spokesperson for the New England Aquarium, when surfers at Rye Beach noticed a group of deal harbor seals washed ashore.

"When we sent a veterinarian, they found six dead harbor seals," Lacasse said. "Some had been dead a couple weeks some had been dead a couple days."

That particular day was a lunar high tide, with big surf, according to Lacasse, who said that all the flotsam, a piece of pier, or a carcass would all come up at the same time.

Read the complete story from Foster's Daily Democrat.

 

 

 

 

 

BOSTON — The first calls came from surfers who were looking for early autumn waves off the New Hampshire coast and found dead harbor seals scattered in the surf and sand.

The report of about half a dozen dead carcasses at Jenness Beach in Rye wasn't unusual on its own for the late September, said Tony LaCasse of the New England Aquarium, which operates a marine animal rescue team.

But the reports kept coming.

Since early September, 94 dead seals have been discovered from Maine to northern Massachusetts. That's almost four times the 24 deaths in the same period last year, considered a typical year.

The seals are generally less than a year old and have a healthy appearance. Researchers have theories about what's causing the spike — perhaps a virus or disease — but they have no real answers, and are awaiting test results from tissue and organ samples.

Read the complete story by Jay Lindsay of The AP at The Republic.