AT LAST, SOME GOOD NEWS for Chesapeake Bay fish lovers. Three years after policymakers drastically restricted the blue crab catch, the number of our beloved blues reached 461 million, its second-highest level in more than a decade.
But with the good comes the bad. While blue crabs are thriving, menhaden, a little-known member of the herring family, is in very bad shape. Schools of menhaden, which help filter the polluted waters of the Bay and are a primary source of food for striped bass and bluefish, are being decimated. The stock is at its lowest level in 54 years.
The mixed news is one more example of how difficult it is to manage a complex eco-system like the Chesapeake Bay. It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole: Get rid of one problem and up pops another.
But it also proves that bold policies can have critical, even rapid, impact.
Environmentalists hope that like the blue crab, menhaden soon will earn new protections to help the species recover and improve the wider health of the Bay.
First, the good news: After years of decline, the blue crab population is booming. That abundance has brought many watermen back to their boats. In 2010, the harvest topped 89 million pounds, the largest catch in nearly 20 years. Recreational crabbing licenses also jumped 8 percent.
It’s a marked change from just four years ago when scientists worried that the blue crab population was close to collapse. The 2007 winter survey – a kind of annual “state of the crab,” showed a 70-percent plunge in the stock, from 852 million in 1993 to 249 million.
Those numbers, at last, prompted aggressive action. The governors of Maryland and Virginia approved deep cuts to the number of female crabs that could be caught and Virginia shut down its winter dredge fishery, which captures females that have burrowed into the mud to wait out the cold weather and would, when the water warms, swim into the bay to molt, breed and lay eggs. The watermen’s pain was eased with $15 million in federal disaster relief funds.
The result was an all-but instant rebound in the blue crab population. In 2008, there were 291 million. In 2009, 393 million. In 2010, a whopping 658 million. “The stock’s improved status from just a few short years ago is neither a random event nor a reflection of improved environmental conditions,” said Dr. Rom Lipcius, who directs the Virginia component of the winter dredge survey.
Lipcius attributes the 30 percent decline between 2010 and 2011 to low “recruitment” – that is, the number of larvae that make it to juvenile stage. Recruitment numbers can fluctuate as much as 80 percent a year. “We are not concerned with the drop, and view it as natural variation in recruitment,” he said.
Environmentalists say these steps were essential to protect this symbol of the Chesapeake Bay, which has suffered from degraded water quality, expanding dead zones and a growing population of crab predators such as striped bass, or rockfish, as it is locally known. What was especially impressive, noted the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates other local species, was that the controversial decisions came during the depths of a recession and amid strong criticism from lawmakers as well as angry fishermen, who worried that new regulations would squeeze them economically.
Whether menhaden have a similar recovery will, in many ways, depend on whether the ASMFC has the same courage as the state leaders it lauds. In November, the agency, made up of representatives from 15 states, will vote on whether to leave more fish in the water.
Read the full article at Flavor Magazine.
Analysis: The article is correct in noting that menhaden are currently not overfished. Overfishing has only occured once in the last ten years. The fishery is currently meeting its target fish fecundity rate, and in the last year that overfishing occured (2008) it was only slightly above its target mortality rate.
There is, however, debate as to the precise ecological role of menhaden. Contray to the article's claim, a recent study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science concluded that menhaden have a negligible impact on water quality. They're importance to the diet of species like striped bass also varies, with menhaden contributing as little as 9.6% of striped bass diet.