Growing up I hated bunker, a slang word for menhaden. I worked on the party boats and bunker were a job, something that had to be backed, chunked and ground into chum every morning and every evening before we went bluefishing.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission stated in their August 2011 Draft Addendum to the Fishery Management plan for Atlantic menhaden that the menhaden population has declined steadily and recruitment has been low since the last peak was observed in the early 1980s.
There are three types of fishermen making use of Atlantic menhaden. Recreational fishermen, commercial bait fishermen, and a single reduction fleet operated by Omega Protein, Inc.
Numbers on what recreational anglers take with cast and seine nets and snag hooks is based on MRFSS data and recognized by the ASMFC to be flawed. For example, in 2009 the recreational sector caught zero metric tons of bunker while averaging 126 metric tons a year since 1981 to the present. If that information is recognized to be flawed, how exact is the rest of the information?
“I think the response is very overblown. We have no problem with reasonable limits. We’re not opposed to a coast wide cap on bunker but how do you implement that? There are a lot of question marks here and we need better science from the ASMFC,” Jeff Kaelin from Lunds Fisheries in Cape May said.
Lunds operates commercial bait boats. On the entire Atlantic coast, the bait boats averaged catches of 36,000 metric tons of menhaden per year from 1985 to 2010. The commercial bait boats from New England have a substantial range, from Maine to New Jersey.
At their public hearings earlier in October, the ASMFC reported commercial bait boats accounted for 20 percent of the total menhaden harvest or 44,000 metric tons in 2010. The recreational sector accounted for less than a one percent. The rest of the harvest, 80 percent of it, came from Omega’s reduction fleet operating out of Reedville, Va.
Read the full article at MyCentralJersey.com
Analysis: When discussing the current health of the menhaden fishery, the article fails to mention that the most recent data collected indicates no pattern of overfishing. The most recent stock assessment concluded that menhaden were not overfished, and overfishing had only occurred once in the last ten years.