December 14, 2012 — The Providence Journal's "PolitiFact" unit investigated claims made by Pew Environment Group in advertisements they ran in several newspapers asking east coast governors to support their demand for a 50% cut in the menhaden harvest. Pew justified this demand saying "… in recent years, menhaden numbers along our coast have plummeted by 90 percent." The newspaper found the claim to be "Mostly False".
The paper found that the "estimated number of menhaden is clearly well below the estimated population for the late 1980s. But it's currently at levels seen in the 1960s. If you want to claim a 90-percent drop, you have to compare the 2008 population to a very specific — and very exceptional — year, 1982."
The following is an excerpt from the paper's analysis:
The estimates over the years show two peaks and two valleys. The population was high in the 1950s. It dropped precipitously and remained low in the 1960s. Then it started rising significantly, peaking from 1976 to 1989 before falling back to the 1960-ish range during the last two decades.
If you think of "recent" as the last 10 years, the drop from 1999 to 2008 has been 43 percent, far from 90 percent, according to the chart Pew referenced.
Over the last 20 years, it's been 76 percent.
To show a drop close to 90 percent, you have to start at 1982, when the estimated number of menhaden was 20.2 billion, the second-highest ever reported, and compare it with 2008, when the population was about 2.4 billion — a drop of 88 percent.
If you started with the first year of data — 8.3 billion fish in 1955 — and compared it with 2008, you’d have a decline of 71 percent.
We also consulted with Mark Gibson, deputy chief of the marine fisheries division of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
"There's no question there's been a decline downward," he said. "But when you have a fish stock that varies up and down across time, you can cherry-pick your window across time, say it declined and get a whole bunch of people alarmed."
Read the complete analysis in the Providence Journal
The newspaper listed its sources for this analysis:
Interviews and e-mails, Jeff Young, spokesman, Pew Environment Group, Dec. 12-13, 2012
ASMFC.org, "Stock Assessment Report No. 10-02 of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission," revised March 2011, and "Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission 2012 Atlantic Menhaden Stock Assessment Update," July 2012, both accessed Dec. 12, 2012
Interviews, Jud Crawford, science and policy manager, Northeast fisheries program, Pew Environment Group, Dec. 13, 2012
Interview, Mark Gibson, deputy chief, marine fisheries division, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Dec. 13, 2012
Roanoke.com, "Menhaden: Point/Counterpoint," The Roanoke Times, Nov. 25, 2012