Fisheries management sometimes involves the best guess about immensely complicated ecosystems.
Scientists, for example, couldn't be absolutely sure that suspending winter crab dredging would help boost the crustacean's population in the Chesapeake Bay. But it seemed like an obvious response to a steady decline.
That ban on an old Virginia industry has worked so far. Crab populations are rebounding. But scientists would have been stuck with only a theory if regulators hadn't actually acted on it.
Another idea is about to be tested. The theory is that the industrial harvest of menhaden in and around the Chesapeake has materially harmed the health of sport fish species and water quality.
On Wednesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted a policy that will dramatically reduce the harvest of menhaden.
"Once implemented after another year of study and debate, the measures are expected to reduce harvests by up to 37 percent – cuts that Virginia officials say will be damaging to the menhaden industry centered in the Northern Neck town of Reedville and to watermen who catch and sell the oily fish as bait," reported The Pilot's Scott Harper.
Virginia voted in favor of a 23 percent cut, but that proposal was defeated.
Read the full editorial at the Virginian-Pilot.
Analysis: The editorial gets a number of facts wrong about the menhaden fishery. First, the menhaden fishery is not currently overfished. The 2010 stock assessment from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission states that the population is currently not overfished, and that overfishing had only occurred once in the last decade. Egg production in the fishery is also currently at its target level.
Secondly, menhaden's ecological role as filter feeders has likely been overstated. Several recent studies have come to the conclusion that menhaden contribute little to improving overall water quality.