August 11, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The audio files from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2020 Summer Meeting Webinar are now available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/
ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Adopts Ecological Reference Points
August 6, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved the use of ecological reference points (ERPs) in the management of Atlantic menhaden. By adopting ERPs, the Board will be accounting for the species’ role as an important forage fish. The 2020 Atlantic menhaden benchmark assessments, which were endorsed by an independent panel of fisheries scientists, used the Northwest Atlantic Coastal Shelf Model of Intermediate Complexity for Ecosystems (NWACS-MICE) in combination with the single-species model (Beaufort Assessment Model or BAM) to develop Atlantic menhaden ERPs by evaluating trade-offs between menhaden harvest and predator biomass.
“The Board took another important step in managing Atlantic menhaden in a broader ecosystem context,” stated Board Chair Spud Woodward of Georgia. “It’s the culmination of more than a decade of effort by state, federal, and academic scientists to develop ERPs that reflect menhaden’s role as a key food source for several fish species. These ERPs are not a silver bullet to resolve all our fisheries management issues, and the models on which they are based will continue to evolve. However, the use of ERPs for menhaden management will enhance the success of predator management by providing a more abundant forage base for rebuilding predator fish populations. It is important for us to keep those rebuilding efforts on track through the use of proven management tools such as controls on fishing mortality.”
New Analysis Shows Minuscule Impact of Fishing on Atlantic Menhaden
August 3, 2020 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:
As the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) considers whether to adopt Ecological Reference Points for Atlantic menhaden at its Summer Meeting this week, a new scientific analysis confirms that current management is working, and that the fishery has a minuscule impact on the overall menhaden population.
The review, conducted by prominent fisheries scientist Dr. Steve Cadrin of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth at the request of the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), found that 99.5 percent of menhaden born each year are left in the water, where they serve as forage for other species and fulfill other ecological roles. Just 0.5 percent of menhaden are harvested by either the reduction or bait fishery.
Especially notable in the review’s findings was the fact that the menhaden fishery harvests very few menhaden under the age of 2, which are the ages at which menhaden are most likely to be consumed by predators. The fishery also rarely harvests older fish that are important for menhaden spawning.
Analyzing a decade’s worth of the most recent data, from 2008-2017, the review indicated that current menhaden harvest levels are extremely precautionary, and that current management is already doing a good job of protecting the ecosystem.
“This review confirms that menhaden management is working for the fishery, the resource, and the environment,” said Wayne Reichle, President of Lund’s Fisheries, a Menhaden Fisheries Coalition member based in Cape May, New Jersey. “The Commission should consider these results while they debate Ecological Reference Points, and before they consider any adjustments to the current menhaden harvest levels.”
In addition to demonstrating the minimal impact of the fishery on the larger menhaden population, the report also noted that the overall biomass for menhaden is “almost the highest on record,” while similarly noting that fishing mortality is “much less than historical levels, much less than the management reference points, and much less than the rate of natural mortality,” part of a trend towards lower mortality and higher biomass that began in the 1990s.
The healthy indicators for the menhaden fishery are in stark contrast to other species, specifically striped bass, which are considered to be overfished. Based on the available evidence from the most recent menhaden assessment, it is unlikely that current issues facing striped bass are a result of insufficient menhaden, given the near-historically high levels of menhaden abundance and low levels of fishing mortality.
The menhaden fishery is also certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, the preeminent fisheries sustainability certification body.
Dr. Cadrin’s review is part of an overwhelming body of evidence that the menhaden fishery is sustainable and current menhaden management is successful. The Commission should not forget this success as it considers the fishery’s future.
99.5 Percent of an Atlantic Menhaden Year Class is Left in the Water to Serve Its Ecological Role, New SCEMFIS Report Finds
July 29, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:
The Atlantic menhaden fishery leaves 99.5 percent of a menhaden year class in the water to serve its ecological role as forage, according to a new review from Dr. Steve Cadrin of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. This finding is one of many indicators that menhaden is a healthy and sustainable resource, according to the review.
“Determining whether or not menhaden is fulfilling its role in the ecosystem has been at the heart of recent debates around menhaden management,” said Dr. Cadrin. “A review of all the available data from the most recent peer-reviewed stock assessment clearly shows that menhaden are conservatively managed and already successful in meeting ecosystem needs.”
The review comes at the request of the National Science Foundation’s Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS). Dr. Cadrin, a professor of fisheries oceanography and former president of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists, previously conducted a review of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) most recent menhaden stock assessment in February.
ASMFC Withdraws the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Atlantic Menhaden Noncompliance Finding
May 14, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
Today, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission notified the Secretary of Commerce that the Commonwealth of Virginia is in compliance with Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden. Specifically, the Commonwealth has promulgated regulations to implement the 51,000 metric ton (mt) Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap (cap). For the 2020 fishing season, the Commonwealth set the cap at approximately 36,000 mt, nearly 15,000 mt below Amendment 3’s cap to reflect overages that occurred in 2019. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which now has regulatory authority for menhaden management in state waters, will set the cap at 51,000 mt in 2021 as long as catch is below the cap set in 2020.
“I would like to thank my fellow Virginia Commissioners, Governor Northam, Secretary Strickler, the Virginia General Assembly, and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission for their attention to this issue,” stated Patrick Keliher, ASMFC Chair and Commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “We are appreciative of their hard work to bring the Commonwealth back into compliance prior to the effective date of the moratorium.”
Under the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, upon receiving notification that a state has come back into compliance with a mandatory management measure, the Secretary of Commerce determines whether the state is in compliance. If he concurs with the Commission’s compliance finding, the moratorium is terminated immediately.
MAINE: State reverses course, leaves menhaden fishery open
February 21, 2020 — Keenly aware of a looming bait shortage, Friendship lobsterman Chad Benner decided last fall to invest $15,000 to buy the custom-made net needed to join Maine’s growing menhaden fishery in 2020.
He planned to use some of the menhaden, also called pogy, to bait his lobster traps and sell the remainder to lobster fishermen on the hunt for an affordable alternative to Atlantic herring, which is hard to come by since its depleted numbers triggered steep cuts in how much herring can be caught.
But Benner’s plan was put in jeopardy last month when Maine announced that it wanted to place a two-year freeze on the menhaden fishery, closing it to newcomers while the state enacted a licensing system and made a pitch for a bigger share of the East Coast menhaden quota.
“I put my money down back in November, and now they are saying I can’t go fishing?” Benner said on Tuesday to state lawmakers who oversee the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “I’ve got a kid to support, and a family. I won’t even be able to sell (the net) because nobody could get a license.”
Stories of those who had hoped to jump into menhaden fishing, and pleas from lobstermen in search of affordable bait, persuaded state lawmakers to keep the menhaden fishery open while the state works out details of its proposed licensing system.
VIRGINIA: Last of Its Kind, Fishery Faces Reckoning in Chesapeake Bay
February 11, 2020 — For a guy who left school after 11th grade, George Ball figures he has the best-paying job available on this rural stretch of Chesapeake Bay shoreline.
He catches a fish called Atlantic menhaden, used to make fish oil pills and farm-raised salmon feed, and earns about $50,000 a season, as much money as some college graduates.
“There ain’t a whole lot of jobs around here for a person like myself, except for landscaping or something like that,” said Ball, who comes from a long line of black fishermen. “Starting over would be treacherous.”
He may have to, though.
Ball works for Omega Protein, a company facing increasing government restrictions amid criticism that it could be disrupting the Chesapeake Bay’s food chain. Last year, Omega Protein exceeded catch limits in the Chesapeake by more than 30%, prompting the Trump Administration to threaten a moratorium in Virginia waters.
The firm’s sustainability certification from the influential Marine Stewardship Council is now under review. And environmental groups, sport fishermen and some state lawmakers have grown louder in their calls to further restrict — if not shutter — the firm’s operations in the bay.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times
ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Prepares to Move Forward with Menhaden Ecological Reference Points
February 7, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board accepted the results of the SingleSpecies and Ecological Reference Points (ERPs) Assessments and Peer Review Reports for management use. The single-species assessment indicates the stock is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing relative to the single-species reference points established in Amendment 3. However, the ERP assessment indicates that the fishing mortality reference points for menhaden should be lower to account for menhaden’s role as a forage fish. In order to consider moving forward with the use of ERPs for management, the Board tasked the ERP Workgroup with producing several scenarios to explore how different fishing mortality assumptions for the other predator and prey species in the ERP model (i.e., bluefish, weakfish, spiny dogfish, and Atlantic herring) might affect the menhaden ERP fishing mortality target and threshold. The Board will review these analyses and take up the issue of formally adopting ERPs in May at the Commission’s Spring Meeting.
“On behalf of the Menhaden Board, I commend the ERP Workgroup and the dozens of state, federal, academic, and ASMFC scientists for their countless hours of dedication to this formidable task,” stated Board Chair Nichola Meserve. “The Board has long recognized the importance of Atlantic menhaden as a forage fish for a variety of predators as reflected in its setting of conservative harvest limits for menhaden and its emphasis on the development of ERPs as one of its highest priorities for managing the species. The ERP assessment is an impressive body of work and a huge step towards fully realized ecosystem-based fishery management. Although there is still much more work to be done, the ERP assessment provides managers with a critical tool in setting harvest targets for menhaden in an ecosystem-context.”
Under the traditional single-species reference points, Atlantic menhaden are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing. Population fecundity, a measure of reproductive capacity (i.e., number of mature eggs in the population), has been above the single-species threshold since 1991 and above the single-species target in 20 of the 27 years since then, including 2017. Fishing mortality (F) has remained below the single-species overfishing threshold (0.6) since the mid-1970s, and below the single-species overfishing target (0.22) since the mid-1990s. Fishing mortality was estimated to be 0.11 in 2017. Although the ERP assessment indicates that the F reference points should be lower than the single-species reference points, it also showed that the conservative total allowable catch set for the 2018 to 2020 fishing seasons is consistent with the ERP F target in the example management scenario presented to the Board.
Science Center for Marine Fisheries Releases Evaluation and Summary of Latest Atlantic Menhaden Assessments
February 4, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:
Dr. Steve Cadrin, Professor at the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and past President of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists, has completed an evaluation and summary of the latest Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review (SEDAR) Atlantic menhaden stock assessments. Dr. Cadrin’s evaluation and summary was commissioned by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS). SEDAR completed two assessments in January, a traditional single-species benchmark assessment, and a first-of-its-kind ecological reference point assessment.
Read Dr. Cadrin’s evaluation here
Among other conclusions, Dr. Cadrin’s evaluation and summary finds that, according to the peer-reviewed assessments, the menhaden population is healthy, with menhaden fishing mortality remaining low. Atlantic menhaden was certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council in 2019. When comparing the two assessments, Dr. Cadrin notes that the single-species assessment “is the best scientific information available for fishery management.”
The evaluation and summary of the Atlantic menhaden assessments was one of the 2020 projects recently approved by SCeMFiS, which is part of the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program. The review was commissioned to provide a non-technical summary of the two 400+ page Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) menhaden assessments, so that menhaden fishery stakeholders would have, in an easily-comprehensible format, the information needed to support the best path to science-based management of the fishery.
Single-Species Assessment Remains Best, Most Reliable Information Available
Dr. Cadrin evaluated and summarized both the traditional, single-species menhaden stock assessment, as well as the new assessment that includes a multispecies focused analysis of menhaden and species which prey upon menhaden as part of their diet. This effort is a key part of the ASMFC’s efforts to transition to ecosystem-based fisheries management.
“The single-species assessment includes much more information on size and age composition, fishery selectivity, and recruitment variability than the multi-species models that were developed, but all models provide similar perceptions of menhaden stock trends since the 1990s,” writes Dr. Cadrin.
Other notable points by Dr. Cadrin include the improvements that the single-species assessment made in getting more accurate measurements of menhaden natural mortality, and the assessment’s conclusion that menhaden fishing mortality remains low, while the estimate of the current stock size is high.
Lower Menhaden Fishing Would Not Help Overfished Striped Bass
Dr. Cadrin’s evaluation and summary of the ecosystem-based assessment focuses in part on how it modeled the relationship between menhaden and striped bass. Most notably, he observes the assessment finds that, due to current overfishing and the overfished status of striped bass, decreasing the menhaden harvest would have little impact on striped bass stocks.
“At the current rate of fishing mortality on striped bass, there is little change in the long-term expectation for the striped bass stock from fishing menhaden at a lower rate than the single species target. Therefore, there appears to be negligible benefit to bass from fishing menhaden lower than the single species target,” Dr. Cadrin writes.
The assessments are the culmination of a two-year effort to gather and analyze available data for Atlantic menhaden from the fishery-independent sampling programs of the Atlantic states, commercial purse-seine reduction fishery, and commercial bait fishery. All those who worked on the single-species assessment and the ground-breaking ecosystem assessment – the SEDAR 69 Panel, the Atlantic Menhaden Technical Committee (TC), the Stock Assessment Subcommittee (SAS), the ASMFC Ecosystem Reference Points Work Group, the Center for Independent Experts (CIE), the technical reviewer and the review panel chair — deserve credit for the completion of this task.
Both assessments will be discussed at this week’s ASMFC meeting.
About SCeMFiS:
SCeMFiS utilizes academic and fisheries resources to address urgent scientific problems limiting sustainable fisheries. SCeMFiS develops methods, analytical and survey tools, datasets, and analytical approaches to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates. SCeMFiS university partners, University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, are the academic sites. Collaborating scientists who provide specific expertise in finfish, shellfish, and marine mammal research, come from a wide range of academic institutions including Old Dominion University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, University of Maryland, and University of Rhode Island.
The need for the diverse services that SCeMFiS can provide to industry continues to grow, which has prompted a steady increase in the number of fishing industry partners. These services include immediate access to science expertise for stock assessment issues, rapid response to research priorities, and representation on stock assessment working groups. Targeted research leads to improvements in data collection, survey design, analytical tools, assessment models, and other needs to reduce uncertainty in stock status and improve reference point goals.
Members of SCeMFiS include:
- Atlantic Capes Fisheries………………………………. Massachusetts, New Jersey
- Bumble Bee Seafoods…………………………………… New Jersey
- Garden State Seafood Assn……………………….. New Jersey
- LaMonica Fine Foods…………………………………….. New Jersey
- Lund’s Fisheries……………………………………………….. Massachusetts, New Jersey
- NFI Clam Committee
- NFI Scientific Monitoring
- Northeast Fisheries Science Center
- Omega Protein………………………………………………….. Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia
- Sea Watch International…………………………….. Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey
- Surfside Seafood Products………………………… New Jersey
ASMFC 2020 Winter Meeting Final Agenda & Meeting Materials
January 22, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The final agenda and meeting materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2020 Winter Meeting are now available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/
Board meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, February 4thand continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 12:30 p.m.) on Thursday, February 6th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible. To register, please go to https://attendee.
As a reminder, the guidelines for submission of written comment for issues for which the Commission hasNOT established a specific public comment period (i.e., in response to proposed management action) are as follows:
1. Comments received 3 weeks prior to the start of a meeting week will be included with the main meeting materials.
2. Comments received by 5:00 PM on the Tuesday immediately preceding the scheduled ASMFC Meeting (in this case, the Tuesday deadline will be January 28, 2020) will be distributed electronically to Commissioners/Board members prior to the meeting and a limited number of copies will be provided at the meeting.
3. Following the Tuesday, January 28, 2020 5:00 PM deadline, the commenter will be responsible for distributing the information to the management board prior to the board meeting or providing enough copies for the management board consideration at the meeting (a minimum of 50 copies).
The submitted comments must clearly indicate the commenter’s expectation from the ASMFC staff regarding distribution. As with other public comment, it will be accepted via mail, fax, and email.
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