Chesapeake Bay Archives - Saving Seafood

States Schedule Public Hearings on Atlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II

September 2, 2026 — The following was released by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic coastal states of Maine through Virginia have scheduled hearings to gather public input on Draft Addendum II to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden. The Draft Addendum considers options to reduce the Chesapeake Bay Reduction Fishery Cap (Bay Cap) by up to 50% and distribute the cap more evenly throughout the fishing season. The options aim to alleviate a concentration of effort that may be affecting other fisheries within the Bay and other potential ecological impacts.

The Board initiated the Draft Addendum in response to concerns regarding declining pound net harvest and catch per unit effort in the Bay in recent years, coinciding with an increase in the concentration of reduction harvest in the summer months, and the possible downstream effects on menhaden predators.

The Draft Addendum also includes options that link the Bay Cap to the coastwide total allowable catch to maintain a more fixed proportion between the two, as well as options to distribute the Bay Cap into three quota periods to prevent a concentration of reduction harvest in the spring and summer of the fishing season.

Some hearings will be conducted in-person, some will be hybrid, and others will be conducted via webinar. If you are unable to participate in your state’s scheduled hearing, you are welcome to participate in any of the virtual hearings. The public hearing details follow.

Webinar Instructions

For all virtual and hybrid hearings, please click HERE and select the hearing(s) you plan to attend from the dropdown menu to register for a public hearing webinar. Hearings will be held via GoToWebinar, and you can join the webinar from your computer, tablet or smartphone. Please note that in order to comment during virtual webinar hearings you will need to use your computer or download the GoToWebinar app for your phone. If you are new to GoToWebinar, you can download the software by (clicking here) or via the App store under GoToWebinar. We recommend you register for the hearing well in advance of the hearing since GoToWebinar will provide you with a link to test your device’s compatibility with the webinar. If you find your device is not compatible, please contact the Commission at info@asmfc.org (subject line: GoToWebinar help) and we will try to get you connected. We also strongly encourage participants to use the computer voice over internet protocol (VoIP) so you can ask questions and provide input at the hearing. If you are unable to participate in your state’s scheduled hearing, you are welcome to participate in any of the virtual or hybrid hearings.

Hearing Presentation Recording

For those who cannot attend any in-person or virtual hearings, the Commission will also post a recording of the hearing presentation on the Commission’s YouTube page so that stakeholders may watch the presentation and submit comment at any time during the comment process. This recording will be available in early September.

Submitting Comments

The public is encouraged to submit comments at any time during the public comment period but no later than 11:59 PM (EST) on October 9, 2026. You can access the Draft Addendum, public hearing schedule, and ways to comment on theAtlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II Action Tracker webpage.

We accept public comment in several forms (at public hearings, an online public comment form, an online public comment survey, and via mail or email) and all forms are equally valued. However, we strongly encourage the use of the public comment survey as it allows users to select specific preferred options in the Draft Addendum and provides space for open-ended comments at the end. Options for submitting comments follow:

Online via the public comment survey
Online via comment box
Email: comments@asmfc.org (subject line: Atlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II)
Mail: James Boyle, ASMFC, 1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200-N, Arlington, VA 22201
Verbal comments provided at any of the scheduled public hearings

If your organization is planning to release an action alert in response to the Draft Addendum, please contact James Boyle at jboyle@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740, so he can work with you to develop a unique subject line to enable us to better organize and summarize incoming comments for Board review. For more information, please contact James Boyle, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at jboyle@asmfc.org.

The revised press release can be found at https://asmfc.org/news/press-releases/states-schedule-public-hearings-on-atlantic-menhaden-draft-addendum-ii/

Dams give way to better habitat in Chesapeake Bay region

September 1, 2026 — A few years ago, biologist Brian Watson was looking for endangered mussels in Virginia’s Rock Island Creek when his assistant went around a bend and made a startling discovery. It wasn’t a rare mussel.

“There’s, like … a stone wall,” she shouted back to Watson. Then added, “That’s a dam.”

Standing 6 feet tall and stretching 55 feet across the creek, the dam was entirely unknown to them — appearing nowhere on maps or dam inventories.

But the dam wasn’t irrelevant to their project: It was taking a toll on mussels, as so many dams do. The biologists found shells of dead James River spinymussels, an endangered species, behind the structure.

“We assumed the mussels probably got washed down to the dam and then died as they got trapped,” said Watson, a mussel specialist for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, noting that the sandy substrate and water depth behind the structure was unsuitable habitat.

It was one of more than 6,500 dams that dot more than 200,000 miles of waterways draining the Chesapeake Bay watershed. That’s an undercount. Many of them don’t appear on dam inventories. Research was required to learn that the one on Rock Island Creek was called the Baber’s Mill Dam, built in the early 1800s.

Large or small, dams create a host of problems. They alter habitat, block fish movement, change water temperatures, promote algal blooms and contribute to the decline of native species. Some are safety threats to people.

But the Baber’s Mill Dam no longer causes such problems.

By chance, an aquatic ecologist from the timber company Weyerhaeuser, which owned the property, contacted Watson about the dam a few months later. The state and company teamed up to remove the structure in April 2024.

Read the full article at Bay Journal

VIRGINIA: Protesters harass menhaden fishermen

September 1, 2026 — Chesapeake Bay menhaden fishing protesters in small craft continue to harass Ocean Harvesters’ boats and fishermen by circling in front of the firms’ steamers attempting to keep boats from making sets.

Ocean Harvesters of Reedville, Va., harvests menhaden and sells it to Omega Protein, also located in Reedville. Omega Protein buys the fish from Ocean Harvesters and processes them into fish meal, fish oil, and other products.

Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein are part of the only large menhaden reduction fishery in operation on the East Coast of the United States and have drawn protests from environmental groups throughout the mid-Atlantic who want to prevent menhaden reduction fishing on Chesapeake Bay.

“Over the past three years we have seen a few dozen of these recreational fishing boats racing to get in front of us and just circling so we either can’t get to where we want to go, or to try and block us from setting out nets,” says Monty Deihl chief executive officer of Ocean Harvesters. “These go hand-in-hand with the threats we get on social media and the coordinated effort to disrupt our operations.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Record Cobia Tournament Shows a Chesapeake Predator Thriving Alongside Menhaden

August 31, 2026 — Congratulations are in order for the winners and participants in the 2026 Big Man’s Cobia Bonanza.

The ninth annual tournament was held August 14–15 in the Chesapeake Bay, with events based in Norfolk and weigh-ins at Little Creek. By the organizers’ account, it was a record year, with more than 100 boats participating and a top prize of over $38,000, and two runner-up $12,000 prizes. The organizers summed up the weekend with the declaration: “We put Virginia Cobia fishing in the Chesapeake Bay back on top!”

That is worth celebrating. It is also worth considering in the continuing debate over whether the Chesapeake Bay has enough menhaden to support its predators.

Cobia are large predators that spend the summer feeding in Chesapeake waters. Menhaden are part of their prey base and an important forage fish in the same waters where cobia thrive. Scientists and Bay fishing organizations alike have identified menhaden as an important prey species for cobia, and menhaden have traditionally been a preferred cobia bait.

That makes this year’s tournament particularly interesting; the success of a major Chesapeake predator that consumes menhaden is difficult to reconcile with sweeping claims that the Bay lacks sufficient forage for its predators.

The contrast with striped bass is instructive.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission currently classifies Atlantic cobia as not overfished, with overfishing not occurring. Striped bass are also important predators of menhaden, but their stock has followed a different path. In 2024, the peer-reviewed striped bass stock assessment found the stock was overfished. The stock is currently managed with restrictions designed to reduce fishing mortality and rebuild the population.

That history does not mean forage is irrelevant to striped bass, but it does mean discussions about their condition should acknowledge a well-established factor: fishing mortality on striped bass themselves was too high for years.

Menhaden, meanwhile, are already managed with their ecological role in mind. The ASMFC uses ecological reference points specifically designed to account for menhaden as forage and the needs of predators. The Atlantic menhaden stock itself is classified as not overfished, with overfishing not occurring.

Taken together, these facts suggest Chesapeake predator dynamics are more complicated than simply claiming there are not enough menhaden. Cobia and striped bass share the same broader ecosystem and both consume menhaden, yet their stock conditions are very different.

That comparison does not mean menhaden are evenly distributed throughout the Chesapeake Bay or that every predator has equal access to forage at all times. Menhaden are highly migratory schooling fish whose presence in any particular place changes with season, movement and environmental conditions.

Questions about local menhaden movement, seasonal abundance and predator access deserve continued study. And that work is happening.

The federal government, Virginia, and the menhaden industry are all supporting research to better understand menhaden movement, seasonal abundance, predator consumption and fishery interactions in the Chesapeake Bay. Congress has funded Bay-specific research, Virginia has committed funding for work led by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and the industry is supporting collaborative research involving VIMS, the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and NOAA.

That is how unresolved questions should be addressed: through cooperative science, not through simple assumptions.

In the meantime, what happened at this year’s Cobia Bonanza deserves attention.

Congratulations to the winners. Their success is a reminder that the Chesapeake Bay forage story may be considerably healthier than some of the rhetoric surrounding menhaden would have us believe.

Debate over menhaden fishery continues as it gains national media attention

August 20, 2026 — An ongoing debate over the future of the U.S. Atlantic menhaden fishery has gained national media attention, with the industry pushing back against NGOs and activists.

The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece by Mark Robichaux – a former Wall Street Journal reporter – that reviewed recent back-and-forth over the nation’s menhaden fishery and its claimed impacts on the wider environment, which includes accusations it is responsible for a decline in osprey populations and that it is diminishing an important forage species, resulting in declines in predators like striped bass.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MARYLAND: Governor Wes Moore announces state surpassed pollution reduction goals under Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement

August 13, 2026. — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced the state has successfully met or surpassed nearly all of its pollution reduction targets set under the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

Based on the most recent information from the Chesapeake Bay Program’s pollution model, Maryland achieved 100 percent of its sediment reduction goal. Additionally, the model said the state completed its phosphorus reduction goal and 99 percent of the nitrogen reduction goal from 2009 to 2025. Moore said the model was updated this year based on data from 2025.

Read the full article at CoastTV

ASMFC petitioned to consider menhaden reallocation, will make decision on fishery cap in Chesapeake

August 13, 2026 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is being petitioned to initiate a reallocation process for the menhaden fishery as it also considers its options to reduce the Chesapeake Bay Reduction Fishery Cap by up to 50 percent.

The menhaden fishery is spread across the U.S. east coast, and allocated across several U.S. states, with each state getting a different share of the fishery. Historically the U.S. state of Virginia has received the largest portion of the quota, and has also been the largest fisher of the species, with companies like Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters processing and harvesting most of the catch, respectively.

Now, conservation groups are petitioning the ASMFC to reallocate the quota of the fishery, claiming the shifting patterns of the species mean the quotas should shift too.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Public will get to weigh in on proposed changes to Chesapeake Bay menhaden harvest

August 7, 2026 — Officials who regulate the Atlantic menhaden industry have debated in recent years how to balance the historic fishery in the Chesapeake Bay with growing concerns about the ecosystem.

On Wednesday, they took their latest step. The Menhaden Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission advanced a document for public comment with potential changes to harvesting menhaden in the bay.

The commission helps manage fisheries along the East Coast, including 15 states from Florida to Maine.

The proposal outlines options for cutting the amount of menhaden the industry can catch by up to 50% and spreading the harvest more evenly throughout the season.

Ocean Harvesters, the company that harvests menhaden in the bay, said in a statement that the proposal is “a solution in search of a problem.”

“The addendum assembles observations, uncertainties and hypotheticals but never demonstrates that Chesapeake Bay menhaden availability has declined because of the reduction fishery or that the proposed measures would produce any biological benefit,” the company stated.

Ocean Harvesters, which operates a fishing fleet to supply Omega Protein, harvests up to 51,000 metric tons of menhaden in the bay each year using large walls of netting called purse seines. Omega processes, or “reduces,” them into fishmeal and fish oil at a plant in Reedville.

Environmentalists and sportfishers believe purse seines are removing too many menhaden, affecting species that rely on them, such as striped bass and osprey. They want the reduction industry to be banned from the bay or more heavily restricted.

The public comment period will run through September and October, with the board meeting again in November to consider final approval, according to the commission’s website.

Read the full article at WHRO

ASMFC advances Atlantic menhaden proposal

August 6, 2026 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has voted to advance Draft Addendum II to Amendment 3 of the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery Management Plan for public comment, reviving a proposal that had been delayed earlier this year as commissioners sought additional work on the document.

The Aug. 5 vote by the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board marks the next step in a management debate that has divided industry representatives, conservation organizations and fisheries managers over whether additional restrictions are needed in the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery.

The company cited comments made during the meeting by Virginia ASMFC Commissioner Adele McClure, who questioned whether the public comment process should move forward before additional research is completed.

“Without that complete picture, without the proper Bay-specific data, I feel like we are putting the cart before the horse instead of availing ourselves to the upcoming studies and data that could finally guide us,” McClure said during the meeting, according to Ocean Harvesters’ summary of the discussion.

McClure also pointed to ongoing research efforts that she said could provide managers with more complete scientific information before making future management decisions.

“We finally got that funded in Virginia at $4.5 million. We have three studies, and this could guide us in the context of good science, which is good for both the public, for union workers, and the fisheries,” she said

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Approves Draft Addendum II for Public Comment Draft Addendum Considers Changes to Chesapeake Bay Reduction Fishery Cap

August 6, 2026 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved Draft Addendum II to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for public comment. The Draft Addendum considers options to reduce the Chesapeake Bay Reduction Fishery Cap (Bay Cap) by up to 50% and distribute the cap more evenly throughout the fishing season. The options aim to alleviate a concentration of effort that may be affecting other fisheries within the Bay and other potential ecological impacts.

The Draft Addendum was initiated in response to concerns regarding declining pound net harvest and catch per unit effort in the Bay in recent years, coinciding with an increase in the concentration of reduction harvest in the summer months, and the possible downstream effects on menhaden predators.

A press release will follow with details on the availability of the document for public comment, the public hearing schedule, and how to submit written comments. This information will also be available on the Atlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II Action Tracker webpage. A public comment form will also be available as another option to submit input on the Draft Addendum’s specific options.

The Board will meet to review submitted comments and consider final action on the addendum in November 2026 at the Commission’s Annual Meeting in Newport, Rhode Island. For more information, please contact James Boyle, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at jboyle@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.