Saving Seafood

Opinion: Menhaden fishing is a lifeline for Virginia workers

July 7, 2022 — The following is an excerpt of an op-ed by Ken Pinkard, a 38-year, third-generation menhaden fisherman in Virginia’s Northern Neck region. It was published yesterday by the Daily Press and the Virginian-Pilot.

The Virginia Saltwater Sportfishing Association’s Mike Avery inaccurately claims that the Chesapeake Bay’s menhaden fishery is hurting striped bass (“Advocates call for limits of menhaden fishing in Virginia”). In reality, menhaden fishing is not only sustainable, it’s a critical economic engine for Virginia’s Northern Neck.

For decades, menhaden fishermen have worked in the Chesapeake Bay alongside crabbers, oystermen and other watermen. The menhaden fishery is currently the largest employer of minority and union workers in rural Northumberland County, and Virginia will not attract “good-paying” jobs by destroying it. The proposals Avery promotes would have a devastating impact on hardworking Virginians whose families rely on the fishery for their livelihoods.

The economy of the Northern Neck depends on Omega Protein and affiliated companies, just as Detroit depends on GM and Ford. Omega Protein and its fishing partners offer the highest blue-collar wages with the most generous benefits in the Northern Neck. These are union jobs. Every worker has a voice. Some 98% of our Reedville-based employees live in Virginia and 90% live in the Northern Neck.

Read the full op-ed with a subscription at the Daily Press

Menhaden battle once again pits Virginia against Northern states

September 25, 2017 — HEATHSVILLE, Va. — Five years ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission cut the menhaden harvest by 20 percent, forcing the largest employer in the rural tip of the Northern Neck, Omega Protein, to lay off workers and decommission a ship.

The tiny fish is sold by fishermen as bait to catch blue crabs and commercially rendered for its oil and byproducts at Omega’s Reedville plant. Environmentalists and anglers say it’s critical to the diet of other Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic species such as osprey, striped bass and dolphin. At the time, commissioners said menhaden was at the point of being depleted.

Since then, ASMFC, which manages fisheries from Maine to Florida, changed its method of assessment and says stocks are now healthy. It began easing catch limits to where the quota is now only about 6 percent short of the 212,000 metric tons it once was.

Omega, which catches a half-billion fish each year, replaced two of its seven ships this year with larger, more efficient ships and rehired some of its employees.

But the company sees a new problem.

Monty Deihl, vice president of Omega’s operations, calls it “a fish grab” by other ASMFC member states, specifically northern states where more menhaden have been showing up.

“The stock is very healthy, the quota could be raised, but no one wants to raise the quota because Virginia will get 85 percent of whatever is raised,” he told a crowd of mostly employees and their families at an ASMFC public hearing last week. “You should be offended at the way all the other stuff was done to try to get a piece of what you all put your time and careers in to build.”

Read the full story at the Free Lance-Star

Virginia trying to preserve its working waterfronts

December 12, 2016 — Working waterfronts in coastal Virginia are under increasing threats from sea-level rise, subsidence and loss of marine habitat. And the desire to live on the water sometimes clashes with the tradition of working the water.

Earlier this year, Virginia Beach oyster farmers made headlines when they were confronted by waterfront property owners over the number of cages they were putting down in waters used not only commercially but for recreation.

And it’s not an urban problem. Homeowners on the western branch of the Corrotoman River in rural Lancaster County are challenging aquaculture applications there and applying for riparian rights in an effort to block new farms.

“It’s the same as Virginia Beach on a much smaller scale,” said Ben Stagg, who manages shellfish leases for the state. “It’s the same argument: ‘We don’t want somebody right outside our door. We use this area, our kids swim out here, we don’t want a bunch of cages.’ This issue is percolating up statewide.”

Now, after four years of collaboration, working waterfront stakeholders from the Eastern Shore to the Northern Neck have come up with ways to alleviate conflict and to preserve Virginia’s nearly 600 working waterfronts and their commercial fishing heritage.

Of those, 123 are located in the four counties of the Northern Neck. That includes one of Virginia’s oldest and largest industry, Omega Protein Inc.’s menhaden fishing operation in Reedville, which contributes about $88 million to the state’s economy.

Read the full story at the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

Dolphins more common in Potomac than previously thought

July 19, 2016 — A waterfront house on Virginia’s Northern Neck promised to be a getaway for Janet Mann from three decades of studying dolphins, primarily in Australia’s Shark Bay.

But the day after Mann and her husband closed on the place in Ophelia, VA, four years ago, she spied an all-too-familiar sight from the shore where the Potomac River joins the Chesapeake Bay.

“I said, ‘Oh, look, dolphins!’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, no,’” Mann recalled. “I think we’ve given up on getting me away from my work.”

A professor of biology and psychology at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia, Mann has since embraced the Potomac as the next frontier for her research. In fact, she’s turned that riverfront retreat into a field station for observing a surprising number of bottlenose dolphins that venture up the Bay’s second largest tributary every summer.

Though dolphins have been spotted occasionally in the Potomac for at least the last six years, Mann said she hasn’t met anyone outside of those who live near her summer house who realize how many of the marine mammals are visiting on a regular basis. Last year, she and her research team of students and other Georgetown faculty tallied nearly 200 different animals in just a two-week span.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

VIRGINIA: Watermen’s monument dedication set Saturday at fishermen’s museum

May 26, 2016 — A monument honoring Northern Neck menhaden watermen, including spotter pilots, who died at sea will be unveiled and dedicated at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 28, at the Reedville Fishermen’s Museum, 504 Main Street, Reedville.

This project is a cooperative effort between the Reedville Fishermen’s Museum and the Kilmarnock Museum, said RFM director Shawn Hall.

More than 70 names of watermen who have perished while at sea are inscribed on the monument. Extensive research was conducted to establish the names. As new entries are identified, they will also be added to the memorial, said Hall.

The program will include a short talk on how the memorial came into being. Also, there will be a reading of the names inscribed with the traditional ringing of a ship’s bell, pealing once for each name, he said.

Read the full story at the Rapahannock Record