SAVE THE STRIPERS

MENHADEN UPDATE

Research is Slow, Bay Catch Is Low

10/24/07  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Menhaden Technical Committee met September 21st in Raleigh, NC to evaluate progress on research into the status of the Chesapeake Bay population of menhaden as prey for striped bass and other key predators. NCMC’s Ken Hinman, a member of the ASMFC’s Menhaden Advisory Panel, participated in the session.

Fishing for menhaden in the Bay is kept in check by a 5-year cap put in place in 2006. At the same time, the Commission laid out a scientific research agenda to determine whether the number of menhaden in the Chesapeake is enough to sustain healthy stocks of striped bass, bluefish and weakfish (among others) and what new measures, if any, should be put in place when the cap is lifted in 2010.

In a review of the 2007 fishery, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reported that the Chesapeake Bay take will be under the cap for the second straight year. After many years of concentrating harvest within the Bay, beginning in the early 1990s, the reduction fishery has now shifted offshore. As one committee member noted, such a shift would indicate changes in biology, ecology or economics. But economics would not appear to be the reason for the shift, since the industry’s lone plant is based deep inside the Bay, in Reedville, Virginia, and Omega Protein’s spotter planes, which search out schools for the fleet of ten net-boats, try to find concentrations close to home. Indeed, NMFS data do show the fleet made more sets within the Bay than outside the mouth of the Bay off Virginia, up north off New Jersey and south off North Carolina. They just were less successful.

Where Have All the Bay's Menhaden Gone?

Reports from Bay anglers this summer concur with the commercial fleet’s low catch rates – menhaden have been few and far between, they say. Chesapeake landings from 2001-2005 averaged about 109,000 tons a year, which is where the fishery is capped. Throughout the 1990s, the Bay catch averaged around 150,000 tons a year. In 2006 the menhaden industry caught only 65,000 tons in the Bay, and 2007 may not be much better.

“The steady decline in catch from the Bay over the past 15 years or more, along with poor recruitment over the same period, means either menhaden have been overfished or environmental conditions are deteriorating,” NCMC’s Ken Hinman points out. “Or, most likely, both.”

Warming coastal waters is a possible explanation for a northward shift in a number of fish stocks in recent years, from lobster to tuna. The Technical Committee heard reports of an abundance of menhaden in its northern range, off New England, where they haven’t been seen in such numbers in years. While recruitment has been very poor in the Mid-Atlantic region, which historically has produced two-thirds of the coast’s juveniles, it seems to be improving up north. But that’s not helping the Bay population or the many predators that depend on them there.

A New Cap Needed

The next stock assessment, which traditionally studies menhaden on a coastwide basis only, won’t take place until 2009. Whether or not it will be able to separately assess the state of the Chesapeake population is looking more and more doubtful. The ASMFC’s scientists are still talking about “localized depletion” in general terms, years away from developing biological reference points that would enable them to detect and measure it. At the September 21 meeting, in response to a request from the Menhaden Management Board to provide managers with a definition, the Technical Committee could only come up with this: localized depletion in Chesapeake Bay is a reduction in menhaden population size and density below the level of abundance that is sufficient to maintain its basic ecological, economic and social functions.

“A review of the research underway to estimate menhaden abundance in the Bay, along with predator demand, the critical element, was discouraging,” says Hinman. “Committee members agreed it could be 3-5 years before we get the results of a number of studies, each a ‘promising but limited’ piece of a puzzle that must be put together to form a complete picture. Then, when we get that picture, we have to apply new, ecosystem-based criteria to know what it means and what to do about it.”

The National Coalition for Marine Conservation (NCMC) believes the ASMFC will have to act, sooner rather than later, to put more precautionary measures into place as the cap expires and research continues. In the absence of better information, catch limits – in the Bay and coastwide - will need to be set much more conservatively than under the present single-species regime. We will be presenting our recommendations at future commission meetings, based on new standards we have been developing with the assistance of independent scientists and policymakers. Chief among these is that populations of important forage fish like menhaden be maintained at 75 percent of their unfished level.

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Be sure to check out NCMC's publication Taking the Bait -- Are America's Fisheries Out-Competing Predators for their Prey?

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