A bucket of menhaden. Photo courtesy of Chesapeake Bay Foundation
In 2019, AFFTA and the AFFTA Fisheries Fund convened a panel of scientists and managers to identify the primary threats to the sustainability of our marine fisheries. A major finding of the report, “Recommendations to Improve the Health and Sustainability of America’s Marine Fisheries”, was the need to ensure forage fish are managed in a way that acknowledges their role as a critical food source and essential for abundant and sustainable recreational fisheries.
Known locally as bunker or pogies, menhaden are a silvery-blue herring with dark spots on the sides. They are energetic filter-feeders, swimming rapidly, mouth agape to filter water across their gill-rakers to harvest plankton. In turn, they are prey to striped bass and osprey, dolphins and humpback whales. And they are the East and Gulf coasts’ most-caught fish—and the second-highest catch in the U.S. behind Alaskan pollock.
”Menhaden may be the most important fish you’ve never heard about.” (PEW).
In 2020, responding to years of anglers and scientists expressing concerns of over-harvest and declining populations, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission unanimously adopted a system under which catch limits on the forage fish will account for the needs of its predators and the broader health of the environment. Coming from the regulatory body that sets catch limits for menhaden that was long overdue good news, at least on paper.
In the Fall of 2021 news flashed around the Chesapeake Bay reporting a Canadian fishing company spilling 400,000 "presumably dead" menhaden from torn nets, apparently the latest in the company's 13 fish spills in Virginia since 2018—an important reminder of the need to better manage menhaden, and the need to move from a sound policy on paper to on-the-water results.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) has partnered with other leading voices in the recreational fishing sector to encourage fisheries managers to leave more menhaden in the water for gamefish and protect sensitive ecosystems from industrial fishing. As TRCP observes, the importance of menhaden and other forage fish to recreational fishing cannot be overstated and great sport fishing depends on abundant and healthy forage fish.
TRCP and partners put forward two main goals:
In the Atlantic—where anglers have already been successful at advocating for ecological reference points in menhaden management and a new menhaden advisory committee—support the implementation of the new management model to benefit striped bass populations and pushing for additional conservation measures for menhaden and other forage species.
In the Gulf, build upon an existing coalition of concerned organizations to establish an ecological management model for menhaden over the next three years, and support state legislation and policies that prioritize menhaden conservation and protect sensitive habitat from damage during menhaden harvest activities.
