Tiny menhaden have a big impact
Declining population triggers call to action
12:03 AM, Sep. 26, 2011
Up until recently, a regional fisheries stock assessment concluded there were plenty of Atlantic menhaden – or at least enough to declare the species wasn’t in peril from overfishing.
But recently, fisheries managers concluded they may have been wrong.
Certainly, there were and are plenty of menhaden eggs. The problem, they have discovered, is there is a breakdown in the population dynamics from the eggs to the fish.
So now, years after environmentalists and coalitions of recreational fishing groups and fish conservation organizations raised red flags about the fate of the menhaden, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is proposing limits designed to help the species rebound.
“Abundance has been lagging for the last few years,” said Tina Berger, a commission spokeswoman.
Among the concerns, she said, is a growing interest in commercial harvesting of menhaden as a baitfish for more lucrative fisheries, such as lobstering.
Among anglers and state regulators there are worries about this small fish at the bottom of the food chain.
Menhaden are the prey of species from large tunas to striped bass and bluefish. With a decline at the bottom of the food chain, there is concern about what happens to the species at the top.
The commission set a cap in 2005 on harvests in the menhaden reduction fishery – fish caught to be processed for oil and fish meal – in the Chesapeake Bay region because of concerns about a localized population decline.
But a recent analysis pointed to an increase in the catch there. That fishery takes the lion’s share of the Atlantic coastal harvest and has been blamed by some for the coastwide decline in the population.
Jeff Tinsman, a fisheries biologist with the state Division of Fish & Wildlife, serves on the regional menhaden management board. He said that for years menhaden were treated differently from other managed species. The board was dominated by the commercial fishing industry. Once that changed, state regulators got more involved, he said.
In Delaware, for instance, large-scale commercial menhaden fishing has been illegal for years.
The fisheries commission will host one of several public hearings on menhaden in Lewes tonight to outline its proposals and take public comments.
The proposals range from catch limits to fishing gear restrictions to help rebuild the fish stock.
That the hearing is set for Lewes – a town once noted for its menhaden fishery – is significant.
In 1953, Lewes tallied the highest commercial fish landings in the country.
In a 1993 interview, Rufus Carter, then 64, described his start in the Lewes menhaden fishery.
He was just 14 years old – so young his father had to sign for his pay.
He spent a dozen years working with the Fish Products menhaden fleet at Lewes.
“The only reason I quit fishing,” he said, “there was no future. The last three or four years, there wasn’t no fish.”
But during the heyday, Lewes was the epicenter of menhaden fishing.
During that banner year of 1953, commercial menhaden landings at Lewes were a quarter of all fisheries landings along the East and Gulf coasts combined.
Fish Products – on the site of today’s Cape Shores housing development – had a huge facility, 25 boats and 650 workers.
The fishing was intensive. Each team used a large mother ship, a small “striker” or “drive” boat and two purse seine boats. Spotter planes flew overhead, looking for the massive schools of menhaden.
The striker boat led the way, and the two purse seine boats set the net to encircle the school of fish. Net men like Carter had the strenuous task of hauling in the nets overbrimming with silvery menhaden.
Overhead, pilots looked for signs of a large school – purple water, splashing, frothing waves or large flocks of diving birds.
Doubly important
Scientists consider the menhaden important on two levels: the economic value and the ecological one.
The fish thrive at the bottom of the food chain and are among the most efficient converters of the lowest rungs to the highest.
They are filter feeders – sucking up algae.
Important top-level predators feed on menhaden.
Fisheries managers have concluded from studies over the last decade that population numbers swing wildly.
In the Inland Bays, for instance, state biologists have discovered a basic correlation. In years when menhaden numbers are very high, fish kills will be correspondingly high.
Because menhaden school, they are especially vulnerable to low oxygen levels.
John Clark, a state fisheries biologist involved in the Inland Bays Menhaden Project, said it’s not surprising that in 2005 there were record fish kills in the Inland Bays. In that summer, the young-of-the year index for menhaden showed almost an eight-fold increase over the previous year.
In an estuary like the Inland Bays – where microscopic algae can pose problems during the summer – menhaden play an important role as they filter and feed.
“And they take the nutrients with them” when they leave, Clark said.
“It’s really pretty remarkable,” he said.
Adults spawn in the ocean and it is likely that the young fish are driven to coastal waters by wind and currents, Clark said.
The Chesapeake traditionally has been a hot spot for menhaden, though targeted fishing since the mid-1800s has followed the large schools of fish up and down the Atlantic Coast.
Wholesale depletion is nothing new.
A report on the history of menhaden done in the late 1800s by G. Brown Goode opens with a dire story: the complete absence of menhaden from the waters off Cape Cod in 1879 resulted “in a failure of this very important fishery.”
At the same time, along Delaware Bay, menhaden were a pesky bycatch, “left on the beach to rot or taken home to feed hogs.”
According to data collected by the Atlantic States commission, purse seine landings reached a high point in the 1950s. The peak of the landings – 712,100 metric tons – came in 1956.
There were more than 20 menhaden-reduction facilities from Florida to Maine. But by the 1960s, the fishery collapsed and many of the factories north of Chesapeake Bay closed.
By 1969, reduction landings declined to 161,000 metric tons.
Fish stocks began to recover in the 1980s and reduction landings increased with them. By then, the Lewes plant sat idled. It is now gone, replaced by houses.
“Melting down menhaden is not a way to attract tourists,” Clark said.