When the first menhaden processing plant opened in Reedville, Virginia, in 1878, the bony, oily fish swam in thick schools up and down the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The factory was just one of many menhaden operations that dotted the coast, turning a small fish that people don’t like to eat into nutritious fish oil, animal feed, fertilizers and other useful products.
At the fishery’s peak in the 1950s, there were 20 menhaden plants taking more than 1 billion lb (450 million kg) annually from Maine to Florida. These days, Reedville is still a menhaden town, but it’s now home to the only U.S. facility left along the coast, and it efficiently sweeps up the large majority of the roughly 400 million lb (180 million kg) of menhaden still fished each year from the Atlantic Ocean.
For a fish that humans don’t eat and that is not currently considered overfished, menhaden have recently attracted significant attention. That’s because much in the marine ecosystem rides on the little fish, which are one of the Atlantic’s important forage species prey for whales and other predators. Thanks to fishing quotas set by the first coastwide menhaden management plan in 2012, many states have seen large schools return to areas they’d largely left long ago, according to conservationists.
Humpback whales are now being spotted in significant numbers in New York Harbor for the first time in a century, Rhode Island striped bass anglers are enjoying flush times and New Jersey’s bait companies that sell menhaden to other fishers are seeing more in their nets, too. It’s a wonderful upward spiral, said Paul Sieswerda, president of Gotham Whale, the first organization to take tourists on whale watching trips as the giant marine mammals began to repopulate the ocean around New York.
The menhaden not only provide food for whales, but they also tend to clean the waters, he added, noting that the fish, like oysters, are filter feeders that remove excess nutrients from the ocean as they graze on algae.
Whether that ocean success story continues may depend on what happens this week when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission convenes a two-day meeting on November 13 in Baltimore to determine the future of the Atlantic menhaden fishery. A regional authority consisting mostly of representatives from 15 Atlantic states, the commission could set in motion new limits on menhaden fishing that go beyond the usual goals of ensuring stable species populations or preventing declines. Instead, regulators could impose quotas on menhaden catch to ensure there’s enough fish to feed other marine animals that eat them.
2017 News Deeply.