Despite obstacles, watermen scored a healthy catch

NORFOLK

Crabs in crisis, climate change, the Chesapeake Bay in peril. Those might be the headlines, but Hampton Roads still ranked as the sixth-richest seafood port in the country last year, according to new federal statistics.

Commercial fishermen reported landing $72.3 million worth of fish and shellfish at local docks, up from $71.2 million in 2007 and $51 million in 2006, when Hampton Roads was No. 10 on the national money list.

On top of the roster again last year was New Bedford, Mass., which reported catches worth $241 million. Two ports in Alaska finished second and third, followed by one in New Jersey, then Honolulu, and then Hampton Roads, according to data released last week by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

North Carolina's wealthiest seafood port was Wanchese-Stumpy Point, near Manteo and the Outer Banks. It reported catches worth $22.4 million, or 37th-richest in the nation, up from 41st in 2007, according to federal figures.

In its annual reports, the government also ranks fishing ports based on the volume of seafood they handle. Last year, the tiny coastal town of Reedville, on Virginia's Northern Neck peninsula, finished second in the nation in this category.

Located on the Chesapeake Bay, Reedville accounted for 354 million pounds of fish and shellfish, second only to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which hauled in 612 million pounds last year.

Almost all of the products brought to Reedville were menhaden, an oily little fish that a single company, Omega Protein, converts into fish oil, pet food and omega-3 health supplements at a large processing plant on the outskirts of town.

The menhaden haul in Reedville was substantially less last year than in 2007, statistics show - by almost 70 million pounds. Omega Protein works under a state-brokered cap, intended to conserve menhaden stocks in the Bay, and remained well below its annual limit last year, said Jack Travelstead, state director of fisheries with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

Travelstead said that the cap applies only to menhaden caught in the Bay and that watermen who work for the company have been moving just outside the Bay, in ocean waters, to take more of the coveted fish.

Overall, the federal report found that 8.3 billion pounds of fish and shellfish were brought to American shores last year, worth $4.4 billion. That represents an 11 percent reduction in volume but a 5 percent increase in value, compared with 2007.

Those figures made the United States the fifth-largest seafood producer in the world last year. China was first, followed by India, Peru, Indonesia, then America, according to statistics.

Fish farming, or aquaculture, continued to blossom across the globe as well as in the United States, data indicates. U.S. farmers brought $882 million worth of fish and shellfish to markets in 2002, and they sold $1.2 billion in 2007, the latest year that aquaculture numbers are available.

Last year in Virginia, harvesting of wild fish and shellfish was down significantly - to 415 million pounds, compared with 485 million pounds in 2007, statistics show.

Tom Murray, a marine business specialist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, attributed the downturn to two main causes: sea scallops and blue crabs.

Some of the big haulers of sea scallops sold their federal permits to commercial fishermen in New England, Murray said - meaning that landings of the buttery bivalves found offshore shifted slightly last year from Virginia to Northeastern states, especially Massachusetts.

In addition, Murray pointed out, Virginia cracked down on crabbing last year, imposing regulations that cut the harvest of female crabs by more than 30 percent in the name of conservation.

Still, Murray said, there were considerable amounts of scallops and crabs brought to docks in Hampton Roads, and those two species drove the region's status as the sixth-richest port in the nation.

The government defines Hampton Roads as Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Hampton and Seaford, a small town in York County where many scallops are unloaded.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com