The Virginian-Pilot
©
HAMPTON
Fish processor Omega Protein on Wednesday was cleaning up tens of thousands of menhaden that washed ashore after a net accident earlier this week.
About 75,000 fish spilled Monday from nets being used by the company's vessel Kimberly about 4-1/2 miles off Grandview Nature Preserve, said Ben Landry, a spokesman for Omega Protein.
The company estimated that about 25,000 fish washed up along a five-mile stretch of shore, much of it along Buckroe Beach.
After the fish fell from the net, they sank to the bottom, which is common in a net accident, Landry said. Later, they floated to the water's surface and were carried along by the tide.
"The captain indicated that he felt a tug or net tear while he was pumping the fish," he said.
Officials from the company's plant in Reedville, on the Northern Neck, were in Hampton on Wednesday investigating the cause, Landry said.
The beach was expected to be cleaned by the end of the day Wednesday, Landry said.
Earlier in the day, a skimmer guided by an aircraft gathered fish from the water. Crews were contracted to pick up fish from the shore and will return today in case more fish floated up overnight. The company said it will pay for the clean up.
"It's our responsibility to clean it up, and that's exactly what we plan on doing," Landry said.
Omega Protein, based in Texas, processes the fish in Reedville for its omega-3 fatty acids that are used in various products for humans and animals.
Omega reported the spill immediately to authorities, Virginia Marine Resources Commission spokesman John Bull said. He called the spill an accident that can happen when nets are being used.
"It doesn't happen very often, but it's regrettable when it does," Bull said.
There was no health hazard to anyone on the beach, he said. "Dead fish stink, there's no way around that. But dead fish washing up on shore is a natural thing, just not in these numbers."
The beach was expected to be cleaned by the end of the day Wednesday, Landry said. Earlier in the day, a skimmer guided by an aircraft gathered fish from the water. Crews were contracted to pick up fish from the shore and will return today in case more fish floated up overnight. The company said it will pay for the clean up.
Cindy Clayton, (757) 446-2377, cindy.clayton@pilotonline.com
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Zapata Oil, GHW Bush, Omega Protein and Buying Votes
Question: Who really owns the menhaden purse seine fleet and its spotter aircraft?
Answer: the Bush family through Zapata Oil Company and through a series of shell corporations.
Next question: where did Zapata oil make its money?
Answer: Because Zapata Oil’s Gulf of Mexico oil platforms were unable, in the sixties and seventies, to compete with OPEC and their super tankers, why, Zapata went the more lucrative alternative.
That would be using their offshore oil platforms as transshipment points for South American cocaine. That way the helicopters and launches returning from Zapata’s Gulf oil rigs to the continental United States did not have to clear Customs. Clever, don’t you think?
Omega Protein Uses Laundered Drug Money to Buy Our Politicans
To learn more about the Clinton-Bush Cocaine cabal, search:
Zapata+CIA+Bush+cocaine or www.stopseaboard.net Or just search: George Meredith MD comments.
Next time you talk to the governor or a member of the general assembly ask them about Zapata Oil, Omega Protein and narcotics money laundering. Chances are they will say “I don’t know what you are talking about” You can then confront them with the facts.
But chances are they will go about their business stuffing laundered narco dollars in their pockets, just as before!
Wake up Virginia! If you repeatedly confront your elected officials and embarrass them with the facts behind the menhaden slaughter, why, they might just change their ways!
George Meredith MD
Virginia Beach
Averting Absolute Disaster
This latest unintended squandering of resources is the tip of the iceberg. Our oceans have been plundered to the point of mass extinction. The "Peak fish" point was back in the 80's and many species, from phytoplankton to Tuna, may be gone very soon. The sea will recover from the damage our species has wrought but could take thousands of years if we do not act. Without a living, thriving sea, we may not be able to survive. It is in our interest to impose a 30 year moratorium on commercial fishing and to enforce it as we do other laws from smuggling to piracy. We need to compensate and retrain waterman but without a ban on commercial fishing, they will soon be our of business anyway. I like seafood too but if we don't end commercial fishing and work to re-stock and clean up the seas we will all suffer the consequences.
Omega Cares Not for the Bay
Legislators bought and paid for, Omega has its way with the Bay. Do not like what they do?, seek where their materials go and boycott those very products with follow-up letters to the company factually expressing displeasure with the company's rape-like harvesting practices. Legislators on the company's gift list need to be notified in no uncertain terms that their terms as representatives of the people will soon end if they do not restore the oversight and management of the Commonwealth's resource to the VMRC. Stiff shirted, neck-tied, brain-blood restricted legislators on this issue have absolutely no insight or expertise on fisheries managment. Probably could not tell the difference between salt water and fresh with the taste of money in their snappy crab-like mandibles.
Just two questions....
If the anti-establishment, anti-big business crowd succeeds in shutting down the 'evil' corporations and capitalism in the US and elsewhere:
1. Where are you going to get a decent job?
2. Where are all the manufactured goods that you can’t seem to live without going to come from?
Of course if you have no job you won't have any money to buy anything with anyway.
And don't look for a big-government handout. Without taxpaying workers and taxpaying corporations, the government will soon be broke too.
Bottom line, be careful what you wish for.
A few more questions
Is shutting down all business anyone's goal?
Where all all the manufactured goods coming from now?
How does the export of productive jobs and global competition the cheapest labor and the least regulation affect your chance to get a decent job? What effect has the deregulated market had on the value of our currency over the last couple of decades?
Another sleezy corporation that put money into McDonnells
Another sleezy corporation that put money into McDonnells pocket! Fist the oil companies and then Omega. When will this state wake up and smell the coffee? (rotten fish)
What difference would that make?
Northam's bill to take management of menhaden away from the General Assembly never got to McDonnell. It died, as it does every year, the the Chesapeake sub-committee of the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Chesapeake Committee in the House of Delegates.
Direct your venom where it belongs.
gather and give the fish to local organic farmers
We learned the tale of the colonist at Plymouth Rock being aided by Indians teaching them to put fish with the seeds to act as fertilizer.
Why waste these fish when the farmers (organic or not) could til them into to the land.
Problem...
The following article from Richmond Times Dispatch back in March explains the problem. Bottom line, is Omega over fishes menhaden. Their populations are suffering and it's only a matter of time before it works it's way up the food chain to the fish and critters you actually care about.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/mar/02/fish02_20100301-221805-ar-4418/