Fisheries regulators OK menhaden limits

States from Maine to Florida voted Wednesday to set new, strict limits on catching menhaden from coastal waters and the Chesapeake Bay, handing environmentalists and sports fishermen a major victory in how this important little fish is managed.

"This is great news for jobs, for our economy and for a society that values wildlife," Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said in a statement after the vote.

At a meeting in Boston culminating more than a year of scientific calculations, loud public hearings and more than 90,000 public comments, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted targets and thresholds intent on restoring menhaden stocks coastwide.

Once implemented after another year of study and debate, the measures are expected to reduce harvests by up to 37 percent - cuts that Virginia officials say will be damaging to the menhaden industry centered in the Northern Neck town of Reedville and to watermen who catch and sell the oily fish as bait.

The economic fallout "could be enormous," said Jack Traveslstead, Virginia director of fisheries, who represents the state on the coastal commission. "It's going to cause a lot of hurt. There's going to be job loss. And I suspect the price of crab bait probably just went up by 40 percent or so."

Virginia, New Jersey and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission voted against the new target, favoring a softer proposal to cut harvests by 23 percent. That option was defeated.

The rest of the Atlantic states, along with federal wildlife agencies, voted instead to go further. They sided with marine scientists, conservationists and sportsmen who have argued that menhaden stocks have been weak for decades and need a serious jolt to get back on track.

A mathematical model, when corrected, found that menhaden were overfished 32 out of the past 54 years, although only once in the past decade.

"Today's vote is a welcome step for a fish that hasn't caught a break since Dwight Eisenhower was president," Peter Baker, director of Northeast fisheries for the Pew Environment Group, said in a statement.

Pew spent money and pressed hard for changes in the fishery, taking out ads in several swing states that proclaimed, "When this little fish disappears, big fish (and the rest of us) are in trouble."

Menhaden are not eaten by humans, but they are a key part of the aquatic food chain. They filter phytoplankton and help improve water quality, especially in the Chesapeake Bay, which suffers from excessive algae growth.

The fish also are the backbone of a century-old industry in Reedville, where tons of menhaden are processed each year into fish oil, pet food, livestock fodder and omega-3 health supplements. Spotter airplanes are used by the fishing fleet, which encircles great schools of menhaden before netting them.

The fleet, planes and the processing plant are owned by Omega Protein Inc., a Texas-based company. The plant is the last such facility in operation on the East Coast, with others on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana.

Ben Landry, a company spokesman, said earlier this week that proposed catch rules were based on flawed science and might not do the species any good. He reasoned that natural factors - wind, tides, currents, predators - have more to do with the health of the menhaden population than anything else.

Landry said Wednesday that Omega - the largest employer in Northumberland County - was "disappointed, of course" by the vote but that it remains unclear just how the coastal commission intends to implement its new standards.

"We're not happy, but we're moving forward, we'll try and get the best deal we can," he said by phone from Boston.

The next step in the regulatory process will determine how best to implement the new targets and thresholds. That could involve new quotas, limits on how many days fishing can occur, closed seasons or closed areas.

The commission said it intends to have all aspects of its new menhaden program in place by July 1, 2013.

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