After failing two months ago to come up with a 2017 quota for commercial harvests of menhaden, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission this week finally settled on a number: 200,000 metric tons, a 6.45 percent increase from this year.
The commission struggled for 3½ hours at its meeting in Alexandria in August to set next year's quota, with a half-dozen proposals for various limits failing to win enough votes. On Wednesday in Bar Harbor, Maine, the commission's menhaden management board settled on a number much more quickly.
Still, the new limit was criticized by environmental groups, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Chris Moore, the foundation's senior scientist in Virginia, said in a prepared statement that the fish – a staple in the diets of numerous marine creatures, from striped bass to whales – are "not abundant throughout their geographic range."
Moore said that keeping the quota unchanged for the small, bony, oily fish "would have helped ensure a healthier menhaden population for all users."
In most of the states from Maine to Florida under the commission's watch, menhaden are harvested for bait.
Virginia is the exception. It's the center of East Coast harvests, with next year's quota allotting the state nearly 169,000 of the 200,000-ton limit. The overwhelming majority of Virginia's catches will go to a plant in Reedville , where they'll be reduced into products ranging from fish-oil pills to cattle-feed supplements.
Houston-based Omega Protein Corp., which operates the plant, had argued in August for a 2017 quota increase of 10 to 20 percent. Its representatives pointed out that a commission technical committee of fisheries scientists had said a hike of as much as 40 percent would pose zero risk of overfishing.
Bret Scholtes, Omega's CEO, said there has been "a growing number of observed sightings of very large menhaden schools. … This illustrates to us that there should be no doubt that the stock is robust and healthy enough for increased harvest."
But the commission's stock assessments haven't yet taken into account the effect of harvest increases on other species that eat menhaden. The commission's staff has begun work on an "ecological-based" management system that would factor in predator needs. The earliest that initiative, known as Amendment 3, would go into effect is 2018.