Gilchrest Speaks Up for Menhaden

At this point, the news is a bit dated (it happened in November), but it still deserves comment (and praise). Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, who represents the eastern shore of Maryland, and a small area of the western shore in District 1, has introduced legislation that would create a 5-year moratorium on menhaden fishing on the east coast.

As has been addressed here in the past, the gluttonous Omega Protein, running ships out of Reedville, VA continues to harvest unsustainable numbers of menhaden, a filter feeder, from the Bay for use in its vitamin and animal food products.

At this point, it's clear that Virginia is not going to reign in this industry, so it's good to see Mr. Gilchrest attempting to bring the federal government in to stop this abuse of our shared resource.

A Small Step for the Bay

Some relatively good news for the Chesapeake today, the Capital reports that Maryland and Virginia have come to an agreement to limit the annual harvest of menhaden from the Bay. Of course, in this instance, it isn't the Maryland fishery that's the problem, it's the ravenous Omega Proteins plant based in Reedville, Virginia that is taking the small, oily fish at an unsustainable rate.

The new agreement caps the annual take at 109,000 tons a year (down from the 189,500 ton average annual landings during the 1990s). A coalition called Menhaden Matter was working to halt the fishery, while the state of the menhaden fishery could be studied. If ever there was a tragedy of the commons, surely this is it: A giant corporate behemoth, based in Texas, operating out of Virginia, raids our collective resource, and privatizes the profits 1,500 miles away, while a cascade of bay-area fisheries collapse.

Along these same lines, I hope each of you will take the time to read this bone-chilling series from the Baltimore Sun/LA Times on the decline of our oceans.

An Accumulation of 8 to 10 inches of Good News

Some good news on the legal front. The Department of Justice and the Maryland Office of the Attorney General are taking the Costellos, the couple who brazenly filled in a 1/4 acre of the Bay, to court.

Local Delegate, Virginia Clagett (D - 30), has introduced a bill to prevent the commercial harvest of diamondback terrapins, the State reptile. This may upset connoisseurs of terrapin soup and the 5 to 9 watermen who harvest the terrapins each year. Too bad. If we're going to save the Bay, and its inhabitants, we need to get serious. I'd like to see a similar bill for crabs and oysters, and a resolution condemning the fact that Virginia is allowing the menhaden fishery to be decimated, once again threatening the striped bass.

Menhaden Wars?

Recently, Dick Russell, a fisherman and environmentalist, published Striper Wars, an account of the political and environmental struggles of the 1980s that led to the moratorium on striped bass (rockfish) fishing, and their eventual bounce back to healthy population levels in the 1990s. Something of the epic struggle and ultimate success is known by most of those who have spent significant time by the Bay. After all, Maryland was at the heart of the controversy, being one of the most vociferous proponents of the fishing ban.

With crab and oyster harvests declining, and already dramatically below historical levels, we can at least rest assured that the striper has bounced back. Right? According to Russell, it's absolutely incorrect. Stripers are increasingly threatened, and this time, the culprit is again overfishing, but not the overfishing of stripers. One of the striped bass' primary food sources, a small, oily fish called menhaden is being harvested by the hundreds of millions of pounds per year. As a result, "most of the Bay’s striped bass suffer from poor nutrition and approximately half of the population is infected with the disease, Mycobacteriosis."

Who is the primary culprit? Omega Protein Corp. (slogan: "Healthy Products for a Healthy World"), which is based in Houston, TX and runs its menhaden fishery from Reedville, VA. If we continue to allow these greedy business interests to feed freely at the trough of our commons, the resulting loss of biomass is going to have implications for the Bay's ecology well beyond even our famed striper.