The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has postponed placing limits on the menhaden catch for Virginia watermen. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Lauren Hines-Acosta about what is being considered.
RUSH: The Atlantic State's Marine Fisheries Commission has delayed putting a new cap on the harvesting of Menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay. This is Don Rush. It's currently capped at 51,000 tons, but the Commission's Menhaden Management Board is looking at a reduction of up to 50% in the harvest or leveling it out with complaints by Maryland waterman against those from Virginia. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal, we talk with reporter Lauren Hines-Acosta about where the decision stands.
HINES-ACOSTA: They were going to put out a proposal for public comments looking at what kind of reductions to the harvest for Menhaden "reduction fishery" could we put out. But there was a lot of debate and even question as to the scope of this proposal. So they're kind of going back to look over the whole harvest proposal and it's really being delayed to their August meeting. So we probably won't see something for the public to review until later this year.
RUSH: So I understand one of the issues is just simply the Virginia folks maybe eating into the Maryland folks - in terms of the watermen. What's that all about?
HINES-ACOSTA: A lot of watermen use Menhaden as bait to catch other things such as crabs. And so the Maryland watermen are saying that the Menhaden catch in the Bay has declined so much that their industry is hurting. Now there's a lot of studies going back and forth as to whether or not how true that is, and some has been peer reviewed, some has not. So that's still a very murky area.
RUSH: So how does this, by the way, relate to commercial fishing for the Menhaden?
HINES-ACOSTA: So this decision of reducing the Bay cap really affects one company, which is ocean harvesters that go out, collect these fish, harvest these fish to reduce them into fish meal and fish oils. So that's why they're called the reduction fishery and Omega Protein, their partner company based in Reedville (VA), does all that. So this decision would really affect this company, which is a major group in the Bay.
RUSH: Have we seen a decline then in Menhaden?
HINES-ACOSTA: Yeah, it's hard to say. Again, there's a lot of patchwork of data. It's hard to say what exactly is driving these declines. I mean, we're seeing a decline in I think Osprey and Striped Bass, which eat Menhaden, but it's still unclear exactly if harvesting Menhaden in the bay is causing those declines. And really we're waiting on some more studies that could really answer that question. The federal funding has gone through, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is putting out requests for proposals. So that process and the money is finally underway.
RUSH: So at this point, we're really sort of looking at additional set of studies in order to figure out what's going to go on and do we expect then those studies to be completed soon or to impact this idea of what they're going to do.
HINES-ACOSTA: It's hard to say how that will go on. The proposed study that the Virginia Institute of Marine Science put out a couple of years ago was a three year study. So if that group gets the funding, it'll be another three years before we have those answers. But as for this interstate board, I think right now they're just trying to see what they can do to limit harvesting since that's one of the few things they actually can't control when it comes to the Menhaden population.
RUSH: Bay Journal reporter Lauren Hines-Acosta on the delay for limits to the harvesting of Menhaden and the Chesapeake Bay. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
