Atlantic menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, are small, nutrient-packed fish that are central to the Chesapeake Bay's food chain and support one of the largest commercial fisheries on the Atlantic coast. As a result of their environmental and economic importance, management of the menhaden fishery is a political flashpoint across the region.
Why Are Menhaden Important to the Chesapeake Bay?
Menhaden, also called bunker or pogy, create a vital connection between the bottom, middle, and top of the food chain. They eat tiny plants and animals, called plankton, by filtering them from the water. In turn, menhaden are a rich food source for many predator fish—including rockfish (striped bass), bluefish, red drum, bluefin tuna, and weakfish—as well as ospreys, bald eagles, dolphins, and whales. (Watch our video, Why Whales Follow Menhaden into the Bay.)
What Are the Threats Facing Menhaden?
The Bay is one of the most important nurseries for menhaden, helping to sustain the population along the Atlantic coast. Menhaden eggs hatch in the open ocean before drifting on currents into the Bay, where juvenile fish live and grow for their first year of life. But long-running scientific surveys show the number of young menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay dropped dramatically in the early 1990s and has remained well below the long-term average for the past 20 years.
This graph represents the annual index of menhaden, which shows the relative availability of menhaden from year to year, which has a direct impact for predators like striped bass and osprey.
Citation: Durell, E.Q., and Weedon, C. 2024. Striped Bass Seine Survey Juvenile Index Web Page. https://dnr.maryland.gov/fisheries/pages/striped-bass/juvenile-index.aspx. Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Fishing and Boating Services.
At the same time, almost three-quarters of all menhaden caught on the East Coast are harvested by the Omega Protein Corporation—a Canadian-owned company that fishes in Virginia waters in or near the mouth of the Bay. Virginia is the only state to still allow industrial-scale menhaden fishing on the U.S. East Coast. Omega Protein's plant in Reedville, Virginia reduces (cooks and grinds up) the fish for a variety of uses, such as fish food for large-scale salmon farming, nutritional supplements, makeup, and food additives.
Why Is There A Harvest Cap for Menhaden in the Bay?
Atlantic menhaden can be found along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, which requires a cooperative approach to menhaden fishery management. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), an interstate management body chartered in the 1940s, manages the fishery for the 15 states that share the coastline. ASMFC establishes limits for both the coastwide harvest as well as the Chesapeake Bay harvest.
Over the past two decades, fishery managers have raised concerns that the concentration of fishing effort in and around Bay waters could disrupt the Bay's food chain, harming populations of rockfish and other predator species. As a precaution, ASMFC first set a cap for Omega's industrial menhaden harvest in the Bay in 2006. In 2017, ASMFC voted to lower the cap to 51,000 metric tons to reflect more recent menhaden harvest levels in the Bay.
In blatant disregard for the fishery management process, Omega Protein purposefully exceeded the Chesapeake Bay harvest cap in 2019 by 33 percent. The violation resulted in a unanimous ASMFC vote referring Virginia to the U.S. Department of Commerce for noncompliance with interstate fishery rules. The Secretary of Commerce upheld ASMFC's finding that Virginia's menhaden fishery was out of compliance with the Bay cap. Noncompliance with ASMFC risks a fishing moratorium, but because Virginia complied with the updated Bay cap prior to the start of the next fishing season, a moratorium was avoided.
How Can Better Management Protect Menhaden and the Bay?
For more than 25 years, CBF has worked with partners to advocate for a healthy menhaden population in the Chesapeake Bay to ensure that this nutrient-packed fish can fulfill its key role in the food chain. In 2012, ASMFC's Benchmark Stock Assessment showed the total menhaden population was at its lowest level on record. Peer-reviewed population estimates showed menhaden have been overfished for 32 of the past 54 years. A strong fisheries management plan was needed to rebuild the population, and once rebuilt, to maintain it. (See A Timeline of Menhaden Conservation.)
For decades, management decisions and catch limits relied on "single species" stock assessments, independent of other species. In other words, they accounted for demand from the fishing industry, but did not account for demand from rockfish, osprey, and other animals that rely on menhaden for food. Single species management cannot guarantee that there will be sufficient stock remaining after fishing harvest to sustain larger ecosystem needs.
That changed in August 2020, when ASMFC adopted new multispecies benchmarks, known as ecological reference points (ERPs), that will allow managers to account for menhaden's role in the food chain and set catch limits accordingly. These new benchmarks estimate and account for the needs of a suite of predators and are specifically formulated to meet the needs of the coastwide rockfish population. While ERPs represented a monumental shift toward managing menhaden for their ecological importance coastwide, questions about concentrated menhaden fishing effort and ecological impacts in the Chesapeake Bay remain unaddressed.
In 2023, Virginia successfully passed SB1388, which directed the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to develop a study on the ecology, fishery impacts, and economic importance of menhaden populations in the Chesapeake Bay. Considering just how limited menhaden science specific to the Bay is, this directive from the Virginian General Assembly was a huge step forward. Menhaden scientists, stakeholders, and managers were excited and looking forward to initiating this science. Despite being cooperatively developed with a diverse group of menhaden stakeholders (including Omega Protein) and receiving unanimous support, the science plan remains unfunded and stalled. Omega Protein continues to work against Virginian efforts to fund the menhaden study plan.
More recently, at the August 2024 ASMFC meeting, researchers shared concerning data about osprey nesting failure in the Chesapeake Bay, likely due to inadequate forage such as menhaden. In addition, small-scale commercial bait fishermen who harvest menhaden for blue crab fisheries reported a substantial drop in menhaden abundance and harvest further up the Bay. These ecological 'red flags' in the Bay prompted representatives from Maryland to initiate an ASMFC workgroup to explore additional precautionary management opportunities for Chesapeake Bay menhaden. A final report is expected to be presented at the spring ASMFC meeting in May 2025, and management changes could follow.
What Are the Latest Obstacles Menhaden Face?
The 2025 Virginia legislative session saw three separate efforts to fund the sorely needed VIMS Menhaden Study Plan fail, due to Omega Protein's active opposition. Despite the fact that representatives from Omega Protein took part in designing the menhaden study plan along with scientists and a range of additional stakeholders, the company continues to thwart efforts to complete the study and address the mounting uncertainties about the health of the Chesapeake Bay's menhaden and the predator species dependent on them. The longer these critical scientific questions on menhaden remain unaddressed, the more uncertain they become. As this uncertainty mounts, the potential impacts to the menhaden resource, the Bay ecosystem, and the communities dependent on a healthy Bay become more and more concerning.
Looking forward, CBF will continue fighting for menhaden: improved menhaden science means more sustainable menhaden management and a healthier Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. ASMFC Chesapeake Bay Working Group offers a great opportunity to ensure predator species have access to menhaden at critical times of the year, ant there will be two new coastwide stock assessments released later this fall.
Stand Up for Menhaden Science
For more than 25 years, CBF has been working tirelessly to protect this critical keystone species, and many of our successes have been thanks to vocal advocates. Join the movement and sign the pledge! Commit to doing your part to restore this all-important Bay species.
