Preface. Menhaden are being overfished because it is very profitable and the industry has been powerful enough to prevent reform for over 20 years.

Even more money could be made by more people if there were a 10 year moratorium on catching them, because they are the main fish at the bottom of the food chain eating biomass (phytoplankton) on the East Coast of the U.S. If their numbers could be brought back to what they used to be, the population of blue fin tuna, striped bass, redfish, bluefish, and humpback whales, to name just a few of the 79 species that feed on menhaden, would explode and create many commercial and sports fishing jobs.

By volume, more menhaden is harvested than any other species on the Atlantic coast of the U.S, most of them at the Omega Protein Corporation. Their menhaden fleets locate schools sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands from the sky using airplanes. They encircle them with 1,500-foot nets and haul them onto fishing vessels in extreme quantities. The newest boats in that fleet are nearly 180 feet long and can hold 2 million menhaden at a time (Jacobs 2024).

Postcarbon fast approaches with world peak oil production peaking in 2018, so allowing menhaden (and sardines, anchovies, herring) to increase is an easy way to feed people and prepare for the future. Menhaden also make a great fertilizer, which will be important as natural gas based fertilizers decline (see my post “The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive”).

Menhaden also keep the numbers of jellyfish under control, which aren’t nearly as nutritious as menhaden are. Because of climate change and pollution, there is a chance that a tipping point will be reached where jellyfish outnumber fish in the ocean (see my post “Why and how Jellyfish are taking over the world”, a book review of Lisa-ann Gershwin’s “Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean”).

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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Alice Friedemann. March 23, 2009. Meet menhaden – before this ecologically critical fish vanishes. Ethicurean.

Ever heard of menhaden? Probably not, although perhaps you’re familiar with the fish’s other names: bunker, pogies, mossbacks, bugmouths, alewifes, and fat-backs. You may be surprised to learn they’re the most important fish in the Atlantic and Gulf waters.

Menhaden are the vacuum cleaners of our coasts, filtering up to four gallons of water a minute to extract phytoplankton (algae and other tiny plants). They grow no more than a foot long at most, yet the weight of an entire school of menhaden can equal that of a blue whale.

On land, plants are at the bottom of the food chain, eaten by many herbivores—mice, rabbits, cattle, insects, and so on. In the ocean, plants are also at the bottom of the food chain. The difference is, there’s only one main herbivore: menhaden. The other filter feeders—like baleen whales, herring, and shad—eat zooplankton (tiny animals).

This gives menhaden an extraordinary weight in the oceanic ecosystem: they are the main food source of the entire food web above, and the main species keeping the ecosystem healthy, by clearing the water of excess algae.

Unfortunately, as H. Bruce Franklin documents in “The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America,” they’re almost all gone. And one company, Omega Protein, is systematically eliminating the few that remain, for fishmeal and poultry feed.

Men had it

When the Pilgrims first arrived in the New World, they were astounded by the abundant sea life. The rivers and coasts were teaming with 6-foot-long salmon, foot-wide oysters, and schools of 140-pound striped bass. There were so many whales criss-crossing bays, estuaries, and the coast that they were a peril to ships.

The food chain for all of this cornucopia of life depended on billions of menhaden, once so plentiful that they formed a veritable river of flesh along the Atlantic coast, writes Franklin.

I’d never heard of menhaden until my husband, who grew up in Florida, mentioned them. Just half a century ago, when he and his friends were swimming and the menhaden came through, “they looked like the shadow of a large, approaching cloud—the water boiled with fish, and everyone got out as fast as they could because there were sharks slashing through them, biting at anything that moved.”

Franklin describes menhaden schools as acting like a single organism: “Flashes of silver with flips of forked tails and splashes, whirling swiftly…in moves more dazzling than those of a modern dancer, as they seek escape from hordes of bluefish below and gulls above…a breathtaking experience.”

Menhaden were eaten by dozens of kinds of fish, as well as sea mammals and birds. (Humans don’t choose to eat them because they smell awful and are too oily. But we do eat them indirectly when we dine on menhaden predators, such as tuna, cod, shark, and swordfish.)

The Native American word for menhaden translates to “fertilizer”: they buried these fish below the corn they planted. The Pilgrims copied them, and grew triple the corn they could have otherwise. Later generations forgot about using menhaden as fertilizer, until an article about the practice in 1792 changed all that. It wasn’t long before millions of tons of menhaden were caught and dragged as far as seven miles inland to be dumped on fields, saving farmers the enormous cost of importing guano from Peru. By 1880 menhaden had also replaced whales as a source of oil, and the bits that weren’t used for oil were made into fertilizer or animal feed and shipped all over the country.

Meanwhile, wealthy landowners had permanent nets strung across rivers abutting their property, scooping up all passing fish. Unsurprisingly, fish populations declined dramatically, and by 1870, 90% were gone. Commercial fishermen and citizens desperately tried to stop permanent nets and the menhaden fleets, but wealthy interests were able to prevent any restrictions on fishing. By 1800 salmon had been fished out of New York and Connecticut, by 1840 there were no salmon south of Maine, and when the menhaden industry was finally banned in Maine in 1879, it was too late, the menhaden were gone, and the northern fishery collapsed.

Measuring from the 1860s to today, the combined weight of all the menhaden harvested is more than that of all other commercial fish—more than all the salmon, cod, tuna, halibut, herring, swordfish, flounder, snapper, anchovies, mackerel, and so on that humanity has dragged from the water in the last century and a half.

State by state, the commercial fishing industry wiped out menhaden and gone bankrupt. But it has never died out completely, because the U.S. government has spent taxpayer money to keep the industry going in states where menhaden still existed. There was no reason to do this, Franklin writes: menhaden oil, animal feed, and fertilizer have all been replaced with much cheaper petroleum and soybean substitutes. The role that menhaden play in the ocean’s food chain, however, is irreplaceable.

The ocean’s hoovers, damned

One company, Omega Protein, now catches the majority of menhaden, hunting down the last few remaining schools in two of the most productive fisheries, the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, both of which have suffered tremendous ecological damage and fishery destruction the past few decades. More than 30 Omega spotter planes direct a fleet of 61 ships to where the menhaden swim close to the surface. Omega Protein turns the aquatic herbivores into poultry feed and fishmeal for farmed salmon, two products for which there are cheaper and less devastating alternative sources.

Menhaden are not the only forage fish species being overharvested. According to the Marine Fish Conservation Network, “Globally, about 30% of all marine fish landed each year are forage fish (anchovies, sardines, hake, herring, Pollock, squid, krill) that are processed directly into fishmeal and oil and used in livestock and aquaculture feeds.” The U.N Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that insatiable demand from the global aquaculture industry will outstrip the available supplies of sources of fishmeal and fish oil within the next decade.

Not only are menhaden the main food item for many fish, but they play an even more critical role in the health of any aquatic ecosystem. They filter phytoplankton out, allowing sunlight to reach the depths where aquatic plants can prosper, which increases oxygen levels, allowing shellfish and fish to thrive. When algae aren’t consumed, they erupt into toxic algal blooms, die and sink to the bottom, smothering plants and depleting oxygen. This leads to massive die-offs of all sea life within these areas and is a major contributing factor, along with agricultural run-off from the Mississippi River, to the 8,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

If it were somehow possible to shut down the menhaden industry entirely, Franklin says, and the pitifully few populations protected and nursed back to health, then the ocean and estuaries could be cleansed, shellfish and fish populations recover, and a new sport and commercial fishing industry emerge as the dozens of fish that feast on menhaden return. Oysters, crabs, striped bass, and many other tasty species of seafood might thrive again if the oceans were cleared of toxic algal blooms. Far more jobs would be created if menhaden schools were to recover than would be lost if Omega Protein were forced to get out of the menhaden business.

No conservation organizations are trying to get rid of Omega Protein entirely. But legislatively, it’s been difficult even to get the fishing limits cut back or lower the bycatch of other fish. Congressmen and commissions in Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia have bowed to pressure from Omega Protein and the aquaculture industry in their states. The Marine Fish Conservation Network reports that “on Jan. 20, the Mississippi Commission on Marine Resources voted not to change any regulations or impose a catch limit on the menhaden industry. Omega’s stock rose the next day.”

The MFCN, which represents over 200 conservation and fishing groups, has a comprehensive list of related legislation and a wealth of resources about the menhaden and other fish issues. Other sites where you can learn more or take action:

• Gulf Restoration Network
• Save the Bait
• Menhaden Matter
• The Point Reyes Bird Observatory has taken a lead in studying this issue and offers good basic information about west coast forage species (anchovies and sardines) and their role in ecosystems.

AND EVEN MORE ABOUT Menhaden if you aren’t tired of the subject.

According to Chairman Robert H. Boyles Jr., Chairman of the ASMFC Menhaden Management Board and a fisheries biologist for over 35 years:

“I am concerned about the dwindling number of Atlantic menhaden and the impact that their disappearance has on the health of coastal ecosystems, fisheries and economies. Once abundant along the entire Eastern Seaboard, t he menhaden population has reached an all-time low of less than 10% of its historic size.  It is not enough to limit fishing mortality by the industrial-scale menhaden industry in order to provide a maximum sustainable yield for that fishery because menhaden are much more important ecologically as prey for higher trophic level species of the Atlantic coast. Menhaden are the primary prey item for a majority of Atlantic coast predatory fishes. But they are also a direct link in converting the primary productivity of coastal marshes into fish biomass of the other species targeted extensively by both commercial and recreational fishermen.  Menhaden are unique in that they are able to digest detritus (produced by the breakdown of marsh grass into small pieces which develop a coating of bacteria that the menhaden strips off in its digestive tract and expels, later to develop another bacterial coating, etc. etc.).  Thus, menhaden are able to convert estuarine primary productivity (by marsh grasses) into fish flesh – first theirs and later, when preyed upon, by vast numbers of marine predators such as striped bass and bluefin tuna.  Because menhaden are able to convert marsh productivity into fish flesh and they are the primary link in the Atlantic coastal fish food web, enlightened menhaden management is thus extremely important.  Without menhaden, we would not have the abundance of marine fish t hat exist off the Atlantic coast. This is the conclusion of scientists at NMFS’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center Laboratory at Beaufort, NC, during my tenure with the agency. I understand that …the Board is under pressure to [increase] the quota for 2015. I urge you to explicitly provide for the needs of menhaden predators before increasing menhaden catch limits for 2015 or beyond.

It’s important to note that there has been no documented increase in menhaden abundance here in the Northeast. De spite industry claims that large schools of previously uncounted adult fish are present in northern water s, these sightings appear to end in Providence Rhode Island–well short of menhadens historic range through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. More troubling for us on outer Cape Cod is the lack of juveniles (peanut bunker) that used to frequent our Ocean beaches drawing Striped Bass and Bluefish into the surf zone to the delight of the many surfcasters who live and visit here. Since 2008 when the last such instance of peanut bunker were present in our waters, there have been zero such schools here, making the beaches mos tly devoid of Striped Bass and B luefish through much of our brief fishing season.This is just one example of the negative consequences a diminished supply of menhaden has to our way of life, our local economy, and the health and vitality  of our marine ecosystem. It’s time to hold the line with menhaden conservation, and resist those interests who would like to see a relaxing of the catch limits we worked so hard to a ch ieve. Let’s allow menhaden the chance to recover to former levels of abundance thr oughout their historic range-including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.”

Andrew David Thaler in the article “Six reasons why Menhaden are the greatest fish we ever fished“:

“You could be forgiven if you thought that the American industrial revolution was powered by whale oil. The glossy lubricant was used primarily for lighting in pre-industrial America. By the time Herman Melville published Moby Dick, the golden age of whaling was already in decline. The Civil War was its death blow. Out of that conflict came the industrial menhaden industry. By 1880, half a billion menhaden were being rendered into oil and fertilizer. There were almost three times as many menhaden ships as whaling ship. A menhaden boat could produce more oil in a week than a whaling ship could during it’s entire, multi-year voyage, and it could do so close to shore and out of harms way.

The environmental movement and fisheries ecology rose from the first menhaden collapse. George Marshs’s Man and Nature, later retitled The Earth as Modified by Human Action, published in 1864, was the first major work to link the principles of naturalism with the rigor of ecology. Its publication mark the beginning of the modern environmental movement. In Extirpation of Aquatic Animals, he points to the decimation of menhaden as one of the key examples of our impact on the oceans. In 1879, George Brown Goode released his monumental work, A History of the Menhaden, the first, and still one of the the most comprehensive, studies of an American fishery. In 1880, we were running out of menhaden. The schools that Goode had studied, primarily north of Cape Cod, were gone. Even today, the menhaden’s range is a fraction of what it once was. Yet we continue to fish for them, for one very compelling reason.

Menhaden are really, really good at making more Menhaden.  An adult female menhaden can produce more than 300,000 eggs in a year. They become sexually mature after 2 years. If you look up fecund in a dictionary, you’ll see a picture of a menhaden. That fact alone is the reason that, even after a major fisheries collapse in 1880, they are still a viable fishery, though we have fallen from half a billion tons at its peaks to a measly 300,000 tons, today. This profound fecundity also means that, with reduced pressure, they still have a chance to recover.”

You have to wonder if the NOAA and Atlantic States Marine (ASMFC) are captured government agencies, since the Chesapeake Bay Ecological Foundation, Inc writes that:

Chesapeake Bay Ecological Foundation (CBEF) disagrees with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) 2015 menhaden stock assessment’s conclusion that menhaden have not been overfished in five decades. The informed public is confused and skeptical since the assessment does not address ecological overfishing unsustainable harvest levels that disrupt the natural balance between predators and prey). Although the 2015 assessment indicated menhaden reproductive potential may be greater than previously thought, total abundance of this indispensable prey species is low and continuing to decline.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has 10 reasons why the menhaden catch limit should not be increased in 2017, here are a few of them:

Menhaden remain far below their historic numbers in the Northern and Southern regions of the East Coast. However, if conservation efforts continue, they can be abundant again from Maine to Florida.

• The vast majority of the menhaden fished coast-wide are caught in one relatively small area near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which is also a vital nursery area for many ocean species. An increase in the 2017 quota would intensify fishing in this important and vulnerable estuary, which is already harmed by the loss of important habitats and poor water quality.
• The latest peer-reviewed scientific assessment identified a growing number of mature menhaden, indicating that the population is poised to increase.   But it also suggests that menhaden are still vulnerable: The overall number in recent years was near historic lows, as was the number of young fish surviving long enough to reproduce and help the population grow.
• Giving menhaden time under current catch limits to return to their historic population size and range will deliver the highest benefit to Atlantic coast ecosystems, economies, and fishermen.

As to whether menhaden improve water quality or not, I can find only one paper on this done in a laboratory 5 years ago, so this doesn’t seem to be a settled matter at all.

Consider too that predatory fish can’t make omega-3’s themselves, but are high in omega-3 fatty acids because of eating menhaden, making them an important part of a healthy diet.

References

Jacobs R (2024) We all know we should save the whales. What about the sardines? Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2024/02/ocean-conservation-menhaden-fisheries-fish-oil.html