Why the fight over the Chesapeake’s most political fish is coming to a head

A generations-old fight over the Chesapeake Bay’s most polarizing fish could be nearing a pivotal point: Atlantic Coast regulators are considering whether to cut in half the amount of menhaden that industrial fishing boats are allowed to take from the estuary each year.

The industrial fishing operation, based out of Reedville, Virginia, in the lower part of the estuary, has divided the bay community for more than a century. In recent years, the fight has driven campaign donations, warring news releases and countless hours of debate. This summer, for instance, industry groups have critiqued a College of William & Mary ecologist whose research ties plummeting osprey birthrates to disappearing menhaden in the bay.

The debate has even sparked confrontations at sea: Protesters have at points circled industrial fishing vessels to block the large purse seines they use to ensnare fish. Virginia lawmakers recently passed legislation making this kind of harassment punishable with up to a year of jail time.

An oily and nutrient-rich fish that doesn’t grow much bigger than a loaf of bread, the Atlantic menhaden is at the center of one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most deep-seated divides. Industry backers argue that the fishery has supported good-paying jobs for generations of blue-collar workers, many of them Black or Latino. Conservationists blame industrial fishing boats for killing off an important forage fish and starving other important species, such as osprey and striped bass.

Though the industrial fishing boats are based out of a single port in Virginia, critics say they deal widespread damage to the bay ecosystem.

The proposed catch limits, which regulators on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will consider at their annual meeting next month, wouldn’t be the first time managers have tightened controls on the menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay, but they could mark the largest percentage cut yet.

The board will consider restricting the bay catch by as much as 50%, a decision that also comes as Virginia scientists are beginning a study that could finally provide answers to questions about the health of menhaden in the bay.

A public comment period on the proposed new bay limit closes Friday night. A year ago, the Atlantic fisheries board imposed a 20% cut to the coast-wide menhaden catch and could go farther at next month’s meeting.

The Reedville port site employs about 260 workers at the last outpost of an industry that once spanned much of the Atlantic coast. There, fishermen for the company Ocean Harvesters use spotter planes and huge trawling nets to catch schools of menhaden. That practice is banned in all Atlantic states save Virginia, which gets three-quarters of the whole East Coast menhaden catch allocated by regulators.

Ocean Harvesters provides its catch to the Canadian-owned Omega Protein, which processes menhaden into fish oil supplements or sends it to Canada to feed industrial salmon farms.

Kenny Pinkard, a former fisherman for Ocean Harvesters, said that if regulators approve cuts this fall, it will spell the end of the industry in Virginia. Since Pinkard started on the fishing boats in the 1980s, the Reedville fleet has shrunk from 21 boats to six.

A third-generation boat worker for Ocean Harvesters, Pinkard said groups like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation don’t care about the fishing industry’s importance for a diverse group of Virginia union workers and their families.

“Their biggest concern is having the Chesapeake as a playground, not as a workplace,” Pinkard said.

The latest fight in the menhaden saga comes as more ospreys are failing to reproduce in the Chesapeake, a grim sentinel for the health of menhaden, their primary food source.

Sometimes called “the osprey garden of the world,” the bay is a globally important breeding ground for these raptors. But recent findings from the College of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology show that this year was the worst on record for the bird’s breeding.

Bryan Watts, the center’s director, found that in saltier waters of the bay, more than 80% of osprey pairs produced no surviving young. At this rate, the bay’s population of ospreys will halve in the next decade, Watts wrote last month.

The problem, he says is there aren’t enough menhaden.

Watts’ latest findings drew criticism this summer from the CEO of Ocean Harvesters, who argued that activists were likely to twist the research to fuel “an oversimplified blame campaign.”

Even civil rights leaders have waded into the fray. In a June letter, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference appealed to Gov. Wes Moore to not “place the Bay against working people” in the state’s approach to menhaden limits.

Will Poston, who leads the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s menhaden advocacy, said other environmental factors may contribute to menhaden declines, but restricting the fishery is the only option regulators have to address the crisis.

Poston and the Bay Foundation are asking regulators to cut bay catch limits 50%, to 25,500 metric tons. He also supports measures such as pushing much of the fishing operation into the fall, when ospreys are beginning to fly south for the winter.

“The warnings are so grave now that we can’t afford to wait,” Poston said.

A bipartisan group of Maryland legislators backed that sentiment in a letter to the Atlantic fisheries board last month, while dozens of residents turned out to a public input meeting in Annapolis to plead for regulation.

Among them was Alex Cregan, a recreational fisherman and outdoorsman, who said that in almost 25 years of fishing on the Chesapeake, he’s seen once-abundant schools of menhaden scatter from the bay.

“This fish has zero representation,” he said. “Nobody’s cared about it until we get to these points of absolute failure.”

Ocean Harvesters does most of its fishing outside the Chesapeake, but the bay catch makes up a large share of the company’s coast-wide quota. Fishery managers first capped the bay catch in 2006, and they’ve steadily tightened limits since.

Exactly how much industrial trawlers contribute to depletion of bay menhaden remains largely a mystery, as much for fishermen and conservationists as for scientists.

Rob Latour, a fisheries ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, is leading a study that could soon begin to answer that question. After years of debate, Virginia and federal officials authorized funding for that research earlier this year, and Latour expects to have initial findings by the end of next year.

The Virginia scientist doesn’t think the industrial fishery is the only factor behind menhaden woes. Many fish have migrated north, and Latour believes warming waters from climate change play a major role.

To conduct his research over the next year, Latour said his team will need Ocean Harvesters to keep fishing. Regulators can impose new limits, he said, but for now that regulatory decision isn’t grounded in data.

“Which is fine,” he added. “But it means we probably don’t need the science anymore, because they’ve already made their decision.”