Menhaden processor Omega Protein and menhaden harvester Ocean Harvesters are both pushing back after an environmental NGO laid the blame for a lack of funding for research in Virginia’s two-year state budget.
A proposed research initiative for menhaden would have provided USD 1 million (EUR ) per year for two years to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in order to develop scientific research on the species, and a scientifically justifiable Chesapeake Bay harvest cap. Under current regulations, the menhaden quota in the Chesapeake Bay is 51,000 metric tons (MT), but that total is based on average landings of menhaden and not a biological reference point.
The funding would have contributed to an existing study by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, which is creating a detailed roadmap to manage the fishery more effectively.
However, Virginia’s USD 205 billion (EUR ) budget didn’t include any funding for menhaden research, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), an NGO devoted to the environment in the bay and a long-time critic of the menhaden fishery, partly leveled the blame at Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters.
“Each year industry delay tactics have helped kill the funding, despite broad support from Virginians who want to see this fishery managed with better science,” CBF said.
The NGO then took the lack of research as another reason to halt fishing in the Chesapeake Bay.
“No science, no industrial fishing. With one massive industry continuing to empty the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia must pause menhaden reduction fishing in the Bay,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation Forage Campaign Manager Will Poston said in a release. “The menhaden industry has not once offered public support for funding state menhaden research. The continued political pressure from Omega Protein and their McGuireWoods lobbyists to delay science is damning – and should concern everyone who cares about the Bay.”
The two companies pushed back on the claims, and said Poston’s statement was “false, defamatory, and should be withdrawn immediately.”
“The need for better data is especially important because current Chesapeake Bay menhaden management is built around a harvest cap that was established as a precautionary political compromise, not as a Bay-specific biological reference point,” the two companies said. “Future changes to the Bay cap should be informed not by politics, but by credible science and a clear understanding of ecological, economic, and workforce impacts.”
The two companies have publicly supported research in the past, and have publicly talked of supporting 15 separate menhaden research projects despite repeated rejections by Virginia lawmakers to study its abundance.
“CBF’s ironic ‘no science, no industrial fishing’ slogan ignores the fact that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has repeatedly found that menhaden is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring,” the two companies said. “Since 2020, the fishery has been managed using ecological reference points designed specifically to account for menhaden’s role as forage for predators.”
