CLA Files Petition for Rulemaking in Menhaden Case

Menhaden are called the most important fish in the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean because they are a critical forage fish: the primary food source for many predators, including sportfish like striped bass (rockfish), bluefish, and weakfish, as well as ospreys and marine mammals like humpback whales and dolphins throughout the Atlantic region. For years, the public has called for more responsible limits on the amount of menhaden that can be fished in order to protect the Bay’s delicate ecosystem. 

The Issue:

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) is charged with regulating the menhaden fishery within Virginia waters and the Chesapeake Bay, and is statutorily required to consider and apply specific conservation and management measures to protect the fishery. Currently, the VMRC allows a single industrial harvesting company to capture and kill over 350 million pounds of menhaden from the Bay and Virginia waters, every year (the “reduction fishery”). The reduction fishery uses massive high-capacity netting and hauling techniques that capture several football field-sized schools of menhaden for fish meal, pet food, and other supplements. 

The best available science shows that menhaden populations in the Bay are in decline. As regional overfishing of menhaden continues, there is a strong and direct correlation with declines in populations of reliant species like striped bass and osprey, along with forced shifts in diet away from their primary food source of menhaden. The situation is so dire that Bay states are considering dramatic restrictions on fishing seasons for striped bass, and Maryland has already limited its striped bass fishery. Despite these grave conditions, the VMRC has failed to restrict the reduction fishery, by even a single fish, instead allowing the maximum harvest each year that is permitted under the federal maximum limits. 

For more than a decade, outdated and unreliable data from population surveys along the Atlantic Coast – and not in the Bay – have been used to justify fisheries regulations that fail to protect the public, Bay fishing communities, and the Bay ecosystem. The Southern Maryland Recreational Fishing Organization is part of a broader community—tens of thousands of people—dedicated to protecting the Bay ecosystem and its recreational fishing industry; an industry that provides 10,000 jobs and generates over a billion dollars in economic activity in the region. 

CLA Takes Action:

In May 2023, Chesapeake Legal Alliance responded by filing a challenge, on behalf of the Southern Maryland Recreational Fishing Organization, against the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC), the agency charged with regulating Virginia’s menhaden fishery. We challenged the VMRC’s failure to develop and implement regulations that consider and incorporate statutorily-required conservation and management measures, including prevention of overfishing; consideration of the best available scientific, economic, and biological data; equitable allocation to users; and rulemaking that is not for the sole purpose of economic allocation. The case continues in Virginia Circuit Court, and Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters recently intervened in the litigation. 

Now, and separate from the litigation to better regulate the menhaden fishery, we coordinated with fishing and conservation groups across the Bay watershed to develop a petition for rulemaking to the VMRC. The petition is led by the Chesapeake Legal Alliance and our client, Southern Maryland Recreational Fishing Organization, along with co-petitioners from across the Bay region, are filing a petition for rulemaking, asking the VMRC to employ specific conservation and management measures that better regulate the fishery to protect the Bay and the public’s interest. The petition lays out the blueprint for ‘how’ and ‘why’ the agency should be acting.

Read the full petition for rulemaking below: