In a marathon four-hour fishery management meeting on Tuesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)’s Menhaden Management Board grappled with menhaden catch limits up and down the East Coast. Under pressure from environmentalists to cut catch limits and from menhaden fishermen to protect their livelihoods, board members for the ASMFC voted to reduce the coastwide menhaden catch by 20% in 2026, allowing fishermen to land 186,840 metric tons. The total allowable catch will be revisited in time for the 2027 and 2028 seasons. This motion passed 16-2, with only Virginia and Pennsylvania voting against it.
Inside the Chesapeake Bay, however, the rules are different. The Virginia menhaden reduction fishery, led by purse seine operator Ocean Harvesters, adheres to its own limit, known as the “Bay Cap”, which is currently set at 51,000 metric tons of fish. But environmentalists argue that a much lower Bay Cap is needed to protect the environment. They want to cut the reduction fishery’s limit by 50%. Groups like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation believe menhaden are in trouble, and since menhaden are an important forage fish, that there isn’t enough food to go around for predators like osprey and rockfish. The Virginia menhaden fishing industry disputes the claim that menhaden are in trouble, or that the Bay’s osprey and rockfish population struggles are directly related to a lack of menhaden.
The two sides have been clashing for years over catch limits and the abundance of this small, oily feeder fish. The argument comes down to whether or not the species is at risk—and whether or not menhaden processing giant Omega Protein’s fishing contractors, Ocean Harvesters, are taking too many fish out of the Chesapeake Bay. The two sides have, essentially, been at an impasse since there has been no science-driven process to measure the Baywide menhaden population like there is for striped bass or blue crabs. But that may soon be changing, a development that is welcome to the menhaden industry and environmental advocates alike.
The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) just funded a new project that will pull together all of the existing research on menhaden in the Bay, identify gaps in the research, and propose new study methods to fill these gaps. This would lead to solid research for setting a meaningful Bay harvest cap for that is based on data and is scientifically defensible.
Scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and NOAA, will lead the project to develop a “research roadmap” for Bay fishery managers.
Since that future research won’t be available for some time, the ASMFC Menhaden Management Board moved to initiate a new addendum that would potentially change how the Bay Cap is used, or lower the limit. This addendum would “develop periods for the Chesapeake Bay Cap that distributes fishing effort more evenly throughout the season” and it would also develop “a range of options to reduce the Bay Cap.” These options could be anything from keeping the cap at its current level to a 50% reduction. The hope is to have a draft of the addendum ready to present at ASMFC’s next meeting this winter.
Several individuals from different parts of the Bay community traveled to Tuesday’s ASMFC meeting in Dewey Beach, Delaware, to make public comments ahead of the decision-making. Multiple Virginia menhaden fishermen, some who trace their family business back several generations, pleaded with the board. Captain Thomas Moore said his crew ranges in age from 22 to 66. “We love our jobs and are very passionate about them. Our owner has changed but our men have not for five generations. Any cuts would hurt us, our families and our community,” he said.
Thomas Lilly, a menhaden conservation advocate from Whitehaven, Maryland, argued that menhaden didn’t arrive in the Bay for the first six weeks of the 2025 season, saying the charter fishing industry, which makes its money on the rockfish that eat menhaden, is suffering. “Nineteen out of 22 charter fisherman at Somers Cove Marina [in Crisfield] have gone out of business,” he said, pushing for tighter limits on the reduction fishery.
Robert Newberry, president of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, also called for tighter catch limits for Ocean Harvesters, on behalf of watermen who rely on menhaden for crab bait. He said, “I respectfully ask that we weigh on the side of caution and allow these fish to grow up so our bait industry doesn’t suffer and our crab industry doesn’t suffer.”
In the end, the 20% coastwide reduction for the 2026 season may be a compromise. But some conservationists still aren’t satisfied. Reacting to the board’s decision-making, Center for Biological Diversity Oceans Attorney Mark Patrollena said, “I’m disappointed that the commission once again caved to industry pressure by allowing corporate fishing interests to catch too much menhaden, which will take food out of the mouths of hungry osprey chicks… These modest catch limit reductions are wholly inadequate to protect the menhaden and the creatures that need them to survive.”
