Menhaden Management Board Looks At More Restrictions For Reduction Fishing In The Chesapeake Bay

By Shannon Heckt, Virginia Mercury

August 13, 2025

A board that oversees the management of critical forage fish menhaden along the Atlantic coast is looking into further restricting Virginia’s only commercial menhaden reduction fishery.

Last week, the Atlantic States Marine Commission’s menhaden management board voted to task a workgroup with determining options for spreading out menhaden reduction fishing caps throughout the year to manage the fish populations in the Chesapeake Bay.

This would only impact Ocean Harvesters, owned by Reedville-based Omega Protein, which is already under reduction fishing caps of 51,000 metric tons. This fishery reduces the fish into oil and fishmeal. Smaller fisheries in the bay use the fish for bait. Some sportsfishers and environmentalists believe too many menhaden are being fished from the Chesapeake. One group of anglers recently penned a letter to President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to protect the fish.

The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, conversely, feels the Virginia reduction fishery has been unfairly blamed for issues in the entire ecosystem that could potentially be attributed to environmental challenges; however, more data is needed to nail down the specific impacts on menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.

Fewer fish prompts quest for more data

Lynn Fegley of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources introduced the motion to begin exploring further restrictions on Omega Protein. Fegley said a smaller fishery in her state is suffering because menhaden are not reaching their shores. She claimed that the population of fish is being accounted for in other parts of the Chesapeake Bay, but they are not seeing enough of them in the northern bay.

“The reduction fisheries pressure has been increasing in the middle part of the summer… and potentially leading to a choke point where that biomass of menhaden isn’t making its way into Maryland,” said Will Poston, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s forage fish manager. “Maryland’s small-scale commercial fisheries, which are stationary gears, pound nets that have a well-established time series of data.”

Maryland experienced a major fish kill of thousands of mostly juvenile menhaden washing up on their shores in the summer of 2024 that was attributed to low oxygen due to water quality issues.

“We understand that this is a coast-wide issue. We understand that things are changing … there is significant effort by a large-scale fishery in the Chesapeake Bay. The fish were there but they were not where we are,” Fegley said.

The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition fired back on allegations their operations are bottlenecking the nutrient-rich fish and preventing them from reaching farther up the Chesapeake Bay to Maryland fisheries, as well as leading to osprey populations decreasing.

“Now, when fishermen report low summer menhaden catch, Maryland frames the pound net fishery as a targeted menhaden fishery under threat from Virginia’s “intercept” fleet—itself an incredible stretch to suggest six menhaden fishing boats “blockade” the lower Chesapeake Bay,” the coalition’s statement read.

Fegley also led an effort last year to look into “precautionary management” methods. A workgroup compiled a list of ideas on how to manage the concerns around the menhaden populations but frequently mentioned the need for more data.

The commission’s stock report of menhaden accepted in 2022 for all of the Atlantic Coast states that menhaden are not overfished. But some environmentalists believe that the Chesapeake Bay populations specifically are in decline and the data is getting lost in the big picture.

“I am not saying this is an intercept fishery. What I am saying is that the conditions are changing in such a way that we are having a real fishery problem in Maryland. This is not just about Maryland, it is about an ecosystem that supports the coast,” Fegley said.

Due to the drop in striped bass and osprey populations that rely on the forage fish to survive, conservationists are eager to find a solution. The U.S. Geological Survey presented to the board last summer about the osprey decline.

“Their findings suggested that while the Chesapeake Bay osprey decline was real, it likely stemmed from a complex array of ecological stressors, not simply the availability of menhaden. In fact, USGS explicitly did not attribute osprey declines to menhaden harvest pressure,” the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition said in a statement.

Commercial fishing yields of menhaden have also reportedly dropped in recent years according to Fegley and other board members, leading them to look for any insight into why it is happening. There have been state-level efforts to fund research in the Virginia General Assembly into the bay’s menhaden populations but those efforts have not been successful.

“The Chesapeake’s fisheries and predators can’t wait. Menhaden are key to a thriving Chesapeake Bay, and a healthy, productive Chesapeake is vital to the entire Atlantic coast,” said Chris Moore, Chesapeake Bay Foundation Virginia Executive Director. “We appreciate the efforts of those on the ASMFC menhaden management board who have worked to keep this important issue at the forefront.”

In a press release response to comments made by Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Ocean Harvest said “(CBF) omits mention of well-documented water quality issues in Maryland that may also explain the localized fishery observations cited.”

The workgroup will collect data on the possibility of the reduction fishing caps being shifted to different parts of the seasons, as members of the board shared insight into the menhaden populations showing up in the Chesapeake later in the year. The work group will present their ideas on how to manage the fishery caps at the ASMC winter 2026 board meeting.

The board members said “something is going on” but they aren’t sure why the fish are arriving late and not approaching the shore as much as they used to. Fourteen of the board members voted in favor of the work group, with the representatives from Virginia and New Jersey voting against it.

Some of the members pointed out that there are similar concerns around menhaden yields, striped bass population decline, and osprey decline along the coast outside of the Chesapeake Bay. They want to focus research into the cause and how to protect the fish beyond imposing additional restrictions on the one fishery.

“The only real recourse to ensure the health of the ecosystem is to err on the side of conservation and be more risk averse in how (to) manage this industrial fishery that concentrates so much effort in and around Chesapeake Bay,” Poston said.

The 2024 workgroup made multiple recommendations on how to obtain better data around the menhaden populations, such as seasonal or area closures for menhaden reduction fishing, quota days or periods, restricting some gear usage, or further reducing the menhaden reduction fishing cap.

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit Virginia Mercury.com.