MOBILE, Alabama — A recent vote by federal officials to cut the menhaden harvest along the Atlantic Coast by 37 percent has focused new attention on the massive menhaden catch in the Gulf of Mexico.
The menhaden fishery is the largest harvest in the Gulf, with an annual take of about 1 billion pounds a year, or roughly 10 times larger than any other Gulf fishery, according to federal landings data.
The Atlantic fishery produced about half a billion pounds last year, the data shows.
The Atlantic Fishery Management Commission, which regulates fishing in federal waters on the East Coast, chose to limit the catch there, citing overfishing and a dramatic drop in the size of the menhaden population. Some scientific assessments concluded that the population was about 8 percent of historic levels on the Atlantic Coast.
Omega Protein, a Texas-based company with processing plants in Moss Point and Louisiana, harvests almost all of the menhaden caught along both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Menhaden are processed and used to make animal feed, fish bait and oils used in vitamins and products such as lipstick.
Faced with a nearly 40 percent reduction in the Atlantic harvest level, some worry Omega Protein will increase the catch coming out of the Gulf to make up the difference. Company officials said they were still analyzing what the lower harvest limits in the Atlantic will mean for operations. Ben Landry, an Omega Protein spokesman, said the company did not plan to increase the Gulf harvest “for the foreseeable future.”
To catch menhaden, companies use airplanes to guide purse net boats to schools of fish larger than football fields.
More than 100 million pounds come ashore at Omega’s Moss Point plant each year, and nearly 900 million pounds are landed in Louisiana.
Menhaden have a rapid life cycle and are prolific spawners, a trait that helps protect them from overfishing in some measure, said Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama. But they play a critical role in the ecosystem.
“They are one of the major forage species in the Gulf. They are abundant, and biomass is high. They are preyed upon by all the upper-level predators, mackerel and tuna,” Shipp said, adding that menhaden also figure prominently in the diet of inshore species, such as speckled trout and flounder.
“If they are overfished, it would have an impact on the entire ecosystem,” Shipp said.
Purse net boats are not allowed to work in Texas or Florida’s state waters, and they are prohibited from Mobile Bay in Alabama.
But they are allowed to work in much of Alabama’s portion of the Mississippi Sound, and in all of Mississippi’s portion of the sound. The large net boats are a common sight in the sound.
“We feel like the impact on the Mississippi Sound needs to be assessed. I will state without reservation that we don’t know what the menhaden fishery is doing to the ecosystem in the sound,” said F.J. Eicke, chairman of the governmental relations committee of the Coastal Conservation Association’s Mississippi chapter.
Eicke said Omega Protein considers the location where it harvests menhaden proprietary and does not release details regarding the catch in Mississippi waters. Federal records provide only the states where fish are brought to port, not locations where they are caught.
Chris Dorsett, with the Ocean Conservancy, said the notion of a localized depletion of menhaden off Mississippi has been discussed for several years. He said he was unaware of any scientific studies, including federal stock assessments, that addressed the question.
“That’s a concern that has always been raised, whether or not they are adequately factoring in ecosystem effects of removing menhaden from certain areas,” Dorsett said. “Menhaden are so important for marine birds and fish, and you are removing a lot of fish. Being able to factor where that catch comes from is important from an ecosystem context.”
Eicke said the federal stock assessments for menhaden, which are used to set the annual quota, do not address the Gulf population in terms of individual states. The most recent stock assessment concluded that the species is not being overfished in the Gulf.
“A Gulfwide assessment that says they are spawning doesn’t tell us anything about what is going on in Mississippi. The result is that certain bodies of water, particularly the Mississippi Sound, may be suffering the consequences of overfishing,” Eicke said.
Scientists have described “localized depletions” for other species along certain portions of the Gulf Coast resulting from commercial fishing.
A similar situation emerged in Chesapeake Bay, with Maryland banning the menhaden net boats from its waters after concluding the harvest was hurting the larger ecosystem.
“You can’t take a huge volume out of these waters and not have consequences,” Eicke said. “We need to look at this now, before they start hitting the Gulf population harder.”