Menhaden demise is sad tale

I [Bob Sampson] just finished reading an excellent book that should be required reading for every politician, fisheries committee member, conservationist, angler or just interested citizens between Texas and Maine. It's called "The Most Important Fish In The Sea," written by Bruce Franklin of Island Press.
When I ask the question: "What is the most important fish in the sea?" to fishermen, even seasoned charter captains say things such as striped bass, tuna, bluefish, fluke and other predators at the top of the food pyramid.

• The answer is closer to the bottom of the food chain -- Brevortia tyrannus, the menhaden, moss bunker, bunker, pogie or any number of other names that have been tagged on this incredibly significant, overlooked, underestimated, overfished and underappreciated species.
• Franklin's book is a detailed historical account that essentially tells the story of the systematic destruction of this "most important fish" -- menhaden -- from colonial times to the present. The book filled in a few of the dots in my perception of this tragic history. It's a situation that needs to be addressed now.
• There are two major facts that were lacking from my knowledge base, that once clarified in "The Most Important Fish In The Sea" pulled everything together.
• First and most interesting, I didn't realize this species had been heavily exploited since the late 1700s and were most likely the fish the Plymouth Colony were taught to put under the corn they planted for fertilizer.
• Second, Franklin pointed out in his book that filter feeding, menhaden consume phytoplankton (algae) and detritus, which are both water quality destroyers. Detritus is the non-living organic matter that is stirred up by rains and strong winds that clouds the water like a fog. Detritus can block sunlight from reaching the bottom, where oxygen-producing plants such as eel grass may die off.
• Few other organisms have the ability to target two such environmentally harmful factors and turn them into living fish flesh that is rich in oil and protein, forage that during this fish's life history from fingerlong peanut bunker to two-pound-plus adults provides (or actually provided) high-quality forage for every predatory fish, bird and mammal that lives in or near the ocean from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Maine.
• When swimming along, with their mouths open and gill rakers filtering out its food from the water, a single bunker can filter roughly four gallons of water per minute through its gills. Now factor this by billions, probably trillions of individual fish, the kinds of numbers our waters once held before two centuries of commercial exploitation turned them into oil, fertilizer, fish meal, cosmetics and numerous other byproducts.
• Combine the menhaden, which is essentially like the filter in an aquarium in the water column, with seas that were once blanketed on the bottom with another important filter feeder -- oyster -- and you had gin clear, healthy waters wherever this fish swam.
• Commercial overharvest of these two lowly species, along with about anything else that is worth putting a name on or hook into, has upset the balance in local ecosystems and evidence is strong that some of our pollution woes could be reduced if these living filters were at even a fraction of their historical abundance.
• Slow death
• The demise of the Atlantic and more recently, Gulf of Mexico, populations of menhaden is a classic example of commercial interests being put in front of biological needs. Like my friend Captain Don Cameron said: In Alaska, where most of its fisheries are healthy and viable, the state puts the fish ahead of peoples' wishes. Here, human interests are put ahead of the fish.
• It's where politicians and commercial fishing lobbyists, supported to a great extent by a commercial fisheries-friendly federal bureaucracy, have done their damage to the resource that is the heritage of all Americans, not the personal property of a small number of boat owners and industrial level processors.
• Without producers to provide a connection between the sun's energy and the rest of us, this world would be an anaerobic, bacteria-filled swill pit that could not support much higher forms of life than single-celled or simple multi-celled organisms.
• Ecologically, menhaden are somewhat unique in that they are phytoplankton and detritus eaters, which essentially gives them a limitless source of food with little competition. Because they essentially feed on single-celled algae, the simplest form of producer, they provide an important link in the food chain between producers and consumers -- the rest of us that need that energy to survive and evolve.
• His work indicates that the inshore waters of North America supported incredible numbers of menhaden, which were almost a solid mass along the coast from the Gulf of Mexico to Maine and extending for a few miles out into the ocean.
• According to the book, around 1792 farmers discovered (probably as a result of earlier advise from native Americans) that using menhaden ground and spread or simply turned into the soil at a rate of 10,00 per acre in depleted soils, would increase crop yields by 10 to 40 bushels per acre. It was great fertilizer because it was cheap and readily available along the entire coast.
• But the heavy oil content from bunker and the practice of putting them whole on crop fields eventually ruined the fields. Someone got the bright idea of boiling or rendering the oil out of the fish first, then grinding it up for a less smelly fertilizer that was not harmful to fields. This was step one in the beginning of the end for this species.
• The second step in the demise of Atlantic menhaden stocks took place with the advent of fast steamships and purse seines, which allowed boats to encircle and essentially pluck entire schools of these fish from the ocean like picking mushrooms.
• Overharvest went on unabated as companies moved south to follow the fish as the population shrunk back from the northeast. It was easier and cheaper to build factories where the fish were than to catch and carry them to existing processing plants that had been built during the early phases of the menhaden fishing boom in New England.
• I'd bet that given a decade without any industrial-level harvest (limited taking of bunker for bait would be allowable), the recovery of menhaden populations would improve populations of other valuable sport and commercial fish species to a point that jobs would be created to replace those that will inevitably be lost by workers in the bunker fishing industry.
• Evidence as to the probability that taking the pressure off these fish could well begin to turn things around is the few menhaden that have been moving through Connecticut Waters to Narragansett Bay and beyond over the past three or four years. This is a direct result of some improvement in the menhaden population when New Jersey finally woke up and kicked commercial bunker boats out of its territorial waters in 2000. Connecticut did it in Long Island Sound back in the late 1970s, but it didn't do much good because the fish were wiped out at their source in the south. The bunker in Norwich Harbor that are producing stripers to 30 pounds are a direct, but minor result of New Jersey's action.
• The heavy overexploitation by commercial factory ships has to end. Menhaden are the most important fish in the sea and they belong to all the other fish in the sea and the people of this country -- not a few money-hungry commercial processors. (Bob Sampson Jr, Norwich Bulletin).