In Praise of the Lowly Menhaden

Atlantic menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus (credit: Virginia Institute of Marine Science)

Question: what do bluefish, striped bass, bluefin tuna, laughing gulls, herring gulls, great black-backed gulls, double-crested cormorants, brown pelicans, ospreys, bald eagles, harbor seals, harbor porpoises, bottlenose dolphins, and humpback whales all have in common?  Yes, they're all fish-eating predators (aka piscivores).  And it turns out they all love one particular species of forage fish: the Atlantic Menhaden (Brevoortia tyrranus).

Also called "bunker" in the Chesapeake region and "pogy" in New England, the Atlantic menhaden is a small, silvery, schooling fish related to herrings, shads, and sardines (order Clupeiformes).  Their bellies are shiny and light in color.  They have a large black dot on each "shoulder," behind their gill plates, often with a series of smaller spots trailing further aft.  Their silver sides transition into a darker olive green or blue on their backs.  

Menhaden are adapted for a life of constant swimming, with a thin, streamlined body and deeply-forked tail that propels them through the water.  The menhaden is a filter feeder, swimming with its mouth open and straining plankton from the water with sieve-like gill-rakers.  Ecologically, they are equivalent to tiny baleen whales, swimming around with their mouths open, filtering plankton from the water. One of the more disturbing curiosities about menhaden is that they are common hosts for tongue-eating isopods. These parasitic crustaceans consume the flesh of the fish's tongue and then physically take the place of the tongue while continuing to dine on the fish’s blood. Wouldn't that be a great subject for a horror movie?

Vast schools of Atlantic menhaden swim along the east coast of North America from Nova Scotia to Florida.  Most Atlantic menhaden migrate annually, moving north and inshore in spring, often forming enormous schools of similarly-sized individuals. The largest fish move furthest north in summer.  Adults typically migrate south to the waters off North Carolina for the winter, which is where they spawn. Each mature female produces hundreds of thousands of eggs, which are fertilized in the water.  Larvae are carried by currents into the bays, sounds, and estuaries, where juveniles grow in the relative safety of shallow waters.  They reach reproductive maturity in a year and can live for up to 12 years, grow to over a foot in length and weigh up to about a pound.  But because of commercial fishing and all of those predators, hardly any menhaden survive more than just a few years. 

Often categorized as a “forage species,” Atlantic menhaden are pursued by a variety of predators and are a key link between the lower and upper levels of the food web.  Forage species tend to reproduce prodigiously and live in dense aggregations; they live fast and die young. This description fits the Atlantic menhaden perfectly.

Cool graphic on a fancy sportfishing boat seen in Beaufort, NC.  The predator depicted here is a king mackerel and we'll give you three guesses as to which species of prey it's chasing.  Recreational anglers have a keen awareness of the menhaden's importance to their favorite pastime.

 

Like other members of the herring tribe, menhaden have a very high fat content.  In fact, they are probably the fattiest species in that lineage. This fat is what makes them so valuable as a food source.  Fat equals calories.  The fat is also what makes them a valuable economic commodity.   

Although they are not palatable to humans, we have harvested menhaden for centuries.  The Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to use menhaden as fertilizer for their crops. Menhaden are now the target of the largest industrial fishery on the east coast of the United States.  Because of their importance to the marine food web, they are also the "poster child" for the debate on how the harvest of forage species should be managed. If we over-harvest menhaden, then there would be less of them available for all of their predators, which could result in declining populations of those predators. And many of those predator species, such as bluefin tuna and striped bass, are themselves the targets of lucrative fisheries. So this debate often pits various fishery sectors against each other. The lobster fishery wants the menhaden fishery to maintain high catch levels to ensure an inexpensive supply of bait. But the bluefin tuna industry wants the menhaden harvest to be restricted to ensure that the tuna have adequate supplies of high-calorie food. And these conflicts among the fisheries can be contentious.

Today, the Atlantic menhaden fishery has the largest landings by weight of any fishery on the East Coast. In 2021, Atlantic menhaden landings were roughly 195,000 metric tons (429,202,400 pounds). If we assume that the average size of each menhaden caught was a little less than half a pound, we can estimate that the fishery probably caught about a billion Atlantic menhaden that year. That's a lot of fish but this figure pales in comparison to historical landings, which peaked in 1956 at a little over 700,000 metric tons per year (1,566,400,000 pounds)!  This level of fishing effort was unsustainable and the stock plummeted under this pressure.

The F/V F. Ray Rogers, Jr., a menhaden seiner operated by the Reedville Bait Company.   

The type of gear used to catch menhaden is called a purse seine, which is a large, curtain-like fishing net.  These nets are up to about 1,400 feet long and 90 feet deep.  There are floats along the top of the net and weights along the bottom.  Also on the bottom is a series of rings, through which a rope, called a purse line, passes.  The purse seine is set out in a circular pattern to corral a school of fish.  After the net is set out, the purse line is drawn tight, which closes off the bottom of the net, similar to how purse strings close a purse. (credit: NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service)

Menhaden purse seiners carry two small boats that deploy the purse seine net.  Once the net is pursed, or closed, the fish are pumped aboard the large boat with a giant vacuum.  This seiner also happens to carry a flock of vultures.  

You won't find menhaden on the menu of your local seafood restaurant, but there is a good chance that you've consumed them.  Being high in omega-3 fatty acids, they are used in the making of diet supplements and cosmetics.  But, the most likely way that you have come in contact with menhaden is indirectly, through other things that you've eaten.  Remember that adage: "You are what you eat."  Not only do seafood species like bluefish and striped bass eat menhaden in the wild, but it is also used to make poultry feed and salmon chow (fed to aquacultured salmon and trout).  Additionally, menhaden is also used as bait in the blue crab and New England lobster fisheries.  These fisheries use so much bait that it is a significant food source to the lobster and blue crab populations.  By providing food subsidies to the species that they catch, the lobster and blue crab fisheries are essentially ranching operations.  

The menhaden fishery consists of two distinct segments: the bait fishery and the reduction fishery (named because it reduces whole fish to fishmeal and fish oil). In the mid-1950s there were more than 20 menhaden reduction plants on the east coast, from Maine to Florida. And there were hundreds of vessels working in the fishery. Several of these reduction plants were located in and around Beaufort, NC. The rapidly-declining stock of menhaden led to a contraction of the fishery. By the time we moved to Beaufort in 1997, there was just one reduction plant left in town, which was one of two plants on the entire East Coast (the other plant was in Reedville, VA and it is still in operation today). When the menhaden fishery began to decline, its customers began to look elsewhere for comparable products, leading to increasing competition from foreign reduction fisheries, such as the Peruvian anchoveta fishery. So even after the menhaden stock recovered from episodes of severe overfishing in the 1950s-80s, landings remained lower than their historical levels because demand for the product had decreased.

Two menhaden seiners tied up at the reduction plant in Reedville, VA.  The boats and the plant are operated by Omega Protein, Inc.  Omega's boats catch about 90% of all the Atlantic menhaden landed in the U.S. and process all of these fish at this plant.  The boat in the foreground, F/V Little River, is one of two new seiners that Omega christened in 2023.

Omega's menhaden reduction plant in Reedville, VA.  Omega was purchased recently for half-a-billion dollars by Cooke Seafood, a Canadian conglomerate based in the tiny town of Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick.  In addition to owning industrial fishing operations around the globe, Cooke is primarily known for being one of the world's largest finfish aquaculture companies.  If you've ever eaten salmon, chances are very good that it came from Cooke, which has Atlantic salmon aquaculture operations in Atlantic Canada, the US (both coasts), South America, and Europe.  All of those farmed salmon require a lot of food.  By purchasing the company that catches the vast majority of Atlantic menhaden landed in the U.S., they are ensuring access to the raw ingredients that go into their salmon chow. 

With decreased demand for menhaden products from the 1980s through early 2000s, landings decreased. Also from the late 1970s to the present, fisheries management improved. The combination of lower demand for the product and an increasing emphasis on ecosystem-based fishery management has prevented the sort of overfishing that took place in the 1950s. The population of Atlantic menhaden has undoubtedly declined since colonial times. However, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the agency charged with managing the menhaden resource, does not consider the population to be overfished at this time. Increased availability of menhaden may be playing a role in the recoveries of the populations of some of their predators. But the decrease in demand for menhaden couldn't last forever. There is always a growing need for seafood protein. Today, two of the factors driving an increase in demand for menhaden is the need for bait in the lobster fishery and for feed for the finfish aquaculture industry. So after a bit of a reprieve, the Atlantic menhaden stock is under the gun once again, as are the fisheries managers tasked with ensuring the long-term health of the menhaden stock and of the industry that relies on it. In short, the Atlantic Menhaden is simultaneously a linchpin in the marine food web of the western North Atlantic and a linchpin for nearly a half-billion dollar industry. It is vital that this publicly-owned resource be managed carefully. 

So why is the crew of Adventure Blue Sailing thinking about menhaden right now?  When we were cruising in the Chesapeake this summer we stopped in the town of Reedville, VA, which is the menhaden fishing capitol of the world.  It is home to the last-remaining menhaden reduction plant on the east coast and is also homebase for a menhaden bait operation.  You might look at the history of the menhaden fishery and conclude that it is dying industry.  From hundreds of boats and 20 processing plants down to 17 boats and just one plant.  But a major part of this story is industry consolidation and increased efficiency.  The single plant operating today in Reedville has nearly the same processing capacity as that of the entire industry from 50 years ago.  Unlike other, more familiar seafood products, menhaden is a cheap commodity.  It doesn't fetch the high prices paid for seafood species like lobsters, crabs, scallops, shrimp, or fresh tuna.  To turn a profit, a menhaden operation has to handle huge volumes, while keeping operating expenses low.     

If you have any doubts about the importance of menhaden to Reedville's economy, just look up.  Reedville's public water tower has a giant menhaden painted on it.  While looking skyward, you will also notice planes taking off and landing at a small airstrip next to the menhaden plant.  These are spotter planes used to locate the largest menhaden schools.  Every morning just before dawn, the spotter planes take off and head out over Chesapeake Bay.  The scene looks like a squadron of bombers heading into the climactic battle of a World War II movie. 

The picturesque waterfront at Reedville (at the opposite end of the creek system from the menhaden reduction plant).

Reedville was founded about a decade after the end of the Civil War.  And right from the beginning, it was a prosperous community, thanks to the menhaden.  Since the turn of the previous century, Main Street in Reedville has been known as "Millionaires' Row" due to the grand Victorian and Edwardian homes that line both sides of the street.  

Another beautiful home on Millionaires' Row built with money made from catching menhaden.    

There's no doubt that the menhaden is king in Reedville, VA.

The Morris-Fisher Stack: remnants of a former menhaden reduction plant built in 1902.  At the time that this smoke stack was constructed, it was part of the largest fish processing plant in the world.  Although the plant no longer exists, the stack was retained as a monument to the people in the industry, past and present.

Reedville is an excellent stop for transient cruisers.  Although it doesn't have any stores that are easily accessible and there are only a couple of restaurants (both of which are closed during weekdays), there is an excellent coffee shop and bakery (never underestimate the importance of a good coffee shop).  Crucially, the town is built around a network of deep, picturesque creeks that offer countless safe anchorages.  Having lived a few miles away from the menhaden plant in Beaufort, we immediately realized the importance of selecting an appropriate spot for anchoring in Reedville.  The first thing to know about a menhaden plant is that the boats come and go from it at all hours of the day and night.  And these fishing boats are huge.  You don't want to be anchored in their path.  Also, the plant will fire up as soon as a boat begins to unload its catch. But the most important thing to know is that the plant generates the most gag-inducing stench you can imagine.  There's a reason why the plant is located far outside of the town center.  Locals in Beaufort used to refer to the odor around the menhaden plant there as  "the smell of money being made."  If money really smelled that bad, the cryptocurrency market would still be booming.  As a transient cruiser, you always need to pay attention to the wind forecast.  In Reedville it is especially important because you don't ever want to anchor downwind from that plant.  

Fulmar anchored in Reedville under a cloud-shrouded full moon.  Janet sips wine in the cockpit illuminated by our party lights (You can see here green t-shirt under the lights).  Being upwind of the menhaden plant is a necessity here.

Our time in Reedville reminded us about the importance of the humble menhaden.  The next time you take a fish oil supplement or eat softshell blue crab or a salmon filet, thank a menhaden. 

A fun video of Janet, Loki, and Damon riding in the dinghy and sneaking up on a flock of vultures picking the leftover menhaden from the net on this bait seiner.  One thing that struck us in Reedville was the lack of gulls.  There is one thing that all fishing ports seemingly have in common, and that's the ubiquitous flocks of gulls.  Here, the black vultures seem to have taken over the neighborhood.