Just a couple of years ago, Omega Protein Inc, based out of Reedville, Virginia, made a handshake agreement with the folks around the Chesapeake Bay stating that they would avoid fishing Atlantic Menhaden (Bunker) inside the bay as much as possible and fish out in the ocean.
In 2019, they reneged on their word and not only fished the bay but fished over their allocation, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) voted Virginia out of compliance. This season, they continued to fish the bunker out of the bay until there weren’t any left to catch, so they headed out to sea.
With its own fleet of planes, Omega searches the waters looking for the massive schools of bunker that gather on the surface and then call in the bunker boats to catch them up with ease. These very skilled pilots can even determine if the schools contain the right size fish and that the school won’t overload the nets.
Last week, one of our volunteers alerted me that 4 Omega planes landed in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and another in Long Island NY. Then we watched online as 7 massive Omega ships headed northward at full speed and then stay for 2 days.
We have been through this before back in 2018, so we knew exactly what was going down. They were going to slam the New York Bight again, a fertile area between New York and New Jersey that is loaded up with bunkers much of the year.
Think about this, by July 4th of the 2023 season that started in May, the planes couldn’t find a single school of bunker worth catching between Virginia and New Jersey. Now, if that’s not a sign of fishery management failure, what is? Note that in 2018, they didn’t arrive up here until September. Interesting, that back then they were able to fish the entire summer in the bay and offshore – but clearly, things have changed for the worse.
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| Omega vessels in exact fishing positions on Ambrose shipping Channels, On top of the feeding grounds of the Humpback whales and where the Bunker overwintered. If this isn't an ecologically sensitive area, what is??? |
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| The Fleeton 175 feet long x 39 feet wide can carry 2 million Adult Atlantic Menhaden (Bunker) just one of the seven vessels to attack the waters off of NY and NJ |
So, Omega captains decide to fuel up 7 ships, and 6 planes, and go on a journey. This bunker reduction business of grinding them up for fish meal and oil must be very profitable! Why else would the Omega fleet take on the expense of steaming 305 miles away and back again from their home base inside the Chesapeake Bay to NY & NJ?
Bunker are known as “the most important fish in the sea,” same as the title of Bruce Franklin’s great book on the tortured history of this amazing little forage fish. Reduction fishing has historically taken place from Maine to Florida, but as our knowledge of its harmful impacts on the marine environment has increased – and as the coastwide population decreased – every East Coast state outlawed reduction fishing for menhaden...
Except Virginia
Unfortunately, due to decades of fishing pressure being reduced to Virginia waters and the mid-Atlantic, notably inside the Chesapeake Bay, the localized menhaden population is crashing and the bay is dying.
Canadian-based Cooke Seafood bought Omega Protein back in 2017 for $500 million to vertically integrate, and be able to feed the salmon and other fish that they raise in pens all over the world. A big slice of the fish caught are also ground up for the companion pet industry, a protein source, and a flavor enhancer for our beloved dogs and cats. That’s only two divisions of many; Cooke is a $3 billion dollar-a-year global company and is gobbling up additional companies rapidly. Yes, Cooke is literally vacuuming up America’s key baitfish for export and profit while our coastal ecosystems scramble to find other fish to eat, and small businesses that depend upon the abundance of these fish for commercial and recreational fishing, whale watching, and more take a major hit.
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| Just one of the many Salmon pens on the West and East coast of Canada, fed by American Bunker |
Yes, as per Omega’s public relations rhetoric we hear that the governing management body, the ASMFC has declared that the fishery is “not overfished and overfishing is not occurring”, and everything Omega does is legal and within very constrained regulations. Yet Omega has literally taken all the desired adult fish out of the local waters around Virginia and run out of fish for its own nets.
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary on the East Coast. When you hear the word estuary, think nursery. The bay used to be an idyllic vacation spot, with amazing waters, provide bountiful seafood, a world-class blue claw crab and oyster fishery, and produced over 75% of the fish for one of the largest economic engines of the East Coast, the recreational striped bass fishery. Maryland and Virginia-based small coastal businesses are witnessing a death of a thousand cuts as the Chesapeake Bay as water quality and bounty fade into the past and have the potential to take the entire coastal ecosystem down with it.
The newly implemented ecosystem-based management system for the Menhaden fishery is designed to take every creature in the ecosystem into consideration, in addition to providing sustainable harvest levels for companies like Omega Protein.
It took the 7 Omega ships less than 20 hours of fishing to vacuum up, kill and remove 13 MILLION pounds of bait fish out of the NY Bight, within sight of a dozen Humpback whales and Bottlenose dolphins that were actively feeding on them.
Clearly, we cannot rely upon Omega Protein Inc, or Cooke Seafood to be “good stewards” or for that matter, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission (ASMFC) to manage our coastal waters. Substantial and accurately directed changes are needed to STOP industrialized extraction in environmentally sensitive areas before a coastal ecosystem collapse occurs.
Capt. Paul Eidman
Founder of Menhaden Defenders.org
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