After years of pushback and failed budget bids, Virginia’s General Assembly approved a budget amendment from Gov. Abigail Spanberger to fund a Chesapeake Bay-specific Atlantic menhaden population study with $2 million over the biennium. The results are intende
On the Chesapeake Bay, a small forage fish is at the center of a fight that has dragged on for years—and now, Virginia has finally put money behind a Bay-specific answer.
With $2 million allotted over the biennium through budget language in a General Assembly amendment from Gov. Abigail Spanberger, researchers and regulators plan to examine the menhaden population inside the Chesapeake Bay. The study is described as the culmination of years of legislative efforts. and its purpose is practical: to determine whether updated conservation standards and catch limits for menhaden should be established.
Menhaden is not just another species in the water. The fish sustains multiple species and fuels the only industrial reduction fishing operation in the Bay. Regulators say the data will be essential to manage what the budget language calls a “scientifically defensible and ecologically meaningful” cap on fisheries’ catch.
That wording is the point of the delay. Conservation groups have warned for years that menhaden could be declining in the Bay. and that the consequences are already visible in the animals that depend on it. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said striped bass and osprey populations have suffered because they don’t have enough menhaden to eat.
Those concerns have met resistance at the legislative level too. Multiple bills to add the funding in the state budget have failed to pass. including a bill pitched earlier this year. Now. the study is funded—and it’s being built around the specific questions that have fueled the argument: whether menhaden abundance is changing inside the Bay. how predators affect the population. and how fishing patterns might create local shortages.
Researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission will conduct the work. The study is also expected to draw on recommendations from an industry-backed Science Center for Marine Fisheries-funded study. and to use the 2023 VIMS report that laid out a roadmap for this research.
Ocean Harvesters. the Reedville-based corporation that contracts with Omega Protein and runs the only reduction fishery allowed to fish within Virginia waters in the Bay. has denied that its operations are depleting menhaden in the Bay. The company already adheres to a Bay-specific yearly catch cap of 51,000 metric tons. Maryland, by contrast, has banned reduction fishing—an approach that limits where Ocean Harvesters can catch menhaden in the Bay.
Ocean Harvesters has also argued against further restrictions. The company has pushed back on regulations to its Bay catch limits and has maintained that proposed catch limits and time period quotas put forward by various groups are arbitrary and not based on science.
Still, the newly funded study’s scope is broad enough to directly test those disputes. The budget language says researchers should consider seasonal abundance. movement rates. impacts of menhaden predator consumption. spatial and temporal patterns of commercial fishing in the Bay. and the possibility of localized depletion of menhaden populations.
The fight isn’t limited to Virginia either. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Menhaden Management Board voted last October to reduce the quota caps for the entire East Coast by 20%. citing concerns about striped bass populations. More recently. the management board considered additional restrictions for Ocean Harvesters’ work within the Bay. including options that would reduce the Bay cap and implement time period quotas intended to help menhaden populations work their way up the Bay toward Maryland. where pound net fishermen have cited lacking yields for years. The board put off a decision on those changes until later this year.
Even before the study funding was finalized, debate inside Virginia’s legislature showed how divided the issue has remained. Even with the Senate agreeing to all of the governor’s amendments, there was heated discussion on the floor ahead of the vote.
Sen. Richard Stuart. R-King George. whose district includes the Reedville fishery. said he believes there is no evidence that the fishery is overfishing menhaden. He also argued that shutting down the fishery or reducing its work would be unfair, framing the question around jobs. “It concerns me from the perspective of 260 families that rely on this. They are very good jobs … in the area. There are another 200 or 300 indirect jobs,” Stuart said.
Sen. Scott Surovell. D-Fairfax. brought a different focus. grounded in his constituents’ concerns about osprey populations in parts of the Potomac River. The menhaden debate, he said, has persisted through his entire time serving in the General Assembly. “We have these fish experts at VIMS, (who) are hopefully going to get some information about it. I just know that there’s been some concern for the last 17 years,” Surovell said. “We haven’t done anything.”.
The study is scheduled to move beyond the lab and into the policy process. Progress will be presented to multiple legislative, administrative and regulatory agencies by Oct. 1 for the next two years.
For workers and the fishing economy, the stakes run beyond catch limits. The Virginia Department of Workforce Development, along with other groups, will report on possible impacts on workers if there are reductions in catch allowances for the entire coast and within the Bay.
If the goal is a cap that regulators can defend—and a future that anglers. conservationists. and wildlife agencies can all live with—the new funding sets the timeline. The question now is whether the Chesapeake Bay-specific data will close the gap between competing claims. or deepen it with numbers meant to stand up to scrutiny.
Chesapeake Bay menhaden study Atlantic menhaden VIMS Virginia Marine Resources Commission Abigail Spanberger General Assembly budget amendment Ocean Harvesters striped bass osprey forage fish catch limits reduction fishery