bills target oversight of menhaden fishery
Maybe the legislators want to keep control because they have family members who are commercial fisherman.
Bills target oversight of menhaden fishery
By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot
© January 14, 2010
Two lawmakers from Hampton Roads want to change how Virginia regulates the lucrative menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay.
For more than 100 years, politicians in Richmond have overseen the harvesting of menhaden, a silvery bait fish with major commercial and ecological value in the Bay.
It is the only species in state waters governed by legislators; the rest are managed by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission in Newport News.
State Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk, and Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, on Wednesday unveiled bills that would shift authority for setting catch restrictions and quotas for menhaden to the marine commission - a change that the menhaden industry has opposed, and defeated, in the past.
The two legislators said their intent is twofold: more efficient government and more scientifically based management of menhaden, which filter excessive algae in the Bay and are fodder for numerous game fish.
Environmentalists and recreational anglers endorse the bills, representatives of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Coastal Conservation Association said at a news conference Wednesday in Richmond.
Virginia is the only state on the East Coast that still allows the industrial harvesting of menhaden, conducted by a fleet of boats and airplanes that help spot great schools of the fish in coastal waters.
Millions of menhaden are taken to a processing plant owned by Omega Protein in Reedville, a coastal town on the Northern Neck peninsula. There, they are made into pet food, fish oil and omega-3 health supplements. Because they are so oily, menhaden are not eaten by people.
The menhaden industry, a big economic engine on the Northern Neck, has been living under a Baywide quota of 109,020 metric tons per year, a deal brokered in part by the governors of Virginia and Maryland three years ago.
In November, a coastal fishing commission voted to extend the Bay quota three more years, to 2013. Omega Protein, based in Texas, supports the cap and has never violated it, state marine officials said.
In addition to the Northam-Cosgrove bills, the General Assembly will take up another menhaden bill this year, this one to endorse the cap extension to 2013 and keep management in the hands of lawmakers.
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/01/bill...aden-fishery-0
