For decades, Atlantic menhaden have been at the center of persistent and often heated debate in the Chesapeake Bay: is the industrial menhaden fishery operating sustainably, or is it putting the ecosystem at risk?
The challenge, according to a recent report from Virginia Public Radio, is that the data needed to answer that question definitively has never been fully settled, and fishing has continued in the meantime.
Menhaden are rarely eaten directly by humans, but they play a foundational role in the marine food web. As reported, Scott Harper once said, “humans do not eat menhaden, but just about everything else in the marine environment does,” a quote Virginia Public noted remains central to the debate more than 20 years later…