Menhaden are small, bony, oily fish, members of the herring family. Most people would go out of their way to avoid eating them. (Some old Germans, like my dad, eat them pickled on New Year’s Eve. Supposed to bring good luck.)

The rest of us don’t eat menhaden, except when we do. Oil from menhaden is in store-bought cookies, margarine, cooking oil and cat food. It’s in waterproof fabrics and paint, soap and cosmetics. Menhaden have become even more popular lately as the source of Omega-3 fish oil, which is supposed to help prevent cardiovascular disease.

After the oil applied to these myriad uses has been squeezed out, the rest of the fish is ground into meal and fed to cows, pigs and chickens at industrial agricultural operations. Some ground menhaden is fed to other fish at aquaculture facilities. Bags of fishmeal sold at your local garden center? Menhaden.

I’m in southwestern Chesapeake Bay this week, off the Virginia shore. I came on behalf of the menhaden. I’m joining Greenpeace in a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the menhaden, which have been – predictably – almost wiped out.

Every state along the east coast, with the exceptions of Virginia and North Carolina, has banned commercial fishing for menhaden. Only two companies still fish for menhaden, but one of them – the Omega Protein Corporation of Houston, Texas – hauled 261 million pounds of menhaden from the Chesapeake last year. The company uses spotter planes to locate schools of menhaden, then boats circle the school with nets and take the fish – all of them – from the water. The technique is efficient and lucrative. Menhaden is either first or second best-earning fishery in America every year. Omega Protein made $117 million from menhaden sales in 2002.

Menhaden is a fish of many uses, many dollars and many connections. Omega Protein, which fishes in Chesapeake Bay, is headquartered in Houston because it is controlled by the Zapata Corporation. If that name sounds familiar, it should. Zapata was founded as an oil (i.e. petroleum) company in 1953 by George H. W. Bush. Mr. Bush got out of Zapata in the 1960s. In the early 1990s, Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, bought up Zapata’s stock. Earlier this year, Mr. Glazer became the most hated man in England with a hostile takeover of the Manchester United Football (i.e. soccer) Club. An American forcing a takeover of Man U was as welcome in the UK as a Russian would be taking over the New York Yankees.

While that makes for a good story, it does not merit the attention of Greenpeace. What does merit Greenpeace’s attention is menhaden’s place at the crux of the Chesapeake Bay food chain. The Chesapeake is America’s largest estuary, a mix of fresh and salt water with an average depth of 22 feet. Due to its shallow bottom and shores packed with cities and farms, Chesapeake Bay is full of nutrient-rich pollutants, on which masses of algae and plankton thrive. Menhaden eat algae and plankton, cleaning the water and producing oily, high-protein flesh, an important food source for many aquatic species in the bay.

A significant consumer of menhaden is the striped bass, called “rockfish” in these parts. Almost half of the east coast striped bass population spawns in Chesapeake Bay. Researchers say the Chesapeake’s stripers are stressed and starving because Mr. Glazer and company are fishing out all the menhaden.

No menhaden, no striped bass, no filtering the Chesapeake’s polluted water. Worse, some of the dead menhaden ground into meal are fed to industrial dairy and chicken farms in the Chesapeake watershed and the dung runoff from these farms fills the bay with nutrients the menhaden are no longer there to remove. Aquatic dead zone coming soon, unless…

Next Wednesday the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will meet to determine what is to be done about menhaden. Greenpeace, scientists and sport fishermen are calling for a moratorium on all commercial menhaden fishing. Malcolm Glazer is spending some of his many millions to lobby for Virginia to be allowed to continue its “no restrictions” policy on menhaden fishing.

So I’m here to try and help avert a catastrophe. While I’m here, I’m spending some time each day just appreciating the bay. It’s not as pristine as it once was, but it might get a whole lot worse.

© Mark Floegel, 2005