Back to the bunker? No, we’re not talking about the doomsday-prepping cavern you carved out in your crawlspace—we mean the fish! Most FishTalk readers go fishing in the one and only estuary in the nation, the Chesapeake Bay, where large-scale commercial netting of bunker (aka menhaden, aka pogies, aka alewives, aka fatback) is still allowed. Decades ago with the destructive power of multi-boat purse seining in enclosed waterways clearly evident, one state after the next eliminated the practice in all of their bays and sounds. All except Virginia, which today commands the quota for about three-quarters of the entire Atlantic catch.
Are you hearing the sound of a broken record? Yep. The battle to push those boats out of the Bay has been going on for as long as most of us have been alive. And the commercial interests have won nearly all of those battles without breaking a sweat. I say “nearly” because the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) did finally institute a harvest limit in 2012 (note that this was triggered by an interstate Commission, not by a decision made by the state of Virginia—similar to how an ASMFC decision forced Maryland to reduce the striped bass limit when the state didn’t particularly want to). And that cap has been reduced at times. Of course, we should also note that Omega Protein willfully busted the cap (and basically bragged about it by publicly announcing their intent) in 2019.
The latest front in this never-ending battle opened up with “ecological reference points,” which essentially means considering the fish’s ecological value as a food source for other species, in addition to considering the maximum sustainable yield. And with the decline of striped bass as well as links between osprey nesting failure and a lack of menhaden being suspected, those fighting to push these boats out of our waters seized upon ecological reference points as a cudgel. The only problem? There weren’t as of yet any localized Chesapeake Bay scientific studies demonstrating the exact links between bunker, ecology, fishing impacts, and economic importance. There was a need for solid data in order to swing that cudgel and knock those boats out of the Bay and into the open Atlantic.
Enter: the Virginia General Assembly. In 2023 they introduced a bill directing the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) to develop such a study. But then Omega lobbied, the bill was watered down, and instead they voted for VIMS to merely outline the details of what a potential study might entail. A year later, the Virginia House declined to fund the study and instead pushed it to 2025. And in 2025, you guessed it, again Virginia lawmakers killed multiple efforts to fund the study.
What an exceptionally effective tactic: if you don’t like what you think science will tell you, simply stop the scientists from doing any work.
The battle goes on. Times change. Administrations change. Eventually the scientists will do their study. And eventually, the bunker boats will be forced to steam out into the open Atlantic before they can set their quarter mile-long nets. The only question is, how many rockfish and osprey will still be around when that finally happens?