The Southern Maryland Recreational Fishing Organization (SMRFO) plans to file a new lawsuit this month against the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC), reopening a years-long legal fight over the state’s industrial menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay.
SMRFO President Phil Zalesak said the Chesapeake Legal Alliance (CLA), the Annapolis-based nonprofit legal group that has represented the organization since 2023, will file the suit alleging VMRC has violated Virginia Code § 28.2-203, which requires the commission to prepare fishery management plans consistent with specific conservation and management standards — including preventing overfishing and using the best available scientific data. The planned filing was independently confirmed by the news outlet Cape Charles Mirror, which reported SMRFO’s intent to challenge VMRC’s management of the fishery in court.
At the center of the dispute is Omega Protein, a Reedville-based processor owned by Canada’s Cooke Inc., whose contracted fishing fleet — operated by Ocean Harvesters — is the only industrial-scale menhaden “reduction” fishery still operating in a U.S. state’s own waters along the Atlantic coast; every other state, including Maryland, has banned the practice. Using spotter planes to locate schools of menhaden from the air, the fleet’s purse-seine vessels harvest more than 100 million pounds of the small, oily fish from the Bay most years, processing them into fishmeal, fish oil and nutritional supplements rather than selling them for food.
SMRFO argues that industrial-scale harvesting should be limited to federal waters at least three nautical miles off Virginia’s coast, arguing the current arrangement threatens both the ecological health of the Bay and the livelihoods of commercial and recreational fishermen who depend on menhaden predators like striped bass. Menhaden are a foundational forage species for numerous Bay predators, including striped bass, bluefish, dolphins and ospreys.
This isn’t SMRFO’s first legal challenge. CLA filed suit on the group’s behalf in Richmond City Circuit Court in May 2023, arguing VMRC had unlawfully increased the menhaden catch quota outside the narrow rulemaking window state law allows and had failed to properly analyze the harvest increase’s impact. A judge found merit in that claim, and CLA filed a motion for summary judgment in November 2023 seeking to invalidate the regulation. According to reporting by What’s Up? Media, delays at the Richmond circuit court left that case without a timely resolution, prompting Zalesak to ask CLA to pursue a new lawsuit this year. “The VMRC is breaking the law, and it has to stop,” Zalesak told the outlet earlier this year.
The renewed legal push comes amid mounting scientific concern about menhaden’s role in the Bay ecosystem. A peer-reviewed study published in June by researchers from William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology, the U.S. Geological Survey and other institutions linked starving osprey chicks in the Bay to menhaden scarcity, though the study also cautioned that “a large degree of uncertainty remains about the status of adult menhaden within the Chesapeake Bay.” A 2025 survey similarly found an eastern shore osprey population had dropped 90 percent, with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science calling available data on the fishery’s effects “woefully inadequate.” Separately, Maryland bait fishermen have reported declining menhaden catches in the years following Omega’s harvests south of the state line, prompting the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) — which sets coastwide catch limits — to advance a proposal this summer that could cut the Bay’s harvest cap by as much as half; Virginia cast the lone dissenting vote.
Omega Protein and its fishing partner have consistently disputed that their operations are responsible for predator declines. Ocean Harvesters has previously said its vessels are “crewed primarily by American fishermen, many of whom are multi-generational,” and the company has defended the menhaden fishery as regulated, sustainable and economically important to Virginia, where it says the industry has operated for more than 145 years and supports hundreds of direct and indirect jobs.
CLA is soliciting donations to help fund the anticipated litigation, according to Zalesak’s statement; the organization’s general donation page is linked below. The specific date of filing and the exact claims the new lawsuit will raise were not detailed in SMRFO’s announcement.
