NEWPORT, R.I. — The amount of menhaden that Virginia’s industrial fishing fleet may take out of the Chesapeake Bay will drop by about a third over the next two years, under a compromise that Maryland supported and Virginia alone opposed.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Nov. 11 to tie the Bay’s reduction-fishery cap to 21.8% of the coastwide menhaden catch, the Bay Journal reported. That replaces a fixed cap of 51,000 metric tons a year.
The decision is the outcome of the vote the Chronicle previewed Wednesday, when Comptroller Brooke Lierman urged regulators to cut the harvest. For Southern Maryland, it bears on two long-running complaints: watermen who say their own menhaden catch for crab bait has collapsed, and ospreys that are failing to raise chicks in parts of the Bay where the birds depend on the fish.
What changes
| Year | Bay reduction-fishery cap | Coastwide catch limit |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 (current) | 51,000 metric tons | 186,840 metric tons |
| 2027 | 37,123 metric tons | 170,000 metric tons |
| 2028 | 33,847 metric tons | 155,000 metric tons |
The 2027 figure is about 27% below the current cap and the 2028 figure about 34% below it. The coastwide numbers were set a day earlier, when the commission’s menhaden board voted to trim the total East Coast catch by 9% in each of the next two years, according to the Bay Journal. Whatever the fleet cannot take inside the Bay it may still catch in the ocean.
The cap applies to the reduction fishery, the Reedville, Virginia, operation in which Ocean Harvesters boats net menhaden for Omega Protein to process into fish meal and oil. Virginia is the only East Coast state that still allows it. The Bay harvest has been capped since 2006.
How the vote came together
The commission began the process in October 2025 and sent a draft addendum out for public comment in August with options to cut the Bay cap by as much as 50% and to spread the catch more evenly through the season. More than 40,000 written comments came in urging cuts at least that deep, the Bay Journal reported.
What passed was smaller. Mike Luisi, who directs fishing and boating services at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, described the 21.8% option to fellow commissioners as a middle ground, according to the Bay Journal’s account. Every state on the commission except Virginia voted for it.
A second proposal did not survive. Allison Colden, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Maryland executive director and a member of the commission, moved to restrict the harvest in spring and early summer, when ospreys are nesting, and shift most of it to late summer and fall. Virginia’s representatives objected that the change would push crews into the heart of storm season, and other states were reluctant to dictate how Virginia manages fishing in its own waters. The motion failed, so the fleet may keep fishing at any point in its May-to-November season.
Both sides see unfinished business
Conservation groups welcomed the lower Bay cap while calling the coastwide reduction too small. Will Poston, who manages the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s forage fish campaign, called “the lowest Bay cap on record” real progress but said more is needed, the Bay Journal reported. The foundation had pushed for the full 50% cut and seasonal quota periods.
The industry maintains the cuts are not supported by science. Ocean Harvesters and its supporters argued throughout the debate that the reductions threaten jobs on Virginia’s Northern Neck and that regulators should wait for research. The company’s chief executive told the Bay Journal it would work within the new limits and expects pending studies to show they were unnecessary.
That research is only starting. The commission received a $2.5 million federal grant in January to study menhaden in the Bay and does not expect results before 2028, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science received $2 million in state money this year for a tagging study, according to the Bay Journal. Coastwide, the commission classifies menhaden as not overfished; the open question is how many of the fish are in the Bay itself.
The commission ran out of meeting time before deciding whether to reallocate the coastwide catch among the states, a change sought by New England fishermen who use menhaden as lobster bait. That question carries over to a future meeting.
