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Branford, Conn. — In a bay near this coastal town, the sea was boiling with hundreds of herring-size shiners leaping to flee a marauding squad of bluefish. “These waters are coming back,” Bren Smith yelled above the shrieking din, as sea gulls plunged near our boat, scooping up fish. Mr. Smith grows seaweed and shellfish in Long Island Sound, and he says he’s seen a lot more action out here recently.
What thrilled me about this scene was that I was witnessing what happens when fishery managers set strict catch limits to stop overfishing.
Those leaping silvery fish were menhaden, also known as bunker, or pogies. To Mr. Smith and other fishermen I spoke to, there are encouraging signs that the menhaden population along the Atlantic Coast is healthy after decades of intensive commercial exploitation. Other sea creatures whose lives are intertwined with them also seem to be doing well. Sharks, whales, bluefish, tuna, osprey and other predators depend in part on these fish.
“There’s all this life that wasn’t there before,” John McMurray, who captains his own charter boat, told me. He said it’s been a boon for his sports fishing business off Long Island: “In the past four years, striped bass fishing has gotten a lot better, bluefish as well. We’re even getting bluefin tuna coming inshore to feed on the schools of menhaden.”
Menhaden are filter feeders. They swim in vast schools of hundreds of thousands of fish. Mouths agape as they feed, menhaden are living vacuum cleaners sucking up algae blooms that deplete inshore waters of oxygen and create biological deserts in the sea. A single adult menhaden can clean four to seven gallons of water in a minute.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/opinion/not-just-another-stinky-fish.html
With its putrid smell, bony flesh and rancid oily taste, the menhaden would seem the least likely candidate for “The Most Important Fish in the Sea,” the title of H. Bruce Franklin’s brilliant new environmentalist study. But Franklin is not being ironic. The menhaden is the most important fish in the sea if you understand its ecological purpose.
While it is understandable that groups like Greenpeace would take up the cause of sea creatures at the top of the food chain, like the great whales or the bluefin tuna, Franklin understands that without the easily dismissed menhaden, those above it on the food chain do not stand a chance. This includes the human race as well, since the menhaden is particularly suited to cleaning up plankton-ridden waters. As one of the few marine specimens that thrive on microscopic plant life or phyloplanton, it is uniquely positioned to purify waters that have become virtual swamps as a result of the massive influx of nitrogen-based fertilizers from farms, lawns and golf courses. With much of the Gulf of Mexico having been turned into a vast dead zone by fertilizer run-off from the Mississippi River, there is a drastic need for the humble menhaden.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2007/05/28/the-most-important-fish-in-the-sea/
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