Spot Kill in Bay - 2 Million

[tj06sti]

Weird.. I thought they all left the bay! 2 million dead, if they were having a bumper crop year like the article states, I wonder if this will even put a dent in the population for the upcoming season.

TJ

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/06/mar...ex.html?hpt=T2

[Redfish12]

I saw this in the news and it sounds like live-lining may be tough next year...

I'm not an expert but my uninformed opinion would be that these fish hung around in the unseasonably warm waters in the upper bay too long and missed the trip back south. When the temps took a sharp drop it sent the fish deep and the prolonged cold caused a stress kill. It will be interesting to see how the population is impacted. Granted, my guess is based on the concept that these fish migrate south out of the bay when waters cool. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar kill in the DE bay because they had a late run of jumbo spot and croakers, but on a smaller scale since the ocean water reaches it more easily than in the upper bay. We had a dry summer which kept salinity up which probably also contributed to the spot and hardhead sticking around... Just thinking outloud here.

Either way, bad news for rock with yet another food source taking a hit. Maybe next year will be a big year for menhaden, I saw so many schools of peanutbunker this year, more than the past few years combined. Small survey sample, but I have hope!

[Memory Maker]

I saw this in the news and it sounds like live-lining may be tough next year...

I'm not an expert but my uninformed opinion would be that these fish hung around in the unseasonably warm waters in the upper bay too long and missed the trip back south. When the temps took a sharp drop it sent the fish deep and the prolonged cold caused a stress kill. It will be interesting to see how the population is impacted. Granted, my guess is based on the concept that these fish migrate south out of the bay when waters cool. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar kill in the DE bay because they had a late run of jumbo spot and croakers, but on a smaller scale since the ocean water reaches it more easily than in the upper bay. We had a dry summer which kept salinity up which probably also contributed to the spot and hardhead sticking around... Just thinking outloud here.

Either way, bad news for rock with yet another food source taking a hit. Maybe next year will be a big year for menhaden, I saw so many schools of peanutbunker this year, more than the past few years combined. Small survey sample, but I have hope!

Yeah .......... just hope the GULP survive ........... would be horrible if they died too ..........

[tj06sti]

Sounds like good theories to me. I hope the spot are not impacted, I really don't want to have to start throwing a castnet from the Yak for bunker.

[ictalurus]

I was pretty surprised to see the news, too. I kept checking different places to see if it was a hoax. It's been below the lethal temp for croakers for a while now, but I'm not sure what the lethal temp for spot is. All the articles said that the fish were pretty decomposed, so I wonder if they died a while ago and just now surfaced because of wind or a strong tide or something.

After the meager showing of jumbo spot this year, I was hoping the year class produced this year would show up next year. DNR said 2 million would be a dent, so we'll see. On the bright side, maybe there'll be less competition among spot, and they'll grow faster...

[DOGFISH]

Don't count on a large number of those peanut bunker returning. As adults they will be caught up by trawlers. We used to also see those large numbers of adult menhaden returning to spawn in the spring. Those same large schools of returning adults would also show up on the FF. Now you don't see them in the spring. There would be schools that would go on for miles. Some make it back through the gauntlet, but only a fraction of what it was in the not so distant past.

The spot story sounds as if there was an extra large population of fish, which led to the kill. Hopefully, that is the case, as the rockfish need all the food sources they can get. With lesser numbers of menhaden, the spot are important. There seems to be a drastic need for better management of the menhaden population. There was talk of that happening, but I have not heard any more about officials revisiting the menhaden management plan.

[Memory Maker]

The Menhadden Management plan needs to begin in VA .......... VA's radical right legislature has taken the Menhadden management away from the DNR and put it in the legislature so they can help Omega Protein .......... the graft seems blantant and smells worse then Reedville on a hot August day ........

Omega Protein is allowed to rape the bay by taking about a billion menhadden each year before they mature and before they get to MD where they are protected from their factory ships ..........

MD Menhadden Management is ok ............

VA protects Omega Protien like a small southern sheriff protects Boss Hog and the expense of the resource

[DOGFISH]

Memory, I don't mean to really set you off, but the officials who were to look at the menhaden management plan were federal officials as part of a federal board. I agree about Virginia, they need to start looking at the long term health of the bay. A good example is the Chesapeake Blue Crab. It took a near full collapse of the blue crab population to get even a semblance of cooperation. No one ever needed to keep large numbers of female crabs. What was particularly offensive is when sponge crabs were being kept. Now with the limits on female crabs the blue crab population seems to be rebounding somewhat. DAAAA! Hopefully, Virginia is on board with the crab plan and not dredging females. I know at one time there were areas protected from winter dredging. Its all about greed.

No one seems to look into the food chain, only profit. More of the Menhaden population need to make it back to spawn. They are very prolific. However, the modern tactics of commercial fishing can now desimate a species. Officials are slow to catch on. Particularly those officials whose political jobs depend on campaign contributions from commercial fishing groups.

The same with polutants and farm run off. I won't even fertilize my yard, as being opposed to run off. Yet millions of tons of agricultural waste run off into the Chesapeake drainage system. This is without mentioning sewage. The menhaden problem can be resolved with real management. No one wants to return to the 70s and 80s, when to catch a rockfish was quite an event. Many don't seem to remember those times. However, we all need to remember those tragic days.

Another thing that Maryland may need to look at is oyster farming. This is being done in Barnegat Bay with success. Oysters seem to be one of those things that can be farmed with little impact on the body of water, unlike fin fish. With greater number of farmed oysters, the greater the filtration of the water. The oysters filter large amount of water. This may be a source of filtration that could be beneficial to the Chesapeake. That may also be a way to give the wild caught oysters a chance to rebound.

Well with that said, I may feel slightly better.

Good luck.

[Memory Maker]

Not a problem Dogfish ........... I've been at the town hall meetings when the ruling body heard the testimony and heard the Omega People and their lawyers threaten to sue anyone that wrote or expressed an opinion about Omega. I saw the regulatory board set OMEGA's quota equal their highest catch to give time for study. I've read the study that said there was adequate Menhadden up and down the coast and said little about the stocks in the Chesapeake when other studies clearly showed the Menhadden getting smaller and smaller because of the harvest of the most of the mature fish. I have seen the massive ships send out the plans and use 1/2 mile of nets to catch every fish in the area and then claim there is little bycatch. I have caught alot of croakers and then drifted over the place that was netted and caught nothing and then 100 yds awayu and catch fish again ............ and yes I Hate Omega Protein and do not wish them the best for raping the bay ........... I wish there was a fleet that would harass them like the whaling guys do .........

And the problem with the Feds is that they look at the whole seaboard and not the Bay. THere isn't a problem up and down the coast because the Va portion is 1 of the only places Omega is allowed to operate. Most states have banned them. When they look it that way, there isn't much of a problem ......... yet. The Fed board has some Omega people on it including a guy that actually wrote an article praising Omega. THe conflict of interest and the graft is amazing but no one does anything about it.

THis has been a major topic on Tidalfish for awhile.

[jffoley]

Another Fish Kill

This time...menhaden!! http://www.thesunnews.com/2011/01/07...aden-kill.html

There may be changes for the better in how Virginia regulates menhaden. Below excerpt dated 12/21/2010 from: http://savemenhaden.wordpress.com/

Senator Ralph S. Northam (D – Norfolk) has introduced SB 765 to transfer management authority for menhaden from the Virginia General Assembly to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. Delegate John A. Cosgrove (R – Chesapeake) will introduce an identical measure in the House of Delegates. “This legislation is garnering rapidly increasing levels of bipartisan public support, because it is simply good government” Cosgrove said. “We budget over $20 million a year for VMRC to manage our fisheries; we should let them do it.”

But it likely won't help this season: http://www.ccavirginia.org/

Overall in big trouble: http://www.chesbay.org/

[ictalurus]

I would take everything on the www.chesbay.org site with a grain of salt. The Chesapeake Bay Ecological Foundation is one guy, Jim Price, who does striped bass research based primarily on fish caught by charter boats. He's a smart guy that's been around a long time, but his results don't get peer reviewed, as far as I know. That's a problem, because he often makes some leaps to conclusions without fully covering his bases first.

One of the more problematic things he reports is his study on visceral fat in striped bass for several years. He uses visceral fat as an index of health, which is a really cool idea, but he collects his striped bass in the summer time, which is a bad idea if you don't account for differences in temperatures or trends in temperature. Striped bass lose weight at typical summer temperatures no matter what. You could give striped bass an I.V. drip of menhaden slurry, and they would still lose weight. The hotter it is and the longer it's hot, the more weight they'll lose. So comparing visceral fat between years may simply be comparing the temperature differences among years, not how well the striped bass are feeding.

Collecting fish with only one gear type (fishing) is problematic, as well, because you might only be sampling the fish that are hungry and hitting lures or bait. That can bias your sample toward having a higher proportion of starving fish than really occurs in the population. It's a tough problem to get around, but using different gears, like gill nets or pound nets, helps.

However, since he's been around a while, he has some interesting data on changes in weight by length for stripers. That data would have to be temperature corrected, too, but historical data like that is rare.

Sorry for the rant , but people doing science and leaping to conclusions really bugs me (especially as I write up my dissertation). It happens in the scientific community more often than it should, particularly with sexy topics, but that is a separate rant.

[DOGFISH]

That is good. I just hope someone keeps the pressure on and an new menhaden management plan allows for a larger population. I know that in my days, the menhaden numbers have dropped dramatically.

Whoa Bill, menhaden slurry and sexy topics in science. You better stop before these fisherman really get turned on.