Menhaden Industry Doesn’t Meet Quota Again: Wonder Why?

Next week in Newport, the ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Management Board sets the coastwide quota for 2027 through 2029. Before commissioners vote, they should read a document sitting in their own briefing book: ASMFC's 2025 Atlantic Menhaden FMP Review, released for the November 11 Board meeting.

We read it and we're deeply concerned about a few things, though one detail needs extra time in the spotlight:

The fishery didn't catch what it was allowed.

In 2025, total commercial menhaden landings were fewer than 147,000 metric tons (324 million pounds). That is 63% of the 233,550 mt coastwide quota ^[1]. More than 86,000 metric tons, about 191 million pounds, stayed in the water ^{[1, computed]}.

The reduction fishery, the industrial fleet that grinds menhaden into fish meal and oil at the only reduction plant left on the Atlantic coast, in Reedville, Virginia, landed fewer than 95,000 mt (210 million pounds). That is down 30% from 2024 and 27% below its previous five year average ^[1]. It is the lowest reduction total in ASMFC's own table, which runs from 1991 through 2025 ^[2]. Measured against the share of the coastwide quota available to it, the reduction fleet caught roughly 60% ^{[1][3, computed]}.

Inside Chesapeake Bay, the nursery this industry says it cannot survive without ^[4], reduction landings were under 35,000 mt. That is less than 69% of the 51,000 mt Bay cap ^[5].

This data is not some anomaly for a bad year. It's a fishery trend that the industry will fight to deny.

In 2021 and 2022, under a smaller 194,400 mt quota, the fishery took essentially all of it; ASMFC put it at about 97% and 96%. Then the quota rose 20%, and the catch fell to 71% of it in 2023, 80% in 2024 and 63% in 2025 ^[6].

Look at where the shortfall lives. Maine used 102% of its 2025 quota. Massachusetts used 100%. New Hampshire used 93%. Virginia, home of the reduction fleet, used 57.7% ^[7].

Remember, this is an operation that utilizes a tactical fleet with air support from spotter planes to decimate anything and everything they can find. ASMFC's draft Bay Cap addendum calls out that reduction fishing effort in the Bay is informed by spotter aircraft that locate menhaden schools ^[8]. This is a hard working crew that's really good at finding and harvesting menhaden. This same fleet landed only about 60% of what it was allowed ^{[computed, see 3]}. So, how could they be failing to accomplish their goals so badly, even with eyes in the sky? ASMFC doesn't explain it.

Here is what bothers us most. The review gives no explanation for the shortfall. Its recommendations are routine: biological sampling and de minimis requests ^[9]. More than a third of the coastwide quota went uncaught, and the Commission's annual review of the fishery doesn't ask why. 

Now the industry is asking the Board to keep the current quota ^[10]. The 2026 quota was cut 20%, to 186,840 mt ^[11]. The 2025 catch came in about 40,000 mt, roughly 88 million pounds, below even that reduced number ^{[1][11, computed]}. We believe the cut quota is not what is holding this fishery back. 

The reduction industry's main argument is jobs. So look at what its own spokesman has said this year. In May 2026, National Fisherman reported that the 20% cut "is not going to force lay-offs or a reduction in the working fleet, says Landry," and quoted Ben Landry directly: "It looks like we will be able to fish this year with the same size fleet and crews as last year" ^[12].

In August 2026, Landry told the Menhaden Board the fleet went from 10 vessels in 2010 to 6, and that those workers "have not been hired back... Those jobs have been lost" ^[13]. In October 2026, Landry told the Bay Journal the company survived past cuts by retiring four boats since 2012 and cutting staff through attrition ^[14].

By the company's own account, this year's 20% cut brought no layoffs, and earlier cuts were absorbed over years through attrition. That fits what ASMFC's Committee on Economics and Social Sciences told the Board in July 2026: the input output models behind the big job loss estimates "likely overstate long-term employment effects" ^[15].

This isn't name-calling or an attempt to single out a select few. It's public record. Misinformation campaigns from the menhaden industry have tried to paint us as anti-commercial, ignorant of socioeconomic impacts or even more grotesque implications about social dynamics we won't give another second of airtime. We have never been anti-commercial. Having expectations or standards to contribute to conservation when your entire livelihood is based on taking from a resource does not make you "anti" industry. It's called accountability and integrity. We learned it early from our parents. Regarding the socio-economic ignorance, we have one simple retort: socioeconomic considerations are not determined by one single company's profit and loss statement, nor a single employee's bank account. It is all encompassing and includes all the detriments to tangential businesses that benefit from a conservation action. In layman's terms: the socioeconomic impacts of menhaden reductions don't stop at Omega's profit, because the multi-billion dollar coastal economies from Maine to Florida matter too - and they dwarf the value of these few archaic menhaden operations. 

ASMFC's scientists ran the projections. Keeping the current quota carries a 99.5% chance of exceeding the ecological fishing target in each of 2027, 2028 and 2029 ^[16]. The quota that gives even odds of meeting that target is 114,200 mt ^[16]. The revised assessment also showed fishing pressure was higher, and spawning potential lower, than the previous assessment estimated ^[17]. Those ecological targets exist for one reason: to leave enough menhaden in the water for striped bass and the rest of the predators that depend on them ^[18].

ASMFC needs to gain some perspective and garner some courage. Set the 2027 through 2029 coastwide quota at about 112,100 mt, a 40% cut, as ASGA asked in our October 19 letter ^[19]. That is below the 114,200 mt level ASMFC's scientists say gives even odds of meeting the target. Cut the Chesapeake Bay cap in half, to a fixed 25,500 mt, as ASGA asked in our October 9 comments ^[20]. And when they have their chance on the mic at the upcoming meeting, ASMFC owes every advocate and participant in this process an honest answer not included in their own review: why did the fleet actually leave more than a third of the quota in the water? We're all ears.

The Board votes November 10 and 11 in Newport. Tell your state's commissioners to read their own report before they vote.