Whales rebound near New York because of a fish nobody will name: Menhaden
What we're doing—and not doing—to save whales. Plus, some thoughts on Maine lobster and mainstream media buffoonery.
This summer, controversy erupted when the former head of the International Whaling Commission said the group had done its job and should be disbanded. In fact, most species of whales have rebounded dramatically since the international moratorium on whaling in 1985 led by the IWC. For instance, the humpbacks who visit Brazil’s waters once numbered as few as 450, while now, citizen scientists have documented 30,000. However, two species of right whales in the northern hemisphere are still suffering declines.
Turns out, there’s so much we are doing — and not doing — to help whales recover. Case in point: Whales, dolphins, tuna, sharks, and striped bass are surging in abundance off the shores of Long Island 12 years after a decision by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to reduce menhaden catch rates.
“It’s very rare that you have a conservation gain that is so visible in such a short time, and it’s 100 percent attributed to the 2012 catch limits put in place on menhaden,” John Gans, a northeast field representative for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, told The New York Times.
A relative of herring, menhaden “turn sunlight into whales,” says The Nature Conservancy, because they filter feed, swimming in schools millions thick with their mouths wide open, catching tiny phytoplankton and zooplankton. Menhaden are the “inedible fish everyone eats.” They feed oceans, pets and people. Yet no major news outlet will print their name in a headline. More on this below.
Meanwhile, in Chesapeake Bay, conservationists have struggled for years to reign in Omega Protein, the only company fishing menhaden in the world. Fishermen in Louisiana are also starting to get riled up at Omega Protein over its extraction of this keystone species from their waters and recently enacted regulations to limit menhaden fishing near shore.
SOURCES: The information above was compiled from several news and conservation sources. The IWC posts detailed data on population estimates since the moratorium on whaling began in 1985. However, as the table above shows, stocks for some species were already severely depleted by then. No one source contains the highs and pre-1985 lows for each species. A graph in the Nature opinion piece calling to dismantle IWC shows rebounds since 1985.
Southwest Atlantic humpback whale sources: Oceanographic Magazine, Reuters
North Atlantic humpback whale sources: NAMMCO, NOAA
North Pacific humpback whale sources: CBS News, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Southern Pacific humpback whale source: The Guardian
Blue whale sources: Curious Earth, The Guardian
Grey whale sources: National Geographic, New England Aquarium
Southern right whale sources: Carnivora.net, ABC (Australia)
North Atlantic and North Pacific right whale sources: Marine Mammal Commission, NOAA
Menhaden bring whales to Long Island, yet big media can’t say “menhaden”
Whales have been returning to New York Harbor for several years because of less pollution and more legislation that increased their food supply, Atlantic menhaden. Yet, the bigger the news outlet, the less likely they are to name menhaden in their main headline. A traditional news editor would scrap “menhaden,” since it’s not as well known as herring or sardines, especially if you are writing for an audience away from America’s East Coast. Using unfamiliar terms in headlines alienates readers.
But this irritating habit contributes to the mystery around menhaden and leaves consumers in the dark. Here’s a smattering of vague headlines from big media names:
Last year, a New York Times article featured incredible drone footage of the whales and other sea life that have surged off Long Island in recent years. The Times inexplicably ran this story in its Travel section with the sleep-inducing headline “Whales, From Above.”
Meanwhile, the reference to menhaden is buried in reams of fluff about an Instagram star and the elite audience he caters to.1
Whales didn’t decide to return to Long Island because they love Instagram. They came back because of a long, drawn-out fight by scientists and environmental advocates, who went head-to-head with a billion-dollar fishing industry that was extracting millions of menhaden a year and said, “You’re sucking this ocean dry.”
Menhaden, also known as “pogies” or “bunker,” are a keystone species. They feed humpbacks, fin whales, dolphins, striped bass, sharks, mackerel, osprey, eagles, pelicans and so much else.
Menhaden are the whale food in fish oil supplements
The Times story also contains the patently false statement that humans “don’t eat menhaden.” It’s true we don’t grill them up and put them on our dinner plates, but if you consume fish oil supplements or farmed salmon,2 you consume Atlantic menhaden. If your pet consumes any product with fish, it likely contains menhaden. If you eat lobster or blue crab, it was caught with menhaden bait. If you use fish meal fertilizer in your garden, that likely contains menhaden.
Menhaden is exclusively fished, processed and sold by Canada-based Omega Protein, which operates seven manufacturing plants in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. The company maintains that it sustainably harvests menhaden.
Omega Protein extracts hundreds of millions of pounds of menhaden a year from Chesapeake Bay alone. Striped bass and osprey numbers are down in the Bay.3 Only a couple of whales are spotted in the Bay each year, but they are foraging in increasing numbers at its exit. The menhaden fishery robs the Bay of its ecosystem in order to feed dogs,4 salmon and people in other states, countries and hemispheres.
What makes it so hard for conservationists to achieve catch limits is that this remains a local debate in the Virginia Legislature, while worldwide consumers of menhaden have no idea what it is or when they are buying it. Menhaden won’t stay in the ocean until “menhaden” is a household name.
The “right” whale to hunt continues to decline in the north
North Atlantic right whale: 350 remain alive
North Pacific right whale: 500 remain alive
Right whales are dying from rope entanglements directly linked to Maine’s lobster industry. The Monterey Bay aquarium’s Seafood Watch includes Maine lobster on their red list of foods to avoid. Maine is not happy about this.
We’re a pretty smart species, so of course we’ve already invented a solution to this problem: Ropeless lobster fishing devices. It’s a matter of getting lobstermen to adopt them, whether through policies, monetary incentives or public pressure.
Vessel strikes are also killing right whales and traffic is way up since the end of the pandemic. Check out the video graphic here of a one-year-old male right whale dodging boat traffic near New York. NOAA reported this summer that most vessels are complying with speed zones, even as it struggles to place a 10 knot limit on smaller vessels.
Basques, Scandinavians and Greenlanders initially hunted right whales because they were the “right” whale and fairly easy to harpoon. These whales spend a lot of time at the water’s surface skimming for food. Right whales don’t eat menhaden, they eat krill, but they are still connected to menhaden, which is used as bait fish by the lobster industry.
I can’t afford lobster. But when I worry about right whales, I remind myself that many species have bounced back from such low numbers. Here are a few more examples:
Southern sea otter: 50 alive in the 1960s; 3,000 alive today.
Northern elephant seal: 20 alive in 1892; 200,000 alive today.
Antarctic fur seal: a “few thousand” left by the 19th Century; up to 4 million alive today.
These bottlenecks are not great for a species’ genetic diversity, but at least it’s survival. We can’t give up on the 350 right whales left in the North Atlantic.
My overall point? We’re still saving whales — or not.
What you can do:
For the 350 North Atlantic right whales still alive:
Consider your lobster choices.
NRDC: Dead Right Whale Confirmed Entangled in Maine Fishing GearSupport new vessel speed limits from New York to Georgia.
Seafood Source: US lawmakers trying to stop NOAA Fisheries’ new vessel speed rules
For Chesapeake Bay and ocean life off the Eastern Seaboard:
Talk about Atlantic menhaden. Print it. Say it. Label it.
Menhaden products are rarely labeled as such. Demand labels.
Consider your pet food choices. Most “fish” in pet foods is derived from menhaden.
Consider your salmon choices. Farmed salmon is fed with menhaden “fish meal.”
Consider whether fish oil is a supplement you need. Studies have shown it has little effect. Harvard Health: The false promise of fish oil supplements
Consider whether your garden requires “fish meal” fertilizer.
Support the efforts of conservationists to limit menhaden catch limits.
Know who Omega Protein is and what it does.
Unsealed federal lawsuit alleges Omega Protein skirted U.S. citizen ownership requirementShare this article.
Great nature, environment and solutions headlines
I’m realizing I’ll never be able to fit it all the good news into 52 weekly posts. So, here are some great stories from throughout the web and Substack:
“A Trusting Goldfinch,” by
I could see that some of her feathers were still emerging from their sheaves. This meant she was just a few weeks old, and she was innocent.
“Hummer in the Summer,” by
A group of hummingbirds is called a charm. (A group of ravens is an unkindness; sparrows a ubiquity; and eagles a convocation.)
“Sustainable Seafood 9. Farmed Atlantic Salmon” and “Adventures in Conchology” by
Virtually all Atlantic salmon on the market are farmed, and virtually all farmed salmon are Atlantic salmon.
“A Note on Hope,” by
My concern is that hope is insufficient. So, I encourage you to, in the words of Terry Tempest Williams, “make vows to something deeper than hope.” If not hope, then what? Truth, courage, and solutions. Love. Collaboration and community.
“Diversity is the spice of life,” by
Just like investing in a diverse portfolio of stocks and shares buffers investors from unexpected shocks, the more species a system supports, the more stable it will be in response to ups and downs in the environment.
“Weekly Anthropocene,” by
California startup BurnBot has developed a robot that can conduct precise controlled burns to help prevent future wildfires.
“Why Every Child Deserves a Wildflower Meadow,” by
The Lost Spells book published in 2017, was a response to children’s dictionaries poised to take out words such as ‘acorn’ and ‘bramble’ because children were not using them. If they are not using them, they are not experiencing them.
“A wild swarm of dragonflies,” by
As is their wont, the news media, desperate for clicks like zombies for flesh, baited reports with “dragonfly apocalypse,” “biblical plague,” “invasion,” “attack,” and “hoards.”
From the web:
The best rewilding projects in the world to visit
The Iberian lynx is back from the brink
Judge in Brazil orders slaughterhouses to pay for Amazon reforestation
California gray wolf population more than doubles
The ancient practice of “good fire” is reviving Nebraska's birds, bears and berries
Australia: Birth of new Gilbert's potoroos on Middle Island celebrated by researchers
Oregon students build dams to lure back beavers
Bonus content: one more headline gripe
This year, an extremely rare North Pacific right whale floated next to a research boat, soliciting this baffling headline from a reputable California newspaper, The Sacramento Bee: Rare sea creature approaches scientists’ boat off CA coast and lingers for 20 minutes.
That headline should say: "Endangered right whale stuns scientists off California.”
This “sea creature” baloney is AI writing headlines to bait your clicks. As you know, AI has popped up as “assistants” in all writing software. This includes those used to push headlines out to the web. The more we click on these, the more AI will feed them to us!
Here’s another mysterious “sea creature” headline from the same paper, with an equally puzzling lead photo:
About Earth Hope:
Earth Hope is a solutions-based journalism project that highlights environmental success stories from around the globe, because hope is the foundation of progress. Consuming bad news is important, but we should also remind ourselves frequently that progress happens every day.
About me:
I’m Amanda Royal, a former newspaper reporter who covered wildfires, invasive species, water quality, wildlife and other environmental topics in California and Nevada (while writing under my maiden name and byline Amanda Fehd). I’m not funded by or affiliated with any group, environmental or otherwise. The pseudonym “Earth” was a bit accidental. It grew on me quickly, so I thought I’d keep it for a while. I’m new to Substack as of late July 2024 (I have a small archive because I started this project elsewhere). Thanks for the wonderful reception!
I cut 1,000 words of lecturing on solutions-based headlines from this article before pushing “publish.” You’re welcome. The gist was that most headlines are either conflict-based or “travel,” while we need more solutions-based headlines. When we talk about success, let’s always talk about how we got there.
Thanks to
for the info on farmed salmon food. His post was what got me thinking about menhaden again, which resulted in this article.By all appearances, this is a jobs-versus-jobs debate at the legislative level, the Omega Protein jobs versus the striped bass charter fishing jobs, neither amounting to more than several hundred jobs. Omega Protein donates a few hundred thousand a year to various Virginia state legislators, which we can assume is more than what the charter boat industry raises.
I love dogs.
As someone who considers himself well-informed about ocean issues, I did not know about and am glad to read of a conservation program that has worked marvelously to the benefit of these creatures that are more than likely - smarter than we are.
Furthermore, I am dumbfounded by the fact that “menhaden” is not used here as a double entendre for Manhattan. … Thank you.
I love this writer! I love the long list of things we can do that she gives us at the end. And I love that I find out about the hundreds of thousands more whales that exist on Earth because people are correcting past mistakes and saving a little fish with an odd name, Menhaden. Save the Menhaden!