According to research Chris cites from NOAA and the University of Florida, rebuilding king mackerel would mean leaving about 40% more menhaden in the water than we do now. TRCP’s view is that the science is the easy part.
The hard part is convincing the commissioners and legislators who actually set the limits.
That’s why TRCP is pushing anglers to get involved. Fisheries managers respond to the people who show up and speak up.
The Atlantic menhaden board meets November 11. TRCP has a forage fish petition and more background at trcp.org/foragefishrecovery. The full conversation with Chris and Jaclyn Lunaas of TRCP is at the link in bio and at tomrowlandpodcast.com
15 days agotherealbigsnack
The “leave 40% more menhaden to rebuild the mackerels” line isn’t what the science actually says. The NOAA/UF study they’re talking about is Berenshtein et al. 2023. It’s the ecosystem model that looked at how menhaden harvest affects predators in the Gulf, including king and Spanish mackerel. What it actually found was about an 11% drop in overall predator biomass at the high end of historical fishing, and that an average ecological reference point target worked out to roughly a 14% reduction in fishing pressure compared to recent years. It didn’t say we need to leave 40% more menhaden in the water for the mackerels. The diet work (Sagarese et al. 2016) also doesn’t back the higher numbers that get thrown around. Menhaden are part of their diet, but it’s not at the levels people keep repeating. There’s a real connection between menhaden and kings, but the 40% figure isn’t coming from those papers. If there’s a different study that actually says that, I’d like to see it.
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