Virginia Budget Deal Fails to Launch Long-Awaited Menhaden Research

Repeated delays on science reaffirm need to pause reduction fishery in Chesapeake Bay

House and Senate lawmakers in Virginia announced a deal this weekend on a two-year state budget that once again does not include much-needed funding to study the Chesapeake Bay’s menhaden population—bowing to pressure from industry to delay this vital research.

The funding, which had been included in previous House budget proposals this year, is critical for understanding the population of menhaden in the Bay and the impacts of industrial factory fishing.

This year marks the third in a row since the state developed a study plan with Omega Protein, conservationists, and academics. Each year industry delay tactics have helped kill the funding, despite broad support from Virginians who want to see this fishery managed with better science.

Recent polling shows that 80 percent of Virginia voters support state funding for a menhaden study, and 79 percent support pausing the fishery in the Bay until research is completed. This research would help show exactly what risks the industrial menhaden fishery poses to the Bay and better inform how many menhaden the Bay ecosystem needs to thrive.

Menhaden are foundational to a healthy Chesapeake Bay. They serve as highly nutritious food to some of the most iconic and important species in the Bay, including striped bass, osprey, red drum, and whales.

Estimates in 2025 from Maine to Florida show that there are far fewer menhaden up and down the East Coast than previously thought. Menhaden catches by small-scale watermen in the Bay have declined significantly in recent years. Osprey chicks are starving to death at unprecedented rates in parts of the Bay where they traditionally rely on menhaden for food. Amid these intensifying warning signs and absent new research, the only commonsense remedy is to pause the industrial menhaden fishery in the Bay.

Existing research focuses on the coastwide menhaden population in the Atlantic Ocean—there is no menhaden-specific science in the Chesapeake Bay estuary, where industrial fishing pressure is heavily concentrated. Additional research is needed to understand exactly why the Bay is flashing red warning signs on menhaden.

Virginia is the only state along the Atlantic coast that still allows industrial menhaden fishing in its state waters. That lone remaining industrial operation—foreign-owned Omega Protein and their fishing partner Ocean Harvesters—extracts over 100 million pounds of menhaden from Chesapeake Bay waters each year.

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science has stated that data on menhaden in the Bay remains “woefully inadequate,” and developed a plan for a menhaden study in 2023 together with the industry and other groups.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Forage Campaign Manager Will Poston issued the following statement:

“No science, no industrial fishing. With one massive industry continuing to empty the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia must pause menhaden reduction fishing in the Bay.”

“The menhaden industry has not once offered public support for funding state menhaden research. The continued political pressure from Omega Protein and their McGuireWoods lobbyists to delay science is damning—and should concern everyone who cares about the Bay.”

“Meanwhile, Chesapeake Bay watermen are seeing menhaden catches plummet, blue crab fishermen are spending more on bait, and osprey chicks are starving to death.”