'Critical danger' warning on fish

Not one of these fish is destined for a supermarket, canning factory, or restaurant. Menhaden are oily and foul and packed with tiny bones. No one eats them. Yet they are the most important fish caught along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, exceeding the tonnage of all other species combined. These kibble of the sea fetch only about 10 cents a pound at the dock, but they can be ground up, dried, and formed into another kind of kibble for land animals, a high-protein feed for chickens, pigs, and cattle. Pop some barbecued wings into your mouth, and at least part of what you're eating was once menhaden.

Humans eat menhaden in other forms too. Menhaden are a key dietary component for a wide variety of fish, including bass, mackerel, cod, bonito, swordfish, bluefish, and tuna. The 19th-century ichthyologist G. Brown Goode exaggerated only slightly when declaring that people who dine on Atlantic saltwater fish are eating "nothing but menhaden."

And that is one problem with the intensive fishing of menhaden, which has escalated in recent decades. This vital biolink in a food chain that extends from tiny plankton to the dinner tables of many Americans appears to be threatened. The population of menhaden has been so depleted in estuaries and bays up and down the Eastern Seaboard that even marine biologists who look kindly on commercial fishing are alarmed. "Menhaden are an incredibly important link for the entire Atlantic coast," says Jim Uphoff, the stock assessment coordinator for the Fisheries Service of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "And you have a crashing menhaden population with the potential to cause a major ecosystem problem." Menhaden have an even more important role that extends beyond the food chain: They are filter feeders that consume phytoplankton, thus controlling the growth of algae in coastal waters. As the population of menhaden declines, algal blooms have proliferated, transforming some inshore waters into dead zones.

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These days Omega Protein enjoys a near monopoly fishing for menhaden. As the fish population declined and operational costs increased, many companies went bankrupt or were bought out by bigger, more industrialized corporations. Omega Protein's parent was Zapata, a Houston-based corporation cofounded by former president George Bush in 1953. Omega Protein went independent in 1998, after completing the consolidation of the menhaden industry by taking over its large Atlantic competitor, American Protein of Virginia, and its Gulf competitor, Gulf Protein of Louisiana.