Fishing for flounder and considering the menhaden dilemma

Ralph, Raym and I fished for flounder near DB buoy off Indian River Inlet this week. We caught a bunch. Kept one. Raym had fresh flounder for dinner. Always a treat.

While drifting and bumping baits on the rubble bottom, we watched three of Omega Protein’s blue-hulled menhaden vessels pass by, heading south. It was a clear summer day and the bright sun lit up a thick white bow wake as the vessels lumbered along. I took that bow wake and the vessels sitting low in the water to mean they were heading home to Reedville, Va., with their holds full of the controversial, oily fish.

Controversial because menhaden – the bedrock of the Lewes economy in the early to mid-1950s – are highly valued by humans, bigger fish, porpoises and whales, ospreys and sea gulls.

Omega Protein and its many predecessors have for centuries harvested the fish for the oil and fish meal used at various times in history for products as divergent as lipstick, linoleum, high-protein chicken feed and those ubiquitous gelatin capsules so many of us take as dietary supplements.

For many of the rest of the critters that fly above and swim in the ocean, menhaden are a valuable food source.

Recreational fishermen fear commercial harvesters will harm their passion by taking too many menhaden out of the sea and its tributaries like Chesapeake and Delaware bays, jeopardizing the survival of such species as striped bass.

Environmentalists fear overharvesting will harm all of the other species that depend on the prolific menhaden.

Harvesters and their opponents wage a perennial battle over how many millions of tons of menhaden can be taken while maintaining sustainable numbers. Other than in Virginia, quotas are established by the federal Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. That body uses science to determine how many menhaden can responsibly be taken annually from coastal waters outside the three-mile line that separates state and federal waters.

Virginia is the only state that allows commercial menhaden fishing in its state waters, primarily in the lower reaches of Chesapeake Bay. Steady controversy there, too.

On our way out to DB buoy, 20 miles or so from Lewes, we crossed choppy patches of ocean and smoother, glassier patches. I wondered out loud about that.

Raym, a scientist, said the smoother patches result from oil that rises to the surface from billions of microorganisms that inhabit the ocean, and from larger creatures like the oily menhaden.

I’ve heard of calming rough seas by pouring oil on the surface, but never knew the ocean did the same thing in a reverse direction.

On our fishing day, endless schools of menhaden kept us company as we fished for more palatable fare.