WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / October 27, 2025 / At a Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) event titled "The Impacts of Climate on Fisheries," held on September 24, 2025, at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, Chris Moore, CBF's Senior Regional Ecosystem Scientist, made several inaccurate statements about the Atlantic menhaden fishery and its management.
The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition (MFC) issues the following response to clarify the facts and ensure the public record reflects the best available science.
CLAIM: The menhaden industry has blocked Bay-specific science.
FACT:
The menhaden industry has a long record of collaborating with scientists and agencies throughout the Atlantic coast, contributing to more than a dozen cooperative studies with universities and NOAA. When new acoustic survey methods were proposed for Bay research, industry representatives supported conducting a pilot study to validate the technology before applying it across the entire Chesapeake. The disagreement was about scientific rigor, not opposition to research.
Today, a Bay-specific research roadmap funded through the Science Center for Marine Fisheries and led by scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, VIMS, and NOAA is underway to design a scientifically defensible Chesapeake Bay menhaden harvest cap, the very type of work Mr. Moore claimed was being prevented.
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