Anecdotal accounts of this odd oily fish indicate that they once swarmed up and down the east coast in huge schools and in numbers unimaginable to us today. Even more recently, scientific studies have shown that menhaden have declined 86% in the last 25 years, and that they have been exploited at too high a rate for at least 50 years. Half a century!

Read the rest over at FishHQ.

Many of you are speaking out at public hearings on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s proposed action on menhaden and press attention is picking up. Here’s a roundup of recent coverage in Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia.

This is your chance to be heard as the Commission nears an important decision to introduce a coastwide quota on menhaden which will mean that fishing stops once the limit is reached.

Congratulations to Alliance members Rob Moir of Ocean River Institute and Earthjustice for winning a strong federal court order striking down a flawed amendment to the Atlantic herring management plan. This is good news for depleted river herring, and should encourage management of forage species as part of the ecosystem.

BOSTON (June 18, 2012) – For the first time, comprehensive management measures for industrial mackerel fishing were established to help protect river herring and shad, crucial forage fish, and the marine ecosystems they support. After years of wide-ranging support led by the Herring Alliance, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC), the organization responsible for management of fisheries in federal waters off the mid-Atlantic coast, passed key regulations.