Editorial – September/October 2026

By Karen Wall

BUNKER & BLUES

Starting off, we at the Big Game Fishing Journal want to wish a hearty congratulations to Capt. Damon Sacco and the crew of the Castafari.

Just as we were going to press for this issue, Sacco and his team caught a potential record-setting blue marlin, the largest ever caught on the East Coast and the heaviest ever in Massachusetts state history.

The folks at On The Water had the lucky fortune to be at the dock when Castafari backed in at Falmouth Harbor with the 143.5-inch blue partially sticking out of the transom door.

It checked in at 1,260 pounds, nearly 400 pounds heavier than the previous state record of 873 pounds, the On The Water report said.

The blue marlin was subdued after a three-hour fight in the Atlantis Canyon with Walter Chapman on the rod, the report said.

For those on social media, Sacco shared a highlight video of the catch on his Facebook account (Find him here: www.facebook.com/capecodfishing).

BATTLE FOR BUNKER

In case you haven’t been paying much attention to it, there is increasing alarm being raised about the status of bunker, aka menhaden.

And those concerns are starting to stretch well beyond just the folks catching them for striped bass fishing or crabbing at the docks.

While the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s latest stock assessment update says the Atlantic menhaden population is not overfished and not in danger of collapse, there are increasing signs that something is very amiss.

For starters, the stock assessment update (read it here https://bit.ly/4zzmm0o) notes that the abundance of the fish declined in both the North Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic in 2023, the most recent year of the statistics in the update.

The update happened because the scientists found an error in the data they used in 2020, and the corrected data resulted in a lower starting point for the abundance than what was found in 2020.

The scientists also noted the population fecundity – the number of mature eggs each fish produces, which indicates how many fish could result from spawning – has been declining since 2012. Older fish typically produce more mature eggs than younger fish, so declining fecundity could be an indication that too many older fish are being removed from the population.

The information about the declines seen in 2023 data seems to be ignored by those who keep citing the “It’s not overfished” data.

And it ignores what fishermen are seeing out on the ocean. Where for years there had been large shoals of bunker visible on the surface, those numbers have decreased.

There have been significant declines in the biomass of Atlantic striped bass. That’s been a concern for more than a decade, but much of the focus has been on how many and what size stripers were being removed from the fishery, particularly among fishermen away from the Chesapeake Bay area.

In 2026, there’s a new concern being raised: Ospreys.

The birds had just been removed from the endangered species list in New Jersey in early 2025, after nearly 50 years of efforts to save ospreys, who were harmed by DDT, a pesticide widely used in the late 1960s and early 1970s until it was banned because of the damage it was doing to birds.

Ben Wurst, a senior wildlife biologist with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, has been banding ospreys and researching them for more than 20 years. In 2026, he has catalogued the deaths of several osprey young – deaths due to starvation, he says.

Similar reports are coming in from biologists in Delaware and Connecticut, of ospreys found dead due to starvation.

The primary forage for ospreys? Atlantic menhaden, which have become increasingly scarce off the New Jersey coast.

And increasingly groups are pointing to the menhaden reduction boats of Omega Protein as the cause.

The company is the only reduction fishing company operating along the Atlantic coast. It uses spotter planes to search for vast schools of bunker that it then surrounds and consumes. The fish are turned into fish meal and fish oil.

There have been efforts for more than 20 years to clamp down on Omega’s massive consumption – the 2025 ASMFC stock assessment notes that reduction fishing accounted for 70 percent of the fishing mortality in 2023 – but the company has been able to successfully lobby over and over to stay in business.

H. Bruce Franklin, an acclaimed professor at Rutgers University, was warning about the impacts of Omega Protein and its fishing practices back in the early 2000s. His book, “The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America,” looked at the critical role bunker play in the ocean ecosystem as filter feeders that helped control algae populations while also feeding a vast number of other species, both in the sea and on land.

Franklin was advocating hard for curbs on Omega’s practices even then, in 2007 when his book was published.

Back then, bunker were plentiful in New Jersey’s waters because the state had long banned reduction fishing within the state’s 3-mile limit. At that time, Omega was concentrating its efforts closer to its plant in Reedville, Virginia, and on the Chesapeake Bay.

In the years since I first read the book, Omega has headed out farther to chase bunker. The company’s ships and spotter planes are routinely seen just outside the 3-mile limit, gathering as much menhaden as possible.

Menhaden Defenders, founded by Paul Eidman, has been highlighting the growing impact – and continually expanding range – of Omega for years.

He recently spoke at the ASMFC’s Menhaden Management board meeting and laid out what he said are unmistakable signs that bunker are in trouble.

“The experts at catching bunker — Omega Protein — are now flying spotter planes hundreds of miles from Reedville to Cape Cod Bay, searching for what remains of the adult biomass so they can maximize yields,” Eidman said. The boats are returning to Virginia after trips north with only partial loads, and the catch is “almost entirely pre-spawn juveniles,” fish that will never get the chance to reproduce.

Eidman said the signs go far beyond just Omega’s inability to get full loads of bunker.

“The ecosystem is signaling distress: osprey nests failing, striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, and fluke at historic lows, whale-watching vessels struggling to find marine mammals, and coastal waters that look increasingly lifeless,” he said. It’s an ecological collapse “happening in real time.”

Eidman said he wants authorities to stop “catering to” Omega’s desire to harvest as many fish as possible.

“We do not need to wait for a coastwide ecosystem collapse to act,” he said. “Nature is not whispering — it is shouting.”

He’s right. And we need to add our voices to those of nature, to stop the damage that is being done to our ecosystem before it’s too late.