Menhaden: The Most Important Fish in the Bay

May 29, 2012 from Earth Focus

Never heard of Menhaden? It's time you did. Menhaden may be the most important fish in Atlantic coastal waters. They filter up to four gallons of water a minute and they are a key part of the ocean food chain. But now they are disappearing at an alarming rate -- harvested for omega 3 oil, fishmeal, and poultry feed. The potential loss of the Menhaden threatens the ecology of major US marine areas including the Chesapeake Bay. Students at American University's Center for Environmental Filmmaking made the award-winning film "Menhaden: The Most Important Fish in the Bay." They share the story of the Menhaden and the making of the film with Earth Focus.

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Menhaden

A menhaden, also known as mossbunker, bunker, and pogy, is any forage fish of the genera Brevoortia and Ethmidium, two genera of marine fish in the family Clupeidae. "Menhaden" derives from a Native American word for fertilizer. It is generally thought that Pilgrims were advis... Explore this topic

Overfishing

Overfishing is the act whereby fish stocks are depleted to unacceptable levels, regardless of water body size. Resource depletion, low biological growth rates, and critically low biomass levels result from overfishing. For example, overfishing of sharks has led to the upset of... Explore this topic

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres, it covers approximately 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to A... Explore this topic

Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers 64,299 square miles in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Dela... Explore this topic

Sustainable seafood

Sustainable seafood is seafood that is either caught or farmed in ways that consider the long-term vitality of harvested species and the well-being of the oceans. It was first promoted through the sustainable seafood movement which began in the 1990s. This operation highlights... Explore this topic

Fish farming

Fish farming is the principal form of aquaculture, while other methods may fall under mariculture. Fish farming involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures, usually for food. A facility that releases juvenile fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supp... Explore this topic

Food Chain

A food chain is a linear sequence of links in a food web starting from a species that eats no other species in the web and ends at a species that is eaten by no other species in the web. A food chain differs from a food web, because the complex polyphagous network of feeding r... Explore this topic

Fish

A fish is any member of a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related gr... Explore this topic

Fish meal

Fish meal, or fishmeal, is a commercial product made from fish and the bones and offal from processed fish. It is a brown powder or cake obtained by drying the fish or fish trimmings, often after cooking, and then grinding it. If it is a fatty fish it is also pressed to extrac... Explore this topic

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets. It is sometimes referred to as the world or the Blue Planet. Earth formed approximately 4.... Explore this topic

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Menhaden

Overfishing

Atlantic Ocean

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