Our toothless pudgy-bodied menhaden is a multi-million dollar industry that supplies farmers with fertilizer and animal feed, health crazed baby boomers and generation xers with omega 3, and oil in linoleum, soap and lubricants.  However, there is much more to this coastal superstar than the revenues it brings to tycoons like Malcolm Glazer.  

The menhaden is the liver of the ocean's coastal ecology and a poignant centerpiece of the oceanic food chain.  Supper to almost all Atlantic predatory fish, sea gulls, and ospreys, the menhaden is the diet of the Atlantic.  In addition to its mission to be eaten, the menhaden regulates the vast quantities of nitrogen that poison the oceans by consuming phytoplankton.  In the past menhaden collaborated in its filter feeding with the oyster.  However, in recent years our gluttonous appetite for the aphrodisiac oysters has depleted their population and subsequently added stress to the menhaden's mission.  

The oceans are changing, especially coastal estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, an area once prized as the breadbasket of seafood.  As Mr. Glazer and his fleet of menhaden trawlers prowl the coastline for the staple ingredient of Omega Protein's products, they are choking the ocean of its critical filter feeder.  With each catch of menhaden, Omega Protein is literally removing a portion of the ocean's liver and replacing it with "dead zones," where marine life no longer exists.

¶ 11:57 PM