WASHINGTON, D.C. / ACCESS Newswire / November 2, 2026 / The American Saltwater Guides Association’s podcast, The Guide Post, opens its latest attack on the menhaden fishery under the title “Menhaden Math Ain’t Mathin’.” The episode features Dr. Jerald Ault promoting a mortality estimate substantially lower than the revised estimate the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted after considering his work during its 2025 stock assessment.
Promoting the episode, ASGA asks: “What if one of the most important numbers in East Coast fisheries management was wrong, and the people in charge didn’t want to hear it?” ASGA leaves out that the people in charge did hear it . Ault formally presented his analysis to the ASMFC twice in 2024, and scientists continued to consider his work during the 2025 stock assessment. That review contributed to a revised mortality estimate, although scientists did not adopt Ault’s substantially lower figure.
Host Tony Friedrich presents the discussion as an indictment of fisheries managers and the science behind Atlantic menhaden management. What listeners do not get is a clear account of the technical objections to Ault’s work-or that his work was considered.
The research was considered
Ault presented his analysis to the ASMFC’s Stock Assessment Subcommittee on September 25, 2024, and appeared again at its November 2024 methods workshop . Scientists examined his interpretation of historical tagging data alongside the analysis by Liljestrand and colleagues, including differences in the datasets, fishing effort, tag-recovery efficiency, and modeling assumptions.
That review continued into 2025 and produced a different natural-mortality estimate. The ASMFC revised the estimate used in its assessment from approximately 1.17 to 0.92 , contributing to lower estimates of stock size and to the Commission’s decision last year to reduce the 2026 coastwide catch limit by 20% . The ASMFC did not adopt the substantially lower estimate of approximately 0.50 advocated by Ault and co-author Jiangang Luo.
The revised estimate was incorporated into the 2025 assessment and underwent independent peer review. The ASMFC explains the review and revision in its Atlantic menhaden FAQs.
Ault and Luo’s paper was not published in the peer-reviewed journal Fisheries Research until September 16, 2026-less than eight weeks before the ASMFC’s November meeting. But Ault had presented the underlying analysis to the ASMFC twice in 2024, and the Commission’s scientists examined it during the 2025 assessment. The journal publication was new; the research was not.
The Technical Committee had significant concerns
In an October 21, 2026 memorandum, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Menhaden Technical Committee and Stock Assessment Subcommittee told the Menhaden Management Board that the Technical Committee and the SEDAR 102 Review Panel had reviewed an unpublished draft of the Ault and Luo paper during the 2025 assessment.
That review contributed to the revised mortality estimate. The Technical Committee also reported “significant concerns about the methods and assumptions” Ault and Luo used to produce their still-lower estimate. The memorandum distinguished its review of the unpublished draft from a committee review of the final publication, which had not yet occurred.
The record does not support treating Ault’s lower estimate as a finding that managers must immediately insert into the assessment.
A University of Maryland professor identified serious flaws
During the podcast, Ault says he was given no substantive explanation for the objections to his work. Professor Michael Wilberg’s comments to the Menhaden Board tell a different story.
Wilberg, a fisheries scientist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and a co-author of the Liljestrand analysis, reviewed the published Ault and Luo paper and identified what he called “several fatal flaws.” He reported that:
- The models failed standard diagnostics. After rerunning Ault and Luo’s publicly available models, Wilberg found they did not meet standard tests used to determine whether Bayesian model results are statistically valid.
- The analysis ignored empirical tag-recovery data. Wilberg said Ault and Luo did not use the results of experiments in which nearly 100,000 tagged menhaden were introduced directly into reduction plants to measure how many tags were recovered.
- The paper mischaracterized menhaden longevity. Wilberg said the authors’ description of fish regularly reaching ages 10 or 11 was misleading. He reported that no Atlantic menhaden had been aged nine or older since 1964, despite extensive sampling.
Wilberg said these concerns were similar to those identified by the Technical Committee and to comments he had previously provided to Ault and Luo, including in March 2025. He concluded that their paper should not be considered the best available science and recommended that managers continue using the 2025 assessment.
Friedrich’s suggestions of collusion and industry protection do not answer those scientific objections.
The fishery deserve a factual debate
The ASMFC’s current assessment finds that the coastwide Atlantic menhaden stock is not overfished and that overfishing is not occurring. Predator needs are already incorporated into management through ecological reference points. The Commission reduced the 2026 coastwide catch limit by 20%.
Near the end of the episode, Friedrich says that additional restrictions carry “no risk” because the result would simply be more fish. Ault speaks broadly about sustaining economies, jobs, and people, but neither addresses what further restrictions would mean for the men and women who harvest and process menhaden.
The Virginia NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and UFCW Local 400 have warned lawmakers and regulators about the consequences for the predominantly minority, unionized workforce and the families and rural communities that depend on these jobs. The SCLC’s letter to Maryland Governor Wes Moore calls attention to economic justice, wages, benefits, and the dignity of work. The Virginia NAACP has emphasized health insurance, retirement, family stability, and the scarcity of comparable replacement jobs.
UFCW Local 400 has urged lawmakers and the ASMFC to refrain from additional Chesapeake Bay menhaden restrictions until ongoing research establishes their necessity. Working people, the union says, must have a voice in decisions affecting their livelihoods, and conservation and workers’ rights belong together.
A foreign ownership double standard
The American Saltwater Guides Association has criticized menhaden processor Omega Protein’s Canadian ownership. In one attack on the company, ASGA emphasized that it was “a foreign company.” Yet ASGA’s podcast is sponsored by Costa Sunglasses , a brand of the foreign-owned EssilorLuxottica group, headquartered in Paris.
The distinction for American workers is what happened to their jobs. The menhaden fishery continues to support fishing and processing jobs in Virginia’s Northern Neck, including union jobs held by African American workers and generations of local families. Costa, meanwhile, announced plans in 2019 to eliminate 295 of its 350 Daytona Beach jobs as it was integrated into Luxottica.
ASGA is willing to accept sponsorship from a foreign-owned company that announced the elimination of hundreds of American jobs while criticizing a fishery that supports union and minority working families in a rural community with few comparable opportunities.
Sources
American Saltwater Guides Association. (2019, September 19). Omega Protein ignores Bay Cap.
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. (2025, November). Atlantic menhaden FAQs.
EssilorLuxottica. (n.d.). Introducing Costa Clear: Prescription eyewear from Costa Sunglasses.
EssilorLuxottica. (n.d.). Legal notice.
About the American Small Pelagics Network
The American Small Pelagics Network represents fishermen, processors, suppliers, and coastal communities connected to fisheries such as menhaden, mackerel, herring, squid, and butterfish. ASPN advocates for sustainable fisheries management that supports critical fish species, while maintaining economic opportunities for fishermen and fishing communities.
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SOURCE: American Small Pelagics Network
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