What's got whiskers, a big mouth and "eat me" written all over it? The Bay's blue catfish.
By Whitney Pipkin, Bay Journal
That whiskered, wide-mouthed vacuum of local rivers has emerged after a bit of a PR makeover in recent years. And we might look back on 2015 as the year the blue catfish fully stepped into its new identity as not only a voracious, invasive and unwanted predator — but also a delicious one.
This year, the fish's ubiquity in fishermen's nets and on restaurant menus began to mirror its overabundance in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Officials hope that trend will put a dent in its numbers, too.
"We're getting the results we wanted," Bruce Vogt of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chesapeake Bay Office, who chairs the Bay Program's Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team's Invasive Catfish Task Force, told Karl Blankenship for a story he wrote in the fall.
In it, Karl covered the success of blue catfish as a relatively new commercial fishery, established to put a dent in runaway populations. Commercial catches of blue catfish now exceed those of striped bass on the Potomac River and in Virginia.
Fishermen on the Potomac River landed more than 600,000 pounds of blue catfish this year, according to data from the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, almost four times more than they did as recently as 2008.
Read the rest of the story at Bay Journal here: http://www.bayjournal.com/blog/post/critter_number_11_the_blue_catfish
By Whitney Pipkin, Bay Journal
That whiskered, wide-mouthed vacuum of local rivers has emerged after a bit of a PR makeover in recent years. And we might look back on 2015 as the year the blue catfish fully stepped into its new identity as not only a voracious, invasive and unwanted predator — but also a delicious one.
This year, the fish's ubiquity in fishermen's nets and on restaurant menus began to mirror its overabundance in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. Officials hope that trend will put a dent in its numbers, too.
"We're getting the results we wanted," Bruce Vogt of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chesapeake Bay Office, who chairs the Bay Program's Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team's Invasive Catfish Task Force, told Karl Blankenship for a story he wrote in the fall.
In it, Karl covered the success of blue catfish as a relatively new commercial fishery, established to put a dent in runaway populations. Commercial catches of blue catfish now exceed those of striped bass on the Potomac River and in Virginia.
Fishermen on the Potomac River landed more than 600,000 pounds of blue catfish this year, according to data from the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, almost four times more than they did as recently as 2008.
Read the rest of the story at Bay Journal here: http://www.bayjournal.com/blog/post/critter_number_11_the_blue_catfish
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