It’s Official: Stripers are Virginia’s No. 1 Saltwater Fish

[Fishing Report]

It’s Official: Stripers are Virginia’s No. 1 Saltwater Fish
from Bay Daily by Chuck Epes
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The striped bass, long a favorite of Chesapeake Bay anglers and seafood lovers, has been the official state fish of Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and South Carolina for years.

This week, Virginia’s General Assembly made stripers the official saltwater fish of the Old Dominion as well. The popular Morone saxatilis, also called rockfish, joins the brook trout, Virginia’s official freshwater fish, in the Commonwealth’s pantheon of official critters.

That should please the 4th-graders at Spratley Gifted Center in Hampton, Va., who took on lobbying for striped bass as a class project and made two trips to Richmond over the past month to talk directly to state legislators about the fish.

A group of students from Michele Ferrel’s classroom testified before two legislative committees about the virtues of the noble rockfish and the problems it faces from disease, pollution, and reduced food stocks.

The fish legislation, sponsored by Hampton Senator John Miller, cleared its final hurdle Tuesday when it passed the Virginia House of Delegates on an 80-16 vote (it had been approved by the state Senate earlier this month). But the House victory didn’t come without a mighty struggle. Another fish, the lowly menhaden, nearly ate the striper’s lunch, which is ironic because in nature it’s the other way around.

It seems scores of delegates, led by Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, preferred that menhaden, a Menhaden_copy.jpg small, oily fish not typically consumed by humans, should be the Commonwealth’s official saltwater fish. Menhaden eat plankton and therefore help filter and clear water in the Bay. They also serve as prey for larger fish, birds, and mammals, and they are the basis for a lucrative commercial reduction fishery based in Reedville, Va. Del. Miller offered an amendment to substitute menhaden for striped bass, and the debate was on. Read about it here.

The vote on the menhaden amendment was about as close as it gets – 48 to 49, or one vote shy of carrying the day – but after its narrow defeat, the majority of delegates endorsed Sen. Miller’s striped bass designation, and it was done.

Back in Hampton, Ms. Ferrel’s 4th graders were largely oblivious to the drama playing out 80 miles away until they got a telephone call from Sen. Miller.

Striper “We were quite excited when we heard,” Ms. Ferrel says. “The senator called and explained all of the ‘hoopla’ that went on. I never would have thought an amendment would have been made to change the fish. I was blown away!”

So were her students.

“The kids were equally shocked that someone would try to derail our endeavor,” she said. “Luckily, it all worked out in the end! Now we look forward to meeting the governor” when he signs the legislation into law.

Regular Bay Daily readers know that menhaden have been the subject of intense debate in Virginia and Maryland, not so much to make it an official state fish but to better gauge the health and sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay’s menhaden population and how best to manage it. That debate will no doubt continue, as it should.

But for now, all hail Striped Bass, the official saltwater fish of Virginia…thanks to a bunch of enterprising and committed 4th-graders from Hampton.

Chuck Epes
Chesapeake Bay Foundation

[Photos: top, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; middle, copyright Sandra Zoellner; bottom, CBF]