Republicans say a Virginia blue catfish industry could help protect the Bay

Two Republican lawmakers are floating proposals to create a catfish industry to prevent the depletion of other species in the Chesapeake Bay.

Del. Keith Hodges, R-Middlesex, proposes creating a Governor’s Blue Catfish Industries Development Fund to provide grants and loans to government bodies that support the creation or expansion of businesses involved with “blue catfish processing, flash freezing, or value-added facilities using blue catfish.” Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Westmoreland, is carrying the Senate companion.

A House Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources subcommittee voted Monday unanimously to advance Hodges’ bill, which will now go to the Appropriations Committee.

The bill’s intent is to address the invasive blue catfish species introduced into tidal and freshwater rivers in the 1970s and 1980s, Hodges said. Blue catfish eat shad, herring, rockfish, menhaden, and clams.

Commercial waterman Wayne Fisher and his son Aaron land blue catfish caught in a pound net in the Rappahannock River near Fones Cliffs in 2015. (Bill Portlock / Chesapeake Bay Foundation)

Hodges said that blue catfish also eat crabs, pointing to a study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources found that the crab population in 2022 reached its lowest number since 1990. The recent biennial State of the Bay report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation also noted catfish are depleting the shad population.

“There are 100 million of them. When you do the math … they eat well over a million tons of food,” Hodges said during the subcommittee hearing Monday afternoon. “They will swallow 400,000 rockfish eggs in a single gulp.”

Hodges is also seeking a budget amendment for the fiscal year 2024-25 to provide $4 million in grants for processing infrastructure, equipment, marketing, and tools to help watermen catch fish.

Only two blue catfish processors in the state currently exist, Hodges said. After the hearing, Hodges told the Mercury that blue catfish are the only species of fish that undergo inspections similar to meat, poultry, and egg products.

“Harvesting blue catfish will create much-needed rural coastal jobs and help to restore better ecological balance which this invasive species has disrupted,” said Lewis Lawrence, executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. “We are watching out for the baby Blue crabs and baby menhaden while simultaneously supporting the growing recreational fisheries.”

The fishery would be monitored by the state Department of Wildlife Resources and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which oversees fisheries in the state.

“We want to eliminate [blue catfish], but the only way we can do that, that we’ve come up with right now, is to eat our way out of it,” Hodges said. “It’s a delicious fish. I’d put it up against pretty much anything you can find out there.”