Speaker 2: 0:12

And now from the Blue Ridge PBS studios in Roanoke, virginia. It's the Virginians of Interest podcast, with your hosts Brian Campbell and Carthan Curran.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Welcome to the Virginians of Interest podcast. My name is Brian Campbell. I'm here with my friend Carthan Curran, who's got a special introduction.

Speaker 3: 0:27

Thank you, brian. We're delighted to have with us today Mr Jamie Green, who is the Commissioner of the Virginia Marine Resource Commission. Jamie, welcome to Virginia's Adventurous Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here.

Speaker 4: 0:41

Let's start off with if you could share with our audience listeners where you grew up and Listeners where you grew up and where you're from and your college career and how you got into what I would consider one of the coolest state agencies there is in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Well, thank you for that and I'll agree with you it is one of the coolest, if not the coolest, state agency in the Commonwealth. Well, first of all, I grew up in lower Gloucester area Some refer to it as the Guinea area, beena and Guinea area. I grew up, my family were commercial fishermen. We call them watermen because you got to be able to do a little bit of everything, not just fish, and grew up working the water and, you know, loved sports, played sports in high school and wound up going to college for a little bit, then came back to the water business and, you know, went on my own for quite a while and decided to go to a career in law enforcement years later and I went to the Virginia Marine Police and went back to college while I was working as well. I'm a graduate of the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville, St Leo as well. Graduate of St Leo.

Speaker 4: 1:57

But I have my college background stems. I'm a student of my craft, so I took a lot of courses that pertain to what I do and what I wanted to do, and so I took courses at Old Dominion and several other places as well, to help me along and better understand not only what I was doing, but to get a better grasp on where I wanted to go. And so, lo and behold, I rose through the ranks in law enforcement. I threw first sergeant I was the first FTO, or one of the first FTOs in the department's history Then went to first sergeant captain I think I was the youngest captain and eventually got to lieutenant colonel, before being appointed to commissioner in 2022. Before being appointed to commissioner in 2022.

Speaker 4: 2:54

And lo and behold, I'm here with you guys and traveling the state, talking about what we do and trying to get the word out there about what VMRC does. That's kind of what we go by most times, because it's a mouthful to say Virginia Marine Resources Commission. Every time, so we say VMRC. And if you go to the eastern part of the state in the Tidewater area and you say VMRC, everybody knows who you are. And if you come to the western part of the state, well, it's a hit and a miss.

Speaker 3: 3:19

I think too, for our listeners, that this position is a gubernatorial appointee position, so Governor Young can appoint you to this role with this agency.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Yeah Well, it's funny. So I'd never met Jamie before in my life. He walks in here about 10 minutes ago and we had the same school bus driver, the late Esther Mae Belvin. So you're about 15 years younger than me. You look a lot younger than that.

Speaker 1: 3:46

But we were reminiscing about how that part of Gloucester County changed over the last 40 to 50 years and when I moved there in 1971, there was a thriving waterman community. I mean, it was a lot of people who worked on the water. In fact we were discussing there was an island off of Guinea called Big Island and I don't know 40 or 50 people lived there, but it seemed like half of my elementary school bus. People would take a boat over every morning and catch a bus to the local elementary school. So this was a really integral part of that part of Virginia and it has. It is almost completely not disappeared, but it's certainly not what it used to be. So how has I mean? Mean, you've got, we'll get into your professional job. But what do you think about having witnessed all that and also having your family's heritage be wrapped up in what it is that you now do on behalf of the Commonwealth?

Speaker 4: 4:40

Well, you know it is changing. It has changed quite a bit. I have I won't say exactly how long, but several hundreds of years of. You know my lineages in the area and you're right, the ever-changing portions of the marshes there and the island itself, of which you were referring to, has been, it's been great, it's accelerated and it's been it's accelerated.

Speaker 4: 5:09

And I went out. We're doing a project now at VMRC to try to use new creative products to help prevent, you know, the erosion and the disappearing of the marsh and see if we can reestablish the marshes back in that area, because a lot of that marsh area is state-owned and so when I went out there recently it had probably gone back at least several hundred yards since the last time I'd been out there. It'd been a while since I'd been there. But, you know, because it's a shoal area, you got to. You know if you're going to go in there, you got to have.

Speaker 4: 5:46

You know either you're lost or you're going in there intentionally, because it's really not a lot of water in there and you don't want to get stranded. And so I was very surprised at how much of it had, you know, eroded away and is gone now in such a short period of time and as far as the area in general, the people you're right, the working waterfront communities are suffering. You know it's not what it used to be. You know when I grew up in that area the Pocosin area, pretty much everywhere in Matthews, tangier, you know the eastern shore, same way northern that you couldn't drive down a road without driving by somebody's yard full of crab pots or you'd see the dredges laying up the side of the building or nets strung out that they were hanging or something.

Speaker 4: 6:37

I mean it was everywhere. It was kind of like a way of life and you know, you had somebody in your little area there that you didn't have to travel very far, that knew how to do everything or did everything. For instance, like you know, we had individuals that would hang our nets for us while we were working or make our gear or whatever it was we were using. And you know, you just don't see that anymore. And that's one of the things we're doing at VMRC that I decided to do to try to see if we can answer that to keep the culture alive. Yeah, because it's really. It is a culture. It's the history of Virginia. I mean, people don't believe this, but at one time the Guinea area was so prevalent that they had a theater there in the In.

Speaker 4: 7:22

Marius, it was in Marius, that's right, and the big singers I mean the major players in the country music world and stuff, would come in there and do concerts which they wouldn't believe to this day. But it was because it was a thriving, vibrant community at the time and the seafood industry was probably the most robust industry in the Commonwealth at the time. And of course, you fast forward 50, 60, 70 years later and it's the same, obviously. And there's been a lot of changes and there's been a lot of as people grow up and move out of the communities. You don't see the. I'm one of them, for example. I mean, I don't live anywhere near Gulfstream anymore. I don't work the water. I was the last one in my family to work the water.

Speaker 4: 8:13

And I come from, you'd have to. There's nobody in my lineage that didn't work the water, and I'm the last one. My great-grandfather was one of 13.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Wow.

Speaker 4: 8:23

And every single one of them worked the water. So we it's just fading and it's fading fast. So it's just fading and it's fading fast. And that's why, back to what we're doing at VMRC, that I decided to create an apprenticeship program for the youth. And it's not to necessarily suck people in and say, hey, you're going to work the water, it's to keep the culture alive, for people to learn what we did, what we do, and to try to keep it going. There are some people that you know, young people out there that really want to work the water. You know they go to like vo-tech schools. They're not necessarily interested in college and one of the things we have to understand is I mean my kids, I push, you know, college on them.

Speaker 4: 9:06

Don't get me wrong, but college wasn't for me at first either, and so providing the opportunities to those who want to work, if we can, I thought, was a great idea, and it helped keep the culture alive, especially since the average age of a waterman in Virginia now is like 57, 58 range or higher. Of the people that I worked with 20 years ago or a little over 20 years ago, the majority of the people that I worked with I enjoyed having around. They passed away. I mean, you said you grew up in the Jenkins Neck area. Well, you couldn't have grown up in the Jenkins Neck area and not knew Jackie Bonneville, wild Bill.

Speaker 1: 9:46

There's no way.

Speaker 4: 9:46

Well, he passed away last week.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Oh God, he was one of the last ones, yeah.

Speaker 4: 9:51

And what an amazing character, amazing human being. That area down there would help anybody. You know, sometimes you know it was known as a rough area. But I know one thing we never, even though we didn't have a whole lot, you never noticed it. You always had work to do. You always had something to do. There was always somewhere to go, obviously work-related.

Speaker 4: 10:14

So I don't really know how to do much other than work. Everybody says do you do anything but work? I don't know how to do anything else. My wife tries to correct that every now and then to make sure that I get grounded on that some sort of way. But coming from humble beginnings and built everything, everything was built on the foundation of hard work. So that's what I know. And so when we put this apprenticeship program together a couple of years ago, we had the mindset of not only bringing more people in to keep the culture alive, not just the locals. It wasn't just about the locals, it was also about educating people even out here in the western part of state, because what we were trying to do is we're trying to build a system of opportunity to people that involves the seafood, the wonderful seafood that comes out of Chesapeake.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Where does it come from? How does it get to my?

Speaker 4: 11:09

table Right, and so we're trying to build an infrastructure with the apprenticeship program that would include young people that want to be entrepreneurs, that maybe want to sell fresh seafood or open a restaurant and sell fresh seafood or have fresh dishes from Virginia seafood in it. And when you have that kind of open mindset that we reach further than just the Tidewater area or the 757 area code or the saltwater areas, then if you can create that kind of network, you're going to create more opportunities also for the people in the eastern part of the state because they're going to have places to go with their product and we're developing a program that where young people can get more involved in things that are not only harvested but processed right here in the Kamala.

Speaker 3: 11:55

Let me piggyback on your so the origins of the decline of the seafood industry in Virginia. Can you kind of give our listeners what the origins, the very beginning of that decline. But now twofold question it seems that, if I'm not mistaken, we are seeing a comeback in the seafood industry in Virginia.

Speaker 4: 12:21

That is correct. I won't use the term decline, but I'll tell you there's been some hits in it. One of the major issues we have in Virginia that's been really, really hurting us bad is the loss of all our processing facilities to other states, and most of that is labor. There's a you know, you got to remember we have these visa workers coming in, but the seafood industry has a very limited, almost pool where it hurts them. They do very well. They love coming here to work. They come here legally through the H-2B visa program.

Speaker 4: 13:08

The problem is we can't get the amount they need to continue on the processing and people say, well, man, these jobs are here. We shouldn't be giving these jobs to migrant labor workers that come in with HTVs. We should be forced to give them to people here. Here's one thing that I like to tell everybody, because this is what's hurting the seafood industry big time is every single migrant HTV visa worker that comes in here for the work in the seafood industry supports 6.2 domestic jobs. Wow, so if you believe into, hey, we want more people working well, then you want them migrant laborers to help us too as well, because when we get the migrant labor for processing and help us with the plants and help us with all this stuff. It helps support all these other jobs as well.

Speaker 4: 14:02

And it's it's huge, it's it's it's such a it's a misnomer by a lot of people that we say, well, you know, just don't, don't do that. Or, and it's also, you know, because they want to give the jobs to locals. You got to understand that some of these rural areas, you don't have that big a pool of workers, yeah, that want to do that job, that want to do that job. I mean they're doing job searches constantly. I mean they're up to it and listen. I mean I'm not going to go out here and quote people's paychecks, but these workers do really well, believe it or not, some of them, you them. If you go to some of these processing facilities, some of these oyster houses and stuff like that, and ask the migrant workers, have a conversation with them. What do they think about, how much they make and how they're doing.

Speaker 1: 14:44

I mean these are what we used to call picking houses, right Picking houses and chucking houses Some of them could be fish houses that clean fish as well. But in the picking houses it seemed like when I was growing up there there were mostly older women who had been doing the job for 40 or 50 years and they just sort of died doing it and there was no next generation of people to take those jobs.

Speaker 4: 15:01

That's absolutely right, and one of the things that people often attribute to it is it's a low-paying job, a job. Well, you know, there are some pickers, even back then that had, like a good portion of them had a regular job, like a government job, or they were maybe a school bus driver or something. They would come in three hours before they would have to leave to go to work. They would work in a processing facility for extra money and then they would go do their normal job and it was kind of like, well, it's like having two jobs. Basically, I mean most people that I know if they survived their whole life with only two jobs, they would have been happy because most of them had three, four jobs.

Speaker 4: 15:47

And we always. There's a lot of people that dabble in things, even watermen, that have like grass cutting businesses and stuff, stuff like that. They do things on the side Nowadays. It's good to see people that have the ambition to work and do extra. I mean it's nice. It's also a better way to be more successful and have a better, less risk, so to speak. If you've got more things, you can do.

Speaker 1: 16:11

One other thing I was going to share with you when we were talking about the old days was back to Bocosin again. So I moved to Gloucester when I was in the third grade and we would play sports against Bocosin and it was like it was the north versus the south and I thought what's the deal between Gloucester and Bocosin and Carthen? You should know this. Apparently, in Oyster War yeah, oyster War, and the governor called out the National Guard.

Speaker 3: 16:33

I was going to ask Jamie about that. Harry Bird Sr was governor when these Oyster Wars were taking place.

Speaker 4: 16:39

I'd like your audience to know. I wasn't around for that time so I don't. I mean, I'm not that old yet, but no it's. I've heard the same stories. I'm a history buff. I love the history of Virginia. I try to. I'm not an expert at it, but I try to stay up with it the best I can. I'm very interested in it. There's been a lot of issues over the years. You got to remember our law enforcement division is the second oldest law enforcement division in the Commonwealth. When I tell people that they're like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. When I tell people that they're like, oh, you don't know Starbuck, yeah, we were the Orsha.

Speaker 3: 17:19

Navy in 1864, right after the Civil War, because everybody was fighting. It wasn't just Virginians fighting Virginians called the Orsha Wars, but we had, I mean literally shooting between Maryland and Virginia watermen.

Speaker 4: 17:33

Yes, On the Potomac Right, and it was. I mean, there was many conflicts and, like you said, it wasn't just Virginians against Virginians, it was some people moving down as well. Also, it was Marylanders versus Virginians and vice versa. It wasn't and it wasn't one side that was necessarily the good side, because you had some from both sides that were doing wrong. Do you know what I mean? So it was just it wasn't like so.

Speaker 4: 18:02

That's why we partnered up and the Potomac River Fisheries Compact came out in 1958. We partnered up with Maryland and created Potomac River Fisheries Compact and created an entity to help combat some of the poaching issues that both states were having and to work together. We still work together today. Great, it's an amazing relationship. We have a board up there. I'm on the board. I'm currently the chair of the PRC board. It's four Virginians and four Marylanders and we do very well work great together. I mean, sometimes there's controversial issues, like you know, men hating and crabbing and stuff like that that comes up, whether it's crab dredging or something like that. It gets, you know, kind of an us versus them kind of mentality to some people. But in general, I don't see that. I love working with Maryland. They've been great to me. I have nothing but great things to say about them. They've been good. Maybe might not have all great things to say about me, but I've got nothing but great things to say about them. It's been wonderful working with them.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Let me go back a little bit to when your family and you and I know from growing up down there it is watermen because of the idea of moving from different species, right from gillnets to dredging clams or whatever patent tongs, right the tong and oysters. So did your family do all that? And you've experienced growing up doing all that yourself.

Speaker 4: 19:29

Yes, well, you got to remember. I mean, first thing is the oysters died from disease in the late 80s and that kind of like. That was kind of like the staple was the oyster was a staple of our seafood industry for years.

Speaker 3: 19:42

And the disease. Jamie was MSX and dermo. This is pollution, bambi. Pollution that created that.

Speaker 4: 19:49

Yeah, I'm not an expert on disease, but yes, and you know we won't. The oysters were very vulnerable to it and it just wiped them out. You hear a lot of people say over-harvest, over-harvest, over-harvest and disease, and they love saying that. They love throwing that over-harvest in there. Over-harvest didn't kill the oysters. That's the number one thing people need to understand. The disease killed the oyster. That's the number one thing people need to understand. The disease killed the oyster. We worked with VIMS, the scientists at VIMS when the oysters died and told the watermen hey, go catch everything because they're going to die. I mean they were dying at such a fast rate due to the disease. We couldn't stop it, we couldn't crack the code, we couldn't figure out how to fix it and you know. So it wasn't over harvest, matter of fact, it wasn't pretty much any harvest. They died.

Speaker 4: 20:41

I orschered, my family orschered, hand-tonging, and we'll talk about crabbing in a second. We'll go to that because I want to touch on that. But in the 90s there was virtually no orschering. I mean that's what you got. I mean, and in the 90s there was virtually no orchard. I mean that's what you got. I mean the small amount of boats when I was a kid went to Deep Creek, which was James River, is like the hub, that's like the backbone, especially of your seed orchard in Virginia. Anywhere I'd put it against anywhere On wild seed, it doesn't matter. For some reason the good Lord just reached down one day and said this is going to be the spot and James is it. There was probably 175 tong boats hand tong, not pad tong in James River. Then, when I was a kid, there were several buy boats, which were the deck boats that would buy a seat.

Speaker 4: 21:32

Well, by the time the 90s came I was still doing it. I had a small round-storm boat that was built in Middlesex and it was five boats. It was nothing. There was no market. The horses they had all died the ones you were catching, so it wasn't over harvest. I mean you couldn't make any money. Nobody was going to the oysters, they had all died the ones you were catching, so it wasn't over harvest. I mean you couldn't make any money. Nobody was going to do it. It just wasn't there.

Speaker 4: 22:01

You know, I was doing it to kind of give a family member something to do. I wasn't making any money doing it at all. Most of the time in the winter I didn't work doing that kind of stuff. I would do other things, make a difference, you know, to kind of survive.

Speaker 4: 22:17

But there was no money in it and of the five boats that were working, it was two to four people on each boat, you know, because you would have two tongers and two colors if there was four people. There's maybe if there was 10 people in total in the five boats, two of them alive today. There was 10 people in total in the five boats 10, 12, two of them alive today. Wow, and so we've seen it. And I put the last load of seed on the last boat Tong and Orchard back then when they shut it down, or at least like say, shut it down, you couldn't afford to do it anymore, and so they that kind of morphed into where we're at today, where we've continued our replenishment. This administration has been wonderful at giving us the resources to really do well In 2023, the 2023, 2022, 2023 season, because it kind of overlaps two years.

Speaker 4: 23:12

It starts in October, goes through May. We caught more oysters and harvested more oysters that year than we had since 1987 when the oysters had died. It was the first time we went over 300 and some thousand bushels. I can't remember.

Speaker 3: 23:29

I'm sorry, Jamie. So there's definitely a comeback in oysters. It's a comeback, and so there was a. Apparently, it was discovered how to handle or to address the disease that was affecting them.

Speaker 4: 23:42

Well, science didn't figure that out. Was this a cycle? The disease is still there. The orchards have. We've done a great job at managing at VMRC and figuring out the orchards that were surviving the disease and conserving them and saving them. So what it appears now is that it's not that they seem to be surviving longer with the disease, it's like a better strand, so to speak. It's some of the industry folks refer to it as they seem to be outgrowing the disease Now they still die. We know the oysters are still dying from the disease. They seem to be outgrowing the disease Now they still die. We know the oysters are still dying from the disease, but the deal is now is they're not dying so early.

Speaker 4: 24:22

Where our market size for oysters is three inches right, it's got to be three inches for it to be legal off of public bottom, private lease it doesn't have to be any size. There's no size equation because you put them there yourself, but on the public bottom it's three inches. Well, we know that typically your oysters die between three and a half and five inches now, where before they were dying much earlier. So they never got to market size. Well, now we're getting to market size and one of the things you talk about.

Speaker 4: 24:47

Harvest is like some people, especially when you want to get real conservative, it's like oh man, we got to. You know, we don't want to Remember. If you leave the oyster on the bottom too long it's just going to die anyway. Yeah, so that's. But now we know that it's going to make it to that size and they're doing very well. They're very healthy. It is our strikes are, which is where they have a spat set and reduce, kind of expel their larvae out and they're really thick. Now we're having great counts on spat sets the last 10 years, 20 years or so, and they're surviving better and we have the best orchard I believe in the world. They're very good orchards. The disease only affects the orchard. It's not something that's a human issue, it's just it affects the oyster itself and I'm not quite sure the genesis of where they came from. So you know I don't want to speak on that, but I do know that they're thriving, they're doing well.

Speaker 4: 25:50

Our oyster industry is, you know, back to the days it was before you know, the crisis of all of them dying off. Our management strategies are working. We involve industry and so it's been important. One of the things I wanted to bring to your attention. We talk about the wars, the Osher Wars and stuff. In 1864 was when we started our law enforcement division started you referred. If we go to Crab and talk about crabbing for a second, crabbing is a fairly excuse me, a fairly I'm about to sneeze but a fairly new in comparison to oyster industry, because crabbing is done mostly by potting crab potting- which is in the wire traps they build.

Speaker 4: 26:39

It's kind of squared You've got the funnels in them, you get in there and you get trapped. Well, they didn't show up until the 1920s, was that?

Speaker 1: 26:49

when the crab pot was kind of invented?

Speaker 4: 26:50

Yeah, so it's. You know my great-grandfather said that the first ones that there's a patent from a guy in the Northern Neck I have a picture of it on my wall in the office. But my great-grandfather said the first ones they saw were in Carolina and they used to get on a train to go get food during the Depression. It just was nothing to eat. They'd get on the train and hop the train and go to Carolina. That's how they made it up. This way is what I was told. Now that story doesn't match the patent because there's a guy that's got a patent saying he invented it. When I was in the Northern Neck, well, the first ones they seen were years before that and they were in Carolina. So I don't know. But anyways. So the crab industry is much newer in sense compared to, like, the oyster industry and stuff like that, Even though there was an industry for crabs yes, you got to remember, because crab dredging was actually being done before crab potting.

Speaker 1: 27:46

And dredging is when they've gone down in the colder weather.

Speaker 4: 27:49

They winter and they get them up with the scrapes. They call it dredging. It should be more or less like scraping. They don't go in the bottom, but like two or three, it's just scrapes. It's like a rake scraping over top, and that is permitted now.

Speaker 3: 28:00

No.

Speaker 4: 28:01

That was crab dredging in Virginia was prohibited in 2008 and hasn't come back since. It was a conservation measure for reduction of harvest in Virginia. Now there's still crab dredging in Delaware. Delaware Bay does it. They have it there and they have a much smaller fishery than we had because it's just not as much water up there as we have in the bay, but they still have it going up.

Speaker 3: 28:27

What about?

Speaker 4: 28:27

Maryland, maryland. They outlawed it. I don't know if they ever had it. If they ever had it, it would have been decades ago, been before my time. How has the crab business been in terms of the population? Has it gone through ups and downs? Yes, and it's stable. I mean, I say stable, it's not overfished, but overfishing is not occurring according to the science. However, it's like anything else. I mean, we had a dip in 2022, and we did a reduction. It came right back up in 2023. In 2024, a survey we got this year a little bit lower than 2023. But you know it fluctuates. If you look at that chart, it's not. There's no consistency. It does this.

Speaker 4: 29:13

It's pretty crazy, and one of the things we're working with them now they're our scientific advisors to try to figure out how we maybe update with the change that we have in weather and stuff like that, how we update the survey or something like that, to reflect, see if there's things going on that we don't know about, because we're doing it the same way. We've always done it, which you know. You've still got to do it that way because you you got to be able to have that data to compare. But there's some things that we should add you know. One of the things I would say no matter what you're doing with your work, if you don't change with the times, you'll die with the times.

Speaker 4: 29:53

So you have to modify, you have to be open-minded of being you know, because if you miss something you could either really you can hurt the stocks really really bad or you can hurt the industry really bad, and I know people say, well, you shouldn't worry about that. You kind of need to be. It needs to be a symbiotic relationship that you understand that you're representing every side. You're conserving these resources for future generations, for everybody, for every Virginian to enjoy, and so that does include the commercial guys as well. So you've got to make sure that we're keeping our eye on the ball and that we're open-minded, because one of the things I've learned in going through my career here is you know, there's a new idea out there somewhere that hasn't come to you yet. There's a new invention that hasn't come to you that's going to make it a lot better, yeah, or make your data more accurate, to give you a better way. One thing I learned from a scientist one time is your science is only as good as the next science that comes along and disproves it.

Speaker 1: 30:51

Well, let me make an observation, then I'm going to switch gears a little bit and that is I saw the other day that there's a blue crab problem in Italy, that somehow blue crabs got into the bilge of a ship. Have you heard about this?

Speaker 4: 31:03

Yes.

Speaker 1: 31:03

I read about that. Yes, yeah, and they're going crazy over them, which gets us to our problem. I'm sure you know our good friend, delegate Keith Hodges, who's a West Pointer, and I know he's been obsessed with this catfish issue.

Speaker 4: 31:25

He's trying to deal with it, tell us a little bit about how this this catfish thing got introduced to the bay and why it's a problem. So the catfish were were introduced to the in in the tributaries in the 70s I believe it was um by us. They weren't here. They're not native. The blue catfish is not a native species and they they eat just about everything. And when are they from, jamie? They're from down south in the Gulf area. Why did we introduce them? It was more of a sports fishery type thing, I believe, but I am not an expert at that either, so I won't comment.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Well, we'll ask Keith Hodges that yeah.

Speaker 4: 31:52

I would ask Keith, that they reproduce at a high rate. There's just, the population has exploded. It is lack of a better term, it's gotten out of hand and they, like I said, they eat just about everything.

Speaker 1: 32:06

So it affects the ecosystem. So they're eating things that other things now can't eat.

Speaker 4: 32:11

Well, yes, and they're eating all the other things and they don't have any natural predators and they don't have any natural predators.

Speaker 4: 32:19

I mean, yes, everything has a predator.

Speaker 4: 32:20

I guess at some point In the smaller stages, some of the smaller ones you'll see birds and stuff will eat that, but typically no other than us in that area.

Speaker 4: 32:31

We're pretty much the number one predator on blue catfish by a long shot, but they'll eat everything and see, the areas that they pretty much stay at, their habitat areas the best ones at Suda, where the salinity is down, is areas where all the other fish go to spawn, or a lot of other fish go to spawn, and so as they spawn and their larvae comes up or their eggs are placed, they'll just eat it right up. And so it's hard to, you know, manage other things, and some of these other species are, you know, manage other things and some of these other species are, you know, they've been suffering for a long time, like American Shed and the River Herring, stuff like that. We've had some issues, you know, and they're competing and I say competing they're not necessarily competing for food source, but survive. It's hard for them to survive when the eggs are being laid in the area and their larvae is hatching. Where there's just so many catfish that eat everything, there's a problem across the board, in all of our tributaries.

Speaker 1: 33:26

They've just kind of gone everywhere. Right, They've gone everywhere and it's not necessarily by.

Speaker 4: 33:31

Everybody thinks just like swim out of one river and just go another. It's not necessarily how. It appears that they've been planted just everywhere in the heads of all the rivers at some point or somebody has put them in there and so they've gotten out of control. Pretty much the head of every river we have. I know the Mattapanapa monkey have pretty thick of them. The Rappahannock they're thick in a rat. The James is obviously the largest water body we have with that?

Speaker 3: 33:55

What about the? Do they flourish in the bay?

Speaker 4: 34:00

I've seen them down in the bay. Sometimes you hear that story. I'm not going to say that they don't come down there, but they don't just come down there and hang out. Everybody's saying they're saltwater resistant now or getting more resistant saltwater. I don't necessarily know that that's the case. I know that we have seen them down the bay but it's during low salinity, high rainfalls. When you have high rainfalls, you've got to remember it flushes out from the head of your rivers so it pushes that water comes out and mixes with the salinity, the higher salinity areas, and it lowers the salinity. So it then makes it more conducive for the catfish to be able to come down into the areas that they typically wouldn't be in because the salinity has dropped. But you don't typically see them in super high salinity areas. You'll see them in areas that are usually high salinity, but typically when you see them there the salinity is not high. It's because of the rainfall or something like that.

Speaker 1: 35:04

And one of the things I think Delegate Hodges was trying to do was to harvest them and then to sell them, because there's a good market for people that eat catfish.

Speaker 4: 35:11

If you like catfish it's the most tasty catfish out there I mean, if you like them.

Speaker 1: 35:17

And one of the things he told me was because he said, the largest employment down in our neck of the woods is people leaving to go to Newport News or Richmond. In other words, there's still an out-migration, and one of the things he was trying to do was figure out a way to, one, get the catfish out of the rivers and, two, create jobs down there so people wouldn't have to leave the area every day to go to work.

Speaker 4: 35:36

It would be amazing and we're working on it now. The governor has put together a grant for the localities to try to help prop that up. There's been one business in Gloucester that got the grant the first round of grant last year and they're putting stuff together to build a process and flash freezing type of thing processing, flash freezing type things. One of the things about these products is you know your big chain grocery stores and stuff like that and restaurants and stuff. They love having this fish, particular fish, there in types like this, but they need a consistent stock and consistent flow of product and that's what we're trying to crack because they don't want to get involved.

Speaker 4: 36:19

You take all these big chains now and I won't say names, but they've done really good at being able to provide a really good product and keep it consistent. And it's really important for the restaurants because it's portion control. You know, individually flash frozen products now are working amazing because you don't have as much of waste. You know because it's perishable when you thaw it out it's perishable. So it's helped both the restaurants and the markets as well as it's helped the ability for fishermen to have more jobs because now you know you can process more you can hold it longer, to have more jobs, because now you can process more, you can hold it longer One of the things that we have to figure out at some point too is warehouse capabilities, because as you get these products, you've got to be able to hold it, and so we're working on that now.

Speaker 4: 37:09

The administration has been amazing at wanting to address this issue. It is an issue I don't know that it is easily fixed. The problem is not the catfish are not there. There's way too many catfish. Yes, the catfish are there. The problem is you've got to have that infrastructure that can handle the catfish, the processing, and that was one of the things I said earlier about losing all your processing facilities, not being able to get your migrant workers here, stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 37:35

I mean that hurts, because that's what usually Well, Jamie, how does Virginia compare to Maryland and North Carolina, our two neighbors north and south of us as far as their CPU industry compared to ours?

Speaker 4: 37:48

I mean it's kind of apples and oranges. I mean obviously we got different environments.

Speaker 4: 37:55

And yeah, some are similar, some of the species go, but the management style is definitely different because in them areas the organisms may be in a different stage of their life during certain times. When you want to protect a species, you typically protect the spawning times and stuff like that. Well, if they're spawning down there, they're going to have a different management strategy, different harvest strategy and stuff like that. Same thing in Maryland if they're doing it up in Maryland. So it's much different. I will say I love our Carolinians too and I love the Marylanders, but we are number four, I think three or four in the country on seafood production and they're not above us.

Speaker 3: 38:40

So they're not even close, but that's including Medhaven, isn't it? Yes, so that probably pops those numbers up.

Speaker 4: 38:48

Yes, yeah, it does. It does prop the numbers up pretty high, but we've historically been four, something like that, three or four. Yes, it counts Manhattan, but Louisiana counts Manhattan too.

Speaker 1: 39:03

I was wondering who are the top two, louisiana and California maybe, oh no, alaska.

Speaker 4: 39:06

Alaska, alaska, louisiana, massachusetts, I think are the top three. Oh no, alaska, alaska, alaska, Louisiana, massachusetts, I think are the top three. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:14

In that order. I got two questions. We're going to wrap up because we're running out of time. Mine's sort of a two-edged sword One. I want to talk a little bit about Menhaden, how that's being managed, but I also want to talk about aquaculture. When I had a boat down in Gloucester and I noticed one of the old fish houses had been bought by a bunch of oyster guys in Richmond who were using the aquaculture the way to, you know a different way to harvest oysters. So first tell me about how you guys are managing this menhaden issue and then tell me what do you think the future of aquaculture is.

Speaker 4: 39:44

All right, two great topics to end on. You know, obviously the most controversial issue is Manhattan. That's a big, you know. Especially Manhattan and Crab Drudging are the ones that really get people's attention. When you mention them, I mean especially out here where people are not super informed and in the weeds on the details and they hear all the information that's just online. And all these organizations you know that are put together to make a movement to protect environmental ideas and interests.

Speaker 4: 40:15

I will say the Menhaden Stock Assessment came back. I think it was the year before last and it came back. The stock assessment came back and the stock assessment that they have. They use what they call ERP's ecological reference points and they used the most robust and updated science to do the Menhaden stock assessment and for the first time in 60 years it just like exploded. We had the best stock assessment, the best stock numbers that we've had since they've been doing this assessment in 60 years. And so the population is doing great and there's no argument on that. The population of menhain is amazing Because the way you have to do your stock assessment is coastwide.

Speaker 4: 41:03

You can't, because this fish doesn't, it's not owned by Virginia or the Bay. It comes in and out, travels up and down the coast. It really does. It goes all the way to Bay. It comes in and out, travels up and down the coast it really does. It goes all the way to Maine. It goes all the way down to Fordham it really does. And so they go offshore too. By the way, they'll go offshore a long ways. I've seen schools of men hating 48 miles offshore, so it's in large schools of rockfish just tearing them up. So it is crazy how these fish move.

Speaker 4: 41:26

But so the stock is in really, really good shape and that's something we should celebrate, as one of the scientists said to me. He said we're in a position where we should be celebrating, but we're constantly getting a barrage of negativity. You know, this is a fisheries like man. The management's tools worked. We're catching less fish than we've caught in decades because it's being managed, not because the fish are not there. So, caught in decades because it's being managed, not because the fish are not there. So it was being managed. We have caps now. We didn't have caps before, and so that's one of the things we've done to help.

Speaker 4: 41:57

And so, long story short, the question, the sensitive question, is is what's going on in the bay. You know, why is there not fish in the bay or why do people not believe there are fish in the bay? Well, I can't answer that question. There's been a movement by several organizations and institutions to say, hey, we need to do a study on what they call localized depletion and it's going to be a very tough one, you know this is. You know, I am not a scientist necessarily to be able to talk as an expert on this, but I have been around a while. I've been in the rooms, been talking to stuff for a long time. That is not easy. That's just not something you stand up and say, well, we can do that in no time. It takes money and time, resources to put that kind of stuff together. Obviously, that wouldn't be done by somebody like us. We're a management, not our research arm is VIMS, and so where Maryland has.

Speaker 3: 42:52

Jamie, can you for our audience, what does VIMS stand for?

Speaker 4: 42:55

It's the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. They're a branch of the University of William Mary and that's by code. They're our scientific advisors and so they have a very robust research program there. It is huge, most of their facilities at Gloucester Point. It is absolutely amazing. If you ever get a chance to go check it out, do a tour of it. It's beautiful.

Speaker 4: 43:22

They've got a lot of experts around that work on this stuff, and so the localized depletion question and concern is definitely one that people are looking into and seeing, and we're all interested in the management side, asmfc, which is Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. We're all looking at that and saying, hey, keeping our eyes on the ball to see what comes out of this. Is there something? Now we know that this year so far far the fish haven't came in the bay. There's plenty of fish, they're just up the coast. We can't tell you why they're not coming to the bay. They never really came down. The major portions of these schools never came down below Jersey like they usually do, and what the reason behind that is, you know. We can throw all the terms out there you want.

Speaker 3: 44:12

Nobody really knows. Well, like bluefish, when I was in my 20s you could catch a grocery cart full of bluefish, and that's not the case now, correct?

Speaker 4: 44:25

Right, and I mean the stock assessment on the bluefish one is not quite as positive as the menhaden one. So but I think what we got to remember on the menhaden side of it is we do monitor it, keep it good, we've put a bay cap in it and it's a lot of fish that they're allowed to catch. But remember there was unlimited catches in three times the boats 25 years ago. There's only a handful of boats that do it. There's a cap on what they can catch. And to give you an idea how good the stock assessment is, the coastwide quota. It's coastwide from Maine to Florida.

Speaker 4: 45:06

When they did the stock assessment went up from 199,000 metric tons to 235,000 metric tons. Because of it, they voted to go to 235. The range that they could have went to the suggestions the experts were making was 308,000. But yet the managers we all got together and said we don't, 225 is high enough. 235, whatever it is, it's high enough. And so they could go up to 308,000 and decided no, we're not going to, let's just be conservative. It was 199, and we survived. I mean, so 235 is what it is, but there was. It is interesting and very important to note that the metrics from the experts said we could went to 308,000. So we're being very conservative, super conservative here and cautious in our approach. So as managers coast-wide I'm talking from Maine to Florida and so this fishery is being managed very well.

Speaker 4: 46:06

The question is, the big question for everybody is the bay. You know, and there's some science out there. You hear them to bring in the birds issues and stuff like that. I am not, I'm a fisheries person. I can't speak on that. I know they come to our meetings and they have their conversations, but our experts advise us and the advisement we're getting is that that is not far enough along in vetting and peer review and stuff for us to use that as our metric. And we manage fishers. So, that being said, we're keeping an eye on that, we're working with them. We had a work group and so we're working on that.

Speaker 1: 46:48

And now aquaculture I'm running on that one. We're working with them, we had a work group, and so we're working on that.

Speaker 4: 46:49

And now aquaculture. I'm running on that one, aquaculture. You know we run the largest replenishment program in the country, for sure I'd say probably in the world. We do a million bushels a year of shale on up to a million bushels a year on our public bottom. The cage aquaculture stuff we do in private leases is just booming. It's doing really well. We see more and more people getting into it, more and more businesses starting and a lot of the businesses get bigger. So it's doing great and the technology has come a long ways with that. I would say our entire industry is aquaculture, if you ask me, because we plant shell and seed on every piece of bottom we have. Now if you want to say aquaculture is only in a cage growing stuff, I would say well, they don't grow corn in a cage, they plant it in the fields. Thanks for correcting me.

Speaker 1: 47:42

I think I picked it up just because I heard people saying it.

Speaker 4: 47:46

But the cage businesses are doing well. They're wonderful to work with. They've been great. You know, obviously one of the things we've run into a lot now is user conflicts. People don't want the cages in front of their houses, the waterfront properties and stuff. That seems to be the number one issue we're running into now. Everybody loves oysters. They just don't want them growing in front of their house and you know I tell people and just try to be fair with them is.

Speaker 4: 48:15

I know the cage stuff seems to be something you don't want in front of your house, but we get complaints on every commercial activity in front of people's houses and commercial fishermen have been working these waters way longer than these houses have been sitting there, and so we need to be. We just need to be cognizant of the fact that. You know that. You know, I know people, you've got their view and I appreciate that, being someone that has one of them as well. And, however, you know one good thing about having commercial fishermen around. This is very important.

Speaker 4: 48:50

The majority of the commercial fishermen you ever meet are the most honest and absolute, wonderful people. You don't have to worry about anything. Usually, when you go to town for two or three weeks. You've got a house sitter. You've got somebody checking on your house getting my mail, so it doesn't look like anybody's home. Trust me, no one's going to mess with your stuff if commercial guys are sitting there, I mean they really are. And, believe you me, nobody anywhere notices changes or things looking different or things out of place, more than a waterman. They're there every single day. They know what they're doing. I tell everybody in the world of research we bring industry to the table and they say, hey, what is your research? We're going by the research. Why don't you ask this guy? He's been doing what you guys do once a month, every day for 60 years in the same spot.

Speaker 1: 49:44

That's real Carleton.

Speaker 3: 49:47

No, I was just going to say, Jamie, we're going to unfortunately run out of time. Love to have you back, because I wanted to talk about the different divisions within VMRC. Absolutely, You've got law enforcement, regulatory responsibilities.

Speaker 4: 50:03

Yeah, we have fisheries management division, a shellfish division, a habitat division that monitors and permits all the habitat, the wetlands and stuff like that dredging activities, roads, bridges, the built cross there Also we have admin and finance and obviously law enforcement, being the second oldest law enforcement division in Commonwealth behind the Capitol Police.

Speaker 1: 50:25

That's why I thought the Capitol Police go all the way back to the beginning.

Speaker 3: 50:27

Beginning Jamestown. Well, jamie, thank you. Let Brian keep eating oysters and crabs. It's kind of unfair.

Speaker 1: 50:35

We're from the same place, but you two are friends. I'm glad I've got a new friend from back home. So thanks for joining us today. Jamie, thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to the Virginians of Interest podcast. If you like what you've heard today, please like, subscribe and share this podcast with others. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 50:49

Thank you for listening to the Virginians of Interest podcast. No-transcript.