In many of America’s freshwater regions blue catfish are held in pretty high esteem. They grow fast, are plenty strong when hooked, and top out at triple-digit weights. They’re not hard to catch, and at the end of a dinner fork they’re darn good eating. But in tidewater Chesapeake Bay, they have become such an overwhelming problem that they’re devouring native baitfish, crabs, oysters, clams and just about everything else that gets in their way. They’re greatly impacting many other species, Chesapeake Bay experts and scientists report.
There are so many blue catfish that anglers targeting striped bass, perch and other species have to battle their way through blue catfish to get their target species, say some anglers. Blue cats outcompete native species for habitat and food, and they’ve taken a real chunk out of Chesapeake Bay’s beloved and once bountiful blue crab fishery.
A Destructive Force
Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) considers blue catfish as a major problem “due to their voracious and indiscriminate appetites, high reproductive rate, and potential to harm native species, some of which are commercially and recreationally important to Maryland, including blue crabs.”
To help stem the tide of abundant blue catfish, Maryland has no season or creel limit for them for recreational anglers. Commercial fishermen have begun targeting them, too, with haul seines and trot lines. Maryland also is pushing the big cats as a table delicacy in restaurants and seafood shops. Their moto is, “if you can’t beat em, eat em.”
The state’s DNR reports that “blue catfish spread rapidly throughout the Chesapeake Bay during the late 1990s and 2000s. Stocked as an additional recreational fish in Virginia rivers by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries in the 1970s, blue catfish were later found in the Potomac River. Following the initial discovery of the Potomac River blue catfish population, blue catfish harvest numbers increased rapidly.”
Their range also increased with blue catfish expanding into the Patuxent River in the mid-2000s.
Catfish Everywhere
The state of Maryland has videos showing electro shocking operations and the great abundance of big blue cats in the state’s Chesapeake Bay watershed. DNR also has a website dedicated to blue cats, explaining their expanding population, how and where to catch them, and recipes for eating them.
Dr. Allison Colden of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reports that blue cats have no natural enemies. They are an apex predator that is systematically overwhelming the Bay ecosystem and its native fish and sea life population.
“If we don’t solve it, it threatens a ton of different species in the Chesapeake Bay and people’s way of life,” said Colden.
Throwing Money at the Problem
Today, blue cats are found virtually everywhere in the Bay and its tributaries, and they’re growing big. According to Maryland’s DNR, blue catfish in the Potomac River routinely weigh 50 pounds. Maryland’s record blue cat weighed 84 pounds and was caught in the Potomac near Fort Washington located just south of Washington D.C.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), headed by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, recently announced its offering a total of $8 million to support the seafood industry to process blue catfish.
- $6 Million in Grants: These grants are available to seafood processors to help them expand their businesses, improve the food supply chain, and develop new markets for invasive, wild-caught catfish.
- $2 Million Pilot Program: The USDA is partnering with the Maryland Department of Agriculture on a one-year pilot program to purchase up to $2 million worth of Chesapeake Bay blue catfish.
“The project here in Maryland I visited today … is a win for our rural communities who now have a new processing facility that will support good paying jobs, a win for our fishermen who are ridding the Chesapeake of a destructive invasive species, and a win for our local communities who have another source of protein for the charitable feeding network,” said Rollins.
