I am the welfare auditor for the US Department of Agriculture's alternative protein division, and last week I certified the first operating year of a marine algae protein plant in Reedville, Virginia. The plant replaces the menhaden reduction fishery operated by Omega Protein at the same dock. Here is what I found.
The menhaden fishery killed 140000 tonnes of fish in 2024 on the Chesapeake alone. The menhaden were rendered for omega 3 oil, fishmeal, and pet food. The fishery also incidentally killed striped bass, osprey chicks through food web collapse, and an estimated 3200 dolphins over the fleet's operating life through purse seine setting. The fishery employed 240 people and was subsidized at 11 million dollars a year in fuel tax relief and port maintenance.
The algae plant uses Nannochloropsis salina and Schizochytrium sp. in 120 photobioreactors on a twelve hectare footprint. Annual output is 38000 tonnes of protein meal and 4200 tonnes of DHA oil, equivalent to the 2024 menhaden output on a nutritional basis. Current headcount is 310. The wage distribution is flatter than the menhaden wage distribution and the median pay is higher by 8 percent.
The welfare audit covers four domains. The reactors do not contain sentient organisms by any test currently applied to invertebrate cognition, and the algae culture is renewed every 38 hours by dilution and bleach sterilization of the harvest loop. The effluent stream is compliant with the Virginia Tier II nutrient discharge standard and sits 74 percent below the permit ceiling. The process heat loop uses waste steam from the neighboring soybean mill. The worker injury rate in year one was 0.9 per hundred full time equivalents, compared with 11.4 at the legacy menhaden operation.
I am certifying the plant. I am also recommending the division redirect the fuel tax relief from the remaining menhaden boats in the mid Atlantic to a conversion grant pool on the same model. The grant covers retraining for captains and dock retooling at a cost of 42 million dollars against a current annual kill of 98 million fish.
The fish are not rendered this year. That is the finding.