MENHADEN, a species of fish (Brevoortia tyrannus) of the herring family .(Clupeitkr), appearing in vast schools along the Atlantic Coast of America. Owing to the large number of local names applied to this species much con fusion concerning its identity, and distribution exists in the minds of fishermen and others. The name "menhaden° (Indian) is used chiefly in southern New England. North of Cape Cod the fish is called pogy, or occasionally hard head; in New York and New Jersey, bunker or marshbunker; the fishermen of Delaware and Chesapeake bays know it as bay alewife, and in the latter region and southward also as bug-fish or bug-head; still farther south it be comes the fat-back, and so on. From the other herrings the menhaden is readily distinguished by its very large head, large mouth, complex gill strainers and crenulated scales. The body is deep, the fins small, the mouth toothless and the color bluish and silvery, with one large and several small black spots.
Like some other pelagic and migratory fishes the menhaden is exceedingly irregular in its movements and variable in abundance and distribution from year to year, but its general range is from Nova Scotia to Brazil and oceanward, so far as observed, to the Gulf Stream. In spring it approaches the coasts and extends northward with the alewives and other species, probably for the purpose of spawning in brackish water, though little is actually known of its spawning habits. In winter Cape Hatteras marks the northern limit of its abundance. The menhaden swims in compact schools of large size, the movements of which at the surface, or sunken to a greater depth, are extremely irregular.
These irregularities are owing, no doubt, to corresponding variation in its food-supply, which consists wholly of the minute organisms, both vegetable and animal (plankton), that are caught as the fish swims with open mouth, straining the water through its lips and gill arches as it goes. Owing to its strong oily taste and extreme bonyness its value as human food is very slight, but as furnishing food for other fishes, as bait, and for the manufacture of oil, fertilizer and other products, it has a very great economic importance. Large com panies control its capture for the latter pur poses and, besides pound nets, utilize many steamers provided with purse seines and der ricks, by means of which entire schools are taken at a haul and lifted on deck. The oil is extracted and the solid parts ground up for fertilizer at factories on shores. The product varies from year to year, but the total weight of fish taken runs into the hundreds of million pounds. The catch of fish and industries in volved reached their highest level of import ance in the latter part of the last century, since which both have much diminished, whether by reason of over-fishing or because the menhaden no longer come to the northern part of the coast in so great abundance, is not determined. Consult Goode, 'History of the Menhaden,' Report United States Fish Commission, 1879, and recent reports of the United States Bureau of Fisheries.