Inside the kitchen at Skrimp Shack in Hampton, Kyle Rowley pulls some blue catfish filets from a prep cooler and plops them on the counter.
He chunks the thin pink strips and dips them in milk, then a pan of bread crumbs. Rowley puts the fish in a fry basket and dunks them into a bubbling vat of oil.
"And now we wait for the magic."
Blue catfish was not traditionally on the menu at Skrimp Shack, which has a dozen locations in Virginia, most in Hampton Roads.
But Rowley, the chain’s chief operating officer, added them as part of a statewide campaign to get people to eat more of the fish — and hopefully reduce the population.
The invasive fish are taking over the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, threatening to disrupt the delicate food web.
It’s a problem of Virginia’s own making. Blue catfish were introduced into state waters in the 1970s to start a recreational trophy fishery. But the species was too successful.
Now, the state is working to scale a commercial market to attack the same fish. The initiative is dubbed “River to Table.”
Officials say it could be a win-win for all involved.
“The more you eat, the more healthy the bay is,” said Rachael Peabody, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board, a quasi-state agency that helps promote the seafood industry. “That's really something I think everyone's interested in capitalizing on.”
But there are also challenges.
‘An eating and reproducing machine’
Rowley grew up fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and recalls easily catching flounder, croaker and gray trout to feed the family for dinner.
But when he went back out on the water with his children years later, he noticed those fish weren’t as easy to find.
He started researching what was affecting the bay and discovered blue catfish could be one cause.
“That kind of piqued my interest, and got me on a rabbit hole that I went deep into and tried to find out a way that we could help.”
Blue catfish are native to freshwater river basins in the central and southern U.S. They’re a funky-looking bunch that live up to their name, with smooth, scaleless blue skin and cat-like whiskers.
They can grow up to 65 inches long and weigh up to 143 pounds. That’s what made them appealing to Virginia officials for a recreational fishery.
But half a century later, the ramifications are clear.
Some surveys find blue catfish account for up to 75% of fish biomass in sections of the York, Rappahannock and James rivers.
Mary Fabrizio, a professor who studies fish populations at William & Mary’s Batten School and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, said blue catfish are generalist predators.
That means they gobble up pretty much anything, including native species such as oysters, shad, menhaden and river herring. They then use most of that energy to procreate, Fabrizio said.
“They’re really an eating and reproducing machine,” she said.
Fabrizio recently investigated the potential impacts on blue crabs. The research involved peering into the stomachs of almost 7,000 blue catfish caught by local watermen.
Her team found that small blue catfish weren’t generally eating the crabs, but medium-sized and larger ones “were really chowing down,” especially on baby blue crabs.
The prowess of blue catfish as predators makes stopping them extremely daunting, she said.
But the state sees a rare opportunity for a solution that benefits the environment and the economy, particularly in rural Virginia.
How to build a sustainable fishery
Virginia has taken some action to target blue catfish, including lifting certain recreational fishing limits and creating an experimental electrofishing program. Fishermen use electricity to stun the fish, bringing them to the surface where they can be easily scooped up.
The “River to Table” effort is the most coordinated yet, including a marketing campaign and grants to jumpstart a commercial fishery.
The first step is getting fish processors on board, the middlemen who buy fish from watermen and sell them to restaurants and wholesalers.
“Whole catfish come in. We head it, gut it, skin it, filet it, bag it, put it on ice and ship it out the door,” said Chris Sopko, vice president of Sea Farms in Gloucester.
The business won $250,000 through one of the first state grants a few years ago. It’s meant to help overcome some unique challenges to processing blue catfish.
Catfish is the only fish regulated under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rather than the Food and Drug Administration. (Congress made the change in 2014 after pressure from southern catfish farmers threatened by foreign competitors.)
The stricter regulations require expensive infrastructure and an inspector on-site while catfish are cut.
Virginia is trying to incentivize businesses, including Sea Farms. (The state recently awarded another grant to Suffolk-based Wanchese Fish Co.)
Sopko put the money toward a blast cabinet freezer and extending a loading dock to build a massive storage freezer room.
“It holds about 300 pallets, so we have the capacity to hold a lot of frozen cats, if and when we get them,” he said.
Catfish currently accounts for just 5% of the business, Sopko said. But it’s difficult to predict how successful the market will become, with unknowns such as whether regulations will change again and how many blue catfish watermen will actually be able to catch.
“It's hard to look into the future and say, ‘All right, we're going to grow this business and do this, this and this,’ without having the real facts,” Sopko said. “If catfish can get down to a manageable number and can be a sustainable fishery, I'm all for that. But I don't know how they're going to quantify that.”
That’s one big challenge for Virginia officials: They’re asking businesses to invest in a fishery, even though the ultimate goal is to get rid of those fish.
“There is an inherent tension there,” said Brent Hunsinger, director of advocacy and coastal programs at the nonprofit Friends of the Rappahannock.
He was part of a blue catfish workgroup prompted by the General Assembly last year, which recommended next steps such as creating incentives for state-funded institutions to source food locally and increasing funding for watermen and processors.
A wide range of businesses and people support a blue catfish market, Hunsinger said. But there is some disagreement about whether eradication is the long-term goal.
“There is a little of a push and pull: If we're going to set up fisheries and invest a lot of money in these things, in the private and public sectors, why would we put all this effort in and then try and remove the population altogether?”
But that’s likely a distant concern.
“That would be a happy debate, if we had done such a great job with our demand, that our businesses were doing so well, that we actually out-fished it,” Peabody said.
Fabrizio said it’s unlikely Virginia could eradicate blue catfish. It’s hard to control them even in a short period of time, because they can live for more than two decades.
“It's going to take that long, or longer, maybe two or three lifetimes,” she said. “Blue catfish is not your average fish in how you might control it. The amount of effort it's going to take to decrease that population is going to be very, very high, almost unrealistically high.”
One strategy could include a “Trojan horse” method, where scientists breed blue catfish in a lab with genes that would eventually produce all male offspring.
Eating them is just part of the solution, Fabrizio said.
An ‘image problem’
For now, state officials are trying to rebrand the species.
“Blue catfish has an image problem,” Peabody said. “People don't seem to think about it when they think about wanting a really premium fish.”
Virginians tend to think of catfish as bottom-feeders with a muddier flavor, she said.
But blue catfish live throughout the water column, feeding on a lot of the same things Virginians already eat.
That gives them a fresher flavor, said Rowley with Skrimp Shack.
“People go back to their comfort food, what your mom used to cook, what your grandmother used to cook, and blue catfish wasn't on the menu,” he said. “So changing perceptions, introducing a new product into an everyday menu for families, is difficult.”
Virginia officials are mulling a universal label for blue catfish, such as “Chesapeake Wild Harvest,” to differentiate it from farmed fish.
They also want to promote its health value. A 4-ounce serving of blue catfish includes Omega-3 fatty acids, 19 grams of protein, 90 calories and 1.5 grams of fat, according to NOAA Fisheries.
Skrimp Shack’s menu advertises it as “Wild Caught Chesapeake Bay Blue Catfish.”
Rowley said price is the biggest barrier. Though blue catfish are only a couple of dollars extra, people don’t opt to pay more for what they think is a lower-quality product.
But he’s usually able to convert customers once they try it.
“It’s kind of, instead of seeing is believing, tasting is believing.”
