Gulf Menhaden
Species Facts
Science Name: Brevoortia patronus
Description

Evidence from morphology [2] and DNA analyses [3] suggest that the Gulf menhaden is the Gulf of Mexico complement to the Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus). Both species support large commercial reduction fisheries,[4] with Gulf menhaden supporting the 2nd largest fishery, by weight, in the United States.[5]

Distribution and Habitat

The range of Gulf menhaden encompasses the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico nearshore waters, with the exception of the extreme eastern Yucatan and western Cuba.[1]

Sources

"1.^ a b c FAO 2002. The living marine resources of the western central Atlantic. ASIH special publication No. 5, Kent E. Carpenter, ed. ISSN 1020-6868. 2.^ a b Dahlberg, M.D. 1970. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico menhadens, genus Brevoortia (Pisces:Clupeidae). Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences 15:91-162. 3.^ Anderson, J.D. 2007. Systematics of the North American menhadens: molecular evolutionary reconstructions in the genus Brevoortia (Clupeiformes: Clupeidae). Fishery Bulletin 205:368-378. 4.^ Vaughan, D.S. and C. Strobeck. 1998. Assessment and management of Atlantic and Gulf menhaden stocks. Marine Fishery Review 53, 47-55. 5.^ a b Pritchard, E.S. 2005. Fisheries of the United States 2004. Silver Spring, MD: National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Science and Technology, pp. 1-19. 6.^ Anderson, J.D. and D.L. McDonald. 2007. Morphological and genetic investigations of two western Gulf of Mexico menhadens (Brevoortia spp.). Journal of Fish Biology 70a:139-147. 7.^ a b Castillo-Revera, M., A. Kobelkowsky and V. Zamayoa. 1996. Food resource partitioning and trophic morphology of Brevoortia gunteri and B. patronus. Journal of Fish Biology 49:1102-1111. 8.^ a b Anderson, J.D. and W.J. Karel. 2007. Genetic evidence for asymmetric hybridization between menhadens (Brevoortia spp.) from peninsular Florida. Journal of Fish Biology 71b:235-249. 9.^ Reintjes, J.W. 1959. Continuous distribution of menhaden along the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. Proceedings of the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute 12, 31-35. 10.^ a b Friedland, K.D., D.W. Ahrenholz, J.W. Smith, M. Manning and J. Ryan. 2006. Sieving functional morphology of the gill raker feeding apparatus of atlantic menhaden. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Comparative Experimental Biology 305(a):974 – 985. 11.^ Anderson, J.D. 2006. Conservation Genetics of Gulf Menhaden (Brevoortia patronus): Implications for the Management of a Critical Forage Component for Texas Coastal Gamefish Ecology. Federal Aid in Sportfish Restoration Act Technical Series, F-144-R. 12.^ a b c Vaughn, D.S., K.W. Shertzer and J.W. Smith. 2007. Gulf menhaden (Brevoortia patronus) in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico: Fishery characteristics and biological reference points for management. Fisheries Research 83:263–275. 13.^ Franklin, H.B. 2007. The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America. Island Press, Washington, DC. 280pp."