Maryland students eat invasive blue catfish at school lunch

Students at Preston Elementary School in Preston, Maryland, recently ate blue catfish sandwiches during lunch. The school serves the fish cakes a few times each month alongside other menu items. Second-grader Ben Rochon called the food yummy and ate it with a bun. Fifth-grader Teagan Donovan preferred the meat without the bun.

Beth Brewster, who manages food services for Caroline County Public Schools, says the fish is healthy and tastes good. The dish uses blue catfish, a species that has become a top predator in the Chesapeake Bay. The fish can grow to more than 100 pounds and eats native species like crabs and rockfish.

State officials first asked Brewster to find a use for the invasive fish about eight years ago. Karen Fedor, administrator of the Farm and Food Programs at the Maryland Department of Agriculture, recalls suggesting that the good taste of the fish could help. Brewster’s team created a crabcake-like recipe that meets federal dietary rules. The recipe has USDA approval, allowing the fish cakes to be served in schools across the United States.

Blue catfish are native to the Midwest. They were brought to Virginia rivers in the 1970s for recreational fishing. Officials expected the fish to stay in freshwater areas because they are freshwater species. However, the fish adapted to brackish water. In 2018, record rainfall helped the fish move out of rivers and into new habitats. Branson Williams, manager of the Invasive Fishes Program for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, says the fish now live in every tidal tributary in Maryland and in the Chesapeake Bay proper.

In some areas, blue catfish make up about 70 percent of the total weight of the fish population. They eat forage fish like menhaden and young crabs. This threatens the seafood industry, which relies on traditional species such as flounder. Virginia officials have warned that the fish population is out of control.

Rocky Rice, a fourth-generation waterman, fishes for blue catfish in the lower Potomac River. He hauled in about 1,000 pounds of fish on a recent morning. He fishes three days a week using hoop pots. Rice started catching the fish 14 years ago as a side activity but now it is his main job. He can fish year-round because there are no season or size limits for invasive blue catfish.

Rice’s catch goes to one of four processors in Maryland that can handle blue catfish. Only four processors in the state are able to do this because catfish is the only U.S. fish that requires a USDA inspector on site. The fish is now sold in grocery stores and restaurants. Jenn Lovewell, chief nutrition officer for Real Good Fish, says her company shipped a pallet of blue catfish to a university in Texas just yesterday. Both Lovewell and Brewster say millions of pounds of the fish must be harvested to keep the population stable.