3 August 2025

In June the Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) at William & Mary reported that aerial surveys of osprey nests indicate the population on the ocean side of Virginia’s Eastern Shore has collapsed in just 38 years — from 83 nests in 1987 to just 9 today, and the chicks in those nine nests are starving.

A similar collapse is brewing in Chesapeake Bay where many pairs do not lay eggs at all and many nests fail completely. In the Bay ospreys are producing only 0.6 to 0.9 chicks per nest though they need 1.15 chicks per nest to maintain the population.

Ospreys are just the Canary in the Coal Mine. Something is wrong in the Chesapeake.

Though the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) decline began in the region 15 years ago it reached alarming proportions in the last five years. CCB launched intensive studies to find out why. By 2023 they knew that osprey chicks were starving in the main stem of Chesapeake Bay, that osprey chick nutrition depends on availability of Atlantic menhaden, and that menhaden are no longer available because of overfishing.

Due to its high energy density, menhaden is a critical prey item for osprey populations along the Atlantic Coast and within the Chesapeake Bay. … Researchers within The Center believe that the ongoing decline in young production is driven by overharvest of Atlantic menhaden.  Forage fish such as menhaden, anchovy, sardine, capelin and herring play significant roles in marine ecosystems throughout the world.  These small schooling fish are responsible for transferring energy from plankton to higher-level predators such as osprey.  When forage fish are overharvested the marine food web is broken and higher-level predators suffer.

— The Center for Conservation Biology documents unprecedented osprey nest failures within the lower Chesapeake Bay

So why are Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus) overfished? It’s not because we eat them.

Mehaden are relative small (15 inches) oily fish that are a favorite food of sea birds, striped bass, bluefish, sea trout, tunas and sharks.

We don’t eat menhaden because they don’t taste good but we turn them into fish meal, fish oil and bait. According to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science: “More pounds of menhaden are landed each year than any other fish in the United States, with coast-wide landings ranging from 300,000 to 400,000 metric tons since the mid-1970s.”

Menhaden are easy to catch because they travel in dense schools like this.

Their schools are easy to see from above.

Fishing boats surround them with a purse net and draw in the strings.

Dumped in the hold, this catch is headed for a “reduction” factory where the fish are “reduced” to fish oil, fertilizer and pet food.

Because of overfishing, especially in the Chesapeake, there are fewer and fewer young menhaden growing up to spawn and thus fewer menhaden overall. We can’t see how this is affecting bluefish, tuna and sharks but we can see what’s happening to osprey which may mirror what’s happening underwater. Osprey are showing the collapse of the marine food web in the Chesapeake.

(This successful pair is not at Chesapeake Bay. They upstream in the James River.)

The problem could be solved if Virginia changed its menhaden fishing limits (see below). If they don’t, menhaden will continue to disappear, perhaps catastrophically. The lack of fish will then limit everything and the Chesapeake could well become like Georges Bank in the 1990s.

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Mary Jo Berman asked, “What is the status of the menhaden population? Do we know why it is failing?” I have added this section with information from various points of view.

1. CCB has studied osprey hunting success. Very low catch rate of menhaden indicates fewer fish: “Within osprey pairs, males are responsible for hunting and providing fish to broods. Between 1985 and 2021, the rate of menhaden captures by male osprey declined from 2.4 fish per 10 hours to only 0.4 fish per 10 hours, a decline of more than 80 percent. Although osprey do feed on other fish species within the lower Chesapeake Bay none of these species offer comparable nutrient content.” [Hence the chicks starve.]

2. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Oct 2024: As Osprey Populations Struggle, Managers Continue Deliberations on Chesapeake Bay Menhaden. (Emphasis points out striped bass as the measuring stick.)

Osprey are one of many species that depend on the small, nutrient-packed fish [menhaden] for food. Menhaden also feed striped bass, dolphins, and humpback whales.

But the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)’s current ecosystem model bases menhaden fishing limits only on what’s required to feed a healthy striped bass population. Whether these limits are sufficient to feed a growing population of osprey is unknown.

The colossal industrial menhaden fishery is based in Virginia[*]. However, scientific data on the impact on industrial menhaden fishing on the Chesapeake Bay is lacking, necessitating precautionary action to protect ospreys and other wildlife currently suffering from insufficient forage.

3. Virginia Mercury Commentary in May 2023: The battle for menhaden: corporate greed threatens the Chesapeake Bay.

As early as the 19th century, overfishing caused the [menhaden] population to decline, and it’s been a cycle of boom and bust ever since. One by one, all the Atlantic states but one banned reduction factories and fishing for the reduction industry in their state waters, protecting the bays and estuaries where the immature fish live for their first year or two before heading into the ocean. 

The one outlier is Virginia. The last reduction factory on the East Coast is located in Reedville, Virginia, providing jobs for about 250 local workers. But this is hardly a sleepy little local business. The operation is owned by Omega Protein Corporation, which in turn is owned by a Canadian multinational, Cooke Inc. Omega’s fishing vessels use 1,500-foot-long purse seine nets to harvest hundreds of millions of pounds of menhaden every year. The fish are processed at the Reedville factory and then shipped out to Omega’s other business operations around the world. 

In 2012, in the face of plummeting numbers of menhaden blamed on Omega’s operations, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) took on the regulation of menhaden fishing. Today the ASMFC allocates catch levels  among the states, but in a way that locks in Omega’s outsized share of the fishery. Virginia’s — that is, Omega’s — quota is 75% of the total. The other 14 states in the compact share the last 25%, enough to supply bait for local crabbers, fishermen and lobstermen. 

Virginia is an exception in other ways, too. Not only is Omega permitted to operate in state waters along the Virginia coast, which no other Atlantic state allows, Virginia also lets Omega’s vessels fish in the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, Omega is currently allowed to take 112 million pounds (51,000 metric tons) of menhaden out of Virginia’s side of the Chesapeake Bay every year, about a third of Virginia’s total quota.  …

The bay’s health is famously precarious. Many of its fish and birds that depend on menhaden for food are in decline, including striped bass (rockfish) and osprey. The declines threaten economic mainstays like the recreational striped bass fishery, which generates an estimated $500 million annually in economic activity. 

— Virginia Mercury: The battle for menhaden: corporate greed threatens the Chesapeake Bay.

4. Bay Journal opinion: As osprey chicks starve, Virginia history risks repeating itself.

5. Omega Protein Corporation describes how they fish responsibly and within the limits.