Ospreys in the Chesapeake Bay Are Starving to Death at Disastrous Rates. What Will It Take to Save Them?

It is likely one of the nice dramatic sights in nature: to see an Osprey hunt. To look at a long-winged raptor hover like a kingfisher excessive above the water, eyes on its prey, earlier than committing and plunging downward at greater than 40 miles an hour after which, on the final second, throw its wings again and talons ahead, putting feet-first. Because it lifts off the water with a thrust of exertion, it adjusts the slippery, squirming fish in its grasp, shaking off silver flecks of spray.

As a younger man on Cape Cod within the Seventies, I by no means witnessed this spectacular phenomenon as a result of just about no birds nested there. The widespread use of the chemical DDT had thinned Osprey eggshells, inflicting adults to crush their progeny and populations to plummet all alongside the Atlantic Coast. However once I returned to the Cape within the Nineties, the spring sky was filled with Ospreys, and there gave the impression to be a nest on the finish of each jetty. Spurred by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, public outcry had galvanized a motion to ban the insecticide, and the EPA’s resolution to take action in 1972 led to the birds’ renaissance. For me and so many others, their return is what made their absence palpable. We didn’t know what we had been lacking. 

Within the years since, Ospreys have impressed 1000’s of human beings who intertwine their lives with these of the birds. If Ospreys are in your neighborhood, you already know it; their houses are, like them, conspicuous. Useless bushes had been as soon as excellent Osprey actual property, however today a lot of the birds nest atop poles and platforms, architecturally half-human, half-avian. If that is an instance of Homo sapiens giving one other species a leg up, additionally it is an indication of penance. In spite of everything, it was our chemical compounds that just about wiped them out. 

The important story that Osprey folks inform is a hopeful one, and when a brand new narrative concerning the birds started trickling out of the mid-Atlantic a number of years in the past, most didn’t imagine it at first. It began as a rumor amongst birders and fishermen and individuals who noticed the nests close to their houses: Osprey nests had been sitting empty, and the adults that did breed weren’t producing younger—or in the event that they had been, the younger had been ravenous to dying. 

It was onerous to get your head round, since in lots of locations Ospreys now appear a lot part of the panorama. That is very true within the Chesapeake Bay, residence to greater than 10,000 breeding pairs—shut to twenty p.c of the worldwide inhabitants, by some estimates. However what started as rumour solidified into one thing extra concrete as folks started to speak. Then scientists confirmed it: Ospreys within the Chesapeake are facing a new challenge, one that might show as dire as that of DDT—and warning bells have begun to ring elsewhere. 

Having written two books concerning the birds’ resurgence, I used to be not desperate to see their hopeful story revised, however I set out from my residence in North Carolina to analyze. I wished to know: Will Ospreys once more show resilient? And the way can we give them that probability?

No place higher epitomizes the Osprey’s capacity for comeback than the Chesapeake Bay—the most important estuary in america and the third-largest on Earth. Fed by greater than 150 rivers and streams, the Bay extends 200 miles from its mouth in Virginia up via Maryland, forming a vibrant ecosystem that set the stage for the chicken’s rebound from DDT. Bryan Watts has been finding out the Bay’s Ospreys for greater than 30 years, and the Heart for Conservation Biology (CCB) that he directs at William & Mary in Virginia has stored cautious data for even longer—again to the low level of 1,450 breeding pairs within the early Seventies. So in my quest to know what is going on with Ospreys, Watts was my first cease.    

We met at his workplace, the place, in a voice flavored by a southern lilt, Watts described the findings that sounded the current alarm. He and his colleagues monitor Ospreys all through every breeding season, touring from nest to nest by boat. In 2023 in an space of the Chesapeake known as Mobjack Bay, the 81 pairs they surveyed produced simply three stay chicks—lower than one-tenth the speed wanted to maintain the inhabitants. The subsequent yr they broadened the survey to 571 nests within the larger Chesapeake, and in 2025 they expanded it once more, that point surveying 1,025 nests. They discovered that Ospreys all through the principle stem of the Bay had been producing lower than half of the younger required for the inhabitants to outlive—a reproductive fee even decrease than in the course of the top of DDT. 

“Osprey chicks are ravenous of their nests,” Watts informed me. “And the reason being easy. Their main meals supply is menhaden. And that meals supply is now not plentiful.” Oily, energy-packed, and nutritious, in the case of forage fish, menhaden are the perfect Osprey meal. However the variety of menhaden that Ospreys carry to their chicks, CCB information present, has dropped by 80 p.c over the previous 40 years. 

Each Ospreys and menhaden play distinct ecological roles. Ospreys are an indicator species, reflecting the well being of an ecosystem of their rise and fall. Menhaden are a keystone species, the bottom on which different creatures within the system rely. Swimming open-mouthed, they filter out phytoplankton and algae, stopping dangerous blooms whereas accumulating omega-3 fatty acids that may then nourish a veritable internet of life: striped bass and bluefish, dolphins and sharks, and each fish-eating chicken that shares their habitat, together with loons, eagles, gannets, puffins, herons, and, after all, Ospreys. Based on Watts, what the indicator species is telling us is that the keystone species—and subsequently the entire Chesapeake ecosystem—is in hassle.

The one Ospreys that gave the impression to be doing okay in current research had been these nesting farther up tributaries, in tidal freshwater areas the place the birds had entry to a larger range of fish; in saline areas, the place they’re menhaden-dependent, the nests failed. There, Ospreys can’t appear to search out sufficient fish—and, Watts identified, they’ve stiff competitors. Annually industrial fishing boats vacuum menhaden out of the Bay. 

Virginia is the final state on the East Coast to allow the operation of a menhaden discount fishery (so named as a result of it reduces the fish to meal or oil). To reap the catch, two ships encircle colleges of fish with 1,600-foot purse seine nets, and the trapped menhaden are then pumped right into a vessel’s maintain. This had been a thriving business up and down the Atlantic Coast for a lot of the previous century, however in the present day just one plant stays: Omega Protein, a subsidiary of the Canadian firm Cooke Inc. Virginia-based Ocean Harvesters catches the fish for Omega; lately it was permitted to reap roughly 350 million kilos of menhaden yearly, together with 110 million kilos from the Chesapeake. This quantities to roughly 70 p.c of the catch for your complete Atlantic menhaden inhabitants.

Ospreys go after menhaden as a result of they pack twice as many energy as different fish, Watts famous: “Which is similar motive that Omega Protein is after them.” And like Ospreys, the fishery additionally takes off to search out them. Once I left Watts, I drove a few hours north to the Omega Protein plant in Reedville, Virginia. There I finished by a small grassy airfield the place a half-dozen single-engine Cessnas had been lined up. 

Menhaden as soon as swam in colleges of billions that stretched for 40 miles, simply as Passenger Pigeons as soon as shaped flocks so huge that they blocked out the solar. Although menhaden are far much less quite a few in the present day, their colleges are nonetheless clearly seen from the skies above—nice shimmering packs that run close to the floor like a green-blue river via the ocean. For each man in his airplane and birds on the wing, this visibility takes loads of the chance out of fishing. A major distinction, nonetheless, is what every makes use of the fish for. Ospreys depend on menhaden to gas their species’ survival. Omega grinds them up for pet meals, cosmetics, dietary supplements, and feed for livestock and farmed salmon. Which suggests Atlantic menhaden are actually on our menu, too.

Joanie Millward is an ideal instance of how Ospreys convert even informal chicken observers into passionate advocates. When she was contemplating shopping for a one-story residence in Colonial Seashore, Virginia, which sits alongside the Potomac, her husband appeared out and noticed that there was an Osprey nesting on a pole clearly seen from the again door. “You’re going to love this,” he mentioned, and she or he did. Watching the birds led to caring about them, and that led to finally beginning the Virginia Osprey Basis, which surveys the city’s Ospreys and throws an annual pageant to have a good time their return from Central and South America every spring.

“It was such a hopeful story,” Millward informed me as we tooled round Colonial Seashore in a golf cart, checking in on most of the 50-plus nests throughout the 2.5 sq. miles that make up the neighborhood. The native Ospreys nest principally atop platforms, however some construct in bushes and on buoys, and at the very least one has constructed its residence on high of a ship. Ospreys have offered constant leisure for the members of this group 35 miles upriver from the Chesapeake, going about their enterprise of fishing, nesting, and elevating their younger proper out within the open. “It was we had so many fledglings that the sky was filled with Ospreys,” Millward mentioned.

A special story has unfolded over the previous two years. To every nest we cease at, she will be able to connect a story, and the narratives are sometimes darkish. The grownup birds deserted one nest and the younger died. At one other, the adults stayed however the chicks starved. At one more, lack of meals led to siblicide, the firstborn chick killing the second. Ospreys instinctively regulate their clutch sizes based on the quantity of meals that’s accessible, typically laying three or 4 when fish are plentiful. The birds in Colonial Seashore that reproduced laid just one or two eggs—and even then the chicks starved. The saddest story Millward informed concerned her “residence nest,” the one which impressed her ardour. There the male had a tough time discovering fish, and the feminine deserted the nest throughout a rainstorm; inside 10 minutes the three younger had been devoured by crows. 

“We used to have so many Ospreys calling and hovering and studying the best way to fly, and we took that a lot as a right,” she mentioned after we accomplished our lap of the neighborhood. “And it was so quiet final summer time.” This isn’t a subjective impression. Two years earlier, Colonial Seashore had 55 profitable fledglings from 35 nests. That summer time that they had 8 fledglings. 

To Millward, it’s apparent that the falling numbers of Ospreys are tied to falling numbers of menhaden. She factors to the truth that native fishermen are having hassle filling their nets. Along with Virginia’s discount fishery, in states alongside the coast, a lot smaller operations catch menhaden as bait for blue crabs, lobster, and finfish. These bait fishermen, who make up the remainder of the business harvest within the Atlantic, have seen their annual catches nose-dive. A 2025 report from the Potomac River Fisheries Fee discovered that menhaden landings for bait fishermen had been one-third of the all-time low, set simply two years earlier than. 

In Colonial Seashore, the place each empty nests and the Potomac are inescapable sights, the Osprey-menhaden connection is tough to overlook. After saying goodbye to Millward, I made a decision to move north alongside the coast to see if the disaster, too, follows the birds up the Atlantic.

The subsequent day I discovered myself in a 22-foot MayCraft skiff watching American Oystercatchers, Nice Egrets, Willets, and a couple of dozen migrating Ospreys, with one other half-dozen perched on the branches of useless cedars. Ben Wurst, a senior wildlife biologist for the Preserve Wildlife Basis of New Jersey, had supplied to provide me a tour of Sedge Island in Barnegat Bay—1,900 acres of tidal marshes, creeks, ponds, and open water that make up New Jersey’s sole marine conservation zone. 

Wurst’s spectacular beard blew backward as we sped out to the jap fringe of the island, the place we climbed out of the boat and explored a uncommon Osprey floor nest, a big mound of useless grass, sticks, and plastic. Whereas charismatic and exquisite, Ospreys should not neatniks, and their nests have been recognized to comprise, together with the standard sticks and branches, Easter tinsel, boat line, plastic purchasing baggage, and, in multiple case, Barbie dolls. Wurst picked items of plastic out of the nest, explaining that the birds’ fascination with our by-­merchandise might show lethal in the event that they get entangled. He additionally searched in useless for shell fragments, proof that chicks might need hatched. 

There have been 40 nests within the speedy space, all traditionally profitable. The yr earlier than, that they had produced 55 younger. I requested what number of had been profitable this previous yr. “5,” Wurst mentioned. I requested about ­menhaden.

“Everybody is aware of one thing is happening,” he mentioned. “The actual fact is, the fish should not right here. And those we do see are smaller. Peanut menhaden we name them, younger fish. Bait fishermen now have menhaden swim proper via their nets. The grownup menhaden have been a dependable meals supply for 1000’s of years, however now they’re scarce.”

Sedge Island makes clear that the issue shouldn’t be confined to the Chesapeake. Different information factors are rising, too. Alan Poole, who wrote the ebook on the birds with the traditional Ospreys: A Pure and Unnatural Historical past, just lately reported two of each three nestlings starved in a previously sturdy colony in Massachusetts, together with a decline in menhaden delivered to the nests. Volunteers with the Connecticut Audubon Society, in the meantime, reported incidents of ravenous chicks and nest abandonment in that state, spurring the group to launch a research to probe fish supply there, too.

Wurst confirmed me a telephone app, made by FlightAware, that enables him to trace the trackers which might be spotter planes; he might see that plane from Virginia had been making frequent journeys to the world, flying nearly weekly to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and even Lengthy Island, New York. Although discount fishing is prohibited in these states’ waters, Ocean Harvesters can fish in federal waters three nautical miles from shore. And whereas most of its harvest is caught close to the place the fish are delivered to shore in Virginia, the corporate follows massive colleges as they shift seasonally alongside the coast. 

Menhaden vary from Florida to Nova Scotia, shifting from nurseries in estuaries like Chesapeake Bay into offshore waters to spawn; many adults migrate north in spring and return south in autumn. A wide range of environmental circumstances affect these actions, and there are nonetheless some unknowns in the case of precisely why Ospreys can’t discover the menhaden they want. 

Everybody I spoke with talked about the affect of local weather change. Millward noticed that the waters off Colonial Seashore have warmed in current summers, and Watts and others suspect that forage fish are shifting north seeking cooler habitat. Wurst remarked that extra frequent and intense nor’easters have stored menhaden from nearshore waters. However local weather change, scientists agree, additionally compounds different stressors, making each fish and birds much less resilient to these pressures.

One of the vital persuasive arguments Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters make in protection of the discount fishery is that jobs can be misplaced whether it is compelled to shut or shrink. The business at the moment employs 270 folks. However many extra livelihoods can be on the road if the menhaden inhabitants collapsed: these of bait fishermen, crabbers, lobstermen, and individuals who assist the leisure fishery for species greater up the meals chain like striped bass and bluefin tuna. Wurst was sympathetic to issues for the discount fishery’s workforce however identified the plain: “Should you’re not sustainable, you’re all going to be out of jobs.” 

It is a sentiment typically neglected within the present debate: It isn’t simply Ospreys that may disappear together with the fish. Once I spoke with Don Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Institute, he careworn this connection as nicely. “The Ospreys are telling us that one thing is altering,” he mentioned. “They’re telling Omega, too. And whereas they should keep watch over short-term earnings, I’d love to listen to a considerate individual from the within describe what the longer term seems to be like. How do they think about the fishery in 10 years? Twenty?”

Once I received residence from my journey, I reached out to Monty Deihl, the CEO of Ocean Harvesters, which catches the fish that Omega processes. We had a convivial speak, and he’s a educated man who grew up in Reedville within the midst of the fishery. However regardless of mounting proof on the contrary, he insisted that the menhaden inhabitants stays wholesome each on the Atlantic coast and within the Chesapeake Bay itself.

In reality, that is one other unknown. Though the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Fee (ASMFC), which regulates the interstate fishery, doesn’t think about Atlantic menhaden overfished, final yr its technical committee concluded it had overestimated the coastwide inhabitants by as a lot as 37 p.c. Plus, nobody really is aware of what number of menhaden are within the Chesapeake Bay itself. What’s wanted, conservationists and different stakeholders agree, is a strong research of menhaden within the coastal waters the place Ospreys are fishing. The issue is: Ospreys are ravenous, they usually want motion now.

In early March, six months after my journey up the coast, a pair of Ospreys returned to the nest close to my home in North Carolina. I heard the birds earlier than I noticed them—that high-pitched kew-ing that claims Osprey—and felt a elevate like a type of bodily embodiment of hope. 

Till then, hope had been powerful to search out. ASMFC’s 2025 evaluation instructed {that a} greater than 50 p.c discount within the Atlantic catch can be required to assist be sure that striped bass, which in its fashions serves because the reference level for menhaden predators, would have sufficient to eat; Audubon and the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Basis supported that proposal or an outright halt to discount fishing within the Bay. As an alternative, the fee lower the general take by 20 p.c, bringing it in keeping with the quantity of fish that Ocean Harvesters has really landed lately.

Ben Landry, a spokesperson for Ocean Fleet Providers, the mum or dad firm of Ocean Harvesters, is amongst these calling for extra science. Blaming Osprey hunger on the menhaden fishery is, he says, “an oversimplified rationalization for a fancy ecological situation”—one which requires analyzing water circumstances, abundance of different prey fish, competitors from predators, predation, habitat change, and different elements. 

However as of this writing, efforts to safe funding for a collection of scientific research proposed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science—with the enter of a various group of stakeholders, together with representatives from Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein—failed within the Virginia legislature, the place the business fought in opposition to it. 

“Virginia can’t afford to maintain kicking this down the highway,” Will Poston, forage marketing campaign supervisor of the Chesapeake Bay Basis, informed me. “The most secure method stays to pause industrial menhaden fishing contained in the Chesapeake Bay till the science is finalized and reveals what degree of menhaden extraction is sustainable.”

In the meantime, the Science Heart for Marine Fisheries, a cooperative analysis heart that’s funded partly by business dues and “operates below business accomplice oversight,” introduced a analysis plan of its personal. Naturally some observers are skeptical of analysis funded by the fisheries, however in any case the research might take years to play out. 

This Might, ASMFC was anticipated to advance a proposal that may supply some safeguards now, together with by decreasing the quota for menhaden caught within the Bay. This cover, based mostly on the typical historic catch, was launched 20 years in the past as a stopgap measure to forestall overfishing. The proposal additionally thought-about setting seasonal catch limits to cut back strain on the fish inhabitants all year long. However when it was time to vote, commissioners selected to punt.

The information felt deflating. “The place there isn’t a hope, there will be no endeavor,” wrote Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century man of letters. But when hope is a mandatory gas for motion, there are nonetheless locations to search for it. 

A current ballot revealed that Virginia’s voters are firmly behind the fish: 92 p.c imagine that fewer menhaden ought to be taken from the Bay. In January Congress handed a invoice that may put $2.5 million towards finding out menhaden, whereas public strain continues to construct for lowering or quickly pausing discount fishing. The rising refrain of menhaden advocates gives a uncommon and hopeful instance of reaching throughout the aisle in these fractious instances. Whereas the phrase conservative has gone via a wierd evolution lately, it’s value remembering that many historic positive factors grew out of bipartisan alliances between environmentalists and outdoorsmen. With the well being of striped bass and different sport fish intently tied to that of menhaden, organizations just like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the American Sportfishing Affiliation have joined with environmental teams to press for options. A current video on Fact Social confirmed fishermen, multiple carrying a MAGA hat, urging an industrial fishing ban. 

Possibly the most effective place to search out hope is within the unique Osprey story. In banning DDT, folks selected to put the lives of Ospreys over the need of an business, and the species surged again. Sure, we are actually in darker instances, however by wanting towards Ospreys, we will see some gentle. 

Paul Spitzer, an elder statesman of Osprey science, supplied extra illumination. We have already got a promising template, he identified, for a way ecosystems reply to leaving vastly extra fish within the sea: As a result of New York banned purse seining for menhaden in 2019, he mentioned, you’ll be able to see whales, dolphins, and different marine animals off Manhattan in the present day. 

It was Spitzer’s analysis that helped reveal the hyperlink between Ospreys and DDT. He additionally uncovered a doable hyperlink between crashing Chesapeake menhaden and Frequent Loon populations 30 years in the past. Spitzer’s specialty is the massive image, and he urged me to think about menhaden not simply regionally and even regionally, however globally. 

“The oceans are a commons,” he informed me. “We share that commons not simply with Ospreys however with striped bass and humpback whales and 100 different species. The present query is: How does this commons get distributed amongst human beings and different species?”

The query is an pressing one. The destiny of the birds of hope could hinge on how we select to reply. 

This story initially ran within the Summer time 2026 situation as “Starvation Pangs.” To obtain our print journal, turn out to be a member by making a donation today.