Stepping onto an old wooden duck blind in the York River, Bryan Watts looks at a failed osprey nest, taken over by diving terns. "The birds never laid here this year," says Watts, near the mouth of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay. "That's a pattern we've been seeing these last couple of years." Watts has a more intimate relationship with ospreys than most—he's climbed to their nests to free them from plastic bags, fed them by hand, and monitored their eggs with telescopic mirrors. The fish-eating raptor known for gymnastic dives and whistle-like chirps is an American conservation success story, reports the AP. After pesticides and other hazards nearly eliminated the species from much of the country, the hawk-like bird rebounded after DDT was banned in 1972 and now numbers in the thousands in the US.
But Watts has documented an alarming trend. The birds, which breed in many parts of the US, are failing to successfully fledge enough chicks around their key population center of the Chesapeake Bay. The longtime biologist blames the decline of menhaden, a small schooling fish critical to the osprey diet. Without menhaden to eat, chicks are starving in nests, Watts says. Watts' claim has put him and environmental groups at odds with the fishing industry, trade unions, and sometimes government regulators. Menhaden is valuable for fish oil, fish meal, and agricultural food as well as bait. US fishermen have caught at least 1.1 billion pounds of menhaden every year since 1951. Members of the industry tout its sustainability and said the decline in osprey may have nothing to do with fishing.
Menhaden help sustain one of the world's largest fisheries, worth more than $200 million at the docks in 2023. Used as bait, the fish are critical for valuable commercial targets such as Maine lobster. The modern industry is dominated by Omega Protein, which pushed back at the idea that fishing is the cause of osprey decline, although it did acknowledge that fewer menhaden are showing up in some parts of the bay. Federal data show osprey breeding is in decline in many parts of the country, including where menhaden is not harvested at all, said Ben Landry, an Omega rep.
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Climate change, pollution, and development could be playing a role, said Landry and others with the company. Blaming fishing "just reeks of environmental special interest groups having an influence over the process," Landry said. But without help, the osprey population could tumble to levels not seen since the dark days of DDT, counters Watts. "The osprey are yelling pretty loudly that, hey, there's not enough menhaden for us to reproduce successfully," Watts says.
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