The Fish Nobody Eats That Everything Else Does
Ask a striper fisherman on the Chesapeake what he thinks of menhaden and you will get an answer closer to reverence than to the shrug most Americans would give. The fish is oily, bony, and nearly inedible on a dinner plate. It is also among the most important animals on the Eastern Seaboard. Menhaden, commonly called bunker, are a primary food source for striped bass, bluefish, tuna, whales, dolphins, and ospreys. Pull enough of them out of the water in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the effects travel up the food chain to the fish you chase on a Saturday morning and the raptor that nests on the channel marker at your marina.
That argument has now reached Washington, Annapolis, and the offices of a little-known interstate body that holds the fate of the fishery in its hands. Dozens of federal and state lawmakers are calling for new limits on industrial fishing for menhaden, the small, oily fish at the base of the Atlantic food web, as regulators prepare to vote next month on whether to cut the catch in the Chesapeake Bay. The trigger is a bird that most Americans know by sight: the osprey, the fish hawk, the fixture of every East Coast summer.
A Record-Breaking Failure on the Water
What the 2026 season looked like
The numbers are hard to read without wincing. The Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William & Mary reported Sept. 14 that the 2026 osprey breeding season in the Chesapeake region was the worst recorded to date. The survey was not a casual one. Biologists and volunteers from nine different state and federal agencies, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations monitored 937 osprey pairs in 23 areas of the Bay from March through August.
The picture was bleakest in the saltier reaches of the bay. In the bay's saltier waters, where the birds depend most on menhaden, 81 percent of nesting pairs failed to raise a single chick, and researchers found young birds starving in their nests. Bryan Watts, who directs the Center for Conservation Biology, has described watching it happen in real time. In Mobjack Bay, a sub-tributary of the Chesapeake, 80% of nesting attempts failed, and researchers are observing osprey nestlings starving to death. Watts has noted that, ecologically, cannibalism of dead young "makes energetic sense when calories are scarce." That is a scientist's way of saying the situation has become grim enough to change the behavior of the birds themselves.
Not just a Chesapeake problem
If the trouble were confined to one estuary, it might be easier to dismiss. It is not. Watts and his colleagues released the first picture of the 2026 breeding season up and down the East Coast: 2,886 osprey pairs in 65 study areas across 10 Atlantic states. Reports of fish scarcity have reached Cape Cod, where a conservation group described the Upper Cape's osprey as producing only a fraction of the normal number of chicks.
The decline also carries historical weight. Older readers will remember the DDT era, when pesticide-thinned eggshells pushed ospreys and bald eagles toward the brink, and the recovery that followed ranks among the great American conservation wins. Osprey in many parts of the region are now reproducing at rates well below the historic lows of the DDT crisis in the 1970s. One recent account framed the moment bluntly: one of America's great wildlife recoveries is coming undone.
The Political Push
Bipartisan in Maryland, Democratic in Congress
The lobbying campaign has been unusually broad. Ten members of Congress, 29 Maryland legislators and a coalition of New York and New Jersey fishing groups have pressed regulators in recent weeks. The congressional letter came from the Maryland delegation: Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Sarah Elfreth, both Maryland Democrats, led an Oct. 9 letter signed by eight fellow Democrats from the House and Senate.
The Maryland statehouse effort crossed party lines. The state lawmakers' Sept. 25 letter, signed by 22 Democrats and seven Republicans, went to Maryland's fisheries commissioners. It was led by Del. Dylan Behler. The lawmakers asked for specific measures: limiting the Chesapeake Bay harvest of menhaden to 13.6% of the total coastwide cap, establishing three even-length fishing periods to spread out the catch, and requiring the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to reevaluate the menhaden regulations every three years.
Their letter also made a point that has less to do with birds and more to do with livelihoods. "Maryland's menhaden harvest has fallen by more than 80 percent since 2020 and now sits below ten percent of the quota the State is allowed to take. Crabbers are struggling to find affordable bait and harvesters are unable to participate in the fishery."
New Jersey and the coastwide view
Up the coast, the same case is being made. Rep. Frank Pallone and Sen. Cory Booker wrote to the commission's menhaden board chair, Joe Cimino, warning that excessive menhaden harvesting, including industrial operations that process the fish into fish meal and oil, reduces the food available to predators throughout the Atlantic ecosystem. They argue that fishing limits must account not only for the health of the menhaden population itself, but also for the striped bass, bluefish and other species that depend on it. Their letter leans on the 2025 stock assessment, which indicated that estimated menhaden biomass was 37% lower than previously believed.
The Industry Position
The other side of this fight is not a cartoon villain, and any fair reading has to say so. The reduction fishery is a legal, regulated business, and its defenders have real points. The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, an industry group, urged the commission to reject further cuts to the bay cap "until the research can establish their necessity and likely benefits."
Omega Protein, which processes the catch at its Reedville, Virginia plant, has argued that the cause is more tangled than a single fishery. A company representative wrote that "The underlying causes of reduced availability of menhaden to osprey are not clear," and besides commercial harvest cited factors such as climate change and changes in the distribution or migration patterns of menhaden that might be delaying their entry into the Bay in spring. The company has also noted that its fleet is not allowed to begin fishing in Virginia waters until early May, and that in 2026 it did not begin until early June. It adds that osprey nesting declines are not limited to the Chesapeake, citing reports from elsewhere along the East Coast and even on the Pacific Coast. Montgomery Diehl, CEO of the harvesting subsidiary Ocean Harvesters, has said that their boats take less than 1% of the total menhaden biomass each year.
Regulators, for their part, have been careful. The coastwide status is not in dispute. The commission classifies Atlantic menhaden as "not overfished" and says overfishing is not occurring. But it also concedes the limits of that finding. ASMFC says its assessment cannot tell whether menhaden are abundant enough in a smaller area such as the Chesapeake Bay.
Why the Chesapeake Is the Flashpoint
Virginia's last reduction fishery
Much of the argument turns on geography. Virginia is the only state along the Atlantic coast that still allows industrial menhaden fishing in state waters. The operation is distinctive. It uses spotter planes, 2,000-foot nets, and large motherships to catch menhaden and provide them to Omega Protein, a Canadian-owned company that processes them into aquaculture feed, pet food, and oils. Critics put the annual take at over 100 million pounds of menhaden from Chesapeake Bay waters each year. The current cap on the bay portion of the harvest is 51,000 metric tons in the Chesapeake Bay, within a coastwide reduction quota of 125,000 metric tons in the Atlantic.
Maryland's own fisheries director, Mike Luisi, who sits as one of the state's three commission representatives, has been measured but pointed. "We believe that there is an availability issue in the bay, and it's likely that some action is going to be needed in order to see whether or not this reduction fleet is part of that equation," he said.
Localized depletion, explained
The phrase at the center of the dispute is "localized depletion." A coastwide population can be healthy on paper while a particular bay, in a particular month, is short on fish. Although federal and interstate assessments do not classify menhaden as overfished, conservationists argue that existing regulations fail to address localized depletion and the needs of predator species. The commission's own working group found something that fuels that worry: declines in menhaden harvests within the Chesapeake Bay that coincided with an increase in reduction operations during the summer months, and "possible downstream effects on menhaden predators." That timing is why the proposed rules would split the cap into three quota periods, to prevent a concentration of reduction harvesting in the spring and summer.
What the Science Says, and What It Cannot Yet Say
The peer-reviewed case landed in June. A paper in Frontiers in Marine Science, titled "Widespread reproductive deficits in Chesapeake Bay ospreys," found that in the 2024 breeding season, osprey productivity in areas with high salinity was below the levels required to maintain the population inside the bay. Its authors were direct about the likely culprit: "Although several factors are operating within this ecosystem that may affect productivity, we suggest that Atlantic menhaden availability is the primary driver of low reproduction." The U.S. Geological Survey has reached a similar view, writing to Congress that "Limited prey availability, their capture or their delivery to nests is seemingly the principal driver of poor reproductive success."
What science cannot yet supply is the one number everyone wants: how many menhaden are actually in the Chesapeake, and how much the fleet's removals change that. The Center for Conservation Biology's own report said the problem "appears to be caused by changes in the availability of Atlantic menhaden to nesting ospreys in the Chesapeake Bay," and notably avoided naming a villain. The Bay Journal summarized the report as citing food stress while avoiding pointing fingers.
A bay-specific survey is finally on the way. Congress has provided $2.5 million for a Chesapeake menhaden survey, and the commission, which will oversee the money, said work will likely begin early next year and produce results sometime in 2028. That leaves a gap of roughly two years between a vote this November and the data meant to inform it. Getting here was not quick. Reporting by the Washington Post found that in 2026 alone, three different proposals failed to advance in Virginia: one to fund research aimed at understanding menhaden abundance in the bay, another to temporarily halt industrial fishing there, and a third to limit when and how the fleet could fish. Omega says it never opposed the research, though a letter its lobbyist sent to Virginia lawmakers last year proposed replacing the full study with a two-year pilot or deferring it until 2026. Virginia did eventually move, with a separate appropriation: $2 million approved in June for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
The Quota Context
The coming vote does not happen in a vacuum. Regulators already tightened the screws once. The commission reduced the coastwide menhaden harvest quota by 20% for 2026, limiting catches to approximately 412 million pounds. The question for November is whether the Chesapeake needs its own, tighter treatment on top of that. The board has said it will collect public comments and consider final action at its November 2026 meeting. The options on the table include linking the Chesapeake Bay cap to the coastwide total allowable catch.
What It Means for the Sportsman
The fishing economy argument
For men who fish, this is not an abstract regulatory spat. Menhaden are the engine under striped bass, bluefish, and red drum seasons from Virginia to Massachusetts, and the fisheries that depend on them are worth far more in guide fees, tackle, boat fuel, and weekend travel than the fish are worth ground into meal. Anglers are already reporting the effects. Anglers are seeing fewer schools of menhaden and catching fewer game fish, according to the Virginia Saltwater Sportfishing Association. A conservation advocate in the Virginia debate framed the stakes as a recreational economy question as well, arguing that better protecting menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay protects a thriving recreational fishing economy in the nation's largest estuary and throughout the coast.
The watermen are in the same boat, literally. Crabbers who bait their pots with menhaden are paying more or going without. A separate Bay Journal headline from May noted that the Chesapeake blue crab population dropped 50%, a decline whose causes remain contested but which compounds the strain on working waterfronts.
The canary in the coal mine
Watts has called the osprey a canary in the coal mine, and the phrase holds up. "They are one of the best indicators we have that something is not right in the ecosystem," he said. An osprey eats nothing but live fish, hunts in plain sight, and nests on structures people can count from a kayak. When its chicks starve, the bay is telling you something about its prey base that no stock model has yet captured.
What to Watch in November
The commission's menhaden board holds the decision, and its options range from doing nothing, to trimming the Virginia cap, to restructuring when the fleet can fish. Industry will argue for patience until the 2028 survey; conservationists, legislators from both parties in Maryland, and a growing list of fishing groups will argue that the birds cannot wait that long. The osprey is a long-lived, site-faithful bird, and a few more seasons of failed nests would mean fewer adults returning in the years ahead, a hole that does not refill quickly.
For the reader who simply loves the water, the practical takeaways are modest but real. Pay attention to the November vote. Report what you see on the water to state fisheries agencies, since local anecdotes are exactly the kind of data this debate lacks. Support the funding for the bay survey, and ask harder questions about where the fish in your pet's food and your garden's fertilizer come from. The menhaden is not a glamorous animal. But a bay that cannot feed its ospreys is probably not a bay that will keep feeding the rest of us for long.
