The 2023 Osprey analysis season in Mobjack Bay, a sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay, started as others had for many years. Cruising the brackish waters in a small motorboat, Bryan Watts, director of William & Mary’s Heart for Conservation Biology in Virginia, and Michael Academia, a researcher on the heart, eased as much as nesting platforms, boat homes, and deserted docks dotting the shoreline. Lifting mirrors on lengthy poles, they held them over elevated Osprey nests and used the reflections to see inside.
What the researchers noticed in these mirrors—or, quite, what they didn’t see—was disturbing: Out of 167 nests they visited in Mobjack Bay and two close by rivers, solely 17 held dwell chicks. “It was a catastrophic failure,” says Watts, who has studied Ospreys within the space for many years.
The Chesapeake Bay helps the most important Osprey inhabitants on the planet: 10,000 to 12,000 breeding pairs of the one raptor that dives talons-first into the water to gather a meal. William & Mary scientists have studied these birds since simply earlier than the 1972 ban on DDT, an insecticide that precipitated most nests to fail. After the ban, hatching charges and Osprey populations rebounded. However in recent times, productiveness in some areas has declined sharply once more. Final 12 months, reproductive charges dropped to their lowest stage in a long time—even decrease than on the top of the DDT interval, Watts says.
This time, researchers say the trigger isn’t chemical substances however starvation. Chicks are ravenous of their nests because of a scarcity of prey, and specifically, the small, high-fat forage fish on which some Osprey rely: Atlantic menhaden. “There’s no query that there’s not sufficient menhaden to assist the Osprey proper now,” Watts says. Within the Chesapeake, conservationists say these menhaden declines are because of overfishing by a single firm, and are more and more vocal in urging regulators to take motion.
No knowledge exist for the variety of menhaden within the Chesapeake, so scientists look to the birds as indicators of how wholesome shares are. Whereas Ospreys eat all kinds of fish, they want a specific amount of high-fat menhaden to outlive, Watts says. He and Academia first assessed the connection between Ospreys and meals availability in 2021, evaluating outcomes for pairs that acquired supplemental menhaden and pairs that didn’t. Among the many latter group, the variety of dwell younger was properly under what would maintain the inhabitants. “A lot of the nests failed throughout the first two weeks of hatching, the vital half once they want the meals,” Academia says.
In early 2024, William & Mary researchers revealed a study in Frontiers of Marine Science linking Osprey declines for the reason that Nineteen Eighties to declines in menhaden throughout that point. The examine instructed that menhaden shares wanted to be restored to Nineteen Eighties ranges to stabilize the Osprey inhabitants.
These outcomes additionally introduced the birds into the contentious matter of menhaden harvesting within the Chesapeake Bay. Whereas scientists say it’s clear that Osprey aren’t getting sufficient menhaden, the function of business fishing stays a topic of fierce debate. The federal authorities units the allowed harvest of menhaden, and the 16 taking part states determine tips on how to handle their quotas, with Virginia taking the lion’s share. In 2022, a federal regulator, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Fee, concluded there was no evidence that menhaden have been being overfished alongside the Atlantic coast.
Critics contend, nevertheless, that present administration of menhaden shares doesn’t put aside sufficient for wildlife that eat the fish. In 2023, the Southern Maryland Leisure Fishing Group sued the Virginia Marine Sources Fee, the state regulator. The lawsuit alleged that, by approving the quota set by the Atlantic Fee, the state company was mismanaging menhaden within the Chesapeake. The group additionally filed a public petition asking the state to scale back harvesting and fund a menhaden inhabitants examine. Administration selections have been depleting menhaden, and by extension, striped bass and different wildlife that rely on them, they stated. “It’s as a lot about Osprey populations as another predator species,” says David Reed, government director of the Chesapeake Authorized Alliance, which is representing the anglers. “It’s an ecosystem downside.”
Conservationists have additionally raised issues. Final 12 months, in response to Watts’ and Academia’s analysis, the Richmond Audubon Society asked Virginia state regulators to quickly droop the usage of giant fishing nets within the Chesapeake. Remy Moncrieffe, marine conservation coverage supervisor with the Nationwide Audubon Society, says the scenario within the Chesapeake reveals a scarcity of regard for the significance of menhaden in supporting different species. “These fish are actually necessary for the ecosystem, however it’s virtually like we don’t have the respect and the care we have to actually protect them,” he says. And there can be found choices for serving to shares rebound, he provides. Louisiana, for instance, in February applied a half-mile buffer zone alongside its coast the place menhaden can’t be commercially fished, after years of campaigning by conservationists and anglers. “These fish may be harvested sustainably,” Moncrieffe says.
Within the Chesapeake, practically all menhaden fishing is carried out by one firm: Omega Protein, which, by way of its fishing accomplice Ocean Harvesters, catches roughly 244 million menhaden a 12 months for discount into fish meal and fish oil.
In an announcement to Audubon, Omega Protein stated that the menhaden fishery has lengthy been attacked by these “who refuse to just accept the science-based conclusions of revered authorities businesses and impartial evaluation our bodies.” The corporate additionally pointed to the Marine Stewardship Council’s 2019 certification of the menhaden fishery as sustainable.
Referring to the Osprey analysis, the corporate famous that it hasn’t fished in Mobjack Bay in a long time, and that regulators have already lowered menhaden harvesting within the Chesapeake Bay to lower than one-third of historic ranges for precautionary causes. The corporate additionally stated there are a lot of potential explanations for nest failures in Mobjack Bay. “Instantly linking the decline in Osprey populations to the provision of menhaden isn’t supported by any obtainable proof,” the assertion stated.
Watts and Academia disagree, they usually’re as soon as once more cruising the Chesapeake to assemble extra knowledge. Together with monitoring reproductive success, this season they plan to watch how a lot time male Ospreys spend attempting to find fish, as an indicator for the abundance of menhaden. In the meantime, authorized efforts to restrict the menhaden harvest proceed. Whereas Virginia’s fisheries regulator denied the anglers’ petition, their lawsuit remains to be transferring by way of the courts.
Given the scale of the inhabitants, the Chesapeake Bay’s Ospreys are usually not in rapid jeopardy, Watts says. However the inhabitants is vulnerable to long-term decline, he provides, and there’s cause for concern about different species for which the Osprey serves as a sentinel, similar to Northern Gannets, Brown Pelicans, and Nice Blue Herons. “If Osprey are doing this poorly,” he says, “what’s occurring with every thing else?”
It’s too early to say how Ospreys will fare this nesting season. However it’s clear that, as they’ve previously, the birds are signaling that one thing, someplace within the Chesapeake’s ecosystem, must be fastened.