It is likely one of the nice dramatic sights in nature: to see an Osprey hunt. To observe 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, hanging 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 stuffed with Ospreys, and there appeared 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 choice 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 hundreds of human beings who intertwine their lives with these of the birds. If Ospreys are in your neighborhood, you recognize it; their houses are, like them, conspicuous. Useless timber had been as soon as perfect 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 any case, it was our chemical compounds that nearly wiped them out.
The important story that Osprey individuals 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 laborious 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, dwelling to greater than 10,000 breeding pairs—shut to twenty % of the worldwide inhabitants, by some estimates. However what started as rumour solidified into one thing extra concrete as individuals 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 desirous to see their hopeful story revised, however I set out from my dwelling in North Carolina to analyze. I needed 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 the USA 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 by Maryland, forming a vibrant ecosystem that set the stage for the chook’s rebound from DDT. Bryan Watts has been learning 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 information for even longer—again to the low level of 1,450 breeding pairs within the early Seventies. So in my quest to grasp 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 latest 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 reside chicks—lower than one-tenth the speed wanted to maintain the inhabitants. The subsequent 12 months they broadened the survey to 571 nests within the better Chesapeake, and in 2025 they expanded it once more, that point surveying 1,025 nests. They discovered that Ospreys all through the primary stem of the Bay had been producing lower than half of the younger required for the inhabitants to outlive—a reproductive price even decrease than through the peak of DDT.
Ospreys all through the primary stem of the Bay had been producing lower than half of the younger required for the inhabitants to outlive.
“Osprey chicks are ravenous of their nests,” Watts instructed me. “And the reason being easy. Their major meals supply is menhaden. And that meals supply is not considerable.” Oily, energy-packed, and nutritious, with regards to forage fish, menhaden are the perfect Osprey meal. However the variety of menhaden that Ospreys carry to their chicks, CCB knowledge present, has dropped by 80 % 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 can then nourish a veritable internet of life: striped bass and bluefish, dolphins and sharks, and each fish-eating chook that shares their habitat, together with loons, eagles, gannets, puffins, herons, and, in fact, Ospreys. In line with 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 appeared to be doing okay in latest research had been these nesting farther up tributaries, in tidal freshwater areas the place the birds had entry to a better 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. Every year 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 faculties 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 trade up and down the Atlantic Coast for a lot of the previous century, however as we speak just one plant stays: Omega Protein, a subsidiary of the Canadian firm Cooke Inc. Virginia-based Ocean Harvesters catches the fish for Omega; in recent times 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 % of the catch for all the Atlantic menhaden inhabitants.
Ospreys go after menhaden as a result of they pack twice as many energy as different fish, Watts famous: “Which is identical cause that Omega Protein is after them.” And like Ospreys, the fishery additionally takes off to search out them. After I left Watts, I drove a few hours north to the Omega Protein plant in Reedville, Virginia. There I ended by a small grassy airfield the place a half-dozen single-engine Cessnas had been lined up.
Menhaden as soon as swam in faculties of billions that stretched for 40 miles, simply as Passenger Pigeons as soon as fashioned flocks so huge that they blocked out the solar. Although menhaden are far much less quite a few as we speak, their faculties are nonetheless clearly seen from the skies above—nice shimmering packs that run close to the floor like a green-blue river by the ocean. For each man in his airplane and birds on the wing, this visibility takes quite a lot of the chance out of fishing. A major distinction, nonetheless, is what every makes use of the fish for. Ospreys depend on menhaden to gasoline their species’ survival. Omega grinds them up for pet meals, cosmetics, dietary supplements, and feed for livestock and farmed salmon. Which implies Atlantic menhaden are actually on our menu, too.
Joanie Millward is an ideal instance of how Ospreys convert even informal chook observers into passionate advocates. When she was contemplating shopping for a one-story dwelling in Colonial Seaside, 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 he or she 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 competition to have fun their return from Central and South America every spring.
“It was such a hopeful story,” Millward instructed me as we tooled round Colonial Seaside in a golf cart, checking in on lots of the 50-plus nests inside the 2.5 sq. miles that make up the neighborhood. The native Ospreys nest principally atop platforms, however some construct in timber and on buoys, and a minimum of one has constructed its residence on prime of a ship. Ospreys have offered constant leisure for the members of this neighborhood 35 miles upriver from the Chesapeake, going about their enterprise of fishing, nesting, and elevating their younger proper out within the open. “It was once we had so many fledglings that the sky was stuffed with Ospreys,” Millward mentioned.
“It was once we had so many fledglings that the sky was stuffed with Ospreys.”
A unique story has unfolded over the previous two years. To every nest we cease at, she will 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 in accordance with the quantity of meals that’s accessible, usually laying three or 4 when fish are plentiful. The birds in Colonial Seaside that reproduced laid just one or two eggs—and even then the chicks starved. The saddest story Millward instructed concerned her “dwelling 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 how one can fly, and we took that a lot as a right,” she mentioned once we accomplished our lap of the neighborhood. “And it was so quiet final summer season.” This isn’t a subjective impression. Two years earlier, Colonial Seaside had 55 profitable fledglings from 35 nests. That summer season 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 Seaside, the place each empty nests and the Potomac are inescapable sights, the Osprey-menhaden connection is difficult to overlook. After saying goodbye to Millward, I made a decision to go 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 few dozen migrating Ospreys, with one other half-dozen perched on the branches of lifeless cedars. Ben Wurst, a senior wildlife biologist for the Preserve Wildlife Basis of New Jersey, had provided to present 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 lifeless grass, sticks, and plastic. Whereas charismatic and exquisite, Ospreys should not neatniks, and their nests have been recognized to include, together with the same old sticks and branches, Easter tinsel, boat line, plastic procuring baggage, and, in a couple of 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 quick space, all traditionally profitable. The 12 months earlier than, that they had produced 55 younger. I requested what number of had been profitable this previous 12 months. “5,” Wurst mentioned. I requested about menhaden.
“Everybody is aware of one thing is happening,” he mentioned. “The very 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 by their nets. The grownup menhaden have been a dependable meals supply for hundreds of years, however now they’re scarce.”
Sedge Island makes clear that the issue just isn’t confined to the Chesapeake. Different knowledge factors are rising, too. Alan Poole, who wrote the guide on the birds with the traditional Ospreys: A Pure and Unnatural Historical past, 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 examine to probe fish supply there, too.
Wurst confirmed me a telephone app, made by FlightAware, that permits him to trace the trackers which are spotter planes; he might see that plane from Virginia had been making frequent journeys to the realm, flying nearly weekly to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and even Lengthy Island, New York. Although discount fishing is against the law 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 faculties 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 with regards to 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 Seaside have warmed in latest summers, and Watts and others suspect that forage fish are shifting north searching for 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.
It isn’t simply Ospreys that can disappear together with the fish.
One of the crucial persuasive arguments Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters make in protection of the discount fishery is that jobs shall be misplaced whether it is pressured to shut or shrink. The trade at the moment employs 270 individuals. 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 larger up the meals chain like striped bass and bluefin tuna. Wurst was sympathetic to considerations for the discount fishery’s workforce however identified the apparent: “For those who’re not sustainable, you’re all going to be out of jobs.”
This can be a sentiment usually neglected within the present debate: It isn’t simply Ospreys that can disappear together with the fish. After I spoke with Don Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Institute, he burdened this connection as properly. “The Ospreys are telling us that one thing is altering,” he mentioned. “They’re telling Omega, too. And whereas they should control short-term income, I’d love to listen to a considerate individual from the within describe what the long run seems like. How do they think about the fishery in 10 years? Twenty?”
After I received dwelling 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 discuss, 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 fact, that is one other unknown. Though the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Fee (ASMFC), which regulates the interstate fishery, doesn’t take into account Atlantic menhaden overfished, final 12 months its technical committee concluded it had overestimated the coastwide inhabitants by as a lot as 37 %. 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 sturdy examine of menhaden within the coastal waters the place Ospreys are fishing. The issue is: Ospreys are ravenous, and so they 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 carry like a form of bodily embodiment of hope.
Till then, hope had been robust to search out. ASMFC’s 2025 evaluation prompt {that a} greater than 50 % 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 a substitute, the fee minimize the general take by 20 %, bringing it consistent with the quantity of fish that Ocean Harvesters has really landed in recent times.
Ben Landry, a spokesperson for Ocean Fleet Companies, the dad or mum firm of Ocean Harvesters, is amongst these calling for extra science. Blaming Osprey hunger on the menhaden fishery is, he says, “an oversimplified clarification for a fancy ecological challenge”—one which requires analyzing water circumstances, abundance of different prey fish, competitors from predators, predation, habitat change, and different components.
However as of this writing, efforts to safe funding for a set 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 trade fought in opposition to it.
“Virginia can’t afford to maintain kicking this down the street,” Will Poston, forage marketing campaign supervisor of the Chesapeake Bay Basis, instructed me. “The most secure method stays to pause industrial menhaden fishing contained in the Chesapeake Bay till the science is finalized and exhibits what stage of menhaden extraction is sustainable.”
In the meantime, the Science Heart for Marine Fisheries, a cooperative analysis heart that’s funded partly by trade dues and “operates underneath trade 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 provide some safeguards now, together with by reducing the quota for menhaden caught within the Bay. This cover, primarily based on the typical historic catch, was launched 20 years in the past as a stopgap measure to stop overfishing. The proposal additionally thought-about setting seasonal catch limits to cut back stress on the fish inhabitants all year long. However when it was time to vote, commissioners selected to punt.
Perhaps the most effective place to search out hope is within the unique Osprey story. In banning DDT, individuals selected to position the lives of Ospreys over the desire of an trade.
The information felt deflating. “The place there isn’t any hope, there may be no endeavor,” wrote Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century man of letters. But when hope is a vital gasoline for motion, there are nonetheless locations to search for it.
A latest ballot revealed that Virginia’s voters are firmly behind the fish: 92 % imagine that fewer menhaden must be taken from the Bay. In January Congress handed a invoice that can put $2.5 million towards learning menhaden, whereas public stress continues to construct for decreasing 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 occasions. Whereas the phrase conservative has gone by a wierd evolution in recent times, it’s price remembering that many historic features 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 latest video on Fact Social confirmed fishermen, a couple of carrying a MAGA hat, urging an industrial fishing ban.
Perhaps the most effective place to search out hope is within the unique Osprey story. In banning DDT, individuals selected to position the lives of Ospreys over the desire of an trade, and the species surged again. Sure, we are actually in darker occasions, however by wanting towards Ospreys, we will see some gentle.
Paul Spitzer, an elder statesman of Osprey science, provided extra illumination. We have already got a promising template, he identified, for the 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 as we speak.
It was Spitzer’s analysis that helped reveal the hyperlink between Ospreys and DDT. He additionally uncovered a potential hyperlink between crashing Chesapeake menhaden and Widespread Loon populations 30 years in the past. Spitzer’s specialty is the large image, and he urged me to think about menhaden not simply regionally and even regionally, however globally.
“The oceans are a commons,” he instructed 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 season 2026 challenge as “Starvation Pangs.” To obtain our print journal, turn into a member by making a donation today.
