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

It is one of the great dramatic sights in nature: to see an Osprey hunt. To watch a long-winged raptor hover like a kingfisher high above the water, eyes on its prey, before committing and plunging downward at more than 40 miles an hour and then, at the last second, throw its wings back and talons forward, striking feet-first. As 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 young man on Cape Cod in the 1970s, I never witnessed this spectacular phenomenon because virtually no birds nested there. The widespread use of the chemical DDT had thinned Osprey eggshells, causing adults to crush their progeny and populations to plummet all along the Atlantic Coast. But when I returned to the Cape in the 1990s, the spring sky was full of Ospreys, and there seemed to be a nest at the end of every jetty. Spurred by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, public outcry had galvanized a movement to ban the insecticide, and the EPA’s decision to do so 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 were missing. 

In the years since, Ospreys have inspired thousands of human beings who intertwine their lives with those of the birds. If Ospreys are in your neighborhood, you know it; their homes are, like them, conspicuous. Dead trees were once ideal Osprey real estate, but these days most of the birds nest atop poles and platforms, architecturally half-human, half-avian. If this is an example of Homo sapiens giving another species a leg up, it is also a sign of penance. After all, it was our chemicals that almost wiped them out. 

The essential story that Osprey people tell is a hopeful one, and when a new narrative about the birds began trickling out of the mid-Atlantic a few years ago, most didn’t believe it at first. It started as a rumor among birders and fishermen and people who observed the nests near their homes: Osprey nests were sitting empty, and the adults that did breed were not producing young—or if they were, the young were starving to death. 

It was hard to get your head around, since in many places Ospreys now seem so much a part of the landscape. This is especially true in the Chesapeake Bay, home to more than 10,000 breeding pairs—close to 20 percent of the global population, by some estimates. But what began as hearsay solidified into something more concrete as people began to talk. Then scientists confirmed it: Ospreys in the Chesapeake are facing a new challenge, one that could prove as dire as that of DDT—and warning bells have begun to ring elsewhere. 

Having written two books about the birds’ resurgence, I was not eager to see their hopeful story revised, but I set out from my home in North Carolina to investigate. I wanted to know: Will Ospreys again prove resilient? And how can we give them that chance?

No place better epitomizes the Osprey’s capacity for comeback than the Chesapeake Bay—the largest estuary in the United States and the third-largest on Earth. Fed by more than 150 rivers and streams, the Bay extends 200 miles from its mouth in Virginia up through Maryland, forming a vibrant ecosystem that set the stage for the bird’s rebound from DDT. Bryan Watts has been studying the Bay’s Ospreys for more than 30 years, and the Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) that he directs at William & Mary in Virginia has kept careful records for even longer—back to the low point of 1,450 breeding pairs in the early 1970s. So in my quest to understand what is happening with Ospreys, Watts was my first stop.    

We met at his office, where, in a voice flavored by a southern lilt, Watts described the findings that sounded the recent alarm. He and his colleagues monitor Ospreys throughout each breeding season, traveling from nest to nest by boat. In 2023 in an area of the Chesapeake called Mobjack Bay, the 81 pairs they surveyed produced just three live chicks—less than one-tenth the rate needed to sustain the population. The next year they broadened the survey to 571 nests in the greater Chesapeake, and in 2025 they expanded it again, that time surveying 1,025 nests. They found that Ospreys throughout the main stem of the Bay were producing less than half of the young required for the population to survive—a reproductive rate even lower than during the height of DDT. 

“Osprey chicks are starving in their nests,” Watts told me. “And the reason is simple. Their primary food source is menhaden. And that food source is no longer abundant.” Oily, energy-packed, and nutritious, when it comes to forage fish, menhaden are the perfect Osprey meal. But the number of menhaden that Ospreys bring to their chicks, CCB data show, has dropped by 80 percent over the past 40 years. 

Both Ospreys and menhaden play distinct ecological roles. Ospreys are an indicator species, reflecting the health of an ecosystem in their rise and fall. Menhaden are a keystone species, the base on which other creatures in the system rely. Swimming open-mouthed, they filter out phytoplankton and algae, preventing harmful blooms while accumulating omega-3 fatty acids that will then nourish a veritable web of life: striped bass and bluefish, dolphins and sharks, and every fish-eating bird that shares their habitat, including loons, eagles, gannets, puffins, herons, and, of course, Ospreys. According to Watts, what the indicator species is telling us is that the keystone species—and therefore the whole Chesapeake ecosystem—is in trouble.

The only Ospreys that seemed to be doing okay in recent studies were those nesting farther up tributaries, in tidal freshwater areas where the birds had access to a greater diversity of fish; in saline areas, where they are menhaden-dependent, the nests failed. There, Ospreys can’t seem to find enough fish—and, Watts pointed out, they have stiff competition. Each year industrial fishing boats vacuum menhaden out of the Bay. 

Virginia is the last state on the East Coast to permit the operation of a menhaden reduction fishery (so named because it reduces the fish to meal or oil). To harvest the catch, two ships encircle schools of fish with 1,600-foot purse seine nets, and the trapped menhaden are then pumped into a vessel’s hold. This had been a thriving industry up and down the Atlantic Coast for most of the past century, but today only one plant remains: Omega Protein, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Cooke Inc. Virginia-based Ocean Harvesters catches the fish for Omega; in recent years it was permitted to harvest approximately 350 million pounds of menhaden annually, including 110 million pounds from the Chesapeake. This amounts to roughly 70 percent of the catch for the entire Atlantic menhaden population.

Ospreys go after menhaden because they pack twice as many calories as other fish, Watts noted: “Which is the same reason that Omega Protein is after them.” And like Ospreys, the fishery also takes to the air to find them. When I left Watts, I drove a couple of hours north to the Omega Protein plant in Reedville, Virginia. There I stopped by a small grassy airfield where a half-dozen single-engine Cessnas were lined up. 

Menhaden once swam in schools of billions that stretched for 40 miles, just as Passenger Pigeons once formed flocks so massive that they blocked out the sun. Though menhaden are far less numerous today, their schools are still clearly visible from the skies above—great shimmering packs that run near the surface like a green-blue river through the sea. For both man in his plane and birds on the wing, this visibility takes a lot of the risk out of fishing. A significant difference, however, is what each uses the fish for. Ospreys rely on menhaden to fuel their species’ survival. Omega grinds them up for pet food, cosmetics, supplements, and feed for livestock and farmed salmon. Which means Atlantic menhaden are now on our menu, too.

Joanie Millward is a perfect example of how Ospreys convert even casual bird observers into passionate advocates. When she was considering buying a one-story home in Colonial Beach, Virginia, which sits along the Potomac, her husband looked out and saw that there was an Osprey nesting on a pole clearly visible from the back door. “You’re going to like this,” he said, and she did. Watching the birds led to caring about them, and that led to eventually starting the Virginia Osprey Foundation, which surveys the town’s Ospreys and throws an annual festival to celebrate their return from Central and South America each spring.

“It was such a hopeful story,” Millward told me as we tooled around Colonial Beach in a golf cart, checking in on many of the 50-plus nests within the 2.5 square miles that make up the neighborhood. The local Ospreys nest mostly atop platforms, but some build in trees and on buoys, and at least one has constructed its residence on top of a boat. Ospreys have provided consistent entertainment for the members of this community 35 miles upriver from the Chesapeake, going about their business of fishing, nesting, and raising their young right out in the open. “It used to be we had so many fledglings that the sky was full of Ospreys,” Millward said.

A different story has unfolded over the past two years. To each nest we stop at, she can attach a narrative, and the narratives are often dark. The adult birds abandoned one nest and the young died. At another, the adults stayed but the chicks starved. At yet another, lack of food led to siblicide, the firstborn chick killing the second. Ospreys instinctively regulate their clutch sizes according to the amount of food that’s available, often laying three or four when fish are plentiful. The birds in Colonial Beach that reproduced laid only one or two eggs—and even then the chicks starved. The saddest tale Millward told involved her “home nest,” the one that inspired her passion. There the male had a hard time finding fish, and the female abandoned the nest during a rainstorm; within 10 minutes the three young were devoured by crows. 

“We used to have so many Ospreys calling and soaring and learning how to fly, and we took that so much for granted,” she said when we completed our lap of the neighborhood. “And it was so quiet last summer.” This is not a subjective impression. Two years earlier, Colonial Beach had 55 successful fledglings from 35 nests. That summer they had 8 fledglings. 

To Millward, it’s obvious that the falling numbers of Ospreys are tied to falling numbers of menhaden. She points to the fact that local fishermen are having trouble filling their nets. In addition to Virginia’s reduction fishery, in states along the coast, much smaller operations catch menhaden as bait for blue crabs, lobster, and finfish. These bait fishermen, who make up the rest of the commercial harvest in the Atlantic, have seen their annual catches nose-dive. A 2025 report from the Potomac River Fisheries Commission found that menhaden landings for bait fishermen were one-third of the all-time low, set just two years before. 

In Colonial Beach, where both empty nests and the Potomac are inescapable sights, the Osprey-menhaden connection is hard to miss. After saying goodbye to Millward, I decided to head north along the coast to see if the crisis, too, follows the birds up the Atlantic.

The next day I found myself in a 22-foot MayCraft skiff watching American Oystercatchers, Great Egrets, Willets, and about a dozen migrating Ospreys, with another half-dozen perched on the branches of dead cedars. Ben Wurst, a senior wildlife biologist for the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, had offered to give 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 impressive beard blew backward as we sped out to the eastern edge of the island, where we climbed out of the boat and explored a rare Osprey ground nest, a large mound of dead grass, sticks, and plastic. While charismatic and beautiful, Ospreys are not neatniks, and their nests have been known to contain, along with the usual sticks and branches, Easter tinsel, boat line, plastic shopping bags, and, in more than one case, Barbie dolls. Wurst picked pieces of plastic out of the nest, explaining that the birds’ fascination with our by-­products could prove deadly if they get entangled. He also searched in vain for shell fragments, evidence that chicks might have hatched. 

There were 40 nests in the immediate area, all historically successful. The year before, they had produced 55 young. I asked how many had been successful this past year. “Five,” Wurst said. I asked about ­menhaden.

“Everyone knows something is going on,” he said. “The fact is, the fish are not here. And the ones we do see are smaller. Peanut menhaden we call them, young fish. Bait fishermen now have menhaden swim right through their nets. The adult menhaden have been a reliable food source for thousands of years, but now they are scarce.”

Sedge Island makes clear that the problem is not confined to the Chesapeake. Other data points are emerging, too. Alan Poole, who wrote the book on the birds with the classic Ospreys: A Natural and Unnatural History, recently reported two of every three nestlings starved in a formerly robust colony in Massachusetts, along with a decline in menhaden brought to the nests. Volunteers with the Connecticut Audubon Society, meanwhile, reported incidents of starving chicks and nest abandonment in that state, spurring the group to launch a study to probe fish delivery there, too.

Wurst showed me a phone app, made by FlightAware, that allows him to track the trackers that are spotter planes; he could see that aircraft from Virginia were making frequent trips to the area, flying almost weekly to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and even Long Island, New York. Though reduction fishing is illegal in those states’ waters, Ocean Harvesters can fish in federal waters three nautical miles from shore. And while most of its harvest is caught near where the fish are brought to shore in Virginia, the company follows large schools as they shift seasonally along the coast. 

Menhaden range from Florida to Nova Scotia, moving from nurseries in estuaries like Chesapeake Bay into offshore waters to spawn; many adults migrate north in spring and return south in autumn. A variety of environmental conditions influence those movements, and there are still some unknowns when it comes to exactly why Ospreys can’t find the menhaden they need. 

Everyone I spoke with mentioned the impact of climate change. Millward observed that the waters off Colonial Beach have warmed in recent summers, and Watts and others suspect that forage fish are shifting north in search of cooler habitat. Wurst remarked that more frequent and intense nor’easters have kept menhaden from nearshore waters. But climate change, scientists agree, also compounds other stressors, making both fish and birds less resilient to those pressures.

One of the most persuasive arguments Omega Protein and Ocean Harvesters make in defense of the reduction fishery is that jobs will be lost if it is forced to close or shrink. The industry currently employs 270 people. But many more livelihoods would be on the line if the menhaden population collapsed: those of bait fishermen, crabbers, lobstermen, and people who support the recreational fishery for species higher up the food chain like striped bass and bluefin tuna. Wurst was sympathetic to concerns for the reduction fishery’s workforce but pointed out the obvious: “If you’re not sustainable, you’re all going to be out of jobs.” 

This is a sentiment often overlooked in the current debate: It isn’t just Ospreys that will disappear along with the fish. When I spoke with Don Lyons, director of conservation science for Audubon’s Seabird Institute, he stressed this connection as well. “The Ospreys are telling us that something is changing,” he said. “They are telling Omega, too. And while they need to keep an eye on short-term profits, I’d love to hear a thoughtful person from the inside describe what the future looks like. How do they imagine the fishery in 10 years? Twenty?”

When I got home from my trip, I reached out to Monty Deihl, the CEO of Ocean Harvesters, which catches the fish that Omega processes. We had a convivial talk, and he is a knowledgeable man who grew up in Reedville in the midst of the fishery. But despite mounting evidence to the contrary, he insisted that the menhaden population remains healthy both on the Atlantic coast and in the Chesapeake Bay itself.

In truth, this is another unknown. Although the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which regulates the interstate fishery, does not consider Atlantic menhaden overfished, last year its technical committee concluded it had overestimated the coastwide population by as much as 37 percent. Plus, no one actually knows how many menhaden are in the Chesapeake Bay itself. What’s needed, conservationists and other stakeholders agree, is a robust study of menhaden in the coastal waters where Ospreys are fishing. The problem is: Ospreys are starving, and they need action now.

In early March, six months after my trip up the coast, a pair of Ospreys returned to the nest near my house in North Carolina. I heard the birds before I saw them—that high-pitched kew-ing that says Osprey—and felt a lift like a kind of physical embodiment of hope. 

Until then, hope had been tough to find. ASMFC’s 2025 assessment suggested that a more than 50 percent reduction in the Atlantic catch would be required to help ensure that striped bass, which in its models serves as the reference point for menhaden predators, would have enough to eat; Audubon and the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation supported that proposal or an outright halt to reduction fishing in the Bay. Instead, the commission cut the overall take by 20 percent, bringing it in line with the amount of fish that Ocean Harvesters has actually landed in recent years.

Ben Landry, a spokesperson for Ocean Fleet Services, the parent company of Ocean Harvesters, is among those calling for more science. Blaming Osprey starvation on the menhaden fishery is, he says, “an oversimplified explanation for a complex ecological issue”—one that requires examining water conditions, abundance of other prey fish, competition from predators, predation, habitat change, and other factors. 

But as of this writing, efforts to secure funding for a suite of scientific studies proposed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science—with the input of a diverse group of stakeholders, including representatives from Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein—failed in the Virginia legislature, where the industry fought against it. 

“Virginia can’t afford to keep kicking this down the road,” Will Poston, forage campaign manager of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told me. “The safest approach remains to pause industrial menhaden fishing inside the Chesapeake Bay until the science is finalized and shows what level of menhaden extraction is sustainable.”

Meanwhile, the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, a cooperative research center that is funded partly by industry dues and “operates under industry partner oversight,” announced a research plan of its own. Naturally some observers are skeptical of research funded by the fisheries, but in any case the studies could take years to play out. 

This May, ASMFC was expected to advance a proposal that would offer some safeguards now, including by lowering the quota for menhaden caught in the Bay. This cap, based on the average historic catch, was introduced 20 years ago as a stopgap measure to prevent overfishing. The proposal also considered setting seasonal catch limits to reduce pressure on the fish population throughout the year. But when it was time to vote, commissioners chose to punt.

The news felt deflating. “Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor,” wrote Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century man of letters. But if hope is a necessary fuel for action, there are still places to look for it. 

A recent poll revealed that Virginia’s voters are firmly behind the fish: 92 percent believe that fewer menhaden should be taken from the Bay. In January Congress passed a bill that will put $2.5 million toward studying menhaden, while public pressure continues to build for reducing or temporarily pausing reduction fishing. The growing chorus of menhaden advocates provides a rare and hopeful example of reaching across the aisle in these fractious times. While the word conservative has gone through a strange evolution in recent years, it’s worth remembering that many historic gains grew out of bipartisan alliances between environmentalists and outdoorsmen. With the health of striped bass and other sport fish closely tied to that of menhaden, organizations like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the American Sportfishing Association have joined with environmental groups to press for solutions. A recent video on Truth Social showed fishermen, more than one wearing a MAGA hat, urging an industrial fishing ban. 

Maybe the best place to find hope is in the original Osprey story. In banning DDT, people chose to place the lives of Ospreys over the will of an industry, and the species surged back. Yes, we are now in darker times, but by looking toward Ospreys, we can see some light. 

Paul Spitzer, an elder statesman of Osprey science, offered more illumination. We already have a promising template, he pointed out, for how ecosystems respond to leaving vastly more fish in the sea: Because New York banned purse seining for menhaden in 2019, he said, you can see whales, dolphins, and other marine animals off Manhattan today. 

It was Spitzer’s research that helped reveal the link between Ospreys and DDT. He also uncovered a possible link between crashing Chesapeake menhaden and Common Loon populations 30 years ago. Spitzer’s specialty is the big picture, and he urged me to think of menhaden not just locally or even regionally, but globally. 

“The oceans are a commons,” he told me. “We share that commons not just with Ospreys but with striped bass and humpback whales and one hundred other species. The current question is: How does this commons get distributed among human beings and other species?”

The question is an urgent one. The fate of the birds of hope may hinge on how we choose to answer. 

This story originally ran in the Summer 2026 issue as “Hunger Pangs.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.