The New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) is pushing back on efforts to link commercial menhaden harvest to historically poor osprey reproduction in portions of the Chesapeake Bay, arguing that the research has documented food stress but has not established fishing as the cause.
In a Sept. 17 op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, NEFSA director of advocacy Jason Joyce, a commercial fisherman from Maine, questioned the conclusions drawn from recent Chesapeake Bay osprey research.
“It presents a simple story: commercial fishermen catch menhaden, osprey lose their food, and chicks starve,” Joyce wrote of recent coverage of the issue. “It is compelling. It just is not what the science proves.”
His comments follow the release of new monitoring from the Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary, which found historically low osprey reproduction in higher-salinity portions of the Chesapeake Bay.
Researchers monitored 937 osprey pairs across 23 study areas from March through August. In saltier portions of the Bay, average productivity fell to 0.25 young per pair, well below the roughly one young per pair researchers say is needed to maintain a stable population.
Food stress was identified as a major factor in the nesting failures, continuing concerns raised by earlier research examining the availability of Atlantic menhaden, an important prey species for Chesapeake Bay ospreys.
Joyce, however, argued that the research does not answer a separate question: why fewer menhaden may be available to ospreys in those areas.
He pointed to the lack of an independent survey measuring adult menhaden abundance in the Chesapeake Bay and said researchers do not have the data needed to determine the relationship between commercial harvest and local menhaden availability.
Joyce also highlighted the sharp difference between osprey reproduction in high- and low-salinity areas. Ospreys in lower-salinity waters relied more heavily on prey including catfish and gizzard shad and produced more than 1.3 young per pair, according to the op-ed.
“Menhaden matter, but osprey reproduction depends on a broader food web than the article suggests,” Joyce wrote.
NEFSA’s response follows similar arguments from Ocean Harvesters, which operates the purse seine fleet supplying menhaden to Omega Protein’s Reedville, Va., processing operation. The company responded to the 2026 findings Sept. 15, saying it did not dispute the reproductive problems documented by researchers but argued the findings did not establish commercial fishing as their cause.
Joyce also questioned the role changing environmental conditions could be playing. He noted that the study classified sites using average surface salinity from 1985 through 2018 rather than salinity measured during each nesting season and pointed to freshwater discharge, temperature, water quality, plankton, predation and competition as other potential influences on the Bay’s food web.
He further argued that menhaden’s highly migratory nature complicates conclusions based on their availability in one area. Fishermen in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts have reported large concentrations of menhaden, Joyce said, which he argued could be consistent with a shift in distribution rather than coastwide depletion.
The debate comes as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission considers changes to the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap. Options under consideration include reducing the current 51,000-metric-ton cap by as much as 50 percent and distributing harvest more evenly throughout the fishing season.
Conservation and recreational fishing groups have pointed to the osprey research in calls to leave more menhaden in the Bay, while commercial fishing interests have increasingly argued that the research does not establish harvest as the reason for reduced prey availability.
For Joyce, that distinction should be resolved before new restrictions are placed on fishermen.
“That is a critical gap before fishermen are blamed, and their livelihoods are restricted,” he wrote.
