September 18, 2026 — 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.