osprey Archives - Saving Seafood

NEFSA questions link between menhaden harvest and osprey declines

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.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

NEFSA’S JASON JOYCE: Before blaming fishermen, Chesapeake Bay needs better menhaden data

September 17, 2026 — The following is an excerpt from an op-ed published today in the Richmond Times Dispatch by Jason Joyce, director of advocacy for the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association:

As a commercial fisherman from Maine, I was troubled by the Washington Post’s article about menhaden and starving osprey chicks in the Chesapeake Bay. It presents a simple story: commercial fishermen catch menhaden, osprey lose their food, and chicks starve. It is compelling. It just is not what the science proves.

The Chesapeake Bay osprey study found that osprey nesting in high-salinity areas are struggling, while birds in low-salinity areas are successfully raising young. But the researchers did not show that commercial fishing depleted adult menhaden at the study sites. The authors acknowledge that there is no independent survey measuring adult menhaden abundance in the Chesapeake Bay, and that they lack the data needed to determine the relationship between harvest and menhaden availability. That is a critical gap before fishermen are blamed, and their livelihoods are restricted.

Ospreys are opportunistic predators. They do not only eat menhaden. The study reports that osprey in low-salinity areas relied primarily on catfish and gizzard shad. Those birds produced more than 1.3 young per pair, while high-salinity sites produced only 0.08 to 0.90 young per pair. In plain English, the osprey successfully raising chicks lived where menhaden were not their primary food. Menhaden matter, but osprey reproduction depends on a broader food web than the article suggests.

Salinity may be the largest unanswered question. The study found a strong association between salinity and reproductive success, but classified sites using the average surface salinity from 1985 through 2018, rather than conditions measured during each nesting season. A 33-year average cannot tell us what changed between successful years in the 1980s and 2024. Was there less rainfall or freshwater discharge, more drought, warmer water, lower dissolved oxygen, poorer water quality, different plankton conditions or fewer alternative prey fish?

The researchers identify plankton, freshwater discharge, predation, competition, temperature, salinity and water quality as possible influences on menhaden and the Bay’s food web. Those variables cannot be acknowledged and then ignored when policy is proposed.

Menhaden are highly migratory. Their abundance in one place cannot establish the condition of the coastwide population. Fishermen throughout Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts report extraordinary concentrations, with many describing abundances not seen in decades. That does not prove why fewer menhaden may be available to Chesapeake osprey, but it is consistent with redistribution rather than coastwide depletion.

Read the full opinion piece at the Richmond-Times Dispatch

VIRGINIA: Scientist’s Menhaden Lecture Separates What Is Known From What Remains to Be Studied

MATHEWS, Va. (Saving Seafood) — September 16, 2026 — Atlantic menhaden may be one of the most debated fish in the Chesapeake Bay, but a Virginia fisheries scientist told a Mathews County, Virginia audience last month that some of the strongest claims surrounding the species supersede what scientists can actually demonstrate.

Dr. Robert J. Latour, a professor at William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, presented “Atlantic Menhaden — One Fish, Many Opinions” on August 12 at Williams Wharf Landing as part of the Mathews Land Conservancy lecture series.

Over the course of an hour, Dr. Latour walked the audience through the biology of menhaden, the history of a fishery that once stretched along much of the Atlantic Coast, modern stock assessments and the increasingly complicated effort to manage a forage fish that is both commercially valuable and an important part of the marine food web.

The picture he presented was considerably more nuanced than claims advanced by activist groups that portray the commercial fishery as removing too many menhaden from the water and as being the culprit in most if not all of the Chesapeake’s woes.

At the coastwide level, Dr. Latour said, the scientific assessment does not indicate that menhaden are being overfished. Biomass has increased over the assessment period, while recruitment — the addition of young fish to the population — continues to fluctuate from year to year but demonstrates continued reproduction and survival. This is important because menhaden have increasingly become the focus of arguments that commercial harvest is depriving striped bass, ospreys and other predators of food.

Dr. Latour explained that while Atlantic menhaden are still considered a single genetic stock from Maine to Florida, the way that stock is managed has evolved. Rather than relying solely on traditional single-species management, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission now uses ecological reference points designed to account for menhaden’s role as forage and the needs of predator species when setting harvest levels.

A much smaller fishery than it once was

Dr. Latour also put today’s commercial fishery into historical perspective.

At its height, the Atlantic menhaden reduction industry included roughly 145 vessels and about 25 factories. Today, the reduction fleet has contracted to roughly 7 to 10 vessels and a single remaining processing plant.

Dr. Latour cautioned against interpreting that contractionas evidence that fishing exhausted the resource. Economics, changing waterfront development and restrictions on where reduction fishing could occur also significantly contributed to the industry’s disappearance from much of the coast.

Likewise, the current coastwide harvest is only a fraction of its historical peak. Dr. Latour showed the audience that today’s catch is roughly 28 percent of peak historical levels, with removals declining substantially over time and more recently stabilizing under modern harvest controls.

That historical context complicates one of the images frequently used by activist groups in the menhaden debate: enormous nets and large quantities of fish being taken from the water. The biological question is not whether a catch looks large, but whether the population can sustain its level of fishing mortality.

According to the stock assessment Dr. Latour presented, coastwide fishing mortality is not currently producing overfishing.

The Chesapeake question is harder

Dr. Latour was particularly careful in distinguishing what scientists know about the Atlantic-wide population from what they are working to learn about menhaden specifically inside the Chesapeake Bay.

That difference lies at the center of today’s issue.

Critics of the reduction fishery have increasingly argued that even if the coastwide population is healthy, commercial fishing could be causing “localized depletion” inside the Bay, leaving too few fish in particular places for predators or other fishermen.

Answering that question requires better Chesapeake-specific information about adult menhaden abundance, where the fish are, how long they remain in the Bay and how they move between Chesapeake and coastal waters.

Now, significant resources are being committed to developing that science.

Dr. Latour described an emerging research effort supported by state and private funding. The work is intended to build the scientific foundation needed to better understand menhaden abundance, movement, predator consumption, fishing patterns and possible localized depletion in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Science Center for Marine Fisheries, part of the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program, is funding a research roadmap to help scientists determine the most scientifically defensible and effective way to proceed with that work. The project brings together researchers from William & Mary’s VIMS & Batten School, including Dr. Latour, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and NOAA to evaluate potential research methods, timelines and costs.

The research design and execution is developed and directed solely by the team of scientists.

New research aims at the questions behind the menhaden issue

A major portion of the lecture focused not on what scientists already know, but on an ambitious research effort designed to fill some of the gaps that have fueled years of debate.

Researchers plan to investigate seasonal abundance of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay, movement between the Bay and coastal waters, predator consumption, commercial fishing patterns and the possibility of localized depletion. Those are essentially the questions that would have to be answered to place future Bay-specific management decisions on firmer scientific footing.

Tagging could become an important part of that work.

Scientists are examining methods for tagging menhaden and detecting those fish when they later encounter the commercial fishery. If researchers can reliably recover information from tagged fish, the resulting data could help estimate movement, exploitation and eventually abundance — measurements that cannot be obtained by looking at coastwide stock numbers.

The broader research planning effort is evaluating several possible tools for producing those Bay-specific data, with tagging among the most promising approaches. Other potential approaches being evaluated include acoustic and LiDAR surveys, environmental DNA and stable-isotope analysis.

And contrary to claims made by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that the commercial industry has stood in the way of menhaden research, Dr. Latour described the companies involved in the fishery as participants in the work.

He said he has been communicating with Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein about ramping up the project, including the possibility of putting detection equipment aboard commercial fishing vessels and at the Reedville processing plant.

The cooperation is not incidental. Researchers themselves do not have the infrastructure to capture menhaden on anything approaching the scale of the commercial fleet, making access to commercial operations essential to an effective tagging program.

Cooperation with industry could allow scientists to test detection equipment under actual fishing conditions and ultimately determine whether information on tagged menhaden can be recovered reliably enough to answer larger population questions.

The research is particularly significant because the questions it seeks to answer are already being used in arguments for additional restrictions on the fishery.

Instead of allowing the debate to rest on competing assumptions about localized depletion, Virginia, scientists and the industry are putting resources into developing the data needed to determine whether it occurs, where it occurs and whether fishing contributes to it.

A fish with extraordinary reproductive capacity

Dr. Latour’s presentation also offered biological context that can get lost in debates centered on the sheer volume of commercial landings.

Menhaden are highly productive fish. In discussing reproduction, Dr. Latour showed that individual females can produce eggs numbering in the millions and used a roughly three-year-old fish to illustrate the species’ substantial reproductive capacity.

That does not mean harvest is irrelevant. It helps explain why fisheries scientists rely on population models, fishing mortality, biomass, recruitment and biological reference points rather than looking at the number of pounds landed in a given year.

Those assessments are intended to answer the fundamental management question: whether the fishery is removing menhaden faster than the population can sustain.

Dr. Latour’s presentation showed that the current coastwide answer is no.

Managing menhaden for predators, too

Another recurring criticism of commercial menhaden fishing is that traditional fishery management fails to account adequately for the fish’s ecological importance.

But Dr. Latour explained that Atlantic menhaden management has moved beyond a purely single-species approach.

Ecological reference points are designed to account for predator-prey relationships when managers determine acceptable levels of menhaden fishing mortality. Striped bass plays a particularly important role in that modeling.

That means the management system does not treat every menhaden left uncaught merely as unused commercial yield. A portion of the population is explicitly being considered in the context of its ecological function.

The difference is important because arguments over menhaden are sometimes framed as a choice between commercial harvest and ecosystem needs, even as the commercial fishery harvests a low percentage of the overall menhaden biomass. The scientific management framework Dr. Latour described attempts to account for both.

The larger message of Dr. Latour’s presentation was that uncertainty should not be confused with evidence for one side or the other.

Ocean Harvesters Statement on Center for Conservation Biology 2026 Osprey Findings

September 15, 2026 — The following was released by Ocean Harvesters:

The Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary has released the results of its 2026 Chesapeake Bay osprey breeding performance monitoring, reporting historically low reproductive rates in higher salinity portions of the Bay and attributing widespread nesting failures to food stress.

As these findings receive attention, it is important to distinguish between evidence of food stress and evidence of what caused food stress.

The Center itself states that “the underlying causes of reduced availability of menhaden to osprey are not clear.” It identifies climate change, commercial harvest, changes in menhaden distribution and delayed entry into Bay waters as possible contributing factors.

Dr. Bryan Watts has made the same distinction even more directly, writing earlier this year: “Our paper [does not] attempt to link poor osprey reproduction to menhaden harvest.”

Both CCB and the U.S. Geological Survey have also identified numerous other factors that can affect osprey reproductive performance, including storms and other adverse weather, heat stress, predation, human disturbance, contaminants, disease, parental condition, brood size, competition for prey and access to prey.

Timing also deserves consideration. Chesapeake osprey return to breeding territories in late February and March and begin laying eggs in early April, while Virginia’s commercial purse seine season does not open until the first Monday in May and did not begin fishing in 2026 until early June.

There is also a broader geographic context. U.S. Geological Survey scientists have noted recent leveling or declining osprey population trends in other parts of the country, including Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Jersey and Delaware, as well as on the Pacific Coast in California and Washington. The presence of similar trends in areas far removed from the Chesapeake Bay—and, in the case of the Pacific Coast, where there is no Atlantic menhaden fishery—underscores the need for caution before attributing the Chesapeake observations to a single fishery.

We are not disputing the reproductive conditions reported by the Center. The point is simply that neither CCB nor USGS has established that commercial menhaden fishing caused them.

At the same time, a number of conservation and recreational fishing advocacy organizations have mounted a concerted campaign to portray these osprey findings as evidence against the commercial menhaden fishery, even though that is not what the Center itself has concluded. Some conservation organizations have also used alarmist characterizations of osprey conditions in advocacy and fundraising messages, including appeals for donations that link osprey concerns to industrial menhaden fishing.

Those organizations are entitled to advocate for their preferred policies and to raise funds for their work. But their advocacy and fundraising appeals should not be confused with or reported as scientific findings.

We urge journalists, policymakers and the public to look closely at the actual words of the Center for Conservation Biology, Dr. Watts and the U.S. Geological Survey, and to distinguish those scientific statements from claims and fundraising appeals by special interest organizations that go beyond what the research has established.

To learn more about the people and jobs supported by Virginia’s commercial menhaden fishery, visit the YouTube page of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400.

About Ocean Harvesters
Ocean Harvesters owns and operates a fleet of more than 30 fishing vessels in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of America. The company’s purse-seine fishing operation is exclusively engaged in the harvest of menhaden, a small, nutrient-dense fish used to produce fish meal, fish oil, and fish solubles. Both its Atlantic and Gulf Menhaden fisheries are certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Committed to responsible fishing operations, Ocean Harvesters is proud to be heir to a fishing legacy that extends nearly 150 years.

Debate over menhaden fishery continues as it gains national media attention

August 20, 2026 — An ongoing debate over the future of the U.S. Atlantic menhaden fishery has gained national media attention, with the industry pushing back against NGOs and activists.

The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece by Mark Robichaux – a former Wall Street Journal reporter – that reviewed recent back-and-forth over the nation’s menhaden fishery and its claimed impacts on the wider environment, which includes accusations it is responsible for a decline in osprey populations and that it is diminishing an important forage species, resulting in declines in predators like striped bass.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Public will get to weigh in on proposed changes to Chesapeake Bay menhaden harvest

August 7, 2026 — Officials who regulate the Atlantic menhaden industry have debated in recent years how to balance the historic fishery in the Chesapeake Bay with growing concerns about the ecosystem.

On Wednesday, they took their latest step. The Menhaden Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission advanced a document for public comment with potential changes to harvesting menhaden in the bay.

The commission helps manage fisheries along the East Coast, including 15 states from Florida to Maine.

The proposal outlines options for cutting the amount of menhaden the industry can catch by up to 50% and spreading the harvest more evenly throughout the season.

Ocean Harvesters, the company that harvests menhaden in the bay, said in a statement that the proposal is “a solution in search of a problem.”

“The addendum assembles observations, uncertainties and hypotheticals but never demonstrates that Chesapeake Bay menhaden availability has declined because of the reduction fishery or that the proposed measures would produce any biological benefit,” the company stated.

Ocean Harvesters, which operates a fishing fleet to supply Omega Protein, harvests up to 51,000 metric tons of menhaden in the bay each year using large walls of netting called purse seines. Omega processes, or “reduces,” them into fishmeal and fish oil at a plant in Reedville.

Environmentalists and sportfishers believe purse seines are removing too many menhaden, affecting species that rely on them, such as striped bass and osprey. They want the reduction industry to be banned from the bay or more heavily restricted.

The public comment period will run through September and October, with the board meeting again in November to consider final approval, according to the commission’s website.

Read the full article at WHRO

Ocean Harvesters disputes osprey-menhaden link

June 18, 2026 — A scientific paper documenting widespread reproductive deficits among Chesapeake Bay osprey is drawing attention from the commercial fishing industry, with Ocean Harvesters arguing that the study does not establish a causal link between the declines and Virginia’s commercial menhaden fishery.

The paper, Widespread Reproductive Deficits in Chesapeake Bay Ospreys, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, suggests that reduced availability of Atlantic menhaden may be a primary factor contributing to poor osprey nesting success in high-salinity regions of the Chesapeake Bay.

In a June 11 email statement provided by Ocean Harvesters, they claimed the study raised important question about osprey productivity but “does not prove that Virginia’s commercial menhaden fishery caused the problem.”

According to Ocean Harvesters, the paper relies on a series of inferences connecting poor osprey reproduction to food stress, reduced menhaden availability and ultimately commercial fishing activity, but stops short of demonstrating direct causation.

Peter Himchak, senior fisheries scientist at Omega Protein, also cautioned against interpreting the paper as definitive evidence linking the reduction fishery to osprey declines.

“This paper is likely to draw attention because it reads, at least up front, like an indictment of menhaden availability in the Chesapeake Bay,” Himchak said. “But the paper also details numerous other possible mechanisms that may affect osprey productivity, and those caveats are critical considerations in evaluating this issue.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Menhaden Blame Game Isn’t Backed by CCB Findings

October 8, 2025 — The following was released by Ocean Harvesters:

As Virginians, we share the public concern about the poor 2025 osprey breeding results reported by the Center for Conservation Biology (CCB). But the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) attempt to pin those outcomes on the menhaden fishery misstates the timeline, overextends the CCB advisory’s inferences, and ignores other environmental factors that CCB itself noted.

What CCB actually reported

CCB’s news advisory organizes 2025 results by salinity (used as a proxy for local fish communities) and finds that higher-salinity sites had low productivity while low-salinity sites exceeded population-maintenance thresholds. CCB explicitly states “salinity is a proxy for the fish community” and that ospreys in high-salinity areas are believed to rely more on menhaden. CCB also documents many pairs that did not lay clutches in 2025, arriving on time in late February-early March, then abandoning territories in significant numbers, with many returning in June (a first for the Bay population). Finally, CCB notes that food stress showed up as single-chick broods (67% of broods in waters with salinity levels above 5 parts per thousand) and widespread post-hatch losses.

A presentation given by US Geological Survey scientists to the Menhaden Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in August 2024 shows that past research, including research by CCB Director Dr. Bryan Watts, identified other species as being the primary prey of osprey in the higher salinity areas of the Bay. To make the leap that menhaden is the singular problem is not supported by the data.

By Virginia law, purse-seine fishing for menhaden is closed until the Sunday before the first Monday in May (i.e., there is no fishing until early May).
According to Ocean Harvesters’ fleet logs provided to state regulators, menhaden fishing did not begin in the Bay until the week of May 26 in 2025, reflecting late arrival/availability of menhaden that is controlled by nature.
CCB states in a photo caption that: “Most young that starve in the nest die within the first two weeks after hatching.” If chicks hatch in April/early May, those deaths occur before fishing started.
CCB records pairs arriving late February-early March; many never laid eggs at all, events that obviously precede any fishing and indicate that birds may not return to the area in good health.

Taken together, CCB’s description of timing, plus the dates of the legal fishing season, make clear that early nest failures and the chick mortalities in the first two weeks after hatching occurred before the menhaden fishery began harvesting.

Where CBF goes beyond the CCB advisory

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s press statement asserts that CCB’s results “indicate insufficient local food availability in areas where the osprey diet relies on forage fish like menhaden.” CBF points to a decline in bait landings and juxtaposes those figures with the industrial reduction fishery’s annual catch to imply cause and effect.

That is CBF’s biased interpretation, not CCB’s conclusion. CCB does not directly blame the menhaden fishery; it infers food limitation from breeding metrics and salinity as a prey proxy.

CCB itself reports weather-related nest losses (high winds, extended rains) and notes that even low-salinity areas performed worse than recent years, evidence that multiple environmental drivers were at work in 2025.
Ospreys are generalist fish-eaters that take a range of species of suitable size; when menhaden aren’t present inshore, ospreys use other prey (e.g., gizzard shad, catfish). CCB’s map/photo captions and standard references reflect this dietary flexibility.
Fleet operations and observations indicate menhaden have arrived late in recent years, a function of environmental conditions, not fishing. The fishery has no mechanism to delay migration or in-Bay availability.
While menhaden bait landings may be lower in the Bay than in the past, CBF fails to consider the level of effort. There are documented instances of pound netters who have stopped fishing over the past few years through a combination of factors including higher costs for equipment and the inability to find dependable (and affordable) labor.
Bait landings reflect harvest effort and market conditions and are not a direct measure of local fish abundance or near-shore availability to osprey.

CCB’s 2025 advisory shows food stress signals in higher-salinity waters, but the timing and the text do not support CBF’s misleading narrative that the regulated menhaden fishery caused this year’s early nest failures and first-weeks chick mortalities. Those events occurred before the season opened and menhaden boats were still at the dock. Environmental factors, weather-driven nest losses (high winds/extended rains) and widespread post-hatch starvation, are plainly implicated in CCB’s account and must be part of any honest discussion, despite the self-interested view of a special interest group like the CBF.

About Ocean Harvesters
Ocean Harvesters owns and operates a fleet of more than 30 fishing vessels in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The company’s purse-seine fishing operation is exclusively engaged in the harvest of menhaden, a small, nutrient-dense fish used to produce fish meal, fish oil, and fish solubles. Both its Atlantic and Gulf Menhaden fisheries are certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Committed to responsible fishing operations, Ocean Harvesters is proud to be heir to a fishing legacy that extends nearly 150 years.

VIRGINIA: Ocean Harvesters fight to keep fishing

September 29, 2025 — Virginia holds the distinction of being the largest East Coast state for seafood catch volume and the third-largest producer of marine products in the nation, surpassed only by Alaska and Louisiana.

This is largely tied to Reedville, Va. having historically been the fifth largest “volume of catch” commercial fishing port in the United States, and home to Omega Protein, Inc. and its fishing partner Ocean Harvesters.

The recent news that Ocean Harvesters is adding a $9 million menhaden vessel, the 165-foot F/V Tangier Sound, to its fishing fleet is sending a message that Ocean Harvesters, Omega Protein Inc. and Canadian parent company Cooke Inc. plan on fishing in the bay region well into the future.

The company has been dodging a barrage of opposition up and down the East Coast, ranging from Maryland 5th graders writing letters to the firm to “stop killing ospreys,” to opponents throwing blocks into nets. Tactics have included a jet skier interrupting net sets, protest boats attempting to block the fishermen, and environmental groups alleging that overfishing of menhaden is depleting osprey and striped bass populations.

A lawsuit in federal court for the Southern District of New York alleging that Cooke Inc. had been illegally fishing in U.S. waters because the boats are owned by a Canadian firm was dismissed in January 2025, allowing Ocean Harvesters to continue to fish.

The jet ski incident occurred in September 2023 and brought national attention to the debate, prompting Virginia legislators to pass a “right to fish” law to protect menhaden crews and commercial fishing watermen from harassment.

During a Sept. 15 tour of Omega Protein’s fish meal and oil plants and the new vessel, including a 45-minute ride on Tangier Sound and a three-hour classroom style seminar, Ocean Harvesters defended why reduction menhaden fishing should continue on Chesapeake Bay.

Ocean Harvesters’ CEO Monty Diehl addressed each issue with detailed graphic presentations aimed at countering growing opposition from environmental groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, as well as a swelling waterfront population whose changing demographics have no ties to the bay’s seafood or maritime culture.

Virginia has a small purse net bait recreational fishery that catches menhaden as well as the larger “reduction” fishery, so named because of how its catch is processed for omega fish oils, meal and related products. It is the only large menhaden reduction fishery remaining on the East Coast. The reduction fishery was founded in 1867 by Elijah Reed who brought the modern day pogy (menhaden) fishery to Virginia from Brooklin, Maine. Reedville is named after Elijah Reed and a monument in the town square memorializes that history.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Ocean Harvesters Responds to Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s August 7 Press Release

August 8, 2025 — The following was released by Ocean Harvesters:

A press release issued yesterday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) continues a multi-year pattern of gross dishonesty, as it presented an incomplete and misleading narrative regarding menhaden management in the Chesapeake Bay. CBF’s misleading release includes a statement from Virginia Executive Director Chris Moore that ignores and disparages the established science, and the regulatory framework that ensures the fishery remains sustainable and responsibly managed.

In response, Ocean Harvesters has issued the following:

The CBF release refers to “growing warning signs around the Chesapeake Bay”:

“There are clear signs of peril in the Chesapeake, and menhaden are one of the connecting threads.“

This claim is not supported by any independent, peer-reviewed science, but rather represents the biased opinion of a special interest group. The assertion that “there are clear signs of peril in the Chesapeake, and menhaden are one of the connecting threads” overstates both the available scientific evidence and the known ecological dynamics of the Bay. While ecosystem concerns merit monitoring, attributing broad Chesapeake Bay challenges to already conservative menhaden harvest regulations is not supported by the best available science.

In 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) presented data to the ASMFC on osprey populations which showed osprey reproduction challenges and nest failures occurring on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coast, including many areas with no menhaden fishery at all. In a letter to Congress earlier this year, USGS said it found no direct link between regulated menhaden harvests and declining osprey populations. The federal agency emphasized that multiple, complex factors, including weather, predation and prey access, contribute to ecological trends in the Bay.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey present a slide to the ASMFC showing that the recent leveling-off in Maryland and Virginia osprey populations, after years of explosive growth, is a phenomenon also being seen in states across the nation, on both the East and West Coast.

Ocean Harvesters menhaden fishermen.

The statement includes: “This new timing of intense fishing pressure may be contributing to the problems facing the Chesapeake Bay.”

Any adjustment in the timing of Bay fishing is minor and reflects natural shifts in the seasonal population dynamics of menhaden, not a quantifiable increase in harvest pressure or ecological harm. No scientific evidence has established any link between this timing shift and the broad ecological challenges described in the release.

While the press release references anecdotal concerns from Maryland fishers, it omits mention of well-documented water quality issues in Maryland that may also explain the localized fishery observations cited.

Another claim in the statement reads: “One foreign-owned company consistently prevents progress in Virginia, and now coastwide at the ASMFC.”

This statement is inaccurate. Omega Protein is a Virginia-based processing company, and the menhaden are harvested by Ocean Harvesters, a separate American-owned and operated company whose crews are overwhelmingly local, unionized, and multi-generational, represented by UFCW Local 400, AFL-CIO. This domestic fleet works in full compliance with harvest controls, vessel reporting, and ecosystem-based management thresholds set by the ASMFC. CBF is clearly attempting to mislead the audience with distorted information and is crossing a very serious ethical line of misinformation that merits further scrutiny.

CBF’s repeated implication that the industry has obstructed scientific research misrepresents the actual facts. Ocean Harvesters supported a comprehensive ecosystem study of the menhaden fishery developed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in 2021. However, the proposal that later emerged in the Virginia General Assembly used a lower cost, novel methodology that had not undergone scientific peer review. The industry raised legitimate concerns-not about research itself, but about relying on an untested approach for such a politically charged issue. CBF has repeatedly and inaccurately characterized this as blanket opposition to science. In fact, the industry continues to support the original, science-based study design developed by ASMFC, and no menhaden research could be conducted without longstanding industry cooperation.

The statement concludes: “The Chesapeake’s fisheries and predators can’t wait. Menhaden are key to a thriving Chesapeake Bay, and a healthy, productive Chesapeake is vital to the entire Atlantic coast.”

There is simply no Chesapeake Bay crisis that would threaten fisheries or predators. The menhaden fishery is already one of the most scientifically scrutinized in the United States.

The menhaden fishery is currently:

Not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring, as confirmed by repeated stock assessments.
Certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)
Governed by ecosystem reference points that account for predator-prey relationships
Subject to real-time reporting, seasonal harvest caps, and rigorous monitoring under ASMFC’s management plan

Here is the true threat: CBF’s statements add up to nothing more than scare tactics that threatens the livelihood of hundreds of blue collar, multi-generational employees, many of whom are minority and UFCW Local 400 union workers, in Virginia’s Northern Neck.