As the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission prepares to revisit Atlantic menhaden management later this year, an economic study is adding momentum to shift more of the coastwide quota toward bait fisheries, while recent debate in Virginia continues to highlight disagreements over research and management of the species.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) issued a release on June 24 about a study by Southwick Associates that estimated that recreational fishing trips using Atlantic menhaden as bait generated approximately $1.5 billion in total economic output and supported more than 7,200 jobs nationwide in 2025.
According to the study, anglers spent roughly $804 million on fishing trips involving menhaden bait while using the species during an estimated 13.9 million fishing days along the Atlantic Coast. Of those trips, approximately 2.5 million occurred in New England, with another 6.3 million in the Mid-Atlantic and 5.1 million in the South Atlantic.
"Atlantic fishing trips involving menhaden generate more than $1.5 billion in annual economic output," said Ben Scuderi, lead economist at Southwick Associates. "That figure represents the full spectrum of spending that occurs for fishing trips where menhaden are used as bait, from direct purchases of equipment, food, fuel, and the many other items needed for a day of fishing, to the downstream effects that spending has on retailers, manufacturers, and countless other businesses."
The report arrives ahead of several major Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decisions expected this fall. In November, the commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board is scheduled to establish a new coastwide total allowable catch for the 2027-28 fishing season and may also decide whether to begin formally reconsidering how state menhaden quotas are allocated.
This bird of prey, called a fish hawk by some, is known along shorelines from Japan to Australia, from India and the Strait of Hormuz to much of Europe and North America. “Ospreys and people have been overlapping since there were people,” said Alan Poole, author of two books about Pandion haliaetus.
In 2023, when Joanie began the Virginia Osprey Foundation out of their cottage at Colonial Beach, she observed robust production of 55 osprey chicks from 36 active nests around the community. Baywide, ospreys were continuing their heartening comeback from the dark days of DDT — from a historic 1972 low of about 1,500 nesting pairs to an estimated 10,000-12,000 pairs now throughout the Chesapeake Bay region.
Then, a sudden and mysterious population crash: Only five chicks reached adulthood in 2024, eight in 2025. Young ospreys were seen walking aimlessly, dazed and apparently starving. There were fish crows stealing osprey eggs as females left them in search of food the males could no longer provide. Adults were eating their dead babies. “That is difficult to watch, and the whole town takes it to heart,” Barry said as they prepared for the town’s seventh annual osprey festival this spring.
Baywide, a similar picture was emerging, with poor nesting success throughout 80% of the estuary and its tidal rivers and an estimated 5,500 young ospreys starving to death, according to Bryan Watts, a Virginia scientist known for his decades of Chesapeake osprey research. Ecologically, cannibalism of dead young “makes energetic sense when calories are scarce,” says Watts, who is the director of William & Mary University’s Center for Conservation Biology. But, Joanie said, it breaks your heart to watch.
The reversal of ospreys’ fortunes has been dramatic and well documented. While scientists mostly think there is no single cause, the decline has reinvigorated a dispute over the commercial harvest of menhaden by Omega Protein. a Canadian company with a fishing fleet based in Virginia.
Omega’s fleet of six ships, guided by spotter aircraft, takes about 125,000 metric tons of menhaden annually, fishing from the lower Chesapeake and along the Atlantic Coast. Menhaden are small, oily fish that are packets of superbly calorie-dense energy, beloved by larger fish like striped bass, and by ospreys. Along with tinier but abundant Bay anchovies and silverside minnows, menhaden form the forage base underpinning the Chesapeake’s productivity.
Watts and others have documented that ospreys are doing worst in the saltier parts of the Chesapeake and Atlantic coastal bays where menhaden make up a critical part of their diets. Only in areas with less salty water, the upper Chesapeake and its tidal rivers, are ospreys producing enough young to sustain their populations — though not enough to offset the plummeting reproduction in the rest of the estuary.
Prey options in fresher water are more varied, with gizzard shad and catfish providing ample calories. Nesting ospreys with young need to catch five or six fish a day to sustain the family.
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One of Watts’s graduate students has shown that osprey reproduction can be revived if humans give them extra menhaden. He has heard from “quite a few people” around the Bay who are feeding hungry ospreys. “I’m fine with that,” Watts said, “but it’s not a solution to the current deficits.”
In recent day, schools of "peanut bunker", 3-4 inch Menhaden have been circling close to shore at the beach. Osprey, on the other hand, seem pretty scarce; I have only seen one most days.
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