If you’ve done any inshore fishing on the Atlantic coast, there’s a good chance you’ve seen, and benefited from, menhaden. Known locally in some regions as bunker or ponies, menhaden are a critical forage fish loaded with nutrients that fuel the Atlantic coast ecosystem. Species like striped bass, bluefish, redfish, cobia, even bluefin tuna depend on healthy populations of these oil-laden forage fish. Similarly, marine mammals and fish-eating birds like humpback whales, coastal sharks, osprey and gannets are highly dependent on menhaden. Menhaden have aptly been called “the most important fish in the sea,” because of how integral the species is for healthy, productive coastal ecosystems. Intensifying warning signs in the nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay, and throughout the Atlantic coast are prompting fishery managers to consider major reforms to leave more menhaden in the water to support these struggling ecosystems.
While the ecological importance of menhaden is widely accepted as fact, menhaden are big business for commercial and recreational bait. But that bait demand pales in comparison to the profits and menhaden extraction done by Omega Protein, the sole remaining reduction fishery based out of Reedville, Virginia but owned by the Cooke Aquaculture, a multination behemoth based in Canadian. Reduction fishing is the industrial fishing practice of utilizing spotter planes to locate large schools of menhaden, where mother ships deploy nearly 2,000′ purse seine nets to trap and vacuum millions of fish out of the water. These menhaden are then brought back to the factory where they are ground up and cooked down into fish meal and fish oil, which then get used to produce aquaculture feed, pet food, livestock feed, and fish oil pills. Omega Protein is the only remaining reduction operation on the entire Atlantic Coast and is allowed to catch 68% of the entire Atlantic Coast menhaden quota, nearly 300 million pounds. As the last remaining industrial operation on the coast, hundreds of millions of these keystone forage fish are removed from in and around the Chesapeake Bay estuary every year.
Along the Atlantic coast, and focused in the Chesapeake Bay, an ecologic crisis is unfolding, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission can, well must, act to support a thriving marine ecosystem.
In the Chesapeake, osprey are incredibly dependent on menhaden for raising successful clutches of chicks. And as an apex predator that exclusively eat fish, osprey are a fantastic indicator species to gauge the health of aquatic ecosystems. For the past few years, osprey chicks are dying at an unprecedented rate, worse than during the DDT crisis that almost wiped the species out. According to renowned osprey biologists at the University of William & Mary Center for Conservation Biology, 2026 was the worst breeding season ever documented in the Chesapeake, and unless this trend is reversed, the population could decline by 50% over the next decade. The Chesapeake supports the largest breeding population of osprey on the planet, and could be cut in half. But why?
These osprey biologists, who have studied these apex predators for decades, determined food stress is driving cause for these widespread chick mortalities, and specifically the lack of menhaden available to predators in the Chesapeake. Essentially, these chicks are starving to death en masse, because the adults cannot find enough menhaden to sustain them. This same osprey reproduction crisis is beginning to unfold elsewhere on the Atlantic Coast–Delaware Bay, New Jersey, and in Long Island Sound. Osprey are far easier to study with higher levels of certainty than fish species, because well scientists can essentially monitor them in the wild 24/7. If these apex predators are showing such extreme signs of stress, the question becomes how are predators below the water that depend on menhaden faring?
The ASMFC is currently considering major changes to how it manages the reduction fishery inside the Chesapeake Bay as well as a new coastwide catch limit.
Draft Addendum II could significantly reduce the amount of menhaden the reduction fishery can harvest from inside the Bay and implement seasonal management provisions to more effectively distribute the harvest pressure throughout the year. The current Bay Cap is 112 million pounds of menhaden but could be cut by over 50%. Public comment on Draft Addendum II closes on October 9, and final action will be taken at the November ASMFC Meeting. Speak up now to support a struggling Chesapeake Bay–stronger menhaden protections will support a thriving, resilient estuary!
At the November Meeting, the ASMFC will also consider changes to the coastwide menhaden catch limit (total allowable catch, TAC). There were major changes from the 2025 menhaden stock assessment that showed managers had overestimated the size of the menhaden population and needed to take significant reductions to meet ecosystem-based fisheries management objectives. Unfortunately, the ASMFC didn’t go far enough in 2026, but will have another opportunity in November to course correct and approve a TAC that responds to the new science and supports a thriving Atlantic coast ecosystem. Keep a lookout for more on that in the coming weeks.
There are numerous conservation organizations working diligently on advancing menhaden conservation–that is a testament to how important these small fish are to healthy fisheries. Do your research, take action with some of these organizations, and write a comment (addressing the options considered in Draft Addendum II) and email it to comments@asmfc.org (subject line: Atlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II). All these conservation organizations doing great work to protect our fisheries and coastal ecosystems need your help to advocate for conservation minded policies at the ASMFC. Before October 9, comment on Draft Addendum II!