Across the Chesapeake Bay, fishermen are reeling in fewer striped bass. Many osprey have stopped laying eggs, and chicks that do hatch often starve to death in the nest.

These bad omens may be tied to the faltering health of Atlantic menhaden, a nutrient-rich fish foraged by larger bay species and used by the bay’s people since pre-Colonial times.

Sometimes called “the most important fish in the sea” because they help filter waters and feed other fish and birds, the little menhaden stirs big controversy.

Take Baltimore’s recent fish kills. When tens of thousands of menhaden surfaced dead in the harbor this year, many saw it as one more consequence of bay pollution. The fishery industry, though, pointed to the carnage as proof that its operations haven’t depleted the species like environmentalists claim.

The response was emblematic of a raging debate over the health of these fish in the Chesapeake Bay and the bay itself. At stake is a flagging effort to save the estuary’s cherished osprey and striped bass, balanced against hundreds of jobs in Virginia that rely on the menhaden fishery, the last of its kind on the Atlantic seaboard.

Things came to a head last week at the annual meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, where conservationist groups like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation called on fishery managers to slash East Coast menhaden catch limits by more than half. A new assessment released ahead of the ASMFC’s menhaden board meeting found that populations of the forage fish are much lower than thought.

The menhaden catch limit along the Atlantic coast has increased incrementally over the last decade, from 170,800 metric tons in 2013 to 233,550 metric tons this year. Most of those fish are caught by a massive operator out of Reedville, Virginia.

It doesn’t help that no one — fisherman, conservationist or scientist — can say for certain how “the most important fish” is really faring in the Chesapeake Bay.

Are menhaden populations healthy? Or cratering?

“That is the burning question,” said Robert Latour, a fisheries ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “And sorry to give you a bland answer, but we really don’t know.”

That’s because, for all of the agreement about the importance of menhaden to the bay ecosystem, research on the fishery’s impact is “woefully inadequate,” Latour’s institute has said.

The ASMFC regulates menhaden across the whole East Coast but says there’s not enough data to make determinations about menhaden specific to the bay.

No one on the Atlantic seaboard, though, catches as many menhaden as Reedville’s Ocean Harvesters. The company scouts huge schools using spotter planes and ensnares them by boat in trawling nets. This practice is banned in all Atlantic states save Virginia, which is allocated three quarters of the whole East Coast menhaden catch.

Ocean Harvesters provides its fish to the Canadian-owned Omega Protein, whose Reedville plant processes menhaden into fish oil or sends it to Canada to feed industrial salmon farms.

While Ocean Harvesters does much of its fishing outside the Chesapeake itself, the ASMFC limits the yearly catch within bay waters to 51,000 metric tons, or 112 million pounds — about a fifth of the coastwide limit. At the request of Maryland officials Tuesday, the menhaden board is considering tightening that limit further.

Despite concerns in Maryland and Virginia, Latour said, before this year’s revision, stock assessments hadn’t indicated much need to restrict the coastwide catch.

Schools of menhaden tend to arrive in the spring. But how many enter the bay, how long they stay and how much their numbers change from year to year are open questions, he said.

Despite the new findings suggesting much lower Atlantic menhaden populations, ASMFC settled on a half measure Tuesday. Motions to impose a 50% coastwide reduction or ramp up to that restriction over three years fell short, and the board approved a more limited 20% cut for 2026 only. Members plan to reconvene in a year to hash out the regulations for 2027 and 2028.

This decision disappointed Will Poston, who leads menhaden conservation efforts for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Poston pins the bay’s menhaden woes on Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein, and called the board’s decision “nothing more than a performative nod” to its conservation responsibilities.

Regulators, he said, are “playing with fire with one of the most important forage fish on the Atlantic coast.”

Ocean Harvesters and Omega, meanwhile, argued the board didn’t need to go so far.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s meeting, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, an industry group that includes Omega and Ocean Harvesters, sent a blitz of news releases pushing back on environmentalists’ claims linking the struggles of osprey and striped bass to menhaden fishing.

In a video released a day before the vote, fishermen in Ocean Harvesters’ union workforce testified to how the fishery has supported their families, in some cases for generations. Working for Ocean Harvesters allowed them to pay for homes and support kids through college, members said.

“Some people, you’re not going to get it through their head that we are not out there to destroy what keeps us going,” fisherman Tim Crandall said.

“Just don’t take people’s word for it,” another voice chimed in. “Go do your research.”

In the Chesapeake, though, research remains limited, an issue Virginia lawmakers attempted to address in 2023 when they authorized a first-of-its-kind study of industrial fishing’s impacts on bay menhaden. This $3 million assessment would constitute “the biggest investment in menhaden science ever,” according to Latour, who co-chaired a workshop with regulators, environmentalists and the industry to outline the assessment.

Even so, in Virginia’s last two legislative sessions, funding for this study fizzled.

Omega Protein has given $279,000 to Virginia Democrats and Republicans in the last three years, according to state campaign finance records. Over the last 20 years, the company’s campaign contributions in Virginia total almost $1 million.

Asked about the stalled Virginia study, a spokesperson for the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition pointed to the industry’s support for a separate university-led project, approved last month, to review existing menhaden science and identify gaps for future study.

This project won’t collect new data, and until more definitive science is available, menhaden assessments can depend on who’s talking.

One speaker at Tuesday’s meeting pointed to the recent Annapolis Boat Shows, where onlookers were captivated by swirling schools of menhaden, as evidence of their vibrant health.

A cargo ship off Gibson Island sucked an unusual number of menhaden into its cooling system last week, a more frequent occurrence in the upper Chesapeake. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources tracked a significant increase in menhaden in the upper bay in April, which officials said could be a result of a behavioral change in the schooling fish, possibly in response to climate change.

Others in Maryland, though, have described a conspicuous lack of menhaden.

Since 2017, Maryland watermen have harvested less than half their small menhaden quota. Lynn Fegley, fisheries and boating director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, recounted at Tuesday’s ASMFC meeting that many of the state’s pound net fishermen have found almost no menhaden this year.

“We’re in a bad position in Maryland,” echoed Russell Dize, a Tilghman Island waterman who also represents the state on the menhaden board.

Collapsing osprey birth rates, meanwhile, suggest an alarming fallout.

Findings released last month by William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology paint a bleak picture. Surveyors found that nearly three quarters of osprey pairs surveyed in the bay’s mostly brackish waters produced no young this year, while many osprey chicks died of hunger.

These findings suggest osprey will soon decline across the bay, if they aren’t already, said Bryan Watts, the center’s longtime director. In the absence of better data on the menhaden themselves, Watts said predators like osprey offer a “sentinel.”

“There is no question that there are not enough menhaden in the bay to support osprey,” he said. “The question is: Why are there not enough menhaden?”

One big reason may be climate change. The biomass of Atlantic menhaden has moved north along the East Coast, toward New England, a shift both Watts and Latour believe is at least partly a result of warming mid-Atlantic waters.

The exact impact of industrial menhaden fishing, meanwhile, remains a mystery without more study, the two Virginia scientists said.

In the Virginia state House this year, Del. Paul Milde pushed the bill to fund the menhaden assessment.

A Republican and self-described conservationist, Milde worries what menhaden declines could mean for the bay ecosystem. History is replete with examples of fishing industries that insist there’s “more to take,” he said, only to be proven wrong after it’s too late.

He’s optimistic the study will happen eventually, but he also said colleagues haven’t rushed to his aid. Since his bill failed, the union representing Ocean Harvesters fishermen gave $7,500 to his Democratic challenger.

“Once you take a position on this that’s public,” Milde said, “you start getting phone calls from friends and from industry.”

Banner reporter Hayes Gardner contributed to this story.