Menhaden are in a crisis. That was evident by a horrendous osprey nesting season around Jamaica Bay, with 20 empty nests and only five successful chicks this year. As Jamaica Bay Guardian Don Riepe put it, “This is the canary in the coal mine.”
Menhaden, or bunker, are small, oily, schooling forage fish that serve as a crucial food source for marine predators along the Atlantic coast. They’re the meal of choice for ospreys, whales, dolphins, seals, striped bass, bluefish and other marine species. And they’re a fish without a voice as their numbers are being depleted, with potentially detrimental effects on the ecosystem, the local fishing industry and small businesses from bait shops to charter boats to whale tours. While menhaden may not have a voice, stakeholders and environmental experts are raising alarms on their behalf and calling for action to curb industrial fishers using purse seine nets to scoop up tons of menhaden at a time.
Stakeholders have been speaking about the menhaden crisis for years, but from November 9-12, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) will hold its annual meeting with two major agenda items that could result in changes. The ASMFC is an interstate compact formed by 15 Atlantic coastal states to coordinate the sustainable management of shared nearshore and migratory fish species. They oversee 27 species, including menhaden. At their annual meeting, they’ll be discussing 1) Draft Addendum II, which will consider reducing the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap by up to 50% and creating quota periods to distribute harvest under the cap more evenly throughout the season, and 2) they’ll set specifications and commercial quota reallocation for the 2027-2029 fishing years across the Atlantic. On Draft Addendum II, the public has through 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 9 to make public comments. General comments to be included in the briefing materials for the annual meeting, are accepted through October 19.
Why should you care about a little bait fish? Although small, the menhaden’s success or failure could have rippling effects across wildlife and industries that the local economy and recreation depend on. Small businesses that are competing with one mega corporation—Omega Protein. The company’s roots date back to 1878, when a small fish processing operation began in Reedville, VA. The city still serves as their homebase, and the company continues to fish and process menhaden for products such as fish oil supplements, fertilizers, pet foods, cosmetics and more. Since 2017, Omega has been owned by Cooke, Inc., based in Canada. Over the decades, Omega has introduced technology to make fishing menhaden easier, including purse seine fishing and spotter planes to locate schools of menhaden. Purse seine fishing is a commercial method that uses a massive wall of netting to encircle and trap dense schools of open-ocean fish. The methods allow Omega Protein and their fleet of ships with partner, Ocean Harvesters, to catch hundreds of millions of menhaden annually.
ASMFC claims “The coastwide population of menhaden is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing,” according to their Director of Communications Tina Berger. An FAQ section on their website reflects the same. However, their website also admits their 2025 assessment of the population was 37% lower than the average biomass assessment in 2022. And after that 2025 assessment, ASMFC decided to enact a 20% reduction in the Total Allowable Catch for the coast to prevent overfishing in 2026, although they admit a 50% reduction or more be more appropriate to achieve a 0% chance of overfishing, but economic factors came into consideration. “The Board had concerns about the socioeconomic impact of implementing such a significant cut in a single year on short notice and chose to take a more moderate cut for 2026 only,” the ASMFC website says.
Locally, environmental experts and those in the fishing industry are shouting from the rooftops that more cuts need to be made, and quick. And they’ve been shouting for years. “We worked with Senator Joe Addabbo a number of years ago to help New York State pass a law for a three-mile moratorium so that the vacuum ships from Omega Protein could not come in and suck up menhaden and that was a good thing,” Jamaica Bay Ecowatcher Dan Mundy, Jr. said. That legislation, signed into law in April 2019, banned industrial purse seine fishing in New York marine and coastal waters to protect menhaden. However, that ban only extends three miles off the coast, under New York jurisdiction.
States like New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland have similar restrictions on purse seine fishing for reduction purposes. Virginia is the only Atlantic state that still permits large-scale industrial menhaden reduction fishing using purse seine nets. That’s where Chesapeake Bay, a major nursery for young menhaden to grow, is located. Menhaden don’t reach sexual maturity until one to three years old, when they’ll start laying eggs, so young fish being taken before they reach maturity, is adding to the overall reduction of the population.
Chesapeake Bay does have its own quota cap established by the ASMFC, allowing Omega Protein to snatch up menhaden right at a major source, however, once that’s reached, their boats can be seen along other areas of the Atlantic coast, in federal waters, just outside of that three-mile buffer established by the states. “They’re still right beyond that three-mile limit up and down East Coast and this one company is wiping out what is the key species for all marine species and mammals and it needs to be better regulated,” Mundy said. And things are getting bad. “I am offshore in my boat at least twice a week off the coast of Rockaway. I’ve never seen a year with such a lack of menhaden in the last 25 years,” Mundy added.
Over the summer, Don Riepe, the Jamaica Bay Guardian, who has monitored Jamaica Bay’s osprey population for 36 years, as a National Park Service manager and now in his own time, started raising alarms about major changes in the osprey population, with low nesting numbers reminiscent of declines seen before DDT was banned in 1972. In recent years, Riepe was proud of the work done to rebound that population in Jamaica Bay, with 25 successful nests. But more recently, that began to change.
“Starting two years ago, I noticed a few abandoned nests that had never been abandoned before. They were always productive. And then this year was a real crash,” Riepe said. “We checked 25 nests in the greater Jamaica Bay Area, and 20 of them were empty. That never occurred before.” Of the remaining nests, only five chicks survived this year. “So I was concerned, I spoke to other people I know in New Jersey and then down in the Chesapeake, where they have more nests, they also had a population crash. We all agreed, it’s a lack of menhaden. These past two years, we haven’t seen many. Some of the fishermen said they can’t get them. The big thing is these big fishing boats came up from Virginia, and they’re supposed to be within three miles offshore, but after three miles, they’re just scooping up everything.”
Georgie Contino of Pete and Cubos Rockaway Beach is a longtime fisherman and a 100-ton master captain who charters the Martina D and Gypsy fishing boats. As a longtime shark fisherman, he says he saw a noticeable difference this season, as the thresher’s prey was removed. “When I tournament fish, I pre-fish before the tournament. I get 10 trips in. This year, there wasn’t one thresher. Last year, we were getting threshers right off Rockaway and seeing huge schools of menhaden. I was catching and releasing them every day before the tournament. On the third day we went out, these boats came in, like six battleships with a spotter plane, and each boat pulled out a school of menhaden. We were drifting right along with them, these 225-foot boats. The next two days, the threshers were gone. It’s like if you go to Rockaway to get something to eat and everyone’s telling you, ‘We’re out of food,’ what’s your next step? You go over the bridge,” Contino said, alluding to the threshers moving out of the area due to the lack of menhaden.
“That’s the building block of the ecosystem in the water,” Contino said. “It’s the bait. There used to be football fields of bunker. Where there’s bait, there’s fish. If you’re taking this away from them, what’s gonna happen? They’re gonna leave and go to other areas.”
Longtime Captain Vinnie Calabro, who owns and operates Karen Ann Charters, said he must travel further to find striped bass, leading to higher fuel costs. “I had to go to Great Kills in Staten Island from Howard Beach. That’s more than 20 miles, 40 miles back and forth. That’s another $200, $300 just in fuel,” he said, adding that the fishing used to be better closer to home. “Four years ago, you could go in front of Rockaway, three miles off the beach, put a bunker in the water in June, July, and by 8 o’clock, you would hook up and be on your way home with a giant bluefin tuna,” Calabro said. That was until the ships came in with purse seines. “They came in, mopped up the joint, and the fishing shut down instantly. No fish, no bait,” he said.
Calabro is part of a movement called the Forage Fish Campaign and has gone across the tri-state area interviewing owners of various bait shops and fishing businesses, who all seem to come to the same consensus. “Seldom in nature, when something’s in decline, can you pinpoint one specific factor,” he said. “But if you had to write a list, number one with an asterisk would be the harvesting by these companies.”
Less bait has spelled trouble for local bait shops, who depend on fishermen stocking up for their trips. As of today, Tom’s Bait and Tackle is the only bait shop left on the peninsula, and even they’re struggling. After 54 years as owner, Tom McNicholas said he’s seen fewer fishermen come through his doors in recent years, even with a prime fishing spot along Jamaica Bay, adjacent to his shop near the ferry landing on Rockaway Beach Blvd.
“Imagine if you had a hot dog stand outside Yankee Stadium and you weren’t doing any business and somebody told you there’s no game today. That whole stretch there from here to the ferry was our Yankee Stadium. That’s where people fished,” he said. “If you were to look at it now, you won’t see a soul. They don’t come into the shop, they’re not fishing. When the bunker are not around, you get no striped bass, you get no bluefish. There’s no food around them. It’s a serious problem.” McNicholas also explained that what bunker can be found, are much smaller than they used to be. Using tongs, he pulled out and displayed a bunker from his supply case that was about six inches long. “A few years ago, the bunker would be at least a foot long… then they slowly got smaller and smaller,” McNicholas said.
He added that he’s been able to stay in business because of diverse offerings, from beer to lotto tickets, and other bait sources like worms, clams and squid, plus gasoline, making Tom’s Bait and Tackle a spot to fuel up boats, but he said they don’t see many anymore. He added rising fuel costs could be a factor. “It’s a beautiful day. Normally you’d see a hundred boats out there,” McNicholas said, pointing to an empty Jamaica Bay. “There are very few boats now.”
Striped bass fisherman, Billy Lagakis of Lyndhurst, who has more than 60 years of experience on the water, expressed concern over the ripple effect of taking too much bunker. “Are we going to affect the charter boat captains, the party boat captains, the bait and tackle shops? How about all the boats, the marinas, the mechanics? If the fish aren’t there, the local economy is gonna take a big hit,” Lagakis said, adding that he’s already starting to see it.
“There used to be acres of bunker. They numbered in the millions, not in the thousands. Every year there’s less and less. Without the big bunker, it’s hard to catch the big fish. You can’t take the food source out that the whole entire ocean lives on, you know, its whole food chain. Bunker feeds the East Coast,” Lagakis said. “For me, that’s striped bass. Bluefish love bunker, weakfish love bunker, whales, porpoise, sharks, seals eat bunker, so once you deplete that, you’re affecting the entire food chain. In the last 10 years or so, we’ve watched the whale population come back off our coast. But once our bunker schools are starting to be depleted, that’ll lessen.”
American Princess Cruises, which has built a business around whale watching since about 2010, has a mammal spotting rate of about 95%, and is coming off another successful season of spotting whales, dolphins and other species. However, Dr. Danielle Brown, director of research for Gotham Whale, the nonprofit that collects observation data on the whale population around New York City reiterated that they have noticed a difference in their food source, which could mean those mammals may be harder to find. “We have visually seen less Atlantic menhaden in the last several years when compared to our earlier observations,” Dr. Brown said. “Humpback whales are opportunistic feeders that can be found in areas with high densities of food. When they do not find an abundance of food, they won’t stay long and will feed elsewhere.”
With all the warning signs clear, several people and organizations have begun to take action and put pressure on those who can do something. Calabro and others, like Menhaden Defenders, have been advocating for a larger buffer zone of 12 miles from shore, where these harvesting ships won’t be able to scoop up menhaden.
More than a year ago, Calabro said he caught the attention of President Donald Trump, and had an opportunity to meet with him at his golf course in Bedminster, NJ, and explain how the issue was impacting small fishing businesses. Calabro recalled Trump showing interest in resolving the issue. The President allegedly told him, “I’ll sign an executive order on Monday. Done deal.” However, Calabro is still waiting. “It’s been over a year of Mondays already,” he said.
He attributes the nonaction to some loud voices coming from those who support Omega Protein. “Virginia has a very strong lobby group for the menhaden harvesters. This company has deep pockets, and very, very strong lobbying,” Calabro said.
While the President didn’t follow through, Calabro and others recently caught the attention of Councilwoman Joann Ariola, who has taken interest in the menhaden crisis and the way it impacts her constituents and the local environment and economy. She decided to put some pressure back on the federal government. On September 14, she penned a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, urging the federal government to establish that 12-mile buffer to keep purse seine fishers further away from shore.
“Menhaden may be a small fish, but they hold an enormous part of our coastal ecosystem together,” Ariola said in a press release. “When industrial vessels remove them by the millions, the consequences travel all the way up the food chain, from ospreys and striped bass to sharks, whales and dolphins. New York has already acted within its waters to protect these fish. Now the federal government must protect them in the waters beyond our reach.”
While they await a response from the federal government, others, like Danielle McCulloch, executive director of the American Littoral Society, are trying to get the attention of those who have the power to call the shots over just how much fish companies like Omega Protein can take from waters along the coast.
After hearing devastating reports about the decimated osprey nesting season from Jamaica Bay to New Jersey to the Chesapeake Bay, and from local fishermen sounding the alarm on the lack of bunker affecting the fishing season, McCulloch decided to bring those raising alarms to the table, forming a coalition of more than 150 environmental experts, those in the fishing industry and more, to come up with an action plan.
“I’m hearing the bird people say ospreys aren’t getting enough food… And then I’m hearing my friends that are fishing miles and miles offshore saying they’re not seeing the menhaden,” McCulloch said. “We have a problem here.”
She says there’s a potential solution. “We really need to take a look, and we need to reduce how much fish we’re taking out of the system until we get to the bottom of these issues,” she said. “Everyone’s coming at this from a different angle, but it’s all for one reason, and that’s because we want to make sure that we have enough menhaden in the water for all the uses, for the ecology, for the bait fishery, for anglers, recreational, and commercial. It’s not fair that this industry is decimating this stock.”
McCulloch and others say there could be other factors impacting the menhaden population. From habitat to climate, to the depletion of marshlands in Jamaica Bay, to how the wastewater treatment plant may impact the water, to changing water temperatures, to new bunker-eating species like cobia coming around, to several other factors. However, McCulloch explained there’s only one factor where meaningful change can be quickly made. “Yes, there’s a lot of issues, habitat, climate, but there’s one lever we can pull and that’s management. It’s like, when you own stocks or have savings. If you keep enough in the bank so it’ll grow, you can take some of that interest and live off of that. Why don’t we manage our fisheries the same? If we did, there would be plenty. There’s just such shortsighted management and it’s been happening for decades and that’s why we see the decimation of the ecosystems.”
So McCulloch urges all who care about the menhaden crisis, no matter what reason, to act. The American Littoral Society recently published a blog explaining the issue, and how people can submit public comments to ASMFC before the deadline on October 9 and their annual meeting in November. That blog can be found at: www.littoralsociety.org/blog/menhaden-decisions-this-fall-help-keep-our-coast-fed
Public comments can be sent directly to ASMFC by emailing comments@asmfc.org. In the subject line, put “Atlantic Menhaden Draft Addendum II and 2027–2029 Catch Limits.” “Include your name, your state, your personal connection to the issue, and why stronger protections matter to you. Ask managers to cut Chesapeake Bay’s industrial harvest cap by at least 50%, spread the allowed harvest more evenly across the season, and make a substantial coastwide catch reduction that meets ASMFC’s ecosystem target,” the Littoral Society said.
“Menhaden are the one forage fish we cannot lose,” McCulloch said. “If menhaden crash, it will be devastating.”
Photos by Katie McFadden, Don Riepe and Tim Moriarty.
